Nurse Jan was working last Friday in the Huize Padua mental health institution in Boekel when he was seriously assaulted by a client. “My colleagues thought I was dead,” he said on Monday. He is now at home with a broken eye socket, concussion, torn lip and open eyebrow. “It was like a massacre, I was hit one blow after another.”
Jan worked, as he often does, at the mental health institution as a nurse. During his shift, he asked one of those clients to come inside. Then things immediately went wrong. “I was attacked like wild. I received several blows and became unconscious,” says Jan.
Colleagues had to tell him what happened next, because he himself had no knowledge of it. “My colleague who I was working with immediately raised the alarm according to protocol. In the meantime, I received one blow after another. I was hit as if I were a punching bag.”
Jan ended up on the ground. He was grabbed by his shoulders and his head was pushed against a bench several times. The client jumped on his back and tried to strangle Jan. “My colleague could not do anything due to her own safety and had to wait until help arrived.” Fortunately it arrived just in time. “It shouldn’t have taken much longer. One of my colleagues immediately grabbed me. She thought I had already died,” he explains.
“I’m lucky to be alive.”
The first moment he remembers is when he woke up and ambulance workers were standing over him. Jan was taken to the hospital by ambulance. “I’m lucky that I’m still alive. It wouldn’t have made much difference if I were dead,” Jan thinks.
Jan got away well, he is told. “My eye socket is broken and I have a serious concussion. My lip is also torn and a small piece of my tooth is broken off. My body hurts very much.”
“Violence against aid workers must end,” is one of the things Jan keeps repeating when he tells what happened. He’s grateful to be alive, but mostly he’s angry. “It is not the first time that I have been the victim of violence. A few years ago I was stabbed with a box cutter and I have already had to go into hiding with my family.” Yet he enjoys going to work. “I am aware of the risks, but these types of explosions of violence must come to an end.”
The police arrested the client, a 50-year-old man from Boekel, for the serious assault. He has been transferred to a Penitentiary Psychiatric Center (PPC). Care is provided there to detainees with serious psychological problems and psychiatric disorders that cannot be adequately treated in regular mental health institutions.
