Ghanaian Man Who Used Fake ID to Work in UK Mental Hospital Flees to Ghana After 14-Year-Old Girl Dies Under His Care

The tragic death of 14-year-old Ruth Szymankiewicz, a bright and spirited teenager from Salisbury, has cast a disturbing light on the failures within the UK’s mental health care system—and the disturbing role played by a Ghanaian care worker operating under a false identity.

Ruth, who had been battling an eating disorder, was admitted to Huntercombe Hospital in Taplow, Berkshire—a facility already under scrutiny after repeated failings flagged by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Despite her vulnerable condition and recent self-harm, Ruth was left unsupervised for 15 minutes while under the care of a hospital staff member on his very first shift. That staff member, known at the time as Ebo Acheampong, was later found to have used fake documents to secure the job and has since fled to Ghana, never to be seen again.

A Tragic Failure of Oversight

On February 12, 2022, Ruth was supposed to be under constant, one-to-one supervision due to the high risk she posed to herself—having self-harmed just ten days earlier. But instead of being vigilantly monitored, she was left to walk unaccompanied around the hospital and eventually returned to her room alone. Moments later, she was found unconscious. She died two days later from hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, a condition caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain.

At the time of the incident, Acheampong, employed through an agency, had managed to bypass checks using a false identity—raising serious questions about background verification processes in UK healthcare settings.

Escape and Impunity

After Ruth’s death, Acheampong abruptly disappeared and was later discovered to have fled the UK, boarding a flight from Heathrow to Ghana. According to court proceedings, he has not returned and his current whereabouts remain unknown. The coroner told jurors bluntly: “You will not hear from that man, and he let Ruth down.”

This shocking turn of events has left Ruth’s family not only devastated by the loss of their daughter but furious at the systemic failure that allowed someone with falsified documents to care for such a vulnerable child.

A Broken System

Ruth’s parents, both medical professionals, said they were never properly informed of key incidents during Ruth’s time at the hospital—including when she drank cleaning fluid and suffered unexplained injuries. Her mother, Dr. Kate Szymankiewicz, expressed anguish at the lack of communication from the hospital and the complex, opaque system that ultimately failed their daughter.

“We wish we had fought harder. We had no idea how awful it would be,” she said.

Huntercombe Hospital, where Ruth died, has since shut down. But the scars left by its failures remain. Two CQC inspections in 2021 had already rated the facility inadequate and in need of major improvements, yet children like Ruth continued to be placed there.

Questions That Demand Answers

This case raises urgent concerns:

How did someone with fake identity documents slip through the cracks to work in a psychiatric facility? Why was a high-risk patient like Ruth assigned to a first-day staffer, especially one hired through an external agency? What safeguards are in place to prevent such negligence—and are they being enforced?

The role of Acheampong, now presumed to be in Ghana, casts a long shadow over the case. His disappearance leaves a gaping hole in accountability—one that Ruth’s family and the public deserve to see filled.

Final Thoughts

This is more than just a story of a single tragic death. It’s a stark reminder of the cost of negligence, poor oversight, and weak regulation in mental health care. And it is a chilling example of how one individual, using deception and slipping through systemic cracks, can contribute to irreversible harm.

Until there is real accountability and change, cases like Ruth’s could happen again.