My job was to watch hours and hours of abuse caught on camera at Muckamore Hospital

Watching the Muckamore Hospital abuse caught on camera 4 hours ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Marie-Louise Connolly Health correspondent, BBC News NI BBC Warning - this story contains details some people may find distressing. Muckamore Abbey Hospital was meant to be a home, a place of safety for people with severe learning disabilities and mental health needs in Northern Ireland. But some patients were abused, allegations of mistreatment were ignored. In 2017 the hospital became the centre of what the Police Service of Northern Ireland has called the UK's largest criminal adult safeguarding investigation. To date police have reported 124 people who worked at Muckamore to the Public Prosecution Service. It, in turn, has directed that 58 should be prosecuted. A public inquiry has found patients were abused and systematically bullied by some staff. Central to those investigating what went on at Muckamore was hundreds of thousands of hours of CCTV footage which captured what happened on the wards over a six-month period. The inquiry's chair said that with out it the inquiry itself may never have been established. Its existence only emerged when a parent, Glynn Brown, questioned why he could not see footage of an incident involving his son . Staff believed the cameras were not switched on. But they were and the footage revealed 1,500 crimes on one ward alone. One person whose job it was to trawl through the recordings told BBC News he watched vulnerable adults "kicked, trailed by their legs down corridors and thrown into a seclusion room". "They were goaded and abused in a place where they were meant to be safe." 'Snatched comfort blankets' This source, who asked BBC News NI to protect their identity, said the content of the CCTV footage was so harrowing they needed psychological support after viewing it. "I cried, I kicked a bin, I felt angry and in disbelief that health workers could be so cruel to people in their care. "The CCTV footage revealed systemic abuse where some staff nurses showed no empathy and got joy out of intentionally hurting people physically and psychologically," the source said. The source agreed to speak to place on record the scale of the cruelty. They also stressed that the lack of leadership and action from management over decades was reprehensible. Staff would snatch patient's comfort blankets, dolls, or favourite book and magazines which would trigger a "kick-off". That would lead to a "struggle" between staff and patients with the latter being restrained and staff seeing the result as something to celebrate. Our contact said the behaviour of patients was involuntary, however the behaviour of staff was intentionally menacing. "At times it was just neglect and then cruel neglect, one man who had been in the seclusion room and was clearly agitated banging his head off walls for over 30 minutes was made to clean up his own vomit by staff who eventually opened the seclusion door," they said. "Another was brought to t