Longcare Survivors: The Biography of a Care Scandal

Citation

Murphy, G. (2019), "Longcare Survivors: The Biography of a Care Scandal", Tizard Learning Disability Review, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 38-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/TLDR-01-2019-054

This is an excellent, well-researched and shocking book that should be required reading on all professional courses in learning disabilities.

In August 1994, John Pring happened to be the young Journalist, in South Buckinghamshire, who was assigned to follow up an emerging story. A leaked Buckinghamshire County Council report about abuse in a care home was received at the offices of the Slough Observer newspaper, where Pring worked, alongside an anonymous letter about the same care home. Pring went on to research the story of Gordon Rowe and the care homes Rowe set up.

Later, Pring published his first book on the Longcare scandal, Silent Victims, in 2003. This book, “Longcare Survivors”, is a follow-up, in which he traces both the history of services for people with learning disabilities, the events in Longcare and what happened in the ensuing 10 or more years.

The book is divided into six sections: the first examines the eugenics era and the arrival of long stay hospitals for people with learning disabilities; the second concerns Gordon Rowe, who set up the Longcare homes; the third describes the regime in Longcare from the testimony of those who lived and worked there. The events that followed the expose, and the agencies involved, are examined in Section 4, while Section 5 looks at whether the agencies and the systems have changed for the better in the intervening 10 or more years. The final section follows the progress of individual residents from Longcare and their families, and charts their (mostly partial) recovery.

Even for those who thought they knew a great deal about Gordon Rowe and the Longcare homes, there are revelations here. I was one of the three psychologists employed by the police to assess the ability of the Longcare residents to give evidence in court, by no means all were able to do so but we thought that quite a number certainly could do so (Gudjonsson et al., 2000). Nevertheless, none were allowed to give evidence in court, a failure of the court system I would argue.

I found this book riveting, despite my previous knowledge. For example, I had wondered how Gordon Rowe came to act the way he did. I had not realized that, as a young man, in the 1950s, he had worked in a high secure hospital, where the regime was famously punitive at the time. I also had not realised that Gordon Rowe had a history of alleged abusive behaviour against people with learning disabilities long before he ran the Buckinghamshire homes, for example, in Brighton when working as a Mental Health Worker, there were allegations against him, and in Somerset where he set up a home for people with learning disabilities before he went to Buckinghamshire, Pring records that 15 of the residents reported that he had sexually abused them. However, police investigations led to no prosecution (this was before the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act of 1999, with its special measures for vulnerable witnesses). Nevertheless, the police sent their report to Buckinghamshire County Council, but despite this, the Council agreed to let Gordon Rowe set up a home in 1983.

The events in Longcare are probably well known from the newspaper reports from the time. The fact of Rowe’s suicide the day before the case came to court may be less well known. I recall talking to the survivors about this and asking if they felt angry that Rowe had escaped justice. To my sorrow, they said they felt guilty, because they felt they had caused his suicide.

Pring’s book is exceptional in allowing the survivors and their families a voice to talk about what happened, how it affected them adversely, for life, and how only a partial recovery was possible (as research evidence has also shown – see Murphy et al., 2007; Rowsell et al., 2013). In addition, the book documents not only the failures, at every level, of the service system, particularly Buckinghamshire County Council, but also the failures of the inspection service at the time, the local police (who Rowe went out of his way to befriend), the Crown Prosecution Service and the legal system. Pring argues that it is unlikely to be the last scandal of its kind (how right he was) and he asserts that the underlying problem is the attitude of the public to people with learning disabilities, which he illustrates liberally with newspaper reports of hate crimes that have postdated the Longcare scandal.

The whole book is very sobering reading.