Author: islingtonsn

Islington Gazette, 2nd July 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

Sally doesn’t know who sexually abused her. It always happened in the dark, she said. Mysterious figures would enter her bedroom at the children’s home, backlit by the lights in the corridor behind.

“It’s more what I heard than that I saw,” she wept, sharing her memories with the Islington Gazette. After the abuse, she would often hear the fire escape door opening and closing as the perpetrator left.

 “The noise is distinctive,” she said.

A few weeks ago, Sally’s lawyer notified Islington Council, which ran the home, that she was suing.

Sally – her name has been changed to protect her anonymity – was sent to the Conewood Street home, later renamed Park Place, as a teenager.

Her first night there was Christmas Eve. She had run away from her violent mother. But, she later realised, she’d been better off at home.

Sally spoke to the Gazette for two hours at the Barbican office of her lawyer, Andrew Lord, from Leigh Day. He has handled several abuse cases referred by the Islington Survivors Network (ISN).

Sally’s story is unusual because her alleged abuse took place after the London Evening Standard’s 1992 exposé of widespread abuse in Islington’s children’s homes. This, Sally and Andrew believe, amounts to an extra later of “negligence” in her case. The council should have been hyper-alert, but instead the abuse just continued.

Now in her 40s, Sally cried repeatedly as she told the Gazette of her ordeal and its lasting impact on her life.

“I don’t have a partner. I don’t have children. I don’t have nothing. And it is to do with this,” she said.

“It messes you up in ways that you don’t even realise until you try to get close to someone. The trust – forget sexual stuff – just the trust: I don’t have that with anyone. I can’t have that with anyone.”

She has been in and out of mental health care her entire life, she added.

“I’m just sinking and swimming all the time,” she sobbed. “And it didn’t need to be like this. I went there for help.”

Her lawsuit was precipitated by the council’s Support Payment Scheme. Aided by ISN founder Dr Liz Davies, Sally obtained her care records and applied successfully for one of the scheme’s £10,000 payments. She fully expected her file to be missing or sanitised but was shocked to find it contained evidence corroborating her recollections.

Staff recorded the stomach pains she reported after her abuse. They logged when she ran away and reported to a different council that she was being abused at Conewood.

“[Sally] has presented herself at Haringey Social Services Intake Team, saying she does not want to return to Park Place,” the entry said. “She will run away again. Saying we hurt her.”

Staff noted her becoming withdrawn and “depressed” – yet she was never offered counselling or therapy: “There was no support. They didn’t do anything about that.”

All she remembered being offered was creative writing sessions. Inside her file, she was horrified to discover some of the poems she had written, alluding to sexual abuse.

“All the signs were there,” she said. “They knew I was in trouble – emotionally, mentally, physically. They knew it because they wrote it themselves. They did nothing about it.

“They knew it because I complained when my stomach was hurting. They knew it when I ran away and refused to go back… They wrote this stuff in there. They wrote it in my file. That really pisses me off… They knew what was going on.

“This is why I feel like they were all a part of it or knew about it. Because it doesn’t make sense to hear and see all this stuff and not know that I’m being abused. Why would a child of that age be writing that stuff in a poem?”

She has always suspected some staff facilitated the abuse.

“They was outside the room,” she alleged. “I heard them. I heard their voices.”

“How could anyone even get in the building without being let in?” she asked. “There were staff on at nighttimes… I feel like it was like prostitution for them, if I’m honest. Like we was the prostitutes.”

Around the time Sally’s abuse began, she said, staff held an event encouraging all the children to have a discussion about sex.

“I didn’t go,” she says. “Of course, I absconded. Looking back… it was like they were checking out to see who would say anything. Would any of us speak up or expose them.”

Sally ran away a lot, she said, staying out until four or five in the morning. Not just because of the sexual abuse, but because of the whole culture.

“They weren’t feeding us properly,” she claimed. “We were always hungry.”

Another former Conewood Street resident told the Islington Gazette in March that children there were underfed. 

Sally was aggrieved by an entry in her records about breaking into a staff room and stealing crisps.

“One part of me wants to laugh now,” she said. “The other part of me is angry. I didn’t steal your alcohol. I didn’t steal none of your cigarettes. I didn’t go into all your bags or purses that were there. But you’re calling me this bad, naughty girl that I stole crisps because I was hungry.”

