Muckamore Abbey Hospital, Northern Ireland, which provides treatment for adults with severe learning disabilities, became "one of the nation's biggest ever crime scenes" in 2017 when hundreds of thousands of hours of CCTV footage revealed that patients had been seriously abused, said the BBC.
Yet eight years after the footage was discovered, no cases have come to trial, the hospital hasn't been closed and a public inquiry has yet to report its findings.
In 2017 it transpired that CCTV cameras, installed at the hospital six months earlier and believed to have remained switched off, had in fact been running, capturing a a "staggering" 300,000 hours of footage revealing widespread abuse and neglect. This included patients being "punched, kicked, dragged across floors, tipped off furniture" and subjected to "emotional abuse", said the BBC.
This is the "largest systemic abuse case uncovered in the UK", Andrew McDonnell, a clinical psychologist with experience of such investigations, told the broadcaster. The "sheer volume and scale" of it "dwarfs anything I've ever seen before".
There have been 38 arrests to date, said the BBC, but no trials or convictions. In May, seven former members of staff appeared in court charged over the ill-treatment of patients, said the Belfast Telegraph.
A public inquiry that ended earlier this year is yet to deliver its final report and recommendations. Families claimed that their lawyers weren't allowed to directly ask questions of the witnesses, but the inquiry said it had not received any applications to do so. |