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Ashworth Hospital comes under the spotlight

The inquiry, which began on Monday, was sparked by revelations in a national newspaper in September last year,

A patient who had absconded from Ashworth special hospital on Merseyside said pornographic videos and drugs were smuggled into the Personality Disorder Unit and on one occasion an eight-year-old girl was brought in and may have been abused by convicted paedophiles.

Ashworth is home to scores of murderers, rapists, arsonists and other deeply disturbed people, among them Moors Murderer Ian Brady.

John Royce, QC, told the inquiry the former patient met a reporter in Dirty Harry's bar in Rotterdam and claimed the procedure for searching visitors was totally ineffective and some patients had even designed a garden in such a way as to secrete drugs and pornography.

He said one former patient even brought his young daughter into the hospital, where she may have been abused.

Mr Royce said an internal inquiry substantiated many of the allegations and a search of the unit found 800 video films, 41 of which were hard-core pornography and many others had been deliberately wiped clean.

He said there had been many previous investigations into the hospital and he said it was a "woeful tale" dating back at least seven years.

The inquiry, which is sitting in London but will move to Liverpool in the New Year, was set up by the former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell and will focus on allegations of drug and alcohol misuse, financial irregularities, the availability of pornographic magazines and paedophile activity within the unit.

Two consultants and eight nurses at Ashworth resigned in the two days before Mr Dorrell launched the inquiry.

Several other senior staff members were suspended and Merseyside police have spent the last eight months investigating the unit.

The inquiry, chaired by retired judge Peter Fallon QC, will hear from dozens of witnesses, including former members of staff, ex-patients and relatives and friends who visited them in the unit.

Steven, a former patient in the unit, told the BBC rules against drugs and alcohol were still being flouted after the original allegations were reported to the Department of Health last summer.

He says: "There were drugs being sold. There was drug dealing going on, alcohol was being brewed up on the ward.

"People had knuckledusters. Weapons were openly displayed between visiting parole patients and patients on the ward."

Several members of staff who criticised policies at the hospital and highlighted under-manning claim they were threatened with suspension or the sack.

Danny Reid, a psychologist, says: "They were frightened that they might make a mistake and that the repercussions may possibly be that they would be suspended."

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