Nine care home workers are facing trial for neglecting, verbally abusing and deliberately antagonising extremely vulnerable patients in care described as “devoid of kindness and respect” but also criminal.
The six men and three women, aged 25-54, are being prosecuted after a reporter went undercover and filmed the behaviour for a BBC Panorama documentary.
Opening the case at Teesside crown court in Middlesbrough, the prosecuting barrister, Anne Richardson, said the patients all resided at Whorlton Hall, a 17-bed independent specialist hospital unit near Barnard Castle, County Durham, operated by Cygnet Health Care.
The patients were all detained under section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983. “They all had extremely complex needs and it is highly unlikely that any would be able to live independently, even with a raft of appropriate support.”
Richardson said caring for such residents was a “hard, demanding job, and that carers can face complex, difficult, obstreperous, and sometimes violent people who sadly do not realise what they are doing and cannot help their actions.”
But they deserved to be treated with “kindness, respect and patience.”
Richardson said the jury would hear evidence of ill-treatment which was “cruel and abusive”. It was “not only devoid of the respect and kindness that those residents deserved but was also a criminal offence”.
It included care workers repeatedly saying words they knew to be triggers to patients, belittling those in their care and deliberately antagonising them. The undercover footage includes one care worker, Niall Mellor, describing a patient as a retard “and that the residents are cunts who do not deserve good treatment”.
One patient had a known dislike of balloons. Prosecutors allege that Peter Bennett, a care worker, twanged a balloon in the patient’s room and asked her if she liked balloons before describing different coloured balloons.
Bennett was, said Richardson, “someone within the home who liked to show off to other staff members” who would, in turn, copy his behaviour towards residents.
One patient diagnosed with autism was someone who had difficulty communicating. On one occasion, Richardson said, Bennett began “to pretend that he did not understand what she was saying and started to speak French to her. “When she came out of her room, he got up from the chair suddenly as to advance towards [her].” She “took fright and went back into her room. At no time had she been violent or aggressive or noisy.”
Another care worker, Ryan Fuller, while a patient was being restrained, offered chewing gum to all those doing the restraining. He also mocked the patient and wore his spectacles, the court heard.
Richardson said no one was being accused of physical abuse and not all the defendants were equally culpable.
It was also true, she said, that care work was not well paid, “but that cannot be an excuse for not properly supervising residents”.
She said there must have been times when the care workers’ patience was “sorely stretched” as they listened to a patient endlessly scream or repeat the same words or call them derogatory names.
“The crown, whilst recognising that, submits that the solution was not to name call in return, or to wind up patients whose trigger and flash points were well known. To do so went beyond simply being mean and verbally abusive to the residents and became a criminal offence.”
The nine care workers have all pleaded not guilty to charges of ill treatment or wilful neglect of an individual by a care worker. The accused are: John Sanderson, 25, of Willington; Darren Lawton, 47, of Darlington; Niall Mellor, 26, of Bishop Auckland; Sarah Banner, 33, of Newton Aycliffe; Matthew Banner, 43, of Newton Aycliffe; Ryan Fuller, 27, of Barnard Castle; Sabah Mahmood, 27, of Kelloe; Peter Bennett, 53, of Billingham; and Karen McGhee, 54, from Darlington.
The trial continues.
