One woman tells her story … #1

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

Extract I: being silenced

“They would pull my nipples and laugh!” I was sitting at the kitchen table in my son’s flat. “They thought it amusing!” My son stared at the newspaper in front of him but said nothing. Despite his clear discomfort, I couldn’t bring myself to stop: “They would pull them right out to here!”, gauging from memory the extent of the affront. My son looked up and stared at my tired, old hands.

He did not look into my eyes or search my face. He knew what he was hearing was true: he’d had sufficient doubts about the competence of the care home owner and the new manager to know that he had to “rescue” me, as I describe it – and, so, just days after my 99th birthday, had whisked me away from the god-forsaken place where I’d funded my care for three years and five months. Over those final five months, the social care department had dragged-out a discharge process, which let the local Council continue to dispense largesse with my modest life savings for the benefit of the inept care home owner!

Now, as I spoke, my son was reliving all those times over the past three years when, on visits, I would tell him I was frightened but clam up when he asked me why. Out of fear, I had dared not tell him.

I had survived the ignominy of being bathed by gauche girls, completely unprepared for the task, who covered their embarrassment by pulling my nipples and laughing uproariously. I do not blame them. And I had survived without a cup of tea for comfort whenever I couldn’t sleep for I took seriously the hardened night carer’s threat to “pee” in it as punishment for being a nuisance. I needed no second warning.

I had survived being strapped to the bed to stop me reaching for the panic button and disturbing the night staff and had banished my teddy bear to the back of the wardrobe after they said he would bite me if I didn’t do what I was told. I had struck up an unlikely friendship instead with a large seven-legged spider who lived under the sink in the loo and emerged every morning without fail to look at this strange sobbing creature towering above it.

I had recovered from the fractured pelvis I sustained from rough handling, shall we say, and the consequent weeks of painful physiotherapy all of which went undocumented and, I believe, unreported by the care home – whatever difference that would have made – and had sat without company for days on end whenever fellow residents chose to sit alone and depressed in their rooms nursing their own unexplained bruises and fractures.

I had even survived the physical consequences of the powerful chemical cosh they administered daily to keep me sedated. And, after my escape, I had quickly regained my mobility, was no longer daytime-incontinent nor, after a great deal of TLC and regular visits to the GU clinic, any longer “prone” to urine infections, the care home’s leaving gift to me.

I survived for I did not give in, did not abandon hope, nor react like the kicked dog which tries to please its abusers. I refused to relinquish my pride despite knowing that this would likely do me no favours and, instead, took comfort in things that reminded me of the life I’d had … pieces of studio pottery and paintings my son had brought … and I developed coping mechanisms, refusing to let my abusers win. But, I did not survive unscathed. I am damaged goods and I have come to trust no-one so I dare not drop my guard.

My GP says the routine chemical cosh is likely to have lasting psychological effects from which I may never recover and to take things one day at a time and not to worry that I may not be as amiable as I was. And, I think of the thousands of others in my position – elderly and no longer self-reliant – and how they are being treated in the time left to them in care homes owned by people whose moral standards are never questioned.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou

I did not assume that life in a care home for older people would be as meaningful as the life I’d led or that giving up my independence and the family home would be without its issues. But, taking my lead from Diana Athill, a contemporary who threw caution to the wind and took up residence in a care home in 2010, I had expectations of a place befitting the price I was expected to pay and not the squalid, poorly-resourced, and (latterly) badly-managed place to which my social worker directed me. I could not have imagined that, in modern Scotland, an individual with no demonstrable interest in care, would be able to preside over my neglect and abuse and, like some latter-day Victorian husband, have me declared insane. This in an age when, in wider society, anyone who leverages power over another would be condemned rightly as predatory.

But, dreadful though my treatment was at the hands of this individual, my story is prompted by the response of the local Council which helped him to evade investigation by Police Scotland officers (who were non-judgemental and treated me with humanity and respect, for which I thank them), then added insult to injury by going out of its way to launder his reputation while denigrating me. And, I find myself trying to rationalise the lengths to which the Council went to silence and further abuse me for reaching out … and I wonder why, what purpose it serves. There surely has to be a reason. My local Council does not run itself. Like every other, it is run by people and the people who run my local Council have closed ranks against me. They see me as a threat to them in a personal sense! I’m aware of their desperation!

As I tell my story, I think of those others whose degrading abuse and neglect in care homes for older people went or will go undiscovered as would mine had I left the care home in the manner to be expected by its owner and staff rather than sentient and in a wheelchair. For, this is an industry that can bury its mistakes … quite literally! And, I hope that, by lifting the lid on my own experiences, I can help to ensure that those who are motivated to abuse people in under-resourced care homes for older people and Council staff who turn their backs when people reach out will be denied the opportunity to imagine that their crimes will go undiscovered.

Over three years have passed since I asked the Council chief executive respectfully, in the time left to me, to account for the Council’s role in the cover-up of my disclosures of abuse and since she replied, “I note what you write!” before throwing the matter to her attack-dog, the staff she can rely on to get me off her back. My son has unearthed more than enough to persuade me that the Council chief executive’s only incentive is to cover up my abuse.

I need to shout louder! Wish me luck!