Detention centre guard a 'prolific sex offender'

Durham Police

An officer at a notorious detention centre for young offenders was "possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history", an inquiry has concluded.

Neville Husband was jailed in 2003 for abusing five teenagers at Medomsley in County Durham, where hundreds of young men were subjected to physical and sexual attacks by prison staff between 1961 and 1987. He died in 2010.

A report by Prisons and Probation Ombudsman Adrian Usher catalogues a string of missed opportunities to stop the abuse and failures by the Home Office, police forces and prison managers.

Durham Police has apologised. The Ministry of Justice has been approached for comment.

The report said inmates who had complained were not believed and were effectively left to report abuse to the people who had assaulted them.

It warned what had happened was a "cautionary tale" and the mistreatment of the vulnerable was "still an issue" throughout the youth custody estate.

Medomsley housed young men aged 17-21 for periods of three or six months for often low-level offending.

It was intended to give inmates a "short, sharp, shock" but the investigation found physical violence and summary punishments were endemic.

Sexual assaults often centred on the institution's kitchen, where guard Husband is said to have raped young inmates. He was later convicted of sex offences and died in 2010.

Chief Constable Rachel Bacon said the report made for "extremely difficult reading" and exposed "shameful failings by police at that time".

"On behalf of Durham Constabulary I wish to publicly offer my sincerest apologies to those victims and their families for those failures," she said.

"Thousands of young men were let down by the system and are continuing to live with the wounds left by that abuse. Those victims were, and remain, our primary concern."

'Extent of the horrors'

In the report, Mr Usher said: "I have chosen to omit many of the most heinous details of... abuse but I believe it is necessary to include enough to make clear the extent of the horrors that some of those young men endured."

He said the "silence of many" had been required in order "for the worst excesses of sexual abuse to continue for so long without detection".

The report said

• police dismissed allegations of abuse without even recording them and would threaten inmates with being sent back to Medomsley if they persisted
• leadership staff were either aware of abuse and therefore complicit, or lacked curiosity and were therefore incompetent
• victims had never had a public apology – and all bodies should "examine their organisational consciences"
• the deaths of two young inmates, within a few months of each other in 1981-2, were "arguably avoidable"

Some of those who served time at Medomsley said the experience haunted them to this day.

Peter Toole, from Newcastle, was sent there in 1985.

"You weren't even in for a minute and the abuse started," he said. "I just thought 'this is it, this is Medomsley, just get on with it and take it on the chin'."

Jimmy Coffey went to Medomsley when he was 18 in 1979.

"For that first week I was there, I was just continually seeing violence and cruelty and spitefulness," he said. "I still have problems now with flashbacks."

The inquiry, which was ordered by the Ministry of Justice, said Medomsley had existed for 26 years "effectively beyond the reach of the law".

As well as Husband's later convictions, storeman Leslie Johnson was jailed in 2005 for sex attacks on inmates, while other guards were jailed for physical assaults and misconduct in a public office.

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Ministry of Justice