When the Barnstaple Paedophile was sentenced, George Alexander Rose, 75, was warned he would probably die behind bars, and he did.
George Alexander Rose, 75, was convicted in May 2021 after being found guilty of 22 counts of indecent assault and six counts of rape. The offences dated back to the 1980s, and when he was sentenced, Rose was warned he would probably die behind bars.
George Alexander Rose, who committed some of his offences in Blackpool and Oldham, was sent to Wymott Prison in Lancashire. In May 2023, Rose was diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
His first appointment was cancelled by the hospital and rescheduled it but he could not attend due to staffing issues at Wymott.
George Alexander Rose was then taken for a rescheduled appointment in August, but when he arrived, the hospital had cancelled the clinic due to doctor strikes and had failed to inform the prison.
When George Alexander Rose, formerly of Mill Road, Barnstaple, Devon, finally saw a vascular surgeon, six months after his diagnosis, he was told his aneurysm could burst at any time. He subsequently signed a ‘do not resuscitate’ form.
On January 18 in 2024, when George Alexander Rose had failed to collect his evening meal, he was found unresponsive in his cell. Paramedics were called and confirmed he had died. An inquest held on 30 April 2025 concluded that Rose died of natural causes.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman launched an investigation, as is standard with a death in custody, and a clinical reviewer found that if Rose had been assessed by the vascular team in June 2023, when no prison officers were available to take him to hospital, it may have resulted in him being properly diagnosed with quicker intervention.
Since George Alexander Rose’s death, prison bosses have conducted an urgent review of the number of staff allocated to escort duties to determine if the current workforce is sufficient to meet the needs of the prison population at Wymott.
The ombudsman also revealed that healthcare staff at Wymott had failed to refer George Alexander Rose for screening programmes related to his age when he was transferred to the prison in May 2021. This would have included the abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, which he was diagnosed with two years later.
The ombudsman noted in his report, published this month: “On 18 June, a nurse carried out the first and second health screens. There is no record that he asked Mr George Alexander Rose if he had been involved in NHS checks and screening programmes relevant to his ag,e as he should have done.
“As a result, the nurse did not check whether Mr Rose had engaged in the NHS abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening programme, so no referral was made.”
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