Locked up 36 times in a month... for laughing

AN AUTISTIC young man who was locked up at an Atlas care home had been abused at Winterbourne View.

Ben Garrod, pictured, had his jaw broken by a worker at the scandalhit home in Gloucestershire which was exposed by BBC1’s Panorama in 2011. He was then moved more than 100 miles away to Atlas’s Veilstone home, only to be abused again.

Ben, now 25, was repeatedly imprisoned overnight in a freezing ‘punishment room’ at the Atlas home, where he was left to wet himself.

In one month, he was locked up 36 times – for simply laughing or asking repetitive questions.

Jurors heard how one Atlas staff member locked him in the tiny freezing ‘quiet room’ because he refused to do laundry for the home. She then left him inside, while he ‘shouted, wailed, paced, pulled his own hair, made claw like motions and bit his hand’. After Ben’s family voiced concerns about his treatment at Veilstone in Devon, where he lived for just over a year, they were banned from visiting him.

Last night his mother Claire, 53, said he is ‘still a prisoner from the abuse he suffered at Veilstone and at Winterbourne View’.

She added: ‘Instead of being able to enjoy the prime of his life Ben’s experiences were of abuse and fear.

Ben, who has a mental age of seven, requires permanent care and now lives happily in the community with the support of two full-time carers.