Broadmoor is the Gothic madhouse on the hill, a place that lurks in the imagination of the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, and just the its original name conjures up a Roger Corman b-movie chiller, Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. It was built by Joshua Jebb in 1863, located in Crowthorne. Jebb also designed Pentonville……
And the stereotype of Broadmoor still looms today.
I used to visit Broadmoor regularly during the mid-late 1990s, I would get the train from Waterloo, then taxi to Broadmoor. Once there, you are searched and then escorted to either the visiting room or the ward. I used to visit women there as a volunteer for the organisation WISH (Women in Special Hospitals), I had visited women at Rampton (I was invited by their women’s group) and Ashworth. Most, I think all now, of the women have been moved out of Broadmoor (one of the campaigning demands of WISH) and generally the special hospital regime was always geared towards men overshadowing the needs of women. It was estimated that 95% of the women in the Specials had experienced rape and sexual abuse sometime in their lives, that in itself represents a high level of vulnerability and powerlessness. Similar to the prison system these places act like social dustbins for the traumatised and the distressed.
My first experience of being led through the grounds I was struck on how vast the place looked, modern architecture fused with neo-Gothic, the imposing building reminded me constantly of Goffman’s Asylums, institutionalised misery. We always get sensationalism when it comes to Broadmoor, the high-profile cases yet many people are incarcerated for low-level crimes or who have not committed any index offence, they remain in the background and lets be honest….they don’t sell news!
Channel 4 news did an expose on Broadmoor last night and the findings didn’t surprise me.
Words can’t describe the experiences many women encountered as residents at Broadmoor, they still chill me. The place symbolised oppression. Abuse, neglect and sexual/physical violence went unchallenged and unheard. Silenced. Powerlessness and vulnerability increased. Cover-up after cover-up. More pain more trauma. No justice. Meeting many of these women, I was confronted by the similarities I had with them, things we had in common, and the recognition of how easy it is to end up in a hell hole like Broadmoor, even as an atheist I was reminded always of the phrase, there but for the grace of God (go I).
The place continually unnerved me, I was pleased that women felt they could trust me but at the same time I was powerless to act as many felt too scared for their complaints to become formal. One woman I visited regularly, and got to know very well, committed suicide as she concluded that she would never ever get out of Broadmoor, she would never be free, only in death. I still have the sculpture she made me on my book shelf. I wonder sometimes about what type of life she would have had had she been given the support and help she desperately needed. She was failed by an uncaring brutal system along with countless other people.
I stopped visiting the Specials’ and dropped out for a short time in the mental health user movement as I couldn’t handle the bleakness and how soul destroying it was, the feeling of powerlessness and silence crept further into my life and impinged on my own mental wellbeing, I felt angry 24/7 but trapped by it. I think if this was affecting me now I would deal with it very differently.
I felt constantly crap for letting these women down, I found it hard to cope. I did believe I was looking into the human abyss known as the Special Hospital regime. Every time I left Broadmoor I had the urge to scrub myself clean of the institutionalisation that lingered on me. The squalid system that treats people in such a degrading, abusive and inhuman way yet time and time again it goes unheard and hidden. People didn’t seem matter; they were treated like they were nothing, invisible. And what clouds the issue is the sensationalism and hype that goes with the Specials. The right-wing populism that plays to the myth of these places.
The Fallon enquiry recommended that the Specials should close (though he knew the government wouldn’t accept that so listed further recommendations) and that still stands. Broadmoor, Ashworth and Rampton are symbolic of a bygone archaic Victorian age, they are an anachronism entrenched in the 19th century which has no place in 2009.
Time to close these high secure hellish nightmares!
Well done for the work you did. Being locked up isn’t pleasant and so any help is welcome. You surprise me all the time by your guts, HarpyMarx.
Thanks for sharing this. I knew someone who dropped out of training as a psych nurse because of the rampant abuse of patients rights endemic in the system and exacerbated by privatisation.
Totally agree!
I’ve always found asylums one of the starkest examples of horror within capitalism. And I’ve been meaning to write about it for years but can’t quite get a story.
I have friends who’ve worked in mental health and found it utterly soul destroyed for the reasons you stated above. You want to help but the confines of capitalism won’t allow you to.
But then the logical conclusion is that the only way these women will truly be free is when capitalism is gone, but that’s a pretty long-term goal that doesn’t really ease their troubles does it?
Thanks Mr Divine, I appreciate that.
ibs and Benjamin: Thanks for that.
The system reflects the oppressive society we live and the oppression is definitely endemic, rarely challenged. You get whistle blowers but they are usually sacked for speaking out. And my own experiences (personal as well) is that when someone labelled with mental distress speaks out re sexual abuse and rape they are rarely believed instead it is blamed on their label i.e. she doesn’t know the difference between fact/fantasy…’it’s all in the head yada yada’ I heard that countless times and it still chills me, and angers me.
And yes, some of the starkest examples of inhumanity and abuse under capitalism is what I encountered on a personal level and from others in the psychiatric system. It is brutalises people by punishing them for their mental distress.
Another thing is that having visited a friend in a mental hospital a few years back, I discovered how fucking boring and depressing they are. You really wonder how they’re meant to get better – or as I think you’ve described, they just don’t.
And your point about them blaming the illness for those women report sexual abuse is really quite foul. It’s quite sad that people would use that power over people.
What was the general attitude of the nurses? Are they all as robot like as the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Or were their left-wing nurses who fought for better patient conditions through unions?
Yeah, psych hospitals are mind numbingly boring. I was a day patient during the late 1980s, spent my time talking to other patients, other times staring into space mainly to due to the chemical coshes they prescribe me, engaging the brain was impossible. I don’t really about now and whether it has improved but with all the cuts… I some how doubt it…
The psychiatric system is a good example of the imbalance and unequal power relationships that exist.
When i volunteered to visit women at the Specials I found different attitudes existed some seemed ok while others were nothing more than glorified screws, many didn’t have adequate training and adhered to the medical model, many were casually dismissive and oppressive in attitudes.
Again, when I was a patient and worked as an advocate in the mainstream psych system, you had some ok staff to some total nightmare staff. I had the misfortune to get the nightmare ones (my own personal nurse was a total b’stard! I’ll never forget her even after 20-odd years) and one nurse who I believed I could trust, I had plucked up the courage to tell her and it took a lot to open up (I was 18 at the time) about that my then boyfiend was being violent to me. Her reply was that I must have provoked him….
Looking back I will never ever forgive that nurse’s insensitivity and brainlessness for saying that as she fulfilled my own belief that the violence was ‘all my fault’ and I endured further violence as I believed it was my fault as someone had backed up that belief. It took me some time after to believe it was not my fault and walk out.
Though, thankfully, I do know a couple of leftie psych nurses who are active in the trade unions and also supportive of the mh user movement, and push for alternatives to the medical model.
Far out. Those are pretty serious experiences. You could even write a book about it or something.
I’m not that surprised that you had some bad and some good. To a lesser extent, working in welfare, I’ve found people who have contempt for the unemployed whilst others want to help them. The ones that are good don’t last long though.
Thanks Benjamin, really value that, sometimes I wonder how on earth I am still here and survived those hellish times. Some people I was close to back then didn’t. I haven’t written as much about those times as it is hard dragging it all back to the forefront, dusting off the memories and writing them down. I probably should in some ways therapeutic and all that.
But you are right, the good ones don’t last as they are usually shocked by what they see.
[...] our mental heath services, in particular how they damage further vulnerable and abused women. See Broadmoor: time it closed! for the full account. Broadmoor is the Gothic madhouse on the hill, a place that lurks in the [...]
I spent two weeks in the mental wing of a hospital earlier this year and am a member of a mental illness support group. So Harpymarx I know where you’re coming from. It isn’t something you want to recall.
My place in Australia was so so. One of my support ‘group’ highly recommends the Golbourn one .. separate bungalows with TVs!