A disgraced care worker convicted of ill-treating three vulnerable mental health patients has walked free from court with combined probation and community service orders.
Setting aside her initial six month jail term at Antrim County Court, Judge Geoffrey Millar QC instead sentenced 29-year-old Tracey Balantine to 100 hours community service and three years on probation.
Following a three hour contested hearing in the Magistrates Court Balantine, from the Garden Village in Antrim, was convicted of six counts of the ill-treatment “or wilfully neglecting” three patients, a man and two women, at the Broadacres Residential Unit in Templepatrick on dates unknown between December 13, 2016 and April 1, last year.
Describing her offences as a “catalogue of abuse of the basest kind” and commending the care workers who reported her behaviour, Judge Copeland told Balantine: “This was an appalling breach of trust and the families will be outraged, and so should any right thinking members of the public, who placed their sick and afflicted loved ones into your care.”
Broadacres provides 24 hour care to patients with severe learning difficulties and complex needs.
The court was told that when faced with aggressive behaviour, staff were trained at “deactivating situations” and used physical restraint “as a very last resort with minimum force.”
All three of Balantine’s victims, aged in their 40’s and 50’s, were “non-communicative” with limited speech and often had “challenging behaviour.”
A co-worker gave evidence saying Balantine put the male victim into his room, alone and strapped him to his wheelchair using blankets “leaving marks” on his feet.
Other incidents of abuse against the same victim included Balantine telling him “‘f*** off you d*******’ while the injured party was in bed and the defendant was changing his pad whilst holding her hand over his mouth and his hands behind his back.”
The common assault against the male victim also happened the same day.
Using the hand rails, the resident had made his way to the day room when Balantine “put her knees into the back of his knees, causing him to fall to the ground” at which point Balantine told him “get up d*******.”
In relation to one of the female victims, the court heard how she was being “challenging” when Balantine “put her hands in her shoulders and pushed her to the floor and said ‘I can f****** push too you know’.”
The other woman who was subjected to ill-treatment by Balantine had been challenging and destructive so Balantine had “wrapped her in a blanket until she calmed down” but while she was wrapped and immobile, “walked towards her with a blanket, threatening her with it as if taunting her.”
Sentencing Balantine, Judge Millar said he was “only too aware and conscious” of the stresses and pressures facing those who work in a caring environment “but that’s no excuse or justification for acts of cruelty and neglect and repeated acts of cruelty and neglect.”
