Eastbourne woman’s 20-year battle for the truth

The care provided at a hospital is to be the focus of a police investigation after an Eastbourne woman’s 20-year battle for the truth.
MP Stephen Lloyd and Gillian McKenzie SUS-140717-103011001MP Stephen Lloyd and Gillian McKenzie SUS-140717-103011001
MP Stephen Lloyd and Gillian McKenzie SUS-140717-103011001

Gillian McKenzie first raised suspicions over her mother Gladys Richards’ treatment by Gosport Hospital and subsequent death, aged 91, in 1998.

In 2018 an independent panel found the hospital prescribed unjustified and “dangerous amounts” of opioids which shortened hundreds of lives.

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Now police have confirmed there will be a thorough criminal investigation into the hospital.

Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd said, “I am glad that after well over a decade of campaigning with Mrs McKenzie, we are finally going to get a full-blown criminal enquiry into whatever happened at the hospital all those years ago.

“Mrs McKenzie and the other relatives of the victims deserve the truth and for those responsible to be held accountable. And the best way we are going to arrive at that is through a substantive and detailed criminal enquiry which will, hopefully, ensure the perpetrators of the shocking acts identified in the Bishop Jones enquiry, will have to account for their actions in a court of law. Mrs McKenzie and the relatives deserve nothing less.”

Assistant Chief Constable Nick Downing said, “This investigation is not about numbers, it is about people – specifically those who died at the hospital and the loved ones they have left behind.

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“This is a highly complex and emotive case that some family members have been living with for more than 30 years, and I would like to thank them for their continuing patience and understanding of this process.”

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