Care workers accused of taking two patients to see strip show

THREE care workers are to face trial accused of taking a mentally-disabled patient from a nursing home to a strip show and allowing a naked male adult entertainer to sit on her knee.

The incident is alleged to have happened at an adult entertainment show at Baxter’s Function Suite in Dundee, after carers Caitlin Gibb, Shannon Briggs and Samantha Brunton allegedly took two residents there from the Linlathen Neurological Care Centre on Arbroath Road, Dundee.

The centre, the closure of which was announced last year, was home to 33 people with long-term brain injuries or complex neurological conditions and was Scotland’s only unit dedicated to the degenerative brain condition Huntington’s disease.

Gibb and Briggs, both 20, and Brunton, 34, are accused of “ill treating or wilfully neglecting” the two residents in their care by their actions in the runup to Christmas 2018.

Both deny a single charge alleging that they attended at the Linlathen

Centre while under the influence of alcohol and conveyed two female residents to an adult entertainment show at Baxter’s Function Suite, Raglan Street, allowed them to consume alcohol at the public licensed premises there without supervision, consumed alcohol themselves and failed to properly care for the women and permitted a naked male adult entertainer to sit on the knee of one of the women while she was in a wheelchair there.

At Dundee Sheriff Court, the trio, all of Dundee, pleaded not guilty to the charge through their solicitors and the case was continued to a procedural hearing in May.

None of the accused was present in court.

Solicitor Kevin Hampton, for Gibb and Brunton, said they both took exception to the statement in the charge that the two residents were in their care at the time of the alleged incident.

Solicitor David Duncan said Briggs’s position was the same.

Trial was set for June 5, with a preliminary hearing on May 13.