Melanie Leahy, whose son Matthew is among those who died, has said she believes the fatalities were part of a “cull of our most vulnerable, our most gentle, our most needy”.
The deaths of around 2,000 mental health patients will be investigated as a long-awaited new public inquiry begins on Monday.
Warning: The following article contains details some readers may find distressing
Families of the patients who died in Essex have been campaigning for years, claiming they have not been told the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
Melanie Leahy, whose son Matthew is among those who died, believes the large number of deaths being investigated will continue to grow.
“I think we’re going to find there’s a lot, lot more. And I think it’s absolutely horrendous,” she told Sky News.
“I believe it’s a cull. It’s a cull of our most vulnerable, our most gentle, our most needy.”
Matthew Leahy, 20, died in November 2012.
He was found unresponsive in his room at the Linden Centre, a secure mental health unit in Chelmsford, eight days after he was sectioned.
His mother received a call to tell her what had happened. She raced to the hospital but it was too late.
She recalls going in and “there lay Matthew, on the trolley, he had a blue hospital gown on… And in that instant I just wanted to go and grab him and hold him and bring him back to life”.
Mrs Leahy says she was told by staff: “Don’t touch, he’s a crime scene.”
“I was taken into a side room and asked what undertaker I had planned,” she remembers. “I was planning his 21st birthday.”
It was soon after Mr Leahy’s death that she grew concerned that things she was being told about what happened didn’t add up.
Mrs Leahy also has unanswered questions about a serious allegation her son had made days before his death.
Mr Leahy had called his father and told him he had been raped.
He then called police and can be heard on the 999 call telling the operator: “I’ve been raped and the doctors refuse to acknowledge it.”
Police went to the unit but no arrests were made.
An inquest into Mr Leahy’s death found it occurred after a “series of multiple failings and missed opportunities”. Staff even falsified his care plan after he died.
