Pensioner was raped by mental patient in care home

Antony Norris has been detained indefinitely in a secure unit after being convicted of raping the severely disabled 76-year-old who lived at a care home next door.

Norris's mother Kathleen Marsham, 45, said mental health services had failed in their duty of care to her son, who is believed to suffer from a form of schizophrenia.

She said she was "absolutely gutted" for the woman's family – the victim has since died – and believes her son should have been put in a secure unit years ago.

She said her son was refused entry to the Newbridges acute inpatient unit in east Hull twice that afternoon after being breathalysed by staff. She said: "Antony was just a number to them.

"He had been allowed to leave the unit and when he came back he just wanted a cup of tea, but they wouldn't let him in and he went on to do this.

"I want answers – why did they let this happen?"

Humber NHS Foundation Trust, formerly Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust, has conducted an internal investigation – the results of which it will not release because of "patient confidentiality".

It says it has implemented all recommendations, including the way it manages people with alcohol or drugs problems.

Yesterday it declined to give interviews, but insisted in a statement: "The investigating team found no evidence that this incident could have been predicted and there was no indication that Antony would pose a risk to the public."

The trust was criticised last year in long-awaited reports on two patients, Benjamin Holiday and Michael Torrie, who both went on to kill. Paranoid schizophrenic Holiday, 25, who stabbed to death mother-to-be Tina Stevenson in a motiveless attack in Hull, was able to abscond from care "too easily" and had been "under treated."

It came in for more criticism last year when another mental health patient, David Burslam, kidnapped and assaulted a bank manager hours after being released from the unit where he was being treated.

Mrs Marsham first noticed her son behaving strangely when he was 15 and he became obsessed about his appearance but she dismissed it as teenage angst. When his father died in 2005, he started getting in trouble with the police and moved out of the family home, living on the beach at Tunstall and Withernsea for a period.

She said she had to call on mental health services around seven years ago and since then had crises around twice a year when he stopped taking his medication. She said: "At his worst he's totally blank. He doesn't even know who I am. He thinks all his family is dead. He is totally crazy. It's a shame that it was only me, his mum, who actually realised that."

At Hull Crown Court Judge Simon Jack ruled Norris was unfit to plead to the charge of rape and a jury convicted him of committing the act.

Judge Jack said: "This is a really unusual and disturbing case. He had been in a psychiatric institute and allowed out for the day with very regrettable consequences."