* Four people arrested as police launch probe into abuse
* Castlebeck chief executive says he is 'shocked, ashamed and disgusted' by the footage
* Staff trying to goad patients into committing suicide, slap them and punch them
* Patients given cold showers and pinned to the ground

Just a few feet in front of me, Simone cowered in the corner of the shower, her arms over her head to protect her from the care workers who had dragged her, fully clothed, beneath the jets of water.

At the time they took my silence for acquiescence, occasionally leering in my direction as they tossed shower gel at the 18-year-old, who has learning difficulties, and threw mouthwash into her eyes.

But there was a good reason why I didn´t intervene: what these thugs didn´t know was I had a secret camera hidden in the buttonhole of my shirt and was recording every second of their barbaric behaviour.


Vile: Care workers dragged vulnerable patients around like animals at the Winterbourne View private care home in Bristol


Cruel: Patients were trapped under chairs for up to ten minutes which the undercover reporter captured on camera

Not long after arriving, I was taken aside by Wayne - the self-appointed leader of the gang of care workers.

He was a tall, heavy-set man, his neck, shoulders and arms covered by a giant tattoo of a woman with a tear on her cheek.

He told me that the first task of the day was to get Lavinia, a vulnerable young woman in her 20s with a personality disorder and learning disabilities, out of bed.

I liked Lavinia. When she talked, her voice was slightly slurred. But she loved to laugh and listen to music. She enjoyed gardening and talking about blackbirds and flowers.

Sadly, she had a tendency to get quite aggressive - something that was rumoured to be related to a history of abuse.

Wayne wanted to ensure that Lavinia wore herself out and became more pliant. His plan was to get her out of bed in such a noisy, unpleasant way that she would turn into a screaming banshee.

By exhausting all her anger, he said, she´d be easily manageable for the rest of the day. Minutes later, we were standing on either side of her bed. `Wake up princess,´ he said, prodding her in the ribs. Then without a trace of irony: `You´ve got lots to look forward to.´

A prod turned to a push, then a shake. Within minutes we had the screaming, enraged young woman Wayne had wanted. She was dragged into the corridor, in her pyjamas. More jeering, more prodding and, before we knew it, Lavinia was so distressed that she had torn off her clothes and was lying naked in the corridor, beating her head on the floor and kicking the walls.

Later that day, she tried to jump out of the window of the top floor. Luckily, she was stopped.

That´s when I found her on her knees behind the sofa, sobbing. Wayne was talking to her. `I like watching you lot try to jump,´ he was saying. `When you hit the floor do you think you would have made a thud or a splat?´

Looking back, I´m amazed at how easy it was to persuade the bullies that I was on their side, by saying nothing. Wayne thought I was a blank canvas, a potential disciple. He enjoyed explaining his methods of controlling patients, not realising how sick they sounded.

The violence in some of the care workers´ language was grotesque.

`Do you want me to get out a cheese grater and grate your face off?´ I once heard Wayne say to Simone, the teenager he liked to torment. `Do you want me to turn you into a giant pepperoni? Shall I get a razor and cut you up?´

Wayne wasn´t alone. Another care worker, Graham, who had previously worked in the hospital kitchen, liked to use the language of a sexual masochist, calling patients `gimps´ - someone who is trussed up in a rubber outfit. I saw him twist the arm of one patient until she screeched.

Another time he forced Simone´s face into his crotch as he hissed something in her ear. It was agonising for me as I had to be aware of the safety of the patients even while I was filming their abuse. If I believed one of them was in such imminent danger that intervention was the only option, then the patient´s needs would come first - not the film.

It was Simone who seemed to bear the brunt of Wayne´s cruelty. She was exuberant and strong-willed, with a genetic disorder not dissimilar to Down´s syndrome.

Her favourite occupation was jumping on a trampoline, playing hula-hoop and cleaning. She´d clean the tables in the dining room and the cups in the tearoom.

But when she felt upset, she´d lie on the floor and refuse to move or try to tear up the carpet. This irritated the support workers, who took it upon themselves to `discipline´ her.


Vicious: Care workers trapped the young people with learning difficulties under chairs at the state-of-the-art home and stamped on their wrists if they complained

On one terrible day, which will haunt me for ever, I clocked into work at 8am, looked at the rota and realised, with a deep sense of foreboding, that three of the worst bullies were all on day-duty. Usually, there were only one or two of them on the top floor at once. I remember thinking: `Simone is going to get it.´

The first attack came at 9.20am.

I saw her lying in the corridor with Graham kneeling on her legs. She was screaming. Nobody responded.

At about 2pm I found her hunched in the corner of the shower with all her clothes on. She was crying for her mother. `I warned you,´ a female care worker said, as she spurted shower gel into Simone´s face.

At 4.30pm, I heard Simone´s shrieks coming from the garden. It was March and the temperature was hovering at around freezing point. I went outside. She was sitting on the concrete with just a shirt and trousers on. Wayne had thrown a jug of cold water over her. She screamed `Wayne! B*****d!´ when he pushed her over. `No Wayne,´ she pleaded. `No, no Wayne.´

He pushed her to the floor again.

`B*****d!´ she yelled. `I´m going to get the police on you.´

`The police don´t care,´ he said.

Time passed. I knelt by the glass doors, filming her as she lay on the concrete shivering violently.

Finally, Wayne dragged her in `before she turned blue´, as he nonchalantly told a nurse who came by to see what was going on. By 8.30pm, Simone was lying in the corridor refusing to go to bed. To teach her a lesson, Graham and the female colleague who had attacked her in the shower decided to throw jugs of cold water in her face before turning on a cold electric fan to freeze her into complying.

Simone´s day finally ended in her bedroom, where four care workers pinned her to the floor - just to feed her a painkiller. When they´d finished, one of the workers picked up a vase of flowers left by Simone´s mother. Graham emptied the water over Simone´s head while his female colleague shoved the flowers into her face. Simone was too tired to cry.

Later that evening, I returned to Simone´s room. The place was a tip - the care workers had ripped up the cards which her family had left for her and thrown her flowers around the floor. I´m not the crying type. But that day I walked away from work with my hands shaking and tears in my eyes.

The closest I ever got to intervening - and possibly blowing my cover - was on Simone´s behalf.

One day I had to restrain myself from defending Simone physically against the attacks on her.

Wayne had, once again, grabbed hold of her. This time he trapped her under a chair while he sat on it. He did this fairly frequently - sometimes for half an hour while he watched television. If she cried out he would reach down and pull her hair. I saw him stamp on her hand, too.

This time Simone had been forced to lie face-down - which is an absolute no-no in the restraint of patients, due to the danger of suffocation. And instead of resting the chair on the floor, the weight of its legs - and Wayne - had been put on Simone´s bare flesh.

Simone seemed to be coping, but I kept a close eye on her. At one point, I got on my knees to film Simone as she lay inert. Wayne leered at me. He thought I was trying to get closer to the action. I had to remind myself that the best outcome for her would be for me to expose what was going on, rather than intervene then.


FULL article here: BBC Panorama care home investigation: Abuse that shames our 'civilised' society | Mail Online

BBC's take (has video): BBC News - Four arrests after patient abuse caught on film