Staff not only kept alcohol on the premises, she alleged, but supplied it to children in their care.

“There’s a lot of adults that were around that would introduce you to certain things,” she continued. “They would give us cigarettes… Cannabis was around.”

Sally left Islington’s care without finishing school or gaining any qualifications. No longer in touch with her family, she was moved into a flat on a problem estate. For years, she lived in a fog.

In the beginning, she said, “I didn’t know that what I was experiencing, or why I felt the way I felt, was related to sexual abuse.” She made several attempts on her own life, never telling anybody what had happened to her.

“I didn’t know how to,” she explained. “I remembered that they didn’t believe me anyway. I’m just a liar. It was like something I had to just take to the grave, I guess.”

She was in her 20s when she finally disclosed her abuse to a counsellor.

“There was a point in my life where the floodgates opened. It was sink or swim time and I was fighting for my sanity. Things came back thick and fast,” she recalled.

She had previously been living in a state of “cognitive dissonance” – her whole life falling apart due to a trauma she refused to acknowledge.

“Your inner voice is yelling,” she said. “It’s screaming. You can’t deny it anymore. You don’t know what to do with it. You know you’re sinking. There’s part of you that wants to swim. There’s part of you that gets angry and mad.”

“The more years that go by that you’re still f***ed up by something, the more it feels like you’re making it a big deal,” she said.

But, she added, pointing at her file: “Then I’ll read something in there, some stuff that they wrote, or remember things, and I’m reading it like, ‘You’re not making it a big deal, you’ve been minimising it to exist, so you don’t kill yourself. It’s worse than you even let yourself know.”

Her whole life, she concluded: “I’ve been fighting to do something, be something – to not be killed anymore than I already am inside by this.”

Islington Council wound not make any comment on Sally’s story but said it was “deeply sorry” for its “past failure to protect vulnerable children in in its children’s homes, which was the worst chapter in this council’s history”.

It said it was now a “very different organisation”.

“We cannot comment on any individual civil compensation claims while those legal proceedings are ongoing,” it added.

Islington Gazette, 28th May 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

Alleged child abuse victims are having their right to payouts decided by people who did not even show up to their hearings, Islington Council has admitted.

Five applicants to the council’s Support Payment Scheme for abuse survivors have showed up to their appeal hearings to find only one of the three panellists has turned up.

The appeals themselves are contentious – with some applications refused despite witnesses and files backing up their claims.

Yet the missing panellists are still then deliberating over applicants’ cases, deciding whether they should receive pay-outs.

Islington Council says that is OK, because the absentees can catch up by reading the minutes.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Dr Liz Davies, founder of the Islington Survivors Network (ISN), which supported each of the five applicants at their hearings.

“We are bothering to show up. One man came all the way from Newmarket in a train strike and got there in person, whereas the panellists – who were only attending virtually anyway – didn’t show up. It’s not right.”

The Support Payment Scheme, which launched in May 2022 and closes this week, was set up after Islington admitted and apologised for decades of abuse in its children’s homes.

Alleged abuse included staff neglecting children, supplying them with booze and drugs, supplying them to paedophiles and forcing them to terminate babies.

The scheme offers abuse survivors £10,000 to help them cope with the ongoing impacts on their lives.

But the Gazette has reported how some were turned down for supposedly insufficient evidence, despite witnesses and files corroborating their accounts.

One woman was turned down for insufficient evidence she was in the home, despite having supplied photos of herself there with the staff.

Those initially denied the payment were invited to appeal hearings at the council’s offices in Upper Street.

“The chair was quite responsive. This is not a criticism of her,” said Dr Davies. “She was very professional and caring in her approach.

“But she said the other panellists had other commitments and couldn’t attend, yet would still participate in the decision-making later.

“She also said, very clearly, that they might not agree with her because they weren’t there.”

Islington Council said: “Not all members of an applicant’s appeals panel need to be present at the meeting, since the meeting minutes, along with any extra documentary evidence supplied, are shared with the panel members to enable them to arrive at a decision.”

Islington Gazette, 6th April 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

Abuse victims have been urged to apply for £10,000 pay-outs before the cut-off date in less than two months.

Islington Council is offering “support payments” to people abused in its former children’s homes.

But applicants must put their papers in before 5pm on Friday, May 31.

In 2017, Islington Council finally admitted and apologised for decades of abuse of vulnerable children, which it called “the worst chapter in this council’s history”.

