A dedicated team of health and social care professionals worked for years to free Kasibba, a woman from Sierra Leone who was housed in a London mental hospital for 45 years
A non-verbal autistic woman was reportedly inhumanly detained in a mental hospital as a child and left there for nearly 50 years, it has been revealed.
The woman, named Kasibba by the unnamed local authority that held her for 45 years is believed to have come from Sierra Leone, and was detained from the age of seven. Now in her 50s, she’s believed to have spent as long as 25 years in solitary confindement, as she reportedly had no family to speak up for her.
Once her situation was discovered by a clinical psychologist, a nine-year battle to free her began. Dr Patsie Staite learned of Kasibba’s incarceration more than a decade ago in 2013 while carrying out a routine care review as a rookie, and was immediately shocked at her discovery.
Dr Staite told the BBC’s File on 4 Investigates she had never “seen anyone living in the situation that she was living in”, and that she was shocked further still to find it was “legitimised”. 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. The woman, 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. The woman, 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.
The reputation stuck after the incident, which Dr Staite believed was unfounded, and later mounted a campaign to have her freed from her hospital detainment. 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 she 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 fror her to leave the hospital. But her 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.
She 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”. Her 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.
It said from 2010 it had been working with local authorities to enact plans to support the discharge of all long-term residents to more appropriate care, where possible within the community, but said they were prevented from doing so by a legal case brought by the families of othe patients. It said staff had worked tirelessly for years supporitng local authorities to put the necessary support in place and they were able to successfully close the service in 2023.
Across England, more than 2,000 people with autism and learning disabilities are still detained, including around 200 children, despite the government pledging for years to move many into community care as they do not have any mental illness. But key targets have been missed. NHS England outlined an aim in its 2025-26 plan to reduce the reliance on mental health inpatient care for those with learning disabilities and autistic people, delivering a minimum 10 per cent reducion.
The Mental Health Bill currently going through parliament will mean autistic people and those with learning disabilities in England and Wales who do not have a mental health condition will no longer be able to be detained for treatment. But the government said it will not put any changes into action until it is satisfied there is alernative support in the community and will still allow people to be detained in hospital legally for up to 28 days for assessment.
