A 14-year-old girl who was supposed to be constantly observed in a psychiatric hospital died after an agency support worker with a false identity left her unwatched, an inquest jury has heard.
After learning that Ruth Szymankiewicz, who was suffering from an eating disorder, had died, the worker fled from the UK to Ghana, the court was told.
Ruth’s parents, Kate and Mark Szymankiewicz, a GP and a consultant surgeon, had been concerned about Ruth being held at Huntercombe hospital in Maidenhead, Berkshire, because it was so far from their Wiltshire home and they thought a secure setting was wrong for her, the jury heard.
In a statement read out at the inquest, Kate Szymankiewicz described her daughter as “vulnerable” and said what she went through at the hospital must have felt like “torture”.
Assistant coroner Ian Wade KC told the jury that on 12 February 2022 Ruth should have been under constant watch.
He said: “On that day, a new support worker had been recruited and came on duty.” The worker had been employed through a nursing agency and Wade said it “was understood” his name was Ebo Acheampong.
The coroner said: “The agency had purported to interview him, had apparently checked his identity documents and sought to train him by putting him through a day or day-and-a-half course, much of which was e-learning. Those processes were the norm and were sufficient to enable the hospital to employ this person.
“On 12 February, he did not keep Ruth under a constant watch. He was supposed to, but he did not. She was left unobserved for about 15 minutes.”
Wade said Ruth went into her room and apparently carried out an act of self-harm that led to her death.
The coroner said the support worker had been using a false name. He said: “He had been assisted to acquire false identity documents.”
Police established through mobile phone records that he flew from Heathrow to Ghana, believed to be where he is from. “He has never been seen again,” said Wade. “Police think they knew who he truly was. He let Ruth down. He let everyone down.”
Ruth’s parents told the court she was a bright, loving, kind and adventurous child with great friends and a love of sports and animals.
The jury heard that when she became a teenager, she developed tics and may have had Tourette syndrome. She had a “very deep fear” of putting on weight and was diagnosed with anorexia.
While being treated in hospital in Salisbury, a nasogastric feeding tube was wrongly inserted into her lung, leaving her requiring treatment in intensive care.
It was deemed she needed to be detained under the Mental Health Act but there was no psychiatric hospital bed near her home and she was sent more than 70 miles away to Huntercombe.
In her statement, Kate Szymankiewicz said she felt she and her husband lost their parental rights when Ruth was detained under the Mental Health Act.
Szymankiewicz said her daughter once asked if she needed to hurt herself so she could go to another hospital. On one visit her parents were shocked that she had two black eyes and significant bruising. Staff could not say how this happened.
She said: “Our experience of the care Ruth received was terrible. She was managed, contained and not helped. Our belief is the things Ruth had to endure on a daily basis would have felt like torture.
“We have to live every day with the fact that we failed so fundamentally as her parents.”
The coroner said there had been two “unfavourable” Care Quality Commission reports on Huntercombe, which was run by the company Active Care Group. He said the hospital had closed.
The hearing at Buckinghamshire coroner’s court continues.
In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
