Lost in care - The Wales Child Abuse Scandal and the Waterhouse Report
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This
brief resumé of the Wales Child Abuse scandal that took place in the 1970's
to 1980's is presented here with a series of articles from Alison Taylor, the
"whistleblower's " web site and the The Guardian.co.uk Alison
Taylor was featured extensively in the run-up and aftermath of the Waterhouse
Report, and in April 2000 she received a Pride of Britain Award. |
The Waterhouse Report into the wide scale abuse
that took place in residential homes in
There will always be children who cannot live
with their families. Maybe they have been abused, physically or sexually. Maybe
their mother simply cannot cope - because of drugs, alcoholism, illness, severe
depression, extreme poverty. And how do we treat these children, the unlucky
and the damaged ones? Do our hearts go out to them so that we do everything
that we can? Give them a safe structure, professional help, every advantage
possible to go a small way towards compensating them for all they've
irrevocably lost? Or do we put them in a bleak institution, hire carers whose
sole interest is to earn money for their own upkeep, turn them into 'problems'
and feed them right back into the vicious circle which produced them?
More than 75 per cent of young people leaving
care have no formal qualifications at all; high levels of non-attendance and
exclusion from school are very common. Between 50-80 per cent are unemployed
(the Who Cares? Trust found that many employers mistrust care leavers). An
astonishing 23 per cent of adult prisoners and 38 per cent of young offenders
have been in care. At least one in seven young women leave care pregnant or as
mothers. Sixty per cent use drugs. Many are homeless. Man hands on misery to
man; we know this well enough. So what do we do?
Background
to the Report
(http://www.alison-taylor.freeserve.co.uk/waterhouse)
Alison Taylor worked
for Gwynedd County Council in senior childcare posts from 1976 to 1987.
In 1987, she was dismissed after
breaking ranks and informing the police of her concerns about the neglect and
abuse of children in care. She was vilified and condemned at every turn,
and despite making innumerable approaches to the Welsh Office, the Department
of Health in London, the Home Office, various Home Secretaries and Ministers of
Health, and Margaret Thatcher, repeatedly encountered apathy and almost insurmountable
obstacles.
The first breakthrough came in 1991,
when HTV, The Independent, and Private Eye took the brave decision to bring the
matter into the open. Between 1991 and 1993, North Wales Police mounted a
huge retrospective investigation and subsequently referred some 800 allegations
to the Crown Prosecutions Service. Fewer than 3% of these referrals
proceeded to trial, much to the dismay and mystification of many of the alleged
victims and of the adults who knew the extent and nature of the alleged abuse.
The North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal
of Inquiry was announced in summer 1996 by William Hague, then Secretary of
State for Wales. The announcement followed more than a decade of abuse
allegations, counter allegations, police investigations, the conviction of a
handful of former social workers, the broken promise of a public inquiry, the
suppression of at least one damning report on abuse in children's homes in
North Wales, and mounting public and political concern.
The Inquiry, led by Sir Ronald
Waterhouse, opened in September 1996 and closed in May 1998.
Questions
and answers that surround a catalogue of abuse against children
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,232865,00.html
What was the Waterhouse inquiry all about?
It
was ordered in 1996 by William Hague, when he was Welsh secretary in the then
Conservative government, into abuse of children in care after 1974 in the
former county council areas of Clwyd and Gwynedd. This followed an outcry over
a decision by Clwyd councillors, acting on legal advice, not to publish the
report of a smaller inquiry lest it prompt court actions and a rash of
compensation claims. The Waterhouse report calls for a review of such problems
by the Law Commission.
How
did it compare to other child abuse inquires?
It
was by far the biggest. It sat for 203 days and took evidence from 575
witnesses, including 259 complainants alleging abuse when they were in care.
Some 9,500 social services files were made available and the inquiry team
scrutinised 3,500 statements made to police. In all, there were 43,000 pages of
evidence of complaints about some 40 homes, as well as foster placements.
How
did the scandal come to light?
Care
workers in Clwyd were being convicted of sex abuse as long ago as 1976 and
there were allegations and investigations in Gwynedd in the 1980s. But the
scandal was only exposed after Alison Taylor, a children's home head in
Gwynedd, pressed her concerns at the highest levels. The inquiry report finds
that her complaints have been "substantially vindicated". But for
her, there would have been no inquiry into Gwynedd and possibly not into Clwyd
either.
Why
did it take so long to emerge?
What
the report calls a "cult of silence" at the most notorious home, Bryn
Estyn, was all too typical. Few children made complaints. When the police first
investigated Ms Taylor's concerns in 1986-87, the authorities constructed a
"wall of disbelief" at the outset. The subsquent decision not to
bring prosecutions was greeted with "inappropriate enthusiasm" by
social services.
What
kind of abuse did the inquiry hear about?
Almost
everything imaginable, and much that was not. Most attention has focused on sex
abuse of boys by staff and paedophiles outside the care system, but there was
also sex abuse of girls and boys by women staff. The bulk of allegations
concerned physical and emotional abuse, including hitting and throttling
children, bullying and belittling them. Punishments included being forced to
scrub floors with toothbrushes, or to perform garden tasks using cutlery. The
inquiry team says the quality of care, and standard of education, were below
acceptable levels in all the homes it investigated.
Was
there a paedophile ring?
Rumours
of a ring of abusers, including prominent public figures, have been rife. But
the report says there is no credible evidence of any such network. It also
dismisses suggestions that freemasonry was implicated in what went on. The
report does, however, find there were paedophiles in Wrexham and Chester, many
of whom were known to each other, who abused boys and shared information about
victims.
Will
the victims get compensation?
Some
already have, as a result of court convictions of their abusers. Payments have
typically been in the tens of thousands of pounds, though one or two have
reached six figures. More claims are expected, particularly from people who
were in the care of staff named in the inquiry report.
Have
people lied to the inquiry to try to get compensation?
The
report says not. While acknowledging a lack of direct corroboration of most
allegations, the inquiry team says it was "impressed generally by the
sincerity of the overwhelming majority" of witnesses claiming they were
abused.
Could
it happen again?
It
is extremely unlikely, according to the Association of Directors of Social
Services. Measures in place, and more to come, should make it impossible for
the care system to escape scrutiny as it did in north Wales. But there remains
the threat posed by individual abusers and the fear is that determined
paedophiles have moved into other sectors, such as boarding schools and youth
groups.
Any
more inquiries in the pipeline?
Potentially
plenty. According to the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, there are 80
police investigations into institutional abuse. It says each one should prompt
a public inquiry of its own, which for most victims would be "the closest
they will get to real justice". But with the cost of the north Wales
inquiry put at £13.5m, and rising, it is almost certain to be the first and
last of its kind.
For more information please see:
Refuges that turned into purgatory
Report condemns oversights and inadequacies of a system that allowed
children to be abused for 10 years
By Audrey Gillan
Government to accept child abuse report recommendations
Staff and agencies
'I just hope this will protect future generations in
care'
Reaction: Abuse victims give cautious welcome to
report
By David Ward and Helen Carter
'Punishment was the only thing I knew'
The victim: Beatings and humiliations haunt mother
who survived
By David Brindle
Hunt for 24 care workers in child abuse scandal
By David Brindle
Recalling life in the Colditz of care
By David Ward and Helen Carter