Care Home From Hell

Undercover reporters from the Malaysian Star have exposed horrific and distressing details of life in one of Malaysia’s care homes for the mentally disabled.

Reporters gained access to the Kuala Kubu Baru Hospital in Selangor, Malaysia after a tip off from a source in London. What the investigative journalists found was truly shocking, patients were more like inmates and kept like animals in cages. The Taman Sinar Harapan home is a government run shelter for people with mental and physical disabilities, there are approximately 200 residents including men, women and children. The reporters saw how some of the residents were kept in cages, naked and often chained to their mattress-less beds. On entering the building the undercover spies were hit by the foul stench of faeces, residents were soaked in their own urine and excrement and sometimes their own blood.

The reporters gained access to the home as part of a group of volunteers who attend the site at weekends to clean and feed the residents. One of the volunteers explained that certain residents were segregated because they were violent, they would be put in cramped cages like lab rats, and chained to their steel frame beds. The residents had no clothing, or bed clothing not even a pillow or a mattress. This was supposedly because they had used clothes in the past to try and strangle themselves and others.

“Those who are accidentally placed inside the cells with the more aggressive residents would be beaten or abused,” the volunteer said.

[quote]The rest of the residents were allowed to roam free outside the cells, but were still kept naked and without much furniture, or toilets. Most sat on cold wet marble floors that were hosed down. One resident lay face down on a wooden bench, he had defecated himself and just lay motionless covered in his own faeces. The residents would be rounded together in the middle of the room and sprayed with hosepipes by the volunteers, then a second group of volunteers would towel them down. After bath time the residents were then fed a seafood soup which one of the volunteers had made herself, during the week when the volunteers aren’t present the residents are given very little food. The reporters were told that in the week just two caretakers look after the place and they give a tiny amount of food only to those that wanted it. On one occasion a volunteer brought food enough to last for days, but it was thrown away by the caretakers.

“The caretakers said that the residents would create a bigger mess if there was more food because they would defecate more often,” the volunteer told reporters.

Whilst the reporters visited the site one resident was rushed out of the home to the main hospital for treatment to a severe cut on his head. They were told that the resident had merely slipped and fallen, but they witnessed several residents hitting themselves and bashing themselves against the marble floors.

The children at the home were kept in slightly better conditions, they had proper beds with mattresses. But when the journalists remarked how quite the children were he was told they were drugged to keep them sleepy and docile.

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