rehabilitation
The Girl Behind the Gates
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine handed me a book, The Girl Behind the Gates, (2020) with a trademark smile but no explanation; just ‘I’d love to know what you think.’
I’m instantly intrigued. First, by the author, Dr Brenda Davies, who’s a consultant psychiatrist, author, broadcaster, spiritual teacher and Principal of the Brenda Davies International School of Healing and Spiritual Development. Impressive, huh?
Second, by the blurb which tells me this is Davies’ first novel, and it’s based on the true story of a young woman cut down in her prime who’s eventually found in a psychiatric institution and slowly helped to overcome her past.
The fictionalised account takes us back to 1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has led a charmed life, secure and happy, musically gifted, with bright prospects. Then one night of passion with her beloved cousin leads to catastrophic consequences. When her parents learn of her pregnancy, her father beats her savagely with a leather belt, before summoning their family doctor, priest and the senior doctor who directs the dreaded Hillinghurst Hospital, the very name of which is garlanded with shame and fear and inherent malevolence.
When it’s discovered that not only is Nora pregnant, but that she tried to abort the child using quinine and to cut her own wrists, the situation develops layer upon layer of criminality and moral unacceptability. All three acts are ‘mortal sins’. This is the era of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 after all. Nora, deemed a ‘moral imbecile’, or under the 1927 definitions a ‘moral defective’, poses a threat to others (terms only abolished in 1959!). She must be strictly controlled and segregated along with criminals, alcoholics, prostitutes and unmarried mothers who carry the same label. Sympathising with this disgraced family though he may, their family doctor can do nothing to protect her or he too will be imprisoned for ‘aiding and abetting’ criminal offences.
Under cover of darkness Nora is taken from her home and family and sectioned, locked away in the feared Hillinghurst Hospital. A young innocent with no diagnosis beyond a pregnancy out of wedlock.
‘We’re all here to help you get well’, the young doctor in charge of her care promises.
‘It would be best for everyone if you consider your family dead’, the second more senior doctor advises. ‘You’ve been a wicked cunning girl, and here you’ll learn to live a better life ..’
It’s horrifying to read of the barbaric treatments that were used in those days. Bad enough that they were applied in cases of real mental illness in a well-intentioned effort to cure; absolutely scandalous applied to this young sensitive girl who is simply trying to survive. Even the archaic un-pc-by-our-standards language sends shudders down the spine.
What’s more, those paid to care for the inmates inflict malicious cruel acts against her; and anyone showing compassion or kindness is punished or even dismissed. Nora endures both physical and sexual abuse, isolation, visitors are deterred, letters are withheld, humiliation is piled on top of scorn. When she gives birth to the baby, she’s denied even sight of her, and the child is left on a cold slab to die. Utterly bereft, Nora suffers a majorly powerful grief reaction but still clings to the hope that her baby has been adopted and one day she will seek and find her. She only learns of her death when she stumbles upon a patch of baby graves in the grounds and finds Angela’s marker.
Fast forward forty-two years to 1981, and Nora is discovered by psychiatrist Dr Janet Humphreys totally institutionalised and withdrawn in a back ward. Patiently and with great sensitivity, Janet starts to work with her to overcome her isolation and help her rediscover what it is to live freely. The account gives insights into the delicacy of such a task and the peaks and troughs that Janet much negotiate. And all the while the doctor is herself dealing with her own troubled past and broken relationships.
It’s a magnificent and heart-rending book, and despite the shocking revelations of life in a mental facility in the past, it’s ultimately a tale of triumph of good over evil, of hope over despair, and love over punishment.
Broadmoor
Broadmoor. The very word carried a deeply chilling resonance. The most infamous high security hospital in the world. Makes me think of spine-chilling names like Peter Sutcliffe, Ronnie Kray, Charles Bronson … serial killing, cannibalism, paedophilia, arson, and the like heinous crimes. Or the horrific occasion in 1977, when two inmates trapped a third in a locked area in Broadmoor, and tortured him to death, skinning him alive, ramming a spoon into his brain, before garotting him. What kind of a mind could conceive of, and calculatedly carry out, such barbaric acts? I still remember the shivery sense of profound relief when these men were locked away in this maximum security psychiatric hospital facility for the criminally insane. Little public sympathy for them; widespread fear should they ever be released; a general ‘throw away the key’ mentality! ‘Monsters’, ‘evil incarnate’, ‘irredeemable’. ‘The more whole-life sentences running sequentially the better.’