The admission followed a decades-long campaign by survivors, led by whistleblowing former Islington Council social worker Dr Liz Davies, who received her own special apology from the council.

The ‘Support Payment Scheme’ launched on May 31, 2022.

The council says the payments are not compensation and do not amount to an admission of liability.

Am I eligible?

The payment scheme is limited to those who were abused in 35 specific children’s homes.

They include certain homes in greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire, where children were placed by Islington Council.

The abuse must have been suffered between 1966 and 1995.

Those abused in foster care, or in the community whilst known to Islington’s social services, aren’t covered.

What counts as abuse?

Payments are for victims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.

• Sexual abuse includes abuse by other children in the homes and “non-contact” abuse like exposure to sexual behaviour.
• Physical abuse includes the use of restraint techniques such as ‘pindown’, where children were wrestled to the ground and held there, unable to move.
• Emotional abuse includes ridiculing children, exposing them to bullying behaviour, causing them to feel frightened and preventing normal social interaction.
• Neglect includes under-feeding children, failing to provide sufficient clothing or access to medical treatment, and inadequate supervision.

How do I prove I was abused?

Rules say applicants do not have to prove they were abused even to the civil standard of 51% certainty.

The scheme is supposed to be “straightforward and quick” and avoid making applicants “relive past trauma”.

It “requires only that there be credible information and/or material of an applicant’s eligibility”.

A small number of applicants have been rejected on grounds of insufficient evidence either that they were in a children’s home or that they were abused while there.

But the overwhelming majority of applicants have been paid. Those turned down are automatically referred to an appeal panel.

Am I waiving my rights?

Applying to the ‘Support Payment Scheme’ does not waive a victim’s rights to sue the council.

Several people who have successfully applied have been referred to lawyers by Dr Davies’s Islington Survivors Network (ISN) for potential civil suits.

However, the £10,000 will be subtracted from any damages awarded by a court.

How do I apply?

To apply or find further information, including a list of the 35 children’s homes, visit www.islingtonsupportpayment.co.uk.

“We really do want all survivors to feel reassured that they can reach out and ask the team any questions they have beforehand, to feel that they will be listened to and treated sensitively – and to know that if they choose to apply, the scheme is open for them until May 31, 2024,” the council said.

ISN, which helps applicants access their records and file applications, can be reached at 0300 302 0930, or islingtonsn@gmail.com.

Islington Gazette, 18th May 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

Senior council staff accused Islington children of making up the abuse they suffered in care, Dame Margaret Hodge has claimed in an interview.

The former council leader, who has been Labour MP for Barking and Dagenham since 1994, admitted she had listened to officials but not victims and blamed an attempt to stop a later investigation and undermine one victim on “a s***ty bit of advice”.

Her comments have angered the Islington Survivors Network (ISN), which represents hundreds of former children’s home residents who say they were abused.

The group called on Hodge – council leader from 1982 to 1992 – to name the officials she says dismissed and denied victims’ accounts.

“It was so much more than ‘a s***ty bit of advice’, as Hodge refers to it,” said founder Dr Liz Davies.

Dr Davies, then an Islington social worker, raised concerns about the children’s homes in 1990 but was dismissed.

But in 1992, a major investigation by the Evening Standard suggested the borough’s homes had been infiltrated by paedophiles.

Staff and children claimed drug-dealing, sex trafficking and violence were rife.

The scandal resulted in a 1995 investigation called the White Report, which found the council had not properly investigated many allegations.

In an interview with the Guardian this month, she said she’d had meetings with police and senior council officers after the Standard’s investigation.

“We went through allegation after allegation,” she claimed. “They all said: ‘There’s no truth in any of them’.”

Mrs Hodge said she was told the alleged victims were “naughty kids” who’d been bribed by the Standard – but she now accepted neither claim was true.

At the time, though, “I believed them,” she said. “And what I didn’t do, which I should have done, was talk to the kids.”

Mrs Hodge admitted trying to block a BBC report on the scandal by questioning a victim’s credibility.

She told the Guardian she now felt “terrible” about it.

“I was advised to do that, and that was a s***ty bit of advice,” she said – but refused to say who the advice came from.

Dr Davies said: “Margaret Hodge still refuses to disclose the details of those professionals who she says misled her in the 1990s.

