I’m interested to know how the ‘source’ knew it was him - has his identity or photo been revealed somewhere?
"There will have to be a serious inquiry into what he was doing there.”
There certainly does, but please let's not blame staff until we know what happened. Working with severely unbalanced children, teens or adults is very hard and sometimes the wrong decision is made with the best of intentions or you may have worries that are not listened to by those above you and there is little you can do but obey the chain of command. Sometimes the chain includes psychs who have not had to do the one-on-one stuff and make decisions you feel are wrong, but you have no choice but to go with it.
You can also think the behaviour is controlled by medication and it would be but some are very devious when they decide not to take it. It is possible for a person to make it look like they did or if not watched, to make a decision not to take it with disastrous consequences.
To watch, predict and be right about every potential behaviour of another human being is impossible, especially where there is a severe mental illness. NOT however that every person with a psychiatric disorder will be violent. I am talking of extreme degrees where thinking becomes so deranged it does not follow normal logic. As a mental health advocate, I was once hit hard, on the face, by a girl on a locked ward -out of the blue, while talking to a different patient. Her logic when asked was "I was sitting there looking pretty." Nobody could have predicted this action. If you analysed it there was nobody to blame. So I can understand how this terrible random act by a seventeen-year-old boy was blamed on social services. i would want the full circumstances before I blamed anything other than a terrible illness. Or concluded that this was an action by a person, and there are some, who was just evil personified. There is often no understandable logic but a root in some kind of feeling. The girl probably felt awful, was locked up while I was free and so on the mind got too much while who knows what happened with the boy. (Not excusing attempted murder.) For everyone's safety, we do need secure environments where such people can remain and be prevented from harming themselves or others. When someone commits an act of this magnitude, I don't think we can take the risk of allowing them out into the community again.
The point is that normal logic in the mind can for a very small percentage of people, cease to function and the mind can create all sorts of alternate realities and even voices that tell you what to do in a way that convinces the person they need to act. Very few, when needing help get it before and not after action of insanity is performed. Unfortunately. when dealing with mental illness, the help is given too late to prevent the descent into insanity. How often do we hear of someone asking for help, then they do something dreadful and the papers tell us that the person or their relatives had been desperate to get help? How often do we plead with a person who is clearly not in their right mind to get help, have them refuse and find authorities say they will do nothing till the person agrees. We then find ourselves dealing with an attempted suicide or crime or violence of some sort, because the illness has been able to progress without intervention to this point. Only then is the help given and in a few days, the person is released supposedly well again. Some are, others are really not, but appear so.
As to how the ex-worker got the information::
Probably there would be links to colleagues the person worked with as people often keep in touch after they leave an institution, and sometimes update on what happened to various kids etc. It is a dangerous job and you get close to those working with the same danger
I met someone who updated me on kids in a hospital I worked in -not details just the stuff like who got better and went home and on a boy who refused to walk and how one day he just seemed to change his mind and do so. I had spent a lot of time with the boy and after I left thought about him a lot. If you work with kids, you get interested and care about what happens next. When you meet someone who had the same experience, they update you. As workmates, you might socialise a drink after work and so on and this can carry on after you leave. It is easy to underestimate how emotionally involved you become.
Some children and adults are very hard to "special." You can blink and something happens and they can also sound very credible and have periods of time that lull you into a false sense of security. In the seventies, a nurse in a hospital i worked in was raped because her husband, a charge nurse on another ward thought the patient was well enough to go for a walk on his own. It was horrific, but the guy has seemed fine for a very long time.
It is easy to criticise staff, but if you work where someone needs to be one or two on one you understand how hard that job is and how easy it is to be fooled or duped or think something is safe that is not and sometimes those in charge do not listen to those doing the one on one job. One day I was asked to special a girl who had a tendency to bit people. I objected as I would be on my own, but the inexperienced (with this kind of child, insisted I would be fine. This is how I got bitten on the face a week before my wedding. Someone thankfully walked in and had to bang her on the back to make her let go. Of course, the inexperienced charge nurse had never seen what she could do. So I would hold off questioning those who may or may not have specialed this boy on that day until it is clear what happened. You only have to have a person in the mix who does not understand the severity of the problem this kind of child or adult presents and that you cannot trust their behaviour even after a long period of calm.
Sorry, I have gone on again and drawn yet again on my own experiences. I guess my grey hairs are showing.
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