But TV journalist Jonathan Levi, and cultural historian Emma French, have uncovered a much more nuanced picture of this notorious place. In their book: Inside Broadmoor, (published in 2019 but written before the new hospital was opened in the December of that year) they bring together their observations based on nearly ten years observing and interviewing staff, experts and the patients themselves, and they find that the staff really believe in redemption and rehabilitation – at least in most cases. No matter what they’ve done these men deserve to be treated humanely, and they aim to give them the best chance of a future.
This generosity of spirit from the staff comes in spite of the fact that the threat of violence is ever present. There are on average five physical assaults on staff members each week, but violence is seen as intrinsic to some of the medical conditions these patients suffer from, so it’s viewed more compassionately here than by the public at large.
The authors asked why did the men commit such dastardly deeds? Might they do it again? Can clinicians unravel the mysteries of their brain chemistry and render them safe? Are any conditions untreatable? Is there such a thing as pure evil? What can we do with those who are beyond help? What draws people to this work: 8-900 staff at any given time, all sworn not to reveal any information outside the hospital? If the inmates are themselves the victims of appalling histories, does society owe them anything in compensation?
It’s hard to believe that 200 of Britain’s most dangerous men can be housed here together, maximum unrelenting security measures notwithstanding, some of them day in day out with no reprieve of any kind for decades. Each one suffering from a serious mental disorder rendering every man a grave and immediate risk to the public, not to mention their combined threat.
There is a popular misconception that, when someone goes to Broadmoor, they are there for life; in reality only a very few high-profile criminally insane individuals remain there for decades. Over the years a lot of work has gone into de-stigmatising and altering perception of severe mental illness, with great emphasis on intensive programmes of drug and psychological therapies. The old prison mentality and ethos has largely gone. As a result, nowadays, the average stay for a Broadmoor patient is less than 6 years, and there is a notably lower reoffending rate than in the UK prison population overall. This is not to say the men all go free into the community – depending on their diagnosis and progress they may be sent to a variety of other less high security institutions.
The demographics of today’s patients have changed radically over the last 150 years. Religious and ethnic factors play a significant part in this, and the authors concluded that, It is tragically clear that work needs to be done urgently to address these inequalities.
What really emerges is the vulnerability of these men alongside their criminal insanity.
It is nothing short of chilling that … the fate of many Broadmoor patients was fixed from early childhood. Critically, theirs was a childhood not just of deprivation and economic hardship, but of abuse too … Childhood experiences, often shocking and sickening beyond belief, seal the fate of many patients very early on.
One illustrative case is Dillon, born into a ‘satanic’ family. Father broke his bones, sexually abused him, and raped and beat his mother. From birth, mother rejected Dillon, convinced he was evil. She sexually abused him and tried to kill him repeatedly. He was kept locked up in the attic, not allowed to talk to his brothers, or tethered naked to a post and made to eat food off the floor like a dog. By the age of 5 he was an arsonist. From the age of 7 he went into care but became arsonist, kidnapper, violent offender, out of control alcoholic. What chance did this boy have in life? And yet most of us don’t see beyond the violent, criminally insane adult. The staff in Broadmoor do.
One consequence of receiving effective medication, therapy and healing, is that patients can arrive at a deeply vulnerable moment; they begin to have consciousness of the crime that brought them to the hospital in the first place. This is a point of profound fragility. In some cases it’s more than they can handle and proves lethal; they take their own lives. Suicide is rendered possible in the lower risk areas, especially in Victorian buildings where ligature points, such as bars at the windows, have remained because of a shortage of funding to make the necessary alterations.
Hmm, a shortage of funding … Maintaining these dangerous men in secure units under constant surveillance is horrendously expensive. It costs upwards of £300,000 per annum to keep each patient in Broadmoor – five times the cost of a prison stay. Peter Sutcliffe’s 32 year stay in Broadmoor cost the taxpayer in the region of £10 million. In just one of a number of rooftop protests, Charles Bronson did £250,000 of damage.
I found this book profoundly challenging – challenging my preconceptions, my prejudices, my lack of real understanding: the barbed wire around my own reactions. I commend it to you.
