Saturday 19 November 2011

Well, I’m So Glad Your Reviews Are Complete….

…I feel a lot safer now:
Tudor, a former patient at high-security Rampton Hospital in Notts and a convicted sex offender, had been living in the village at St Andrew's Healthcare Centre, which provides secure services and care for men with learning disabilities and autistic spectrum disorders.

Nottingham Crown Court heard he attacked the boy in woodland after asking for leave from the unit on July 20 – his seventh unescorted release.

He told staff he intended to buy binoculars and look at wildlife.
And since – so far as they knew – nothing had happened on those other occasions, why not? I mean, it’s not like they could have predi…

Oh:
The court was told yesterday how Tudor had committed a catalogue of sex offences on young boys in the past and his sentences had been a variety of care or hospital orders for more than 20 years.
*sigh*
Judge John Burgess jailed him indefinitely for public protection.

He will serve a minimum of four years and ten months, less 116 days already served, before his release will be assessed.

The judge said a psychiatrist's conclusion was Tudor had a mild mental impairment and a mental disorder.

"He remains a high risk of causing serious harm in the future by committing further offences of this nature," said the judge.

"Indeed he acknowledges as much himself. He told the author of the probation report, 'I will definitely re-offend against children if released into the community'."
/facepalm
In a statement released after the hearing, St Andrew's Healthcare said it welcomed the news that sentencing was now complete.

It read: "St Andrew's wants to reassure the community of its commitment to good practice and that an incident of this type is exceptionally rare. Internal and external reviews of the incident are complete."
Great! Who has been sacked for being so cavalier with the public’s safety?

*crickets*

Yeah. Like I figured....

14 comments:

SBC said...

"'I will definitely re-offend against children if released into the community'."

I don't think anything more need be said. Sackings are overdue. I'd have some sympathy with the staff if the sicko in question had been 'playing along' and pretending to be 'healed' but,sweet jesus wept, when you have a patient with a past record who is telling you he is a danger then..you...*words fail me*

Greencoat said...

'St Andrew's wants to reassure the community of its commitment to good practice and that an incident of this type is exceptionally rare."

It's funny how you never hear this glib soft-soaping when a clergyman is accused - even when the offence allegedly happened 47 years ago and there ain't a scrap of evidence apart from malicious hearsay.

Angry Exile said...

Echoing SBC, here. I also think four and a half years before his release will be assessed is both too long and too short. Too long because the guy needs watching from the minute he goes back inside to see if he says or does anything that backs up that indefinite term, and too short because, well, it's only four and a half fucking years!

Captain Haddock said...

Forgive me for asking what might amount to being an obvious question ..

If Tudor was beng held in Rampton, how did he acquire/accrue sufficient money to purchase a pair of Binoculars ?

An entry-level pair of Binos, worthy of the name & suitable for very basic Bird/Wildlife watching aren't going to leave you with much change out of £300.00 ..

I would have thought that the request & the costs involved should have rung warning bells with staff ..

Paul in Nottingham said...

I'd have to check but I'm sure that the head of St Andrew's (a charity) is paid more than £500,000 per year

Woman on a Raft said...

The problem seems to be that while Tudor is a sex offender, the health centre treats all mental conditions as if they were somehow only self-directed.

Sex offending - if you accept it is an illness and I jolly well don't - is in a different category since its focus is harm to someone else. If it is in any sense a mental health condition, then it is in there with the criminally insane and compulsive fire-starters.

St Andrews was out of its depth and should never have accepted him. I will bet you he has committed offences against other inmates but they are unlikely to be believed when they complain.

http://www.stah.org/services/services-for-adolescents.aspx

Anonymous said...

Judging by the insane attacks and gratuitous obscenities you encountered on Gadget today, the blog appeared to be playing host to yet more Rampton patients, Julia.

(Yet the style with which you unseated the maddest challenges, was thoroughly enjoyable.)

selsey.steve said...

"Shaun Tudor, you will be taken from this Court to a place of lawful detention and then, on a date to be decided you will be taken from thence to a place of lawful execution where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead.
May the good Lord have mercy upon your soul."
That is the sentence which should have been pronounced.

Anonymous said...

