Child sexual abuse
The stories others have told
Beechwood Community Home, Nottingham
Last March, Andris Logins, 57, was jailed for 20 years for sexually abusing children at a care home where he worked in the 80s. He abused two girls and two boys at Beechwood Community Home, in Mapperley, and was found guilty of 17 charges at Nottingham Crown Court. Police became involved when a woman went to officers and told them she had been raped by Logins when she was 15. Det Insp Mandy Johnson said the ‘brutal’ regime at Beechwood made children too afraid to report abusive staff. Nottinghamshire County Council leader Alan Rhodes has made ‘an unreserved apology’ to the victims, saying, ‘The outcome in this case is proof that victims will be listened to and believed.’
English youth football
A sexual abuse scandal involving mainly young male English complainants was revealed in midNovember 2016 when former professional footballers waived their rights to anonymity and talked publicly about child sexual abuse by former football coaches in the 70s, 80s and 90s. According to police, 184 potential suspects have now been identified and 248 clubs spanning all tiers of the game have been ‘impacted’. The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) have said there were 526 complainants, 98 per cent of whom were male with their ages ranging from four to 20 at the time of the alleged abuse.
Care homes in Gwynedd and Clwyd, North Wales
The North Wales child abuse scandal was the subject of a three-year, £13 million investigation into the physical and sexual abuse of children in care homes in Clwyd and Gwynedd, North Wales, between 1974 and 1990. In November 2014, the owner of several children’s residential homes in the Wrexham area, John Allen, was convicted at Mold Crown Court on 33 counts of sexual abuse against 19 boys and one girl, aged between seven and 15, during the 60s and 70s. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The report into the scandal, headed by retired High Court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, which was published in 2000, resulted in changes in policy in England and Wales into how authorities deal with children in care, and to the settling of 140 compensation claims on behalf of victims of child abuse.