Over 230 new calls to Medomsley detectives

05/02/2014

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MORE than 200 potential new victims have contacted police investigating abuse at the former Medomsley Detention Centre, near Consett following widespread media publicity at the start of last week.

In August last year Durham Constabulary announced it was opening a new investigation into allegations that inmates at the Home Office-run centre were either sexually or physically abused during their time at Medomsley, between the late 1960’s and the mid-1980’s.

An earlier investigation led to a former catering officer at the centre, Neville Husband being jailed in 2003 for abusing a number of young men over a period of time. He died in 2010, following his release from prison.

Up to last Monday, 27th January police had spoken to 143 people, the vast majority of whom were victims who had not previously come forward. The total also included a small number of possible witnesses or callers who had information which might help the police enquiries.

Widespread media coverage of the investigation, including a special report on BBC1’s ‘Inside Out’ programme has since prompted a further 232 calls to police, bringing the total to 375.

All those who have rung over the last ten days will be seen by an officer over the coming weeks and steered towards the appropriate support and counselling.
        
“Our aims all along have been to gain a clearer picture of what happened at Medomsley, obtain evidence which may lead to a criminal prosecution and, most importantly, to leave the victims in a better place than they were before,” said Det Supt Paul GOUNDRY, the senior investigating officer.

“The recent coverage in the media has brought forward another 230 people who might not otherwise have contacted us. That suggests these victims have a level of confidence in us and feel we can help and support them.

“As our enquiries continue we are constantly learning, not only from the victims but all the agencies we are working alongside such as the NSPCC and the Sexual Assault Referral Centre at The Meadows. I think at the end of this investigation we will have some very important learning points to take on board, not just for ourselves but for the police nationally.”

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Medomsley Detention Centre sex probe leads to over 200 new victims

6 Feb 2014 09:48

More than 200 people have contacted police claiming to be the victims of horrific sexual abuse at the former Medomsley Detention Centre

Neville Husband

More than 200 people have contacted detectives claiming to be the victims of historic sex attacks at a North East borstal.

Durham Constabulary launched a new ­investigation into the Medomsley Detention Centre, near Consett, last year after receiving fresh allegations that inmates were being ferried off the grounds and sexually abused between the late 1960s and mid-80s.

It’s thought the scandal is one of the worst cases of mass scale abuse at a Government-run institution seen in this country, prompting the force to assign 80 detectives and the full resources of its Major Crimes Team to investigate the claims.

Senior prison officer Neville Husband was convicted of sex abuse offences in 2003. He died in 2010 following his release from prison.

Now detectives have confirmed that 232 complaints were made to police over the past week by victims claiming to be the subject of sexual abuse at the centre, bringing the total to 375.

Det Supt Paul Goundy said: “Our aims all along have been to gain a clearer picture of what happened at Medomsley, obtain evidence which may lead to a criminal prosecution and, most importantly, to leave the victims in a better place than they were before.

“The recent coverage in the media has brought forward another 230 people who might not otherwise have contacted us. That suggests these victims have a level of confidence in us and feel we can help and support them.

“As our enquiries continue we are constantly learning, not only from the victims but all the agencies we are working alongside, such as the NSPCC and the Sexual Assault Referral Centre at The Meadows.

“I think at the end of this investigation we will have some very important learning points to take on board, not just for ourselves but for the police nationally.”

It is thought hundreds of young boys – most of whom were behind bars for crimes that would today warrant a community penalty – were systematically targeted by sexual predators. Husband, a serial abuser of young boys, was convicted for sex attacks on nine youngsters in 2003. Before his prosecution and after 27 years’ working for the Prison Service he was a minister with the Brighton Road and Cromer Avenue URC churches in Gateshead.

He was jailed for 12 years and his accomplice Lesley Johnson, who was a store man at the centre, for six. Johnson has also since died.

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Beaten, stripped and mentally tortured – Sunderland dad tells of abuse at Medomsley Detention Centre

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• by Craig Thompson

Published on the 06 February 2014

A SUNDERLAND dad today claimed he had been beaten senseless by abusive staff at the former detention centre.

Sunderlandecho.com reported yesterday how dozens of former inmates, from or currently living in Sunderland, Washington and Houghton, have been in touch with detectives investigating abuse at the former Medomsley Detention Centre.

In August last year Durham police announced it was opening a new investigation into allegations inmates at the Home Office-run centre were either sexually or physically abused during their time at Medomsley, between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s.

One victim, now 46, today described the horrific abuse which left him mentally scarred.

He said: “I was in there in 1985.

“On my first day, I was stripped and covered in powder to prevent lice before being marched into the centre and given a number.

“When I was asked to repeat back the number, I sniggered because I was nervous. I was then punched so hard in the stomach I couldn’t stand up straight.

“On another occasion, I’d dropped a Chewit paper on the ground and I was kept back. The officer was behind me and all I can remember is a flash and suddenly my head was being stotted off the wall.”

The man, who asked not to be identified, but still lives in Sunderland, had been sentenced to three months in the centre for causing criminal damage when he was 17.

He also recalled witnessing shocking levels of abuse on other inmates during his time there.

He said: “I was looking out of the window over the exercise yard when I saw one officer take a hockey stick and smash it over a young lad’s wrists, he must have broken them.

