In Depth:  David Potter

What are you going to do about the Winterbourne View Hospital scandal?

You have heard about it surely? First it was a Panorama programme broadcast in May 2011. It showed dreadful physical, emotional and mental abuse of people with severe learning disabilities in a private hospital in Bristol. Even the Prime Minister commented on it in the House of Commons.

She never owned a house or drove a car, wrote a book or made a film, passed an exam or won an Oscar. Even most Christians have never heard of her. Yet the lives of thousands have been touched by hers and hundreds have become Christians because Rachel Potter lived.

Rachel was born on August 13 1963. It was quite a day for her parents, David and Madeleine — first a baby and then, on the same day, a call to the pastorate of an East London church. Their course in life seemed clear, but it did not turn out as they expected. Soon after, their GP told them that their daughter had Down’s Syndrome.

David Potter MBE, founder of the charity Prospects, reflects on the Panorama programme exposing the shocking truth.

Way back in June 1981, Associated Television broadcast a devastating documentary called Silent Minority.

A pastor had asked us to visit a couple in a South East hospital. The wife had given birth a day or two before — to a boy with Down’s Syndrome.

She and her husband had been asked by the doctor: ‘Do you want your child to live?’ They needed help in making their response to what must be the hardest question a parent will ever be asked.

Having joined Evangelical Times as one of three part-time editors in the early 1970s I found myself as the only one left, struggling to catch up with the publications schedules and cover all bases. The Chairman, Herbert Carson, drafted in Bob Horn (who died in December) to help out. We were to work together for nearly ten years.

It soon became apparent that ET was changing. Not in its faithfulness to biblical truth and its practical outworking, nor in its policy on church issues. It was developing a different spirit, very much the result of Bob’s influence. The paper had provided cutting edge comment from three ‘angry young men’. Often it was just cutting, snide even.

No one questioned it or raised as much as an eyebrow. The newscaster was dead-pan when he read it from his autocue.

The fact that it sounds the death knell for thousands and that the result will be indiscriminate massacre passed completely without comment. And by one of those grim ironies which few seem to notice, the source of this horrific policy is a government-sponsored body called N.I.C.E. (National Institute for Clinical Excellence)! Oh, and in case you were wondering in which country this could happen, it's yours - the United Kingdom.

A perceptible change is evident - and not before time!

After nearly 2,000 years Christians are becoming more aware and accepting of people with learning disabilities.

David C. Potter, Director of Cause for Concern is this month's Bulldog.

It is in the nature of movements that they have a tendency to stop moving. When that happens they find themselves overtaken by their times.