An inquiry into the case of necrophiliac David Fuller, who committed horrific acts of sexual abuse on the bodies of over 100 women and girls while working at Kent and Sussex Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital between 2005 and 2020, has revealed “serious failings” at the hospitals that allowed him to go undetected for 15 years.
Fuller, who was already serving a whole life sentence for the sexually motivated murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987, managed to abuse corpses in hospital mortuaries without suspicion or detection. His systematic sexual abuse came to light during a police investigation in 2020.
The inquiry, launched by the government in 2021, focused on Fuller’s employer, the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, to uncover how such a heinous crime could go unnoticed for so long.
Chairman of the inquiry, Sir Jonathan Michael, disclosed the findings during a press conference in Westminster, London. He emphasized that there were “missed opportunities” to halt Fuller’s offenses and highlighted that Fuller had sexually abused 12 victims during normal working hours when mortuary staff should have been on duty.
The report detailed a series of failures within the hospital management, governance, and regulation, as well as a lack of adherence to standard policies and procedures. It revealed that a lack of curiosity among staff contributed to the environment in which Fuller could offend without suspicion.
Sir Jonathan stated, “Over the years, there were missed opportunities to question Fuller’s working practices. Had his colleagues, managers, and senior leaders been more curious, it is likely that he would have had less opportunity to offend.”
The inquiry report outlined 17 recommendations aimed at preventing similar atrocities at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Some recommendations included having maintenance staff work in pairs in the mortuary, requiring non-mortuary staff and contractors to be accompanied by another staff member when visiting the mortuary, and discontinuing the practice of leaving deceased individuals out of mortuary fridges overnight or during maintenance.
The report also called for the installation of CCTV cameras in the mortuary and post-mortem room and a review of the trust board’s governance structures to ensure greater oversight.
The inquiry now faces the challenge of determining who should be held responsible for the failings that allowed Fuller’s offenses to occur. The report shed light on the trust’s awareness of issues in the mortuary as early as 2008 but found little evidence of effective action being taken to address them.
Fuller, who was convicted of the 1987 murders in 2021, was already serving a whole-life prison term when his systematic sexual abuse was discovered. He had filmed himself abusing corpses over a span of 15 years before his arrest, with a total of 101 victims identified.
The inquiry’s findings have prompted calls for accountability and action to prevent such egregious failures in the future within the healthcare system.
