‘State supplied victims’ to rapist in detention centre

Systemic failures allowed widespread physical and sexual abuse to continue unchecked at Medomsley Detention Centre in Durham, a report has found (Getty)

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

The state supplied victims to the “worst sex offender in our history” as systemic failures allowed widespread physical and sexual abuse to continue unchecked at a youth detention centre, a major report has found.

The prisons watchdog says survivors of Medomsley Detention Centre deserve a public apology after he found leaders at every level “failed in their duty” to protect detainees.

The centre, which operated from the site of a former Victorian orphanage in Durham from 1961 to 1987, subjected men and boys aged 17 to 21 to brutal physical and psychological abuse which often started with a punch in the face at the prison gates.

Part of a Margaret Thatcher-era policy of hitting low-level offenders with a “short, sharp shock”, violence became an embedded part of a military-style regime in which boys were beaten, strip-searched, humiliated and made to carry out a punishing routine of chores and drills.

Hundreds also found themselves subjected to horrific sexual abuse, including in the kitchens, where predator Neville Husband would rape two or three young men a day.

Yesterday the government issued an apology to victims as a damning new 202-page report, published almost 40 years after Medomsley’s closure, laid bare the extent of failings.

Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman, found allegations of abuse had reached the ears of government ministers, the police and the Prison Service but were “ignored or dismissed”.

Successive wardens were either complicit or “lacked dedication and professional curiosity to such an extent as to not be professionally competent”, the ombudsman said.

He identified dozens of specific cases where individuals tried to speak up, but authorities failed to act. This allowed Medomsley to operate “effectively beyond the reach of the law” for 26 years, Mr Usher found.