The long‐term effects of the abusive regime at the Longcare homes
| Published date | 01 August 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14668203200500011 |
| Date | 01 August 2005 |
| Pages | 37-43 |
| Author | John Pring |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Sociology |
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Policy and practice overview
The Journal of Adult Protection Volume 7 Issue 2 • August 2005 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited 37
key words
abstract
Introduction
During the course of my research into the abuse that took place
at Longcare, I spoke in-depth to the families of seven of the
victims/survivors as well as Dorothy,one of the former
residents. I met the first of these families in 1995 and continued
to meet with them over the next eight years. I first met Dorothy
afew days after Christmas in 1999. Our first meeting took place
in the presence of Dorothy’ssocial worker.Ihave regularly
spoken to and visited Dorothy, and her husband Jamie, in the
months and years since.
Further information about the effects of the abuse came from
Respond, which has provided psychotherapeutic counselling to
several former Longcare residents.
Dorothy
Dorothy spent more than 20 years at Botley’s Park long-stay
hospital, before she became one of the first residents of Stoke
Place, the first Longcare home, in 1983. She spent nearly eight
years at Stoke Place. In 1991, she left Longcareafter
complaining to her sister that Gordon Rowe had physically
assaulted her.
Dorothy told me that she survived Botley’s Park and Stoke
Place by clinging onto a ‘dream’ that one day she would have a
flat of her own and would be able to ‘settle down’ and get
married. She now shares a flat in a sheltered development in the
south of England with her husband Jamie, who is also disabled.
One of the things that she values most now is her
The long-term effects of the
abusive regime at the
Longcare homes
John Pring
Freelance Journalist
Longcare
abusive regime
learning difficulties
long-term effects
In 1994, a leaked council report
revealed that, for more than ten
years, Gordon Rowe,a former social
worker, had been beating, raping
and ill-treating the adults with
learning difficulties who lived in the
residential homes run by his
company, Longcare.This paper
describes the effect of this abuse on
some of those residents.
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