Ex-patient sues health board over sex assault allegations
A HEALTH board is being sued by a former patient over allegations of sexual assault by an ex-hospital worker who is now in prison for murder.
The legal action is being carried out by law firm Hugh James against Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University (ABMU) health board over claims former employee Kris Wade sexually assaulted an ex-patient.
Wade, 37, is serving at least 21 years in prison after admitting the murder of his 65-year-old neighbour Christine James at her Cardiff Bay flat in March 2016.
He had previously been accused of sexually assaulting patients with learning disabilities in 2012 and 2013 while he worked for ABMU.
Although the complaints were investigated by police, no criminal case was ever heard.
An internal review was launched by the health board that also looked at the relationship between Wade and his father, who was then the health board’s mental health and learning disabilities clinical service director. The records of 59 patients came under review in the case.
A catalogue of issues emerged including that Wade obtained employment with the health board “with a standard application form used at that time but only contained three lines of supporting information”.
Alan Collins, a partner at Hugh James, said steps need to be taken to ensure that “safeguarding in hospital works”.
He said: “Doing a desktop review is all very well and can have all the procedures in the world but need to know if they actually work.”
A spokeswoman for ABMU said: “Our Serious Incident Investigation Team, which carried out our review, did not consider that any of the issues it identified could have either predicted or prevented Mr Wade’s conduct or behaviour outside of his employment.
“Mr Wade had not been in work, and therefore not exposed to patients or our services, for over three years when he was arrested for murder.
“This was as a consequence of him being absent from work while he was being investigated for sexual assault allegations, which we had reported to South Wales Police.
“Ultimately, this did not lead to any criminal prosecution, on the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service. As a result, Mr Wade never faced criminal charges for sexual assault.
“Despite this, we continued with our internal disciplinary process. It concluded that these allegations were proved on the grounds of probability.
“We imposed our most serious disciplinary policy sanction outcome and dismissed him for gross misconduct.
“Our review concluded that there were a number of issues relating to health board processes and responses to the allegations that needed to be improved.”
Despite previously dismissing the need for a public inquiry, Health Secretary Vaughan Gething said last week that he had asked the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) to conduct an assessment of ABMU health board.
He said last week: “In respect of ABMU specifically, I want to be satisfied that appropriate actions have been identified by the health board and that their response is sufficiently robust. I also wish to be assured that there are effective arrangements in place across the organisation to monitor the implementation and embedding of any changes in policies and procedures.”
Mr Gething also said all NHS chief executives had been asked to provide assurance that lessons have been learnt from the report by September 29.