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UNDERCOVER TALES

True Stories of DIY Filming

Vanessa Evans is a seemingly ordinary woman whose experience using hidden cameras I know particularly well, because she worked with me on a Panorama film based partly on the secret footage she recorded.

She is not a journalist; she lives in Croydon, works long hours as a childminder, has a young child herself and, on top of that, always used to look after her grandmother. To her it was just natural; she was always her grandmother’s main carer.

The grandmother, Yvonne Grant, was also a Croydon lady. A hard-working woman, she had laboured as a seamstress and finally was head of dressmaking in a Croydon department store for most of her life. She lived her whole life in South London. She was part of the community.

Eventually, though, Yvonne needed more care than Vanessa could provide. There were particular things, like needing help with getting to the toilet, which were difficult for Yvonne unless she had care right there with her. Until the end, Yvonne ‘maintained her dignity’ as she saw it: going to the toilet and not using an incontinence pad was vitally important to her.

The care home Yvonne moved into was the best that the council was willing to fund, Vanessa says. A 61-bed institution, the home was on the corner of a roundabout but otherwise was surrounded by residential housing. However, from the off, Vanessa was not happy with what she saw. She remembers that Yvonne:

…was constantly waiting and asking for the toilet. Every time I went in she’d say, ‘Oh, I’ve been asking, I desperately need the toilet, no one will take me.’ I would hear her calling them, and she’d be told, ‘in a minute’, or ‘after you’ve eaten’, or ‘you can’t go now because there’s no staff, one’s on break’. A lot of the time she’d be waiting, sometimes up to an hour, even with me going and asking. We had to wait.

It was not just worries about the toilet – as upsetting and indeed potentially painful as that could be for her grandmother. Vanessa says that there were also worrying bruises. Vanessa also had concerns about the attitude of some staff. She made complaints about what she saw but wasn’t satisfied with the response.

‘I’d go in there and she’d start crying and she’d say, “I just don’t want to be here anymore.” I knew that something wasn’t right, but exactly what I didn’t know, or I didn’t know until I put in the camera,’ Vanessa told us for the film we broadcast on Panorama.

Whether to put in a secret camera was a debate, as it was a challenge. Was it necessary to use hidden cameras? Was it proportionate? Was there another way that the problems could be resolved?

A while later, I asked Vanessa to reflect back on her experience – to think about what went well and what she would do differently if she had her time again. What she told me was very interesting for people doing their own filming in future, because it epitomises the fine balance involved with these considerations.

Vanessa told me that she would get a camera in that room sooner, but that she would have gathered better evidence before she began.

She wishes she had taken photographs, demanded copies of paperwork, care plans and body maps, and that she had kept better notes so she could better prove what her worries were initially, before she used a hidden camera. She also would have pushed harder for change – she wishes she had not been fobbed off (as she saw it) with what she says were pat answers from care workers, like ‘Oh your nan is just confused.’ She thinks that in future other families need to listen to their own gut feelings more, if they know something is wrong.

Vanessa only did her secret filming after she concluded all other options had failed. She is a model of good practice, really. The fact that she wishes that she had pushed harder in all ways and all directions is a testament to the same truth that this book is aiming at: we can all do secret filming better.

It is good, though sad, that Vanessa felt she did have to use secret cameras.

Her hidden camera captured one harrowing hour on a Saturday night when her grandmother became increasingly desperate for the toilet after a cup of tea. She needed the toilet. She called out asking for help – she could not get there on her own. She waited, and then she cried out again. And again. No one came. Despite being just opposite the nursing station, it took more than an hour for a member of staff to come into her room. On that Saturday night, Vanessa’s grandmother called out ‘nurse’ 321 times, pleaded for the toilet 45 times and banged her cup on 26 occasions before anyone checked on her – and even then, after she had been checked on, Yvonne was still left waiting longer for the toilet, becoming increasingly and clearly desperate.

Yvonne Grant pleading with a care worker

Source: BBC (2014) Panorama: Behind Closed Doors: Elderly Care Exposed. BBC1, 30 April (21:00 hrs). Copyright © BBC

Vanessa told us:

It was heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking. My nan should have been getting good care from the day she went in there; it’s what everyone should be getting. It shouldn’t take them to be worried that I might have a camera in there – ‘so we’d better go in there and give good care just in case’ – that they never know if the camera’s going to be there or not. It shouldn’t take that.

The owners of the care home, HC-One, told BBC Panorama when that film was broadcast:

The failings in the care of Mrs Yvonne Grant, and the behaviour of a number of members of staff at the home at that time, were completely unacceptable. The level of care Mrs Grant received at Oban House during that period was simply not good enough and did not meet the standards that HC-One, as a responsible provider, expects of all our staff at all our homes. We deeply regret these failings and we apologised to Mrs Grant and her family members as soon as they came to light.

By the time our film broadcast – some time after Vanessa’s secret recording – the care home met all necessary standards, and HC-One said that they took ‘a great many steps to improve the standards of care’, including working ‘with the new management and staff at the home, and with the active involvement of residents and relatives to implement a significant number of improvements’.

Other people around the world using hidden cameras have not always handled their discoveries as well as Vanessa did. One case that I have only read about, where I do not know personally the people involved, really illustrates the dangers involved when people do their own secret filming.

In that case, in 2014 in Uganda, a non-governmental organisation’s employee, Eric Kamanzi, found bruises on his 18-month-old daughter. Rather than confronting his 22-year-old maid, Jolly Tumuhirwe, he installed hidden cameras.

What he filmed was shocking, but what happened after that illustrates how much better prepared everyone needs to be for people doing their own secret filming.

The video footage captured by Kamanzi was broadcast on websites around the world. It shows the maid beating and kicking his daughter.1 From prison, Tumuhirwe said that she was sorry, that Kamanzi’s wife sometimes slaps the child and that she was more angry than normal that day because her father was ill.2

Kamanzi allegedly beat Tumuhirwe ‘to a pulp’ when he saw the footage. Given the severity of the assault on his daughter, some parents will excuse him, but that is not how justice should be administered and, worse, it meant that, of course, he was the one who was arrested, at least initially. Ugandan police were then presented with his covert footage. The police now had to decide what to do with such a mixed set of assaults – one on a child and one on the maid – before finally deciding to pursue Tumuhirwe, not Kamanzi.

People using covert recorders need to think very carefully about how they will react – and hopefully how they will control themselves – if they do film bad events, to prevent themselves from doing wrong and becoming the person who gets arrested. Hopefully, in future, people in such a position will prepare themselves better for the issues that they may have to face.

NOTES

1.Gillman, O. (2014) ‘Ugandan maid who sparked outrage when she was filmed stomping on toddler is jailed for four years.’ Available at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2874502/Ugandan-maid-sparked-outrage-filmed-stomping-toddler-jailed-four-years.html#ixzz3NOD7 xt2z, accessed on 25 July 2015.

2.Nehanda Radio (2014) ‘Uganda “monster maid” explains why she beat up child.’ Available at http://nehandaradio.com/2014/11/29/uganda-monster-maid-explains-beat-child/#sthash.rbLXAArq.dpuf, accessed on 25 July 2015.