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Man attacked and left for dead by unsupervised mentally ill patient in privatised rehabilitation centre
14 August 2024, 07:52 | Updated: 14 August 2024, 07:54
A man left with 27 skull fractures after a random attack in east London has said he fears a lack of security at mental health facilities is putting people’s lives at risk.
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LBC spoke exclusively to 47-year-old Karim Pathmanathan, who believes the attack - which left him with PTSD, permanent smell-loss, and eye and hearing damage - was preventable.
The case raises further questions about the shortcomings of mental health services in the UK, after a report concluded that a mental health trust downplayed the risks posed by Valdo Calocane, who killed two students and a caretaker.
Karim, a TfL engineer, was assaulted a few minutes from his home in Newham on the morning of Sunday 2nd October 2022 by a man with mental health issues who was a resident at a nearby supported living unit, which is known to support those with substance abuse or mental health problems, or who have been detained under the Mental Health Act.
After passing 41-year-old Lawrence Russell in the street, the next thing Karim remembers is waking up in hospital, with a police officer sitting at his bedside.
Doctors told him he had sustained 27 skull fractures and a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage.
“I could just see blood,” he said.
“I had a sick bowl and blood was coming from my nose…I couldn’t think straight and seeing the blood in front of me in my hand and in the bowl, I thought I was dying.”
The bleeding from his head lasted for four days.
Karim says he noticed Russell behaving concerningly in the community in the months before the attack with no member of staff supervising him.
He says locals raised the alarm about Russell's conduct, but that he continued to be seen in the area unaccompanied.
"There's a clear duty of care, both to the [residents] and to the community," says Mark Winstanley, CEO of Rethink Mental Illness.
"If concerns are raised by any member of the community about an individual, there is a duty on whoever's providing the support for that person in the housing, but also a wider duty for the people who've actually placed them there," he said.
Russell was a resident at Waddington House - a supported living service run by private company Supported Living Services Ltd. It's a converted pub, less than a minute’s walk from a nursery and an old people’s home.
Its website states that it caters "for individuals with mental health support needs, recovering from alcohol and illicit substances, have been detained under the Mental Health Act or subject to Home Office or Ministry of Justice Restrictions".
It claims to provide "round-the-clock support... designed to assist vulnerable individuals to live as independently as possible".
Questions are now being raised about whether the facility had adequate measures in place to look after its residents and keep the community safe.
"How did they assess the risk and how did they manage that risk [Russell posed]?" asks Julian Hendy, the founder of the charity Hundred Families.
His father Phillip was fatally stabbed in Bristol in 2007 in an unprovoked attack by a psychotic man, and he says there are 100-120 murders in the UK each year which involve a killer who is mentally ill.
He says there needs to be greater transparency of how private mental health care and supported living services are run.
“The whole system needs to be opened up... we need to know that services are safe, and at the moment it's covered in secrecy. And I don't think that that benefits the public.”
"We've had a number of cases where there's been tragedies in supported accommodation," he says.
"It's called supported accommodation, but actually there might be one person there... and there's not the intensive or assertive care and treatment to follow people up."
Six months after the attack, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out an inspection of Waddington House, rating the facility as “good”.
However, the CQC said Russell was not receiving care regulated by the body, meaning that it was the responsibility of the local authority which placed him at the facility to ensure the suitable support arrangements were in place.
Russell was placed there by Lambeth Council, which has repeatedly refused LBC’s requests for information about the conditions of his residency, though we understand Russell wasn't required to be supervised prior to the attack.
A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “This was a shocking incident, and our thoughts are with Mr Pathmanathan.
“Unfortunately we are unable to comment on individual care arrangements for privacy reasons."
Nearly two years on from the attack, Karim has only recently been able to return to the street where it happened.
He has had extensive therapy in an attempt to "understand the fear", but says he doesn't think it's something he'll "ever get over".
When he saw the news that mental health patient Valdo Calocane had stabbed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, on the streets of Nottingham on the morning of 13 June 2023, it “triggered fear” for Karim.
He asked the police officer assigned to his case: “How could it happen to somebody else?”
“I was angry that it's happened to younger kids and they didn't survive like me,” he said.
He says he believes in rehabilitation for mental health patients so they can live in the community, but says his “personal point of view” is that insufficient services for patients have increased the risk of attacks on members of the public.
He still feels unsafe, and has thought about leaving the area.
Supported Living Services Ltd. said: “We cannot comment on specific cases.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Service providers have a responsibility to protect both patients and staff, and to take action to fully investigate any cases that are reported. Abuse, harassment, or violence of any kind is unacceptable.
“The government is committed to ensuring patients and service users receive the quality care they deserve in safe and compassionate settings.”
Karim’s attacker pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm at Southwark Crown Court in March.
He was sentenced to a hospital order at a secure facility.