Sorry Julia I can't agree with you today re IG.If you are on the same wavelength as MTG (as I assume that's him at 20.31)then you should be worried.Luckily Feral was so idiotic that it overshadowed your comments.
Your point is that ONE officer cocked up with taser (in Devon) then no-one else should get one.One of my colleagues once crashed a car so none of us should be trusted with one.It's the same logic.
PS Nice to see SBC and EV are back-I was feeling lonely.Where have they been?
Jaded

SBC said...

"Nice to see SBC"

Hi, I was spending my online time looking into the whole 'Freeman Of The Land'/'Lawful Rebellion' thang.

Angry Exile said...

WoaR - I can accept this kind of sex offending (as opposed to something like vanilla rape) as an illness. What I can't accept is the current, high risk approach to treatment. If this was an illness of the body caused by a germ rather than one of the mind caused by who knows what the approach would be completely different. They knew enough to keep Typhoid Mary away from people indefinitely a century ago, forcibly when it became clear that she wasn't prepared to change habits so as not to harm other people around her. From Wikipedia:

Eventually, the New York State Commissioner of Health, Eugene H. Porter, M.D., decided that disease carriers would no longer be held in isolation. [Mary] Mallon could be freed if she agreed to abandon working as a cook and to take reasonable steps to prevent transmitting typhoid to others. On February 19, 1910, Mallon agreed that she "[was] prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection". She was released from quarantine and returned to the mainland.

After being given a job as a laundress, which paid lower wages, however, Mallon adopted the pseudonym Mary Brown, returned to her previous occupation as a cook, and in 1915 was believed to have infected 25 people, resulting in one death, while working as a cook at New York's Sloane Hospital for Women. Public-health authorities again found and arrested Mallon, returned to quarantine on the island on March 27, 1915. Mallon was confined there for the remainder of her life.


It's kind of sad because it wasn't her fault that she was a carrier for a lethal illness, but she was and that's life and she needed either to change (not be a cook - not a huge change) or to be kept isolated from other people for the rest of her life. Killing her would have had the same effect but would have been pretty harsh, and I always worry when a state decides to start killing people simply because they're being difficult.

What bothers me is that the same thing would probably happen now with a healthy carrier of an infectious disease but not a mental illness that compels the sufferer to harm others. A nonce that can exercise the self control to leave children alone, and I'm quite prepared to believe that this would be a small minority of them, isn't a problem. One who says that he'll carry on unless physically prevented sure as hell is a problem, though not one of his own making, and should be treated exactly as if he had an incurable infectious disease and kept away from other people.

JuliaM said...

"I don't think anything more need be said. Sackings are overdue."

Yes. But won't happen.

"It's funny how you never hear this glib soft-soaping when a clergyman is accused..."

Indeed!

"...and too short because, well, it's only four and a half fucking years!"

Spot on! Franklt, castration - chemical or mechanical - would be a good idea.

Whether for Tudor or the person who sanctioned release is something I'm still pondering...

"If Tudor was beng held in Rampton, how did he acquire/accrue sufficient money to purchase a pair of Binoculars ?"

I suspect that this probably happened when he was in the much, much laxer St Andrew's. Well, I'd hope so, anyway.

JuliaM said...

"St Andrews was out of its depth and should never have accepted him."

I wonder why they did? Do they get money from the Justice System, perchance, for every one they take off it's hands?

"...the insane attacks and gratuitous obscenities you encountered on Gadget today..."

Heh! Winning the 'first!' game probably didn't help endear me to them, did it? ;)

"That is the sentence which should have been pronounced."

Not if he's 'mad' and not 'bad'. And the authorities have apparently decided it's the former.

Though their judgement looks more and more suspect each day...

"If you are on the same wavelength as MTG (as I assume that's him at 20.31)then you should be worried."

Really? What, someone is only, ever, always wrong..? Can never, just by virtue of who he is, be right..?

I find that a strange attitude to take, frankly.

JuliaM said...

"Your point is that ONE officer cocked up with taser (in Devon) then no-one else should get one.One of my colleagues once crashed a car so none of us should be trusted with one.It's the same logic."

How many other such incidents (of the police being first to a mentally-deranged man with a knife, and getting the worst of it) have happened? Not many. Usually it's us, the public, getting the worst.

Yet I don't see anyone calling for us to have the means, do you?

"...and should be treated exactly as if he had an incurable infectious disease and kept away from other people."

Yup, spot on. I mean, how much clearer does it ever get?