They left me in the care of a paedophile, it is a scandal

“But then it got worse. He would sit me on his lap and make me rub up against him. He would take me into the bathroom and make me touch him.

“He would try to rape me. One day he did it and I was in pain for days.

“I couldn’t even move. He would tell me that I couldn’t tell anyone because his wife would say I was naughty.”

The abuse only stopped when neighbours called Jackie’s school to ask why she had been housed with a paedophile.

Her headteacher notified social services.

And it was confirmed Fairbairn had been convicted by Chepstow magistrates of indecent assault against two girls of 12 in July 1961. He pleaded guilty and got a conditional discharge.

Jackie said: “He had been convicted while I was living there. But nobody thought to remove me from the house. I was put in danger by the people who were supposed to be protecting me.”

In a filed memo, Jackie’s case worker had expressed his “surprise” about the crimes as he “considered the Fairbairns to be rather anxious to preserve a good standard of behaviour in the home”.

When Fairbairn was visited by social workers he admitted that he had with- held information. But Jackie remained in his care a further 10 days after an assessment concluded it was “unlikely” she had been sexually assaulted. That exposed her to yet more abuse – including one final act of rape. Jackie added: “They just left me there. I told them he was abusing me and they didn’t care.” She was finally moved to a workhousestyle institution where she said she was branded a “dirty girl”. Jackie recalled: “It was sheer hell. We didn’t have birthdays or Christmas. We didn’t watch TV. I didn’t know what the date was. It was just work.” Two years later the desperately sad