Investigators looking into one of the UK’s biggest abuse scandals have said they hope to find answers into how it was allowed to happen and provide “some level of closure” for the victims.
Details of an expected 18-month investigation into the history of Medomsley detention centre for young male offenders were announced on Wednesday.
More than 2,000 former inmates at the centre in County Durham reported being physically or sexually abused between 1961 and 1987. It was also where one of Britain’s worst paedophiles, Neville Husband, preyed on young men for 15 years.
After the Guardian revealed in 2012 the stories of several of Husband’s victims, Durham police launched Operation Seabrook, one of the largest criminal inquiries of its kind. Officers were shocked at the scale of the abuse but the huge investigation resulted in only single-figure convictions – a pitifully low number, campaigners said.
The new investigation, titled Operation Deerness, will aim to answer two central questions: how did the abuse go on for so long, and why was it not stopped?
The investigation is being carried out by the office of the prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) Adrian Usher, and being led by Richard Tucker, both former senior police officers.
Tucker said it was not a reinvestigation of abuse allegations. “They are a matter of fact. This is very much focused on what the authorities knew about what was going on, why was it allowed to continue and why they didn’t do anything – or maybe they did – to prevent it.”
By “authorities”, Tucker said he meant police, probation, local authorities, health, faith groups and health services.
Tucker urged people with stories to come forward. “We are here for the survivors and we are independent. We are nothing to do with the police or the prison authorities and we will go where the facts take us.”
Usher said many young men ended up at Medomsley for petty offences, spending only weeks there. “They have, in fact, served life sentences. The damage that was done to them, the wretched abuse at Medomsley, has had life-changing effects for many.
“I’m sure there are people who have not told their story, who have wrestled with their conscience for years. It is never too late. Now is the time.”
Usher said he hoped the inquiry would provide “some level of closure” for victims, but it was also about “preventing the victims of tomorrow”.
Both men said they had been shocked at the scale of the abuse that went on at Medomsley.
Usher said he had lost sleep. “What happened to those men, and in some cases children, is some of the most appalling sexual and physical abuse that I have ever come across and on a scale that I have never come across.”
Husband, a former officer who ran the kitchen at the centre, preyed on young offenders at Medomsley for 15 years. He later became a church minister and received an eight-year jail sentence in 2003 for sexually abusing five young offenders. His sentence was increased to 10 years in 2005 after more victims came forward. He died in 2010.
A Guardian investigation in 2012 suggested that hundreds of boys were abused by Husband. Kevin Young, who died aged 62 in 2021, was imprisoned for three months after receiving stolen property – a watch his brother had given him. He told the Guardian: “I was raped repeatedly, tied up and ligatured [around the neck]. It was the worst of the worst.”
Young continued: “I thought I was going to be killed. I was told by Husband that you could easily be found hanged at Medomsley, and that that year, six boys had already hanged themselves.”
Many campaigners were disappointed that Operation Seabrook failed to uncover the paedophile ring that Durham police said in 2014 appeared to be operating out of Medomsley.
John McCabe, a former inmate and victim of Husband, is hopeful that the new investigation will discover what was known by the centre’s former governors, the Home Office, police and probation service.
David Greenwood, of Switalskis Solicitors, which represents victims and pushed for the special investigation, said: “We want the PPO to identify the point in time when steps could have been taken to stop the abuse and to explain why it wasn’t stopped.”
