Father of raped girl speaks out

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The victim's father says he feels anger towards the system which allowed Darren Harkin to abscond (voiced by an actor)

The father of a girl raped by a man who had absconded from a mental health unit, says he feels anger towards the system which allowed him to walk free.

Darren Harkin, 21, raped his 14-year-old victim after leaving The Hayes at Pilning near Bristol, where he had been detained under the Mental Health Act.

Her father, of Chepstow, Monmouthshire, said a report on the incident still left some unanswered questions.

Harkin, who is autistic, had been detained after killing his stepbrother.

After his escape in February, the alarm was not raised for half an hour.

He crossed the Severn Bridge and the following day dragged the schoolgirl off the street at knifepoint in Chepstow and raped her.

Within half an hour he was arrested by Gwent Police.

During his trial, it emerged that Harkin had a large collection of pornographic and horror films at the hospital, which is run by the National Autistic Society.

It almost seemed he was allowed to go and very little effort was made to catch him again The rape victim's father

The independent report recommended that The Hayes should no longer house high-risk patients.

It also suggested the unit's safety procedures should be changed immediately.

A more thorough assessment of Harkin, who is now in Broadmoor maximum security hospital, was also recommended.

His victim's father, who cannot be named, said he felt the system had failed his family.

"I think the hospital was not the appropriate place for that individual to be and I don't think it was run to the professional standards that that sort of institution should have been run at," he said.

Secure place

"He was allowed to get out of a supposedly secure environment and was loose on the streets without even the police in the local area knowing he was there.

"They hadn't been informed. It almost seemed he was allowed to go and very little effort was made to catch him again.

"For us that was the real disappointment in the way the system worked. You have got someone like that who should be in a secure place and obviously wasn't because of, as far as we could see, negligence on the part of the organisation holding him."

The victim's father said the report on the incident had been "very thorough" and had proved that The Hayes was not an adequate place for Harkin to be.

"I think the security has got to be different if they are going to house higher risk patients in the future," he said.

"The staff have got to be trained in criminal behaviour because reading the report it appears to me that the staff were not trained in the right areas at all to handle the situations that occurred."

Unanswered questions

However, he said the report still left some questions unanswered, including that mystery still surrounded how pornography got into the unit and how Harkin was allowed to have it.

He said his daughter had coped "fairly well" after the incident but said she was reluctant to discuss what had happened.

He had no feelings towards Harkin and the only anger he felt was towards the system that had failed his daughter.

Harkin was first arrested in 2000 in the Hartcliffe area of Bristol, aged 12, after stabbing his six-month-old stepbrother to death.

He was given a hospital order after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Bristol Crown Court in April 2001.

He spent just over a year at The Hayes, a low-security facility which treats patients with autism who have been detained under the Mental Health Act.