“Margaret Hodge did not give evidence to the White Inquiry in 1995 and, as far as ISN are aware, none of the officers have ever been asked about this very serious allegation…

“If officers deliberately misled her then she should have reported them to the appropriate regulatory professional body.

“This ‘advice’ has contributed to 30 or more years of institutional cover-up and denial of survivors’ experiences and disclosures of serious crimes.”

Dr Davies criticised Mrs Hodge’s suggestion that not speaking to the children was the reason for her disbelief, asking why she had not simply trusted her own whistleblowing social workers.

“She should have listened to her staff, [my colleague] David Cofie and myself and other professionals in all the agencies – health, police, education, probation and psychiatry – all raising the alarm at the time,” she said.

“This is unfinished business. Hundreds of survivors in ISN want to know the truth of this cover-up and the names of those responsible for it.”

Mrs Hodge’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Islington Council did not directly respond to Mrs Hodge’s comments or Dr Davies’ criticisms, but reiterated leader Kaya Comer-Schwartz’s past apology for its “failure to protect vulnerable children in its children’s homes, which was the worst chapter in our council’s history”.

Cllr Comer-Schwartz said the council today was “very different”, with protecting children as a “top priority”.

She said the council offered psychological support, counselling and advice to victims and had launched the Islington Support Payment Scheme in 2022, offering £10,000 to survivors.

The support scheme closes at the end of this month.  

Islington Gazette, 20th May 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

Olympic medallist Kriss Akabusi says Islington Council has lost his care records, meaning a large chunk of his childhood is doomed to remain a “big blank”.

The athlete and television presenter spent much of his childhood in one of the council’s notorious children’s homes before joining the army at 16.

He later became a sprinter, winning a silver medal at the 1984 Olympics and a gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games.

He told the Gazette how he grew up in Copthorne, one of the council’s out-of-borough homes in Village Road, Enfield.

“It was supposed to be a short-term home… but I stayed there,” he said.

“For what reason, I do not know. I’m sure that would have been in my files.”

“Draconian”

Akabusi spent roughly a decade in Copthorne, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, living through several changes in management.

One, he said, was “draconian… a very austere and strict regime”.

“I was only a kid so I’m not quite sure whether we deserved that – whether we were tough to deal with,” he said.

“No one ever punched me… But there’s that psychological terror where you know: don’t cross him. A very hard, draconian man. Corporal punishment. The slipper. A cane… A very tough, tight ship.”

But unlike some former residents, he doesn’t recall going without food or clothes.

On the contrary, he said: “You had to finish what was on your plate. I witnessed people having their nose held and shovelled down their mouth. So I witnessed force feeding.

“We had new clothes in the winter, new clothes in the summer… It’s not in my memory that I felt neglected.”

“A Blank”

In the early 1990s, a biographer was granted access to some of Kriss’s care records – but he only personally went looking for them around 10 years ago.

“I wanted to know what happened to me. I wanted to know about my mum,” he said.

“I just wanted to know my past, you know? Because there’s this great big blank, I think, around that period.

“It’s like I created a new self once I joined the army, but I recognise that that kid in the children’s home is a major psychological driver of who I am and became.”

He knows that in care he started refusing to celebrate his birthday – but he has no memory of why.

“I was adamant,” he said. “I must have had half a dozen years in the children’s home where I stopped celebrating my birthday.

“Why? I don’t know. Did I tell my social worker? I don’t know.”

“Accidentally Destroyed”?

Kriss said his quest for answers led him to visit council buildings and send emails and letters, aided by Dr Liz Davies of the Islington Survivors Network (ISN).

But in February 2013, a council employee wrote by email: “Our archive and business managers have now reported to me that unfortunately they cannot locate the files.”

They said the council believed the files had been stored at Highbury House, near Highbury Fields. When it was sold in 2009, records were sent to the council archive.

“If the files had existed at the time of that building move they would have been entered on our electronic system,” the employee wrote.

“As they were never entered onto the system, we can only guess that the files must have been accidentally destroyed between 1992 and 2009.

“The archive manager feels sure that if the files existed now they would have turned up during one of the many building moves and been recorded on the electronic system.

“I am sure that this result is disappointing for you and on behalf of the council I can only apologise sincerely.”

When he and Dr Davies tried again in 2018, the council claimed it had given Kriss 50 pages of records in 2014 – something he said he had no recollection of at all.

He decided to speak out after the Gazette reