HORROR OF THE QUIET ROOM
No heating. No toilet. Not even a chair. Yet Ben, who has severe learning disabilities, was routinely locked up there for hours by care home staff who treated him like a slave. How COULD this happen?
BEN GARROD still has nightmares about the ‘quiet room’ at Veilstone care home in North Devon where he used to live. For despite its name, there was nothing quiet or peaceful about it. Behind its locked door, Ben’s terrified screams could often be heard echoing off the bare walls.
Begging to be let out, Ben would claw and pull at his own hair in frustration, wondering what he’d done to deserve such terrifying isolation. Inside the ‘scary’ room, there was no TV, radio, clock, toilet, chair, heating or ventilation.
No one came when he cried — sometimes for hours on end — until he fell asleep frightened and exhausted on a punctured air mattress. Before he was let out, he’d have to prove his compliance — by agreeing to do chores such as cleaning windows or mopping up his own urine. He was treated no better than a slave.
Ben, 25, who has severe autism, learning disabilities and the mental age of a seven-year-old child, will never understand why he was locked up by the people entrusted with his care. He’s safe now, but repeatedly asks his mother Claire this question: ‘Is it nice to do that?’
Claire, 53, replies: ‘No, it’s not nice, but you don’t have to be scared any more. You don’t have to panic.’
But Ben does panic and Claire doesn’t know what more to say as she, too, finds it incomprehensible.
Veilstone care home was shut down in 2012 after a 2011 police investigation into allegations of abuse by care home staff.
We can only tell Ben’s harrowing story now, as reporting restrictions were lifted earlier this month after a series of trials, which began in 2016.
Today, Ben is happy living in the community — with the support of two full-time carers and his devoted family — near his mother’s home in the North.
But memories of the ‘quiet room’ are never far from the surface.
‘Ben is now a shadow of the person he could have been and I don’t know if he will ever recover,’ says Claire, in an exclusive interview with the Mail.
‘Staff at Veilstone promised us the world, but behind our backs he was locked in a room worse than a prison cell and stripped of all human dignity. Animals are treated better.’
Ben was one of seven vulnerable residents housed at Veilstone — one of 14 homes in the South West run by Atlas Project Team Ltd — which today is at the centre of one of Britain’s biggest care home scandals.
He spent 15 months there, between July 2010 and October 2011, before the home was closed in 2012 after complaints about the ‘quiet room’ triggered a criminal investigation.
In a series of trials, which began last year, 24 people were charged and 13 people were convicted of offences relating to false imprisonment, conspiracy to imprison residents against their will and perverting the course of justice.
Residents, the court heard, were treated like slaves — forced to do chores including laundry, cleaning toilets and bathrooms, mopping floors, vacuuming, mowing the lawn and clearing sheds for pocket money.
If they refused these ‘Domestic Incentives’ they were punished with solitary confinement in an unheated, bare, white-walled CCTV-monitored room dubbed the ‘quiet room’ until they learned to do as they were told.
Atlas director and part-owner Jolyon Marshall, 42, was last year jailed for 18 months — later increased to 28 months after the Attorney General intervened because the sentence was deemed to be too lenient.
Ben’s ordeal — told for the first time here — offers a horrifying glimpse into the profit-making, privately-run care home, which charged local councils up to £4,500 a week per resident.
He was locked up a shocking 36 times in one month. On six of those occasions Ben spent all night inside. Once he was heard screaming under the door until 3 am.
Sometimes he was shut away for nothing more than ‘twitching’, being ‘childish’, yawning, twiddling his thumbs, or not settling down to go to bed.
Claire, who has worked with disabled children, fled the courtroom in tears as staff defended their actions, claiming that the residents were often uncontrollable — almost feral — and had to be locked up for their own and others’ safety.
‘Ben was treated as if he were less than human and I can never forgive them for that,’ says Claire. ‘Even the prison service isn’t allowed to throw someone cold and hungry into an empty room with no food or toilet. It was so cruel. ‘Ben is a fun-loving young man with a wonderful sense of humour, but they tried to break his spirit and then blacken his name in court to excuse their own shortcomings and lack of compassion. ‘When Jolyon Marshall was first sent down, I felt sorry for his children, but did he ever feel sorry for mine?’ Today, Ben’s family are calling for an urgent spotlight on how society supports and cares for people with a learning disability.
They want stronger safeguards for vulnerable residents, more transparency and greater accountability for members of staff.
For, disturbingly, this is the second time Ben has suffered emotional and physical trauma caused by those employed to care for him.
Before arriving at Veilstone, Ben’s jaw was broken and two of his front teeth were knocked out in an incident with a support worker at the scandal-hit Winterbourne View assessment and treatment unit in South Gloucestershire.
In 2011 — shortly after Ben was discharged — the BBC’s Panorama programme captured undercover footage of staff subjecting residents to degrading abuse, taunting, poking and soaking one with water, while trapping another under a chair.
Winterbourne View, run by Castlebeck Care Ltd, was forced to close. In 2012, nine support workers and two nurses admitted charges of either neglect or ill-treatment of residents, but no one was ever arrested or charged over Ben’s injuries. Staff
claimed he’d injured himself during an attack on a care worker.
The past six years have been one nightmare after another for Claire and her ex-husband, Ministry of Defence worker Chris, Ben’s twin brother Tom, 25 and younger sister Emma, 23.
As EMMa says: ‘It was terrifying and sickening to watch the Panorama programme, but we thought, at least Ben is now safe.’
Ben, born one of non-identical twin boys in 1992, was two when he was diagnosed with autism and a serious learning disability.
The severity of his disability and challenging behaviour meant he needed residential care and from the age of eight he attended several special needs schools, spending the weekends at home with his family.
The real problems began when Ben turned 18 and was suddenly thrown into the adult system.
Claire and her daughter Emma were visiting relatives in australia when they learned from Ben’s twin, Tom, that his brother had been taken to hospital from his residential school suffering from severe anxiety.
When they returned, they were horrified to discover that Ben had been sectioned by a psychiatrist and transferred to Winterbourne View, a short-stay treatment and assessment centre near Bristol.
‘When I saw Ben at Winterbourne View for the first time, I think it is the only time I have gasped in my life,’ says Claire.
‘He was dragged into the room by two workers, holding him up by his arms because of the effects of anti-psychotic drugs. His head was shaved and he had filthy bandages hanging off his feet instead of socks and shoes.
‘I had to look twice to make sure it was my son. It was like a scene from the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.’ Ben’s sister Emma adds: ‘Ben showed no interest in us and just rocked and rocked. He had a graze on his head and there was no light in his eyes. I was terrified I’d never see my brother again, but thought, perhaps he
has to get worse before he can get better.’ One day, Claire received a phone call from staff to say that Ben was in hospital and had lost a couple of teeth after biting a nurse.
The dental hospital where Ben was treated, however, raised an alert because Ben’s jaw had been broken in a way that suggested he’d been punched.
To this day, Ben’s family do not know exactly what happened, and claim that staff at Winterbourne View gave them several conflicting stories. Nothing came from police inquiries and Winterbourne View quickly discharged Ben.
Claire remembers thinking Veilstone would be the perfect sanctuary for Ben after his ordeal.
‘We told them what had happened to Ben and asked if they could help him through the trauma,’ says Claire. ‘Everything we asked for, they said “no problem”. They promised the world.’
However, within months of Ben’s arrival at Veilstone — an impressive farmhouse building set in acres of rural countryside, 38 miles from where Claire then lived — the family’s relief turned to concern.
Claire says the staff were ‘hostile’, listening in on her telephone calls to Ben and giving her ‘a good telling off’ for not speaking to her son in an ‘age appropriate way’.
The court heard there was another reason for these monitored calls — to ensure residents weren’t telling their families about the abuse.
‘We’d told staff that we wanted to see Ben every two weeks, minimum, but I wasn’t allowed to visit at all for the first five weeks because I was told he was settling in.
‘During the 15 months Ben was at Veilstone, I think they let me see him only five times and at least 80per cent of his weekend visits home were cancelled at short notice.
‘When I asked why, they’d say “because we say so” or “he didn’t tie his shoelaces”, or “he didn’t clean his bath well enough” and I’d think, hang on a minute, these people have learning disabilities.
‘When Ben’s dad turned up at Veilstone to see our son, they refused to unlock the gates saying there wasn’t a manager available. It was as if they didn’t want us to have any contact with him at all.’
Claire says staff confiscated Ben’s superhero dressing up clothes — which he loved — and stopped him using the sign language Makaton to reinforce his speech.
They took away the Union Jack duvet cover which Claire had bought for Ben, saying it was “too stimulating”, yet allowed him to watch violent films such as The Terminator and Sweeney Todd.
On the rare occasions that Claire was allowed to visit, she was disturbed to see residents quietly lining up like domestic servants.
‘They were asking “what do I have to do now?”. It was mechanical, almost robotic,’ says Claire. ‘I could see fear in their eyes. One man couldn’t pull two black bin sacks apart and seemed terrified of asking for help.
‘One very hot day, we took Ben out for lunch and couldn’t believe it when we came back three hours later to find the others still working hard. Whenever I talked to Ben on the phone, asking him what he’d done that day, he would reply “working, I’m always working”.’
Ben never told his family about the ‘quiet room’ while he was at Veilstone, but Claire says: ‘When Ben came home for visits, there was real fear in his eyes when it was time to go back.’
When Claire started raising concerns with staff at Veilstone and talked about moving Ben to a different home, she found herself banned from seeing him at all.
The care home’s staff claimed he was suffering from an ‘attachment disorder’ and that Claire was having a negative effect on him.
ClaIrE continues: ‘They started making bizarre accusations, telling the local authority’s care manager I’d let Ben roll around on a café floor when I took him out for lunch, pretending to be a dead cow, which was completely untrue.
‘They tried to make out that I was crazy and recommended assisted visits to prevent me from spending any time alone with my son, but I refused.’
Claire wrote more than 100 emails to the local authority recording what was happening to Ben, including one distressing incident when Ben lost one of his repaired front teeth.
Claire was told Ben was ‘eating doorways’, but she refused to believe the claims from staff at Veilstone that he was chewing doorframes, likening him to an uncontrollable animal.
She complained to MPs and commissioners and even went on hunger strike in a desperate bid to see her son.
‘I’d rather be dead than go through that again,’ says Claire. ‘I felt I had no voice, no one was listening to me and everyone was believing them. It felt like a battle and I was not only losing it, but losing my son in the process.’
It was during this time that Ben — who, Claire claims, was told she was dead — was locked up multiple times in the ‘quiet room’ as he became more distressed and disruptive. The ban only ended when Veilstone staff were informed that Ben’s human rights were being infringed and he was being deprived of his liberty to see his mother.
Plans were being made to transfer Ben to a secure unit — against Claire’s wishes — when police acted on a complaint from another resident at the home about the quiet room.
When Veilstone was suddenly closed down, Ben was sent instead to a residential farm nearby.
Claire says: ‘When Ben arrived, having read Veilstone’s assessment that he was uncontrollable, they thought, is this the same person?
‘They were expecting Hannibal lecter, but Ben is very polite and he has very good manners.’
It was only after Ben had left Veilstone that he started to talk about the quiet room. Claire recorded everything he said and handed it to the police.
‘I sometimes wonder how much Ben was out of that room, not how long he was in it,’ says Claire.
‘Ben is now coming on in leaps and bounds. He is being cared for in a good way. We should be able to sit back and relax, think he’s happy, that is it.
‘But I can’t help but worry; what if we were to get it wrong again? and how many other people are still suffering?
‘The damage is done, but as long as I am breathing, I will make sure Ben won’t be let down again.’