One woman tells her story … #2

Of misplaced trust. Of bureaucracy & cover-up. Of a social care system paying lip service to the needs of Scotland’s most vulnerable.

Extract II: this great age!

I was 96 years old and locked-up in a care home when the abuse began so, although I may have wanted to run away – flight was out of the question. In any event, my instinct is to stand up to bullies, so fight it was!

I could not identify my abuser or abusers, I could give the Police officers only a description of the uniform worn and confirm that it would happen when I was in my room, most likely during the night. Nor did I recognise the voice from its menacing tone. I had not looked at my abuser’s face. When they asked me why, I explained that I didn’t think a human being capable of such cruelty so I dared not look up for fear of finding myself staring into the eyes of the Devil. That was a measure of my fear. The Police officers made notes. I was old enough to be their granny. I wondered what on earth they made of it all.

When they asked me if my abuser or abusers could have been male, my son excused himself and left the room. He returned just a minute or so later and apologised; he’d needed some air, he said. He told me later he’d been caught off-guard by the question. Without wishing to be cruel but needing him to question his assumptions – I may, in fact, have said ‘misconceptions’ – I told him that I will never be able to reveal the extent of the abuse. As he stared out of the window, I reflected that my words were heartless and that I felt oddly unmoved as I watched him breathing heavily.

I had assumed myself invincible but I began to see I’d been an easy target for my abuser. This bothered me. There were many times over my ten decades when I was aware of my own mortality, experiencing loss and hardship, from which at times I thought I would never recover, but had survived despite it all. It’s what we do! I think there’s some logic there! I confess I may have thought myself worthy of respect at this great age so may have invited the abuse despite being raised to expect nothing from others.

I saw that the very characteristics that made me a target – my quiet and shy nature; that I am polite and respectful – qualities my parents taught me to value, had exposed me to abuse by people with quite different standards, made me an open invitation, perhaps, to someone inclined to abuse. And, although I do not nor have ever consciously regarded myself as vulnerable on account of my sex or great age, I imagine that my abuser likely thought otherwise.

Unable to identify my abuser, despite being aware today that it must have been one of the night staff, I felt I could trust no-one and withdrew into myself. Mercifully, my change in mood went unnoticed as the care home owner had taken in three high-needs residents, each of whom needed one-to-one, 24-hour care, leaving just two out of the usual contingent of five carers, to work twelve hour shifts without breaks ministering to the various care needs of the rest of us.

When taking in these unfortunate high-needs residents, the care home owner deprived the rest of us not only of the care he was in business to provide but also of what I considered to be the home’s most valuable resource, the dining room, since he had turned that over for use as a ‘ward’ for the new high-needs residents and the carers who sat with them. I never met these poor souls who would spend the next eighteen months or so closeted in the former dining room.

Like me, my fellow residents also missed the dining room but, from my perspective, while it had ensured that I got some exercise each day getting there and back for meals and provided opportunities to socialise, I did not begrudge the high-needs residents its use – none of us did. Nor did I fail to see that its loss allowed me to occupy an armchair for days on end further reducing the likelihood that I would inadvertently interact with my abuser. What luck!

When our enthusiastic activities coordinator was incapacitated and unavailable for six months, the volume on the television sets was turned up and we were left to our own devices. Pure and unadulterated neglect at a time just when I needed to be left alone. I could scarce believe my good fortune!

For days on end I sat undisturbed in this manner. However, although this arrangement suited me, it happened to suit also the hard-pressed day carers, with the unfortunate consequence for me that, on days when they failed to toilet me, I would know to dread the arrival of the night carers and what lay in store for them … and me.

If my luck was in, the night carers would allow me to sleep in the armchair I’d occupied all day rather than toilet me. But, on nights when they insisted, despite my protestations, that I had to go to bed, I could expect my abuser to appear and exact revenge for increasing the workload, standing over me hissing “filthy bitch”.

My son came most days and took me for trips along the coast. He would chat as we drove along, asking me how I was, how things were, but I preferred to sit quietly catching glimpses of the sea between gaps in the hedgerows and speaking only to reminisce. With the care home so under-resourced, often we would take with us one or two of my more able fellow residents. Even the most junior member of staff seemed to have authority to grant us permission. I wondered if the staff would notice if we failed to return or if anyone but I had considered the legal implications were we to roll off the coast road and into the sea. I suspected not on either count!

The current manager was a family friend of the owner and recently retired, with no experience whatsoever of caring for the elderly and infirm. With my head down, I would watch her from under my brows. I could tell that she missed nothing – and, that she lacked empathy. Once, I saw her reduce Peggy’s son – a respected solicitor – to a blithering wreck when he arrived to find that his mother had been hospitalised. I could see, however, that this manager respected my son for he never failed to look her straight in the eye.

She happened to be ‘available’, it seems, just when it was discovered that the previous manager of several years was not qualified for the post, was “unfit” in the jargon, so had to go. Within a short time of her arrival, the new manager organised the admission, without reference to the existing residents or our family members, of the unfortunate high-needs residents I mention, and did so for the sole purpose of lining the owner’s pockets according to staff who, like us, the existing residents, were disadvantaged by the decision.

Our activities coordinator claimed she’d heard the new manager telling the care home owner that he wasn’t making enough money out of us and that she’d fix it. And, fix it she did!

The care home owner, a socially-inadequate man in his early forties, was rarely in evidence and would run for cover whenever a visiting relative appeared so my son took his concerns about understaffing and under-resourcing to the local Council’s chief executive for the home was largely Council-funded. The chief executive showed no interest whatsoever even though frail residents were falling over and suffering bruises and fractures like never before, bearing testament to the risks – had they been recorded and reported to higher authorities.

The Council’s disinterest would be the deciding factor in my quitting a care home which merits the warning “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” My ‘eventual’ discharge from that place, I’m told, could have been handled within the space of a week but took the Council five months to organise, during which period, they continued used to dispense largesse with my dwindling modest life savings for the care provider ‘s benefit.

My social worker, whose approach to her duty to safeguard my safety and welfare seemed to require her to chat about her new house and garden and her love of mid-Century design, was candid that my experiences would evoke little sympathy as I had lived to tell the tale. As an observer at close quarters of how my Council treats vulnerable citizens, and realising that social care is something the Council does ‘to’ people rather than ‘for’ them, I had already worked out for myself that, by surviving, I had given the Council work to do.

Quite how much work my blurting out over supper, in the warmth of my son’s home, that I had been abused would become apparent with time. As would the lengths to which the Council would go to silence me! And my determination to ensure that no other vulnerable care home resident in Scotland would share my experiences.

For the Council’s stonewalling of my son’s concerns would lead, just seven months later, to the abuse of at least three vulnerable older women and the bullying of female care staff by a man who, despite his criminal conviction for smashing his wife’s head against a brick wall in a public place, was employed by the care home owner – and kept in post even after these incidents of abuse – to provide care to his residents.

Given the silencing of my disclosures of abuse, it should come as no surprise that Executive Officers of the Council would assume the freedom to diminish the ordeals of these women and deceive elected representatives in order to avoid the need for an investigation. This is social care in modern Scotland!