Traumatised by months of forced feeding and isolation from her family on a secure psychiatric ward, 14-year-old Ruth Szymankiewicz fled her family home through a toilet window and flung herself into a freezing pond in a desperate attempt to get someone to listen.
“I’d rather die than go back to Huntercombe,” the teenager had warned just hours before her father Mark, dragged her from the icy water near their Berkshire home just after Christmas 2021.
Two months later, Ruth was dead.
The teenager died in hospital two days after having self-harmed when she was left unsupervised at Huntercombe Hospital in Maidenhead, where she should have had constant supervision.
Her death sparked a three-year-long police investigation, which found the agency worker responsible for her care was working under a fake name and had completed just a day or a day and a half of online training before his first shift on the understaffed ward Ruth was on. Police were not able to question the worker, known as Ebo Achempong, as he had fled the country.
Last week, a jury at her inquest made a rare ruling that her death amounted to an unlawful killing after a litany of failings in her care were uncovered at the 10-day hearing.
Ruth, who had an eating disorder, Tourette syndrome and a tic condition, was placed at Huntercombe in October 2021 because her mental health had declined and she required feeding through a tube after refusing to eat.
But while there, she was denied therapy to help her manage the often painful and traumatic tube feeding that kept her alive, she was left without regular access to psychologists and was only allowed to see her family twice a week.
On a much-anticipated trip home for Christmas in 2021, the teenager was happy to be reunited with her family. But she soon became anxious about her return to Huntercombe and protested over being sent back.
The night before she was to return, she self-harmed, and when it was time to leave, she squeezed herself out of a small downstairs toilet window and ran.
Her father, Mark, followed her and watched on, horrified, as she entered the “icy bog”, pleading with her to come out.
When she refused, he pulled her out because she was becoming critically hypothermic, her inquest heard.
He carried her back to the house, where the family warmed her up, but when the secure transport finally arrived to take her back to Huntercombe, the situation that unfolded left them “absolutely broken”.
In a statement read at the inquest, Ruth’s mother Kate recounted the horrifying ordeal: “We had to watch our daughter handcuffed and her legs taped together so that they could restrain her to get her into the transport. Our daughter was screaming throughout the whole ordeal. This was a breaking point for Mark and I.
“It absolutely broke us to see our daughter being treated this way and seeing her so distressed, but there was no other option given to us apart from for her to be sectioned and taken to Huntercombe, as nowhere else could help. We felt helpless. I think that Ruth also felt that she could see no way out of this.”
Ruth’s despair at her time spent on the Thames ward at Huntercombe was laid bare further in a handwritten note found after her death.
Addressing it to “important people”, she complained about a lack of therapy for patients like her at the hospital, which she said had an “unsafe number of staff”.
The note read: “I don’t really know who this is really directed to… Huntercombe, it doesn’t deserve a capital H.
“It is the s***test mental health institution you could get… the unsafe number of staff, how the place makes you worse, the staff literally sleep on their shifts. I don’t want this to happen to any other patients ever. My suggestion is, shut this place down.”
Eventually, more than a year after Ruth’s death, Huntercombe Maidenhead, or Taplow Manor as it was renamed, was shut after a series of investigations by The Independent and Sky News, which revealed allegations of “systemic abuse”.
Patients sent to Huntercombe Group hospitals revealed how they felt like “caged animals”, with claims they were subjected to painful, bruising restraints, medicated so heavily they felt like “zombies”, and isolated from their families.
Ruling that Ruth’s death amounted to “unlawful killing”, jurors said there had been systematic failings not only at Huntercombe but by the NHS mental health system that funded her placement at the private equity-owned hospital.
Clutching Ruth’s stuffed Giraffe as they listened to harrowing evidence of their daughter’s time at Huntercombe, her parents described how just a few years earlier, she had been happy.
They recounted how their first-born child – a little girl “with a head of bright red hair” – was a fiery and determined character with a “huge heart”, a “deep passion for life” and a love of animals and the outdoors.
But in December 2020, she suddenly developed physical and vocal tics, and the family faced an 18-month wait to access specialist care.
In 2021, she developed an eating disorder and by August, she was admitted to Salisbury Hospital before she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Eventually, NHS officials decided she needed to be admitted to a specialist children’s mental health unit, and she was taken to Huntercombe.
Her parents told the inquest they felt pressured into agreeing to the move, and were soon “trapped” in a system that was meant to care for Ruth, but instead “locked her away and harmed her”.
During her time at the hospital, the vulnerable teenager was allowed unfettered access to her mobile phone, which she was later found to have used to search for methods of self-harm.
Throughout the inquest, multiple staff voiced concerns over short staffing in the unit, with a visibly distressed senior support worker, Michelle Hance, breaking down as she spoke detailed the pressures on workers.
Dr Gillian Combe, a senior NHS doctor working for the Thames Valley provider collaborative, which was responsible for Ruth’s admission to Huntercombe, admitted that the NHS did not do enough for the 14-year-old.
She told the inquest the NHS was aware that the hospital was understaffed daily, and that there were concerns over the care it provided, but there were no other suitable choices available. She appeared to make a plea for more money to build the beds it “desperately needed”.
Standing outside of the Berkshire court room after the inquest concluded, Mark and Kate made a heartfelt plea for Ruth’s story to matter: “Remember Ruth’s story. Remember her in the faces of the young people who look to you for help and support.”
“What happened to Ruth is shocking, tragic and harrowing. Whilst there is much more to be said, if change can come from her story, it can make a tangible difference to others.”
In response to the ruling, Active Care Group, formerly known as The Huntercombe Group, said: “We extend our heartfelt condolences to Ruth’s family, friends, and all those affected by her passing. We deeply regret the tragic event that occurred, and we are truly sorry for the distress this has caused and recognise the profound impact it has had on everyone who knew her.”
The group said it was disappointed that a third-party company it had hired had breached its terms of contract, though it did not state what the breach of contract was. It also said it had made improvements to the quality and safety of its services since.
