She was raped by a nurse in her hospital bed

Oliver Balicao

When devoted mum *Jenny’s teenage daughter took an overdose, she thought being in hospital would be the safest place for her vulnerable girl. But it was the beginning of a nightmare that is going on to this day…

I’ll never forget rushing into A&E and frantically looking around for my daughter, dreading the worst. When I spotted my 17-year-old’s pretty face, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

My little girl had taken an overdose. Amy had been really down, but I hadn’t realised just how depressed she’d become until now. When she saw me, she said, "Sorry, Mum." She was slurring and still not with it.

Later I nipped home to get changed. I gave Amy a kiss and left her dozing in front of the nurses’ station, reassured that they would keep an eye on her.

When I returned with her dad two hours later, she’d been moved into a side room. It was clear the drugs were still in her system and were making her hallucinate. "Look at those disco lights, Mum!" she said, pointing to the ceiling. But it was what she said next that totally shocked me.

"Mum, a nurse touched me!" she said, her face deadly serious. "He raped me, Mum!"

Amy was out of it. Not for one moment did I think this had really happened.

When a male nurse came in to check on her, she started screaming, "Mum, don’t let him near me! He shouldn’t be in here! He’s raped me!"

The short, dark-haired male Filipino nurse didn’t take any notice. He was the epitome of professionalism. I felt mortified. I knew Amy wasn’t consciously lying. She was one of the most honest people I knew. I believed the only place this terrible attack had occurred was in her own confused and medicated mind.

Kicking and screaming

Amy was discharged the next day, but as the weeks passed her mental health continued to worsen. She was either in a deep depression, or manic. When she started becoming delusional I took her to the doctors, who immediately referred her to the local mental health hospital.

Amy was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and her condition was deemed so serious they had to section her. I’ll never forget the sight of them dragging my daughter off down the corridor, screaming and kicking.

Over the next three years my little girl was more or less a permanent patient in
the psychiatric unit. Occasionally Amy was allowed to come back home, and whenever she was here she’d religiously read our local newspaper every day. It
was one of her compulsive habits.

During one of her stays in December 2007, I picked up the paper to see the front page headline. "NURSE RAPED PATIENT, JURY TOLD." A male nurse was on trial accused of raping a vulnerable teenage girl, who had taken an overdose, in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

I took one look at the mug shot of the nurse and felt sick to the pit of my stomach. It was the same nurse who had ‘looked after’ Amy. The same one Amy had accused of raping her.

I felt ill as I read how it was alleged that father-of-two Oliver Balicao had raped
a 16-year-old girl in the same A&E department where Amy had been taken. The jury acquitted Balicao of rape, but he was sentenced to 16 months in jail for sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

He was also placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register and banned from working with children under 16. The similarities were glaringly obvious. Amy had been telling the truth.

I felt overwhelmed by guilt, but my primary concern was for Amy. I was terrified this would push her over the edge.

When Amy read it, she was pacing up and down, but once she’d calmed down she told me, "I don’t want any other person going through what I went through."

At the same time another girl – just 22 – went to the police to tell them that Balicao had also sexually assaulted her when she was in hospital. She too had read the article in the local paper.

It took a while, but finally in December 2010 Balicao was put on trial. Every day Amy had to travel from the mental health hospital in Oxford to Reading Crown Court where she gave evidence via video link. She had to have extra medication, with two psychiatric nurses constantly by her side, just to get through it.

It broke my heart seeing how drugged she had to be to deal with the nightmare. At points she could barely keep her eyes open.

I was so proud of my daughter and her determination to stop anyone else being hurt by this man, but it also broke my heart when I listened to her giving evidence. "I’m not allowed to tell lies," she told the court, "that is how my mum has brought me up. I need people to know that I am telling the truth."

When it was my turn to take the stand, it was horrible. The defence went on about how I hadn’t originally believed Amy. I was so upset. I tried to make them understand it wasn’t that I thought my daughter was lying, I thought she was delusional.

But the most soul-destroying part of the whole proceedings was when the court heard reports by two independent forensic psychiatrists. Tears of anger and frustration poured down my face as they both stated that Amy’s schizophrenia had been triggered by a massive trauma – the rape.

Balicao had not only violated my daughter, he’d also stripped her of the chance of a normal life. His sick, perverted actions had opened a door in my daughter’s mind that could not now be shut.

When he was found guilty, I was so relieved. Amy seemed pleased, but worn out and exhausted. Balicao, 37, was sentenced to nine years for raping Amy in October 2004, and 18 months to run concurrently for the indecent assault on the student in 2002.

Andrew Hutchinson

More lives devastated

Shortly after the case was over, my 30-year marriage ended too. The stress
of everything was too much for us both. When it was reported earlier this year
that another nurse had raped more women in the same hospital A&E department,
I was shocked to the core. I felt so angry that more lives had been devastated – and that more hadn’t been done after what had happened to Amy.

Nurse Andrew Hutchinson, 29, was convicted of numerous sex offences including rapes on unconscious women under his care, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The hospital released a statement saying that unconscious patients would now be treated in areas with ‘open visibility’ – but why didn’t they put that in place after my daughter’s case? If they had, this other nurse would not have had the opportunity to do what he did.

Hutchinson is just starting his prison sentence, while Balicao is now eligible to apply for parole – and may well already be out, having served over half his sentence.

But Amy, now 28, is still in a secure mental hospital.

In a rare moment of lucidity the other day she said to me when I was visiting her, "I’m doing all this time for him! Eight years I’ve been locked up."

And she’s right. It’s my Amy who is serving the real sentence.

*Names have been changed for legal reasons.

The hospital's response:

The Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Trust would not give a comment in relation to the Oliver Balicao case. Speaking about the Andrew Hutchinson case, Catherine Stoddart, chief nurse at OUH NHS Trust, said:

"This was a truly shocking situation. My thoughts are with the victims, whose trust was so betrayed in our hospital and elsewhere… We will be carrying out a thorough internal review to see if anything could have been done to prevent Andrew Hutchinson from committing these crimes, and to recommend any improvements that could be made to either working practices or the physical environment if appropriate."

Culled from Irish Mirror