Stanley was sexually abused by a manager in a care home. The police laughed about it
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
As a young teenager, Stanley committed a minor offence. He was sentenced to three months in a detention centre where brutal physical abuse was inflicted on youngsters.
It was during the 1970s that Stanley was given a custodial sentence for trespassing on state property. Initially there was no room for him in the detention centre, so he was held for a short time in a children’s home.
On the first night, one of the managers, Mr A, took Stanley to the bathroom and made him undress. Mr A touched Stanley’s genitals, started to masturbate him and then performed oral sex on him. Stanley remembers that Mr A’s wife, who was also a manager, stood at the door watching the abuse, but did nothing.
Stanley says he tried to get away from Mr A several times, before the manager ‘decided to pack it in’.
The next day, some of the other children in the home asked him ‘has he had you in the bathroom?’ This made him think the sexual abuse must be a regular occurrence. As the days went by, this became obvious. He was sexually abused on two more occasions and he saw other children hiding under tables and behind curtains to escape from Mr A.
After a few days, two police officers turned up to take Stanley to the detention centre. In the car, Stanley told them about the abuse. They laughed at him, saying it was ‘nothing’ compared to what he would suffer in the detention centre. He remembers desperately trying to open the car door so he could jump out and escape.
At the detention centre, two prison officers took Stanley out of the car and immediately started punching and kicking him. He says he couldn’t believe what was happening, and he ran back to the police officers for help, but again, they laughed at him.
During his time in the detention centre, Stanley suffered continual harsh physical and mental abuse. He also saw other children being abused. Chillingly, he describes how the prison officers particularly targeted children who were disabled or overweight for sadistic ‘punishments’.
Stanley witnessed several serious assaults, including a child having his leg broken. He himself still suffers from injuries inflicted on him during his sentence.
Many years later, Stanley made a complaint to the police about their failure to protect the children they delivered to the detention centre. Despite his persistence, they did not follow up his complaint satisfactorily.