The bottom line of this is that there were two pilots neither of whom were competent for the task. It seems there were two fundamental failings; firstly neither could hand fly (a stabilised helicopter) adequately on instruments, and secondly they did not adequately understand how to make the automatics work for them, leading to the AFCS being engaged with cyclic FTR engaged and hence (as I understand it) not having the cyclic controlled by the AFCS. Another example too of when two poor pilots is worse than one good one, both assuming the other is more competent than they are feeling.
What a mess. Scary too - I wonder how many other similarly incompetent crews there are out there?