Muckamore Inquiry: Mother says son's life was stolen from him

The hospital provides facilities for adults with special needs and learning disabilities

A teenager who was placed on a locked ward at Muckamore Abbey Hospital suffered such trauma that it was "as if his life had been stolen from him," his mother has said.

On Wednesday the inquiry into abuse at the hospital heard a statement from his mother, who died in February.

Her son, who was referred to as P63, was in Muckamore from 1992 until 2018.

At 17, he was put on a locked ward and had to sleep alongside older men, some of whom were sex offenders, she said.

She said her son had been a "beautiful and affectionate" child.

By the time he left, he was "like an old man when he got out, sort of hunched over and shuffling his feet when he walked," she said.

"Really and truly, it's as if his life was stolen from him," she added.

HIs mother completed her statement in the months before she died from lung cancer.

A year earlier, her son passed away, aged 46.

She wanted the inquiry to know that he was "much more than just a long-stay patient at Muckamore", that he was a beautiful affectionate child, that he was a talented runner and he had won awards for his running.

'Safest place'

She said that as her son grew into teenage years, he "didn't know his own strength" and would "lash out".

When the doctors and social workers suggested that Muckamore was the safest place for him, she and her husband trusted them.

They thought initially this would be for a few weeks. She had no idea that it would be 26 years.

The locked ward, Movilla A, was "a massive shock and change", she said.

"P63 went from being a lad who loved running and moving about to being in a locked ward and sleeping in a dormitory with lots of other boys and men - men much older than him."

She said her son was very upset and could not understand why he had to stay there.

"It took us a good while before we realised P63 was on a mixed ward, I say mixed because it had males, some of whom were sex offenders, many of them put there by the courts."

The hospital provides treatment for people with severe learning disabilities

She said Movilla A was "not a nice place" with "bars on the windows and no privacy for the lads inside".

Her son's mental health deteriorated and she worried about him being institutionalised, she said.

"The more frustrated he got with the situation, the more we were told he could not be let out.

"How does a family win in this situation and how is that fair, there was nothing we could do," she said.

Broom cupboard

She said they were told there was nowhere suitable in the community for him.

When they asked that he be given his own room, she said that staff cleared out an old broom cupboard and said he could have it but that his parents would have to furnish it.

The mother said during one visit she sat on her son's mattress and it was "soaked through with urine".

"I pulled everything off the mattress to find that everything was absolutely soaking wet with urine and because it was so sodden it must have been like that for some time.

"I went absolutely mad and said I wouldn't go home until they moved and replaced P63's mattress."

HIs parents were also concerned that their son was put in seclusion - either in his room or in a "filthy and littered" yard.

She said the family also wrote to the hospital a number of times about injuries her son had received.

In his first year in Muckamore, she found a bite mark on his upper inner thigh.

She was told a staff member had not noticed it and that the hospital had no way of knowing what had happened.

Another time, he had a cut on his head and a black eye.

'More like his old self'

The inquiry heard how her son was moved to supported living accommodation in 2018, and that he got "somewhat better".

When he was there, there "was something about him more like his old self," his mother wrote.

Her son died in hospital in 2021 on his 46th birthday.

"When I think of all that P63 lost by being there so long," his mother said in her statement.

"I should have seen more and done more, I should have known what to do."

The inquiry was told that when P63's mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, in January 2022, her "main concern was that she wouldn't be alive to see the public inquiry."

The inquiry heard that before her death, she said she did not want her son to "be forgotten".