Panorama - Inside the Oubliette

Satan and the sociology professor sat perched on a roof in Srebrenica watching a man with a Kalashnikov taking pot shots at the people running away from him. The professor explained the complex causes of the conflict and the culture of brutalisation that had transformed the once peaceful farmer into a cold blooded killer. In the pause that followed, Satan turned to the sociology professor and remarked, “But that doesn’t quite explain the glint in his eye though, does it?”.

That was Radio 4’s superlative Harry’s Game, but frankly had Satan taken up in one of the dilapidated office chairs in Winterbourne View care home I wonder if the same observation would occur to him. In a week that saw Jon Ronson argue in his book “How to spot a psychopath” that sadists are practically everywhere; we needed only to tune into Panorama to spot a number of them. The most vulnerable people in our community had been warehoused on an industrial estate in Bristol; though “Warehoused” implies some care over the goods stored. This was an oubliette, a forgotten place in a land that wanted to forget about these people. Secret filming by Joe Casey gave these forgotten people eyes and ears and voices, and on Monday night we heard their screams, their pleas for mercy and their howls of pain. On the left, we often bury unfashionable impulses that would have protected these people. Go on, give into your inner socialists, you know this was about the market. Give into your inner authoritarian; you know secret filming was the only way to tell the truth about what happened.  

Castlebeck keep themselves lean and profitable, the £3,500 per patient, per week they charge is spent on corporate salaries, shareholder dividends and flashy web sites (which until this week boasted they received an award for being one of the top 10 employers in the carehome sector). Lower down the priority order are their “support workers” who receive an average weekly wage of £306 for their 12 hour shifts and, given the lowest priority, their defenceless patients. Cost effectiveness demands patients are subject to the crushing banality of sitting in a functional room watching television and the occasional trip outside to the garden. No meaningful education or outside stimulation is apparent, which is only good sense as those would incur costs which would dent profits. It also suits abusers of course; too many trips to see the dinosaurs at the museum could risk some busybody asking why the girl with special needs has a whacking great bruise on her leg, or heaven forbid one of the inmates telling someone Wayne hit them.

The right wing offer the same panic as always accompanies an attack on the sacred private sector. “Look at the two publicly employed NHS nurses”, they cry, “what about social services who signed the checks” they add. As ever, their knee jerk reaction is to accuse everyone else of having a knee jerk reaction. They did this over Dunblane, screaming that schools should not be fortresses, because plainly your average branch of Barclays deserves better protection against gun wielding psychopaths than little children. The fact is that comprehensive training of support workers by experts can weed out bullies. It can teach proper restraint techniques, it can create a hurdle to casual employment that discourages sadists scouting around for soft options. It can bind people to a professional and caring ethos. The Fitzgerald inquiry into Queensland police brutality and corruption recognised exactly this when it introduced compulsory degree level qualification for Aussie coppers. If that level of qualification is necessary to nick Madge Bishop for drink driving, I’m happy to adopt it for caring for the most vulnerable.

The police recognised a long time ago that installing CCTV in station cells protected them and those in their custody. Plenty of parents did the same with rogue nannies and web cams. The only way to be sure, really sure, about the level of care the most vulnerable receive is to do what Panorama did – film it. When the most defenceless  are unable to articulate the abuse they are suffering, their only ally and advocate is the camera, which unlike a care worker’s  use of force report, is incapable of lying. The benefits don’t stop there. Criminal Offences which properly reflect the gravity of what happened will require evidence from victims.  A camera defeats the abusers best weapon, a knowledge that coherence and accuracy from the victims will suffer with the intimidation of being in a court with unfamiliar people.

Finally, why are there no resignations from the CQC or Castlebeck? When did accountability become a set of vox pops from well-fed men arching their eyebrows,  speaking softly and doing their best “Nick Clegg being sensitive look” earnestly telling us they’re learning lessons. Their allies instantly accuse anyone demanding resignations of forming a lynch mob looking for a sacrificial lamb. That is not a protection afforded to low pay workers in this country and it’s an excuse we only ever see trotted out by people in suits. Let me give them an insight into the lynch mob. People who are rubbish at important jobs, like protecting vulnerable people, should be sacked because they are rubbish. If you have failed to act on clear evidence from a whistleblower you are rubbish at your job because you could have stopped the abuse and you did not.

Let’s be real about this. Apart from the repeated evidence from a whistleblower, Castlebeck also knew one of their patients had previously suffered a broken arm while being restrained, one worker was dismissed for an offence of common assault. Chillingly, Wayne the carer explained he’d previously worked in Young Offenders Institutions. This is going on now, the best protection we can offer powerless victims of abuse is nationalisation and CCTV.