One of the UK’s most horrific and shocking child custody scandals was collectively ignored for decades because the victims were working-class boys from the north of England, a government minister has said.
The sentencing and youth justice minister, Jake Richards, has announced he is implementing a number of recommendations to prevent abuse such as that which took place between 1961 and 1987 at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham from ever happening again.
It was at Medomsley that the paedophile Neville Husband, one of Britain’s worst ever sex offenders, raped and tortured boys over three decades.
His reign of terror was revealed in a number of Guardian reports from 2011 by the late prisons correspondent Eric Allison and the feature writer Simon Hattenstone.
The revelations led to a six-year investigation by Durham Constabulary, which identified more than 2,000 victims. In November last year the grim conclusions of an inquiry carried out by the prisons and probation ombudsman, Adrian Usher, were published.
That led to a government apology to victims and the setting up of a review into safeguarding arrangements across the youth custody estate in England and Wales.
Richards recalled Usher’s draft Medomsley report being one of the first things that landed on his desk after being appointed a minister.
“I read it twice and I remember exactly where I was,” he said. “I read it twice over a Saturday evening and was just completely taken aback and horrified by the scale, but also the nature of the offending. This was industrial sexual abuse and rape of some of the most vulnerable boys in our society.”
Medomsley, which closed in the late 80s, is one of the UK’s biggest abuse scandals but, observers say, it has not had the national attention it deserves.
Richards said that socially and culturally there had been “an apathy” towards this type of offending and one reason was because the victims were seen as “bad” working-class boys from the north.
He said: “I think it is important that as a country we face up to the horrors of the past but also, more importantly, that we make sure it never happens again.
“If you look at the offending, what was happening in the 60s, 70s and 80s and then the response to it, I’m completely convinced that this has been overlooked collectively by people in power, whether that is politicians, parts of the media, or whatever, because the victims here are working-class boys from the north of England.”
They were seen as boys who had done bad things but often the offending had been minimal, Richards said. “I met one victim who was put in Medomsley because he had taken a jacket from a car on a freezing night. There was a prevailing culture that these boys were intrinsically bad and therefore how they were treated was less important than other groups.”
The new safeguarding review, carried out by the government’s chief social worker for children and families in England, Isabelle Trowler, makes 34 recommendations for change.
They include new measures for stronger staff training, tougher vetting and a requirement for every site in the youth estate to have access to a dedicated social worker with extensive child protection expertise.
Trowler said there had been improvements in recent years but more needed to be done.
“Meeting children currently in custody and hearing directly about their experiences has been both a privilege and a profound responsibility,” she said. “This experience, and the stories children shared, will likely stay with me for ever.
“We owe it to them, and to those who suffered in the past, to ensure that the findings of this review lead to meaningful and lasting change.”
That was echoed by Usher, who welcomed the government’s commitment to implementing all of the Trowler recommendations.
He said: “My investigative report revealed the full scale and horror of what happened to thousands of victims at Medomsley detention centre.
“The abuse that took place there was a profound failure by those responsible for the care and protection of children and young people in custody, and prompts the question, even today, is the governance and oversight of prison staff conduct in the right place and would it benefit from more independence?”
