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Racist killer - Simon Rawcliffe
Mad murderer said he would ‘kill a Paki’
24/10/2003
A VIOLENT racist murdered an Asian man after psychiatrists and
nurses failed to realise he was a danger.
Simon Rawcliffe had a seven year history of mental illness,
violence and racist behaviour but he was allowed back in the
community to share accommodation with the victim, Liquat Ali, in
Bury.
Now a report into the circumstances surrounding the murder in
September 1999 has found medical staff committed a catalogue of
errors which led to a failure to assess the disturbed Rawcliffe,
then aged 28, as a potential killer.
The report chronicles the treatment of Rawcliffe, now serving a
life sentence for the murder, and reveals that his insanity and
racism were well known by doctors and neighbours.
He was constantly in and out of mental institutions and prison
suffering from delusions that he had a relationship with Hitler and
was King George V. He abused alcohol and drugs and had assaulted
people for no reason.
Witnesses testified he hated Asians and would shout out "you f....
black bastards....f... off from our country."
On another occasion he said: "I'm going to kill another Paki soon,
I hate them".
On the night of the killing he had struck Liquat Ali on the head
while watching TV in the house they shared with others on Wash
Lane, Bury.
In the early hours of the morning Mr Ali was found lying outside
the house groaning. A housemate brought him inside and laid him on
a sofa.
In the morning he was found dead lying in a pool of blood.
A pathologist said he had died to blows to the head from a blunt
instrument.
Later that same morning Rawcliffe had head butted an Asian man at
Bury bus station. He was arrested and police then made the
connection between him and the killing of Mr Ali.
Rawcliffe has always denied he murdered Mr Ali but was found guilty
by a jury and received a life sentence.
An inquiry team that produced the report found that though
psychiatrists initially decided that Rawcliffe was schizophrenic
his medical records were lost and medical staff later concluded he
had a "personality disorder". They said this mis-diagnosis was
considered to be a means of managing him outside a mental
institution.
The report highlights failing of the then Bury NHS Trust in
supervision, training, record keeping and recruitment. It says at
the time mental health services were severely underfunded.
It also notes that the family of Mr Ali have received no
information, support or any expression of regret from anyone in the
health trust.
The chairman of the inquiry team, Dr Peter Snowdon, a Merseyside
forensic psychiatrist, said they had not decided to name medical
staff responsible for the failing because they did not want to be
part of a "blame culture".
He added: "But we have put together an action plan which will focus
on individuals where this is appropriate."
The Bury Trust has now been disbanded and replaced by the Pennine
Care Trust. Its new chief executive John Archer said: "In this case
there were failings on many levels and this report makes very
depressing reading."
The chief executive of the Trust at the time of the murder, Philip
Bacon, resigned from the NHS and refused to have anything to do
with the inquiry or the report.
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