Sierra Leone Telegraph: 8 March 2025:
Today we mark International Women’s Day in celebration of the achievements of women all over the world. But so too, must we remember the struggles of millions of women – especially Kasibba (not her real name), a woman from Sierra Leone who was wrongly locked up in a London mental hospital for almost 50 years, since she was 7 years old.
According to BBC Radio4’s File on Four, Kasibba was released from hospital after years of campaigning by a dedicated team of health and social care professionals.
Jess McGregor, executive director of adults and health at Camden Council, London, told BBC Radio 4 it was a “tragedy” Kasibba had spent most of her life confined to a hospital.
She said: “I’m personally sorry. She (Kasibba) shouldn’t have experienced what she did.”
Now in her 50s, Kasibba had spent as long as 25 years in solitary confinement, as she reportedly had no family to speak up for her.
Dr Staite (a psychologist) told the BBC’s Radio4 – File on 4 programme this week that she had never “seen anyone living in the situation that she (Kasibba) was living in”, and that she was shocked further still to find it was “legitimised”.
(Photo below: Let us remember the thousands of women across Africa that are suffering institutional injustice in state confinement).
She said: “I hadn’t ever seen anyone living in the situation that she was living in. And I think what was really shocking was it was all legitimised.”
The psychologist added that the legitimate-seeming hospital was masking Kasibba’s brutal treatment, as she was “locked up for sometimes more than 23 hours a day”.
Kasibba was shuttered in a locked annex, and only able to view people walking by outside through a hole in a nearby fence.
Kasibba, who is now in her 50s, is thought to have been trafficked from Sierra Leone when she was younger than five years old and moved to the long-stay hospital by age seven.
The Doctor added Kasibba was described as “dangerous” and an “eye-gouger”, but only found a single incident in hospital records she believes led to the reputation.
What seemed to have happened was that Kasibba, then 19, was startled by a fire alarm when her long-term segregation ward was evacuated and scratched a fellow patient in the confusion, leaving a wound on her eye.
Dr Staite mounted a campaign to have her freed from her hospital detention.
She submitted a 50 page report to Camden Council, the authority that placed Kasibba in the mental hospital, arguing she was not dangerous and could live safely in the community.
She added – it was accepted Kasibba was not mentally unwell, and a team of health and social care professionals calling themselves “the escape committee” started work to have her freed in 2016.
They worked for six years before the Court of Protection ruled that Kasibba could leave the hospital.
Lucy Dunstan works with disability rights organisation ‘Changing Our Lives’ and was appointed to be Kasibba’s independent advocate, and tasked with building a compelling case for why it was safe for Kasibba to leave the hospital.
But Kasibba’s release could only be signed off by the Court of Protection, which makes decisions for people without the mental capacity to make their own.
Lucy recalls her first encounter with Kasibba, looking at her through a small window in the door of her confinement. She said she was just lying on the sofa in a “very empty room”, saying “her life was completely impoverished”.
Six years after first meeting Kasibba, Lucy got the call to say it had been ruled Kasibba could leave the hospital.
Kasibba now lives in the community with the help of a team of support workers, who have said the hospital was detaining a “beautiful human being”.
Kasibba’s care manager said: “She has the most amazing sense of humour. She’s a beautiful human being. After about two weeks of working here she actually came up and gave me a hug. This is not an eye-gouger, you know.”
Jess McGregor, executive director of adults and health at Camden Council, said it was a “tragedy” Kasibba had spent most of her life confined to a hospital. She said: “I’m personally sorry. She shouldn’t have experienced what she did.”
The NHS mental health trust, which cannot be named to protect Kasibba’s identity, said at no point had the care it delivered been brought into question and the service was rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission.
The trust added that anyone assessed as requiring long-term segregation had a self-contained property with their own bedroom, bathroom, living room and garden.
Source: Mirror and BBC Radio4 – File On Four.
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