“Even though so many people were being attacked, no one said anything. You didn’t, you just got on with things.”

The man, who now has children of his own, told how he and other inmates had to “bunnyhop” from place to place.

  He said: “Bunnyhopping was where you had to crouch down, your hands behind your head, and jump from the dormitories to the canteen. Sometimes you would be in that position for hours at a time – it was agony.”

 The man claims he has been left mentally tortured by his time at Medomsley. He added: “Even after all these years, that place never leaves you. I’ve never talked about this for 30 years but no one who goes in there comes out the same.”

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'Abuse turned me from a naughty boy into a violent criminal'

9:51am Thursday 6th February 2014 in Leader  By Chris Webber, Reporter (Stockton/Hartlepool)

 

 

STILL SCARRED: Rod Jones, who was sent to Medomsley, in background, as a teenager

 
Rod Jones, once an armed robber and minder to some of Britain’s most notorious gangsters, says it was the abuse he received in institutions, including the Medomsley Detention Centre, that set him on the road to serious criminality. Chris Webber heard his story
 
ROD JONES was never an angel, not even as a small boy. “I was naughty,” he admits, “I would pinch things, shoplift... but I was nothing out of the ordinary.”

He says it took abuse in approved schools, borstals, detention centres and even an adult prison when he was still only 13, to turn that naughty boy into a truly violent criminal.

The Middlesbrough-born 67-year-old proudly points to three decades of crime-free life, along with more than 20 years running his own charity, set up in memory of his beloved son who died in a car crash as an 18-year-old.

The tragedy led him to leave crime behind.

“This was always in me,” he says. “I always could have been all right, could have done good things given the right chances of a normal life.”

We talk for three hours in Mr Jones’ untidy van, parked on a muddy industrial unit on Stockton’s Portrack Lane Industrial Estate. We were meeting to discuss allegations of violence at Medomsley Detention Centre, near Consett, which is under investigation after hundreds of allegations of abuse.

But as we talk, Mr Jones, who wears an impressively large Christian cross around neck, given to him in Bosnia during one of his aid trips, refers to something even darker, from even earlier in his life.

“I was at secondary school, the first year, and there was a teacher who would pick lads out and take them to his store room. He had this plywood paddle in there. He would put you across his knee and slap you across the backside, while holding you down and then feel your backside.”

He said this happened to most lads.

“One day he took me to the back store room.

It was to be the last time. He went further this time.” Rod describes a very serious sexual assault.

“I was incensed. I steamed out of there and threw chisels at him. He went off it and ran after me. I met up with two other lads in the school toilets and we ran away. I was 11 or maybe 12.”

Mr Jones and his friends jumped on the back of a wagon and ended up in Newcastle. They were caught with stolen tins of beans – “We didn’t even have a tin opener,” laughs Rod – and found themselves in court the next day.

Mr Jones had earlier been in trouble before for breaking into his school and causing damage on two or three occasions after the alleged assaults – a naive schoolboy attempt at revenge, he says. He would probably have been sent home, along with the two other boys, if not for the intervention of his father, who turned up to court and requested his son be sent to approved school. It’s a fact that distresses Mr Jones to this day. The magistrate agreed and the journey to even worse brutality and darkness began.

He was eventually sent to Castle Howard Approved School, a farm school, near Malton, North Yorkshire. The “school” had been founded in 1855 by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders for the East and North Ridings of the County of York and the Town and County of Kingston upon Hull.

Responsibility for the school was assumed by Kingston upon Hull Corporation in 1936, initially by the Education Committee, and then, in 1948 by the Children’s Committee.

MR Jones says he still bears the scars of the whacks administered by staff, for no reason, to the back of the head.

He would still regularly escape and, when caught, had to suffer even worse beatings.

“They’d send the ‘hounds’, the older boys, to catch you and they’d whack you.”

One time, he made it all the way home, through the snow on the North York Moors, only to be sent all the way back and then ordered to stand in the snow until he collapsed.

That time he wound up with rheumatic fever and a welcome respite in hospital.

Still, he would escape. At 13 he broke out with an older boy, “a real bully”. That time they were caught with clothes, stolen to beat the cold, and were once again sent to magistrates in Hull. The school told the court they didn’t want them back and the police and social workers had nowhere for them. The magistrates told the boys that, “with great reluctance,” they would be sent to Armley Prison – an adult prison for some of the worst offenders in the country – as a temporary measure.

“They put you three to a cell, supposedly to stop homosexual activity, the idea was one would be a witness to the other two.

“But one time there was just me and the other lad. He was playing with himself on the other bunk. He came over to me, exposed, asking me to do things. I told him no. We started fighting, he was bigger than me, got the better of me...”

At that point Mr Jones, still a hard man, stops for a minute and lowers his voice to say the inevitable words that he was raped.

And yet his spirit was not broken. He complained, even told the governor. He got a transfer but no investigation took place. No one said: “I believe you.”

Not above administering his own justice, Mr Jones says he sought out his rapist many times.

“A job for these,” he says, clenching his fists and bringing them up to his angry face. Lucky for the rapist, Mr Jones never found him.

• In tomorrow’s Northern Echo, Rod Jones tells of his terrifying time at Medomsley Detention Centre, where he says he admitted a crime he didn’t commit while in fear of his life. 

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