Jane Figueiredo spoke out following the death of her 22-year-old daughter, Alice Figueiredo, at Goodmayes Hospital in Redbridge, east London, in July 2015. Alice had made more than ten previous attempts to take her own life.
After a trial at the Old Bailey, the North East London NHS Foundation Trust was found guilty of failing to ensure the safety of a non-employee. The trust was fined £565,000 for the breach of health and safety law, with an additional £200,000 in costs.
Alice Figueiredo died after staff failed to remove plastic items from a communal area on the secure Hepworth ward. These items had previously been used by Alice to self-harm.
Benjamin Aninakwa, the ward manager at the time, received a six-month prison sentence suspended for twelve months, along with 300 hours of unpaid work. He was found to have failed to take reasonable care of patients on the ward.
Judge Richard Marks described Alice as a “beautiful, vibrant young woman” who was “hugely talented”. He said the accessibility of plastic items in the communal toilets represented a “very serious problem” and a major risk to patients. The judge criticised the failure to adequately assess and manage this risk and lamented that Alice’s previous self-harm attempts had not been properly recorded.
Marks also noted that Aninakwa failed to address the serious concerns raised by Alice’s mother, which should have raised immediate alarms among hospital staff. He stated that while Aninakwa expressed regret over Alice’s death, he demonstrated little insight into his failings.
Jane Figueiredo, a former hospital chaplain, said her daughter had been treated with “dismissive contempt” despite the family’s repeated concerns about her mental health. In a victim impact statement, she told the court that Alice’s distress was genuine and that she had not fabricated concerns about staff neglect.
She told the court: “What she did not like under your supervision in 2015, Mr Aninakwa, was being treated by some staff with unkindness, harshness, indifference, ignorance, even at times cruelty, or being endangered and left at risk by neglectful and incompetent staff, some of whom seemed unaware of their duties and responsibilities.”
Jane described Alice as a “uniquely beautiful, brave, affectionate, generous, kind, colourful, creative, and luminous spirit”. She added that her daughter’s untimely and preventable death had an immeasurable impact on her family, compounded by what she described as disingenuous behaviour by the trust after Alice died.
Alice was first admitted to the Hepworth ward in May 2012, with diagnoses including bipolar affective disorder and a non-specific eating disorder. The investigation into her death began in 2016, but charges were not brought until September 2023.
After a seven-month trial, the NHS trust was cleared of corporate manslaughter, and Aninakwa was cleared of gross negligence manslaughter. He still works at the trust and intends to appeal his conviction.
