A care home has been prosecuted after an 18-year-old disabled teenager died after been severely scalded in a bath.

London-based Lifeways Community Care runs the supported living centre in Owens Way, Oxford where paraplegic Yelena Hasselberg-Langley was fatally scalded.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that the temperature of the water in the bath into which she was lowered was more than 44C (111.2F), which investigators said was ‘excessively hot’.

The Press Association reports that Lifeways Community Care admitted health and safety breaches at a hearing last year. On Friday (22/01/10) at Oxford Crown Court, the company was fined £100,000 and with £45,000 costs.

The Court heard that Miss Hasselberg-Langley was subjected to ‘excruciating agony’ after being lowered into the scalding bath.

Judge Patrick Eccles QC said:

‘The case evokes a great deal of pity for her suffering and a sense of outrage that her ensuing scalding injury and death could have been easily avoided.

‘She was blind, paraplegic, epileptic and severely disabled. She had some power of speech but couldn't clearly communicate her distress when placed in the bath and she would have suffered excruciating agony before being taken to hospital.’

Miss Hasselberg-Langley had been taken to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital after the incident – and was later transferred to a specialist burns unit in East Grinstead, where she died on 31 August 2007, four days after the incident.

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