Prison worker at Durham youth detention centre 'may have been Britain's worst ever sex offender'

A man who worked as a prison officer and caterer in a youth detention centre was able to rape and torture boys for three decades while the abuse was "ignored and dismissed", according to a report labelling him as possibly Britain's worst ever sex offender.

- Raphael Boyd Simon Hattenstone

Neville Husband carried out at least 388 sexual offences against young men and boys between 1969 and 1985 while working at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham, but is believed have committed hundreds more crimes, taking the total past the 450 thought to have been committed by Jimmy Savile.

Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman for England and Wales, has compiled a 202-page report on the conduct of staff at Medomsley from 1961 to 1987, in which he describes Husband as “possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history”.

Husband, a former church minister and scout troop leader who died in 2010, is thought to have attacked hundreds of trainees in Medomsley’s kitchens, where he worked.

Men and boys aged 17 to 21 who had been convicted of relatively minor crimes were sent to Medomsley where the ethos of the “short, sharp shock” was in place to deter them from reoffending. Usher said the policy was supposed to create an atmosphere “so unpleasant that they would never want to return”.

Usher said there was evidence of abuse at Medomsley “from the day it opened its doors until the day those doors were closed”, adding that the “knowledge of abuse by the Prison Service, the police, the Home Office and other organisations of authority was ignored and dismissed”.