I was abused in hospital – the ‘no touch’ policy only made it worse
Staff had ‘favourite’ patients and intense relationships with patients weren’t challenged. The man who groomed me used this to his advantage, writes former Huntercombe patient Nima Hunt
I was 16 when I was first admitted to Watcombe Hall, a children’s mental health hospital in Torbay run by The Huntercombe Group (now Active Care Group). By the time Watcombe Hall was permanently closed in 2017, despite having only been open for two years, at least three children had been the victims of grooming and sexual abuse. I was one of those children.
It’s difficult to identify exactly when my abuser started grooming me, because from the moment I stepped onto the ward the stage was already set; Watcombe Hall was the perfect breeding ground for abuse. Shift staff were overstretched and exhausted. Incident rates (of self-harm and absconsions) were high, so staff were “firefighting” between incidents without debriefs.
At times, the hospital was so understaffed that patients weren’t able to access the garden. Management was non-existent, and the senior multi-disciplinary team worked in offices outside of the ward, sometimes not seeing their patients or shift staff for days at a time. All this created a tense, chaotic and distressing environment, where scenes of violence and suffering, innate power imbalances and deprivations of liberty were normalised.
Nobody at the hospital looked at or listened to obvious signs of grooming and abuse. Staff had “favourite” patients and intense staff-patient relationships weren’t challenged. My abuser used this to his advantage; it enabled him to groom me without fear of repercussion. When other patients and staff had raised concerns about my abuser’s behaviour in the past, he had been suspended for a time, but had returned to work without limitations. Whilst I was being groomed, I told a staff member explicitly what was happening – she congratulated me, and did not report the abuse.
The policies, protocols and measures in place to protect me from harm (such as having limited access to the “outside world”, being restrained, and being sedated with medication) made me more vulnerable to harm.
Watcombe Hall had a “no touch” policy between staff and patients which was supposed to protect patients from abuse. In reality, this fuelled and sustained my abuse. It meant that non-abusive “touch” – such as a patient wanting a brief hug from a member of staff – happened in secret, away from the unit’s cameras.
All forms of consensual staff-patient contact were viewed as wrong – but restraints, which are by their nature non-consensual, were endorsed. My abuser utilised the fact that the only “acceptable” form of touch was non-consensual in order to abuse me.
When I tried to raise concerns about the way I was treated, I was ridiculed and shamed. I started to believe that I had no control over my life, and, in reality, this was true. For a portion of my admission I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which meant I had no power to discharge myself from the hospital or escape the abuse, and even when I was taken off my section I was repeatedly threatened with being sectioned again if I tried to leave.
When I was discharged, I disclosed the abuse to my family, in turn leading to a police investigation which eventually found my abuser – a senior member of staff – guilty of abusing three child inpatients at Watcombe Hall. If myself and the two other brave young women hadn’t reported him to the police when we did, I am certain that he would still be abusing children now.
After leaving Watcombe Hall, I co-founded First Do No Harm, a non-profit organisation set up in the wake of reports by Sky News and The Independent revealing years of harm at children’s mental health hospitals run by Active Care Group.
Since our organisation has grown, it’s become clear to us that our experiences weren’t isolated. Watcombe Hall wasn’t just one bad hospital. Active Care Group isn’t just one organisation that has failed its patients. The UK’s mental healthcare system is riddled with failures at procedural level that enable the harm of its patients.
The UK is in desperate need of a paradigm shift in the way we approach, understand and manage mental ill-health. We need to move away from the “them and us” attitude towards patients, which automatically regards those with mental ill-health or distress as inferior. We need to move away from practices that rely on coercion and submission, instead providing trauma-informed services, led and staffed by people who are appropriately trained and paid. We need individualised care that understands its patient holistically and compassionately. We need environments that promote liberty and empowerment – not locked doors and restraint – that replicate normality and actively discourage institutionalisation.
Ultimately, this is the only thing that can prevent abuse from happening in mental health institutions – and it’s the only thing that could have protected me.