A mental health patient has branded psychiatric hospitals as "playgrounds for predators", revealing that she was raped up to 60 times by a care worker - and that he avoided jail for his crimes.
"He would come in to my room every night and rape me. But who is going to believe a mental patient over a highly respected member of staff?”
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live’s Victoria Derbyshire show, the victim - who is being called Catherine to protect her identity - said: “He was the first person I met when I was admitted. After a week he came into my room, sat on my bed and started running his hands up and down my legs over the quilt.
“At times I was on a very heavy amount of Valium, not to where I was unconscious, but the sedative combined with my already defeated self, I was like putty.
“He would pull the covers back, do what he had to do and leave, all very quickly. I didn’t move.”
The abuse became more regular until it was every night her attacker was at work - sometimes six times in a single week. He told her he would report on her good behaviour, leaving Catherine feeling as if a "threat" was hanging over her.
“It was total manipulation. He was saying, ‘this is your way out’. At the time you believe anything.
“You latch on to that hope because you don’t have much hope in anything else. He would come in to my room every night and rape me. But who is going to believe a mental patient over a highly respected member of staff?”
Police charged the care worker on four counts of sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty to one act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a patient and was given a 12-month sentence but, as it was suspended for two years, he escaped prison entirely.
Kent and Medway NHS Trust ruled he should never work with vulnerable people again and paid Catherine £100,000 but, for the woman who was repeatedly raped at a time when she was most vulnerable, it just wasn't enough.
She is demanding better safeguards for patients, explaining that they are some of the "most vulnerable" in society, and that she was left feeling like an "abused dog":
“The mentally ill are the most vulnerable in society in terms of being abused and having themselves believed. It’s an open playing field for predators in that environment.”