Your story – Heather Scott

Was your llife ever in danger?

I don’t know that my life was in danger but my physical well being possibly was. It was while I was in school, I was about seventeen, and  we had moved to the farm.   As I’ve said before the farm belonged to a mental/psychiatric hospital called Hensol Castle Hospital,  besides the farm the castle had extensive grounds with several blocks which the patients lived in, the castle itself was used for administration, kitchens and at one time staff accommodation. There was a very long drive a least couple of miles long from the bottom lodge of the castle estate to the top lodge of the original estate, the farm was about half way down about a mile from the bottom lodge where the school bus would pick me up in the mornings and drop me off at night, I had to walk down/up the drive every day, past the blocks in which the patients lived.  The patients were able to walk around the grounds during the day, some would work on the farm so I was used to them and not particularly worried, but there was a time when one of the patients, who was considered a high level patient but not dangerous, started to wait for me coming home from school and follow me up the drive, as I say he was a high level patient so knew that I came up every week day and at what time. To begin with he would just follow me and not say or do anything, but after a few weeks of this he started calling out to me and making lewd suggestions, very sexual and explicit about what he was going to do to me.  He would stay behind me following at a distance while we passed the blocks, but once they were all gone the drive went past a paddock and then through a small wood up to the entrance to the short drive down to the farm, after the blocks he started to speed up so I used to grab hold of my school bag in my arms and run as fst as I could, luckily I had been one of the best 100 and 200 yd sprinters in my school so was able to out run him.                                                                                                               I didn’t say anything about this for a few months but eventually I told my friend Linda what was happening, she told her mum Connie, who was a friend of my mums, so Connie told my mum who then told my dad, he was really angry and after asking me a few questions worked out which patient he thought it was likely to be and which block he lived in. The following day my dad was waiting for me as I passed the block and had one of the charge nurses with him, he pointed out a patient to me and asked if that was the one that was following me when I replied yes he told the charge nurse that he was to ensure that the patient was always kept in when I came home from school and if he didn’t and I was followed and harassed again it was not the patient that would suffer the consequences but the charge nurse, the meaning being very clear.                                                                                                             I don’t know if the patient would have done anything but his meaning was very clear and,as a young girl on her own walking through the wood, I certainly believed he would carry through his threats given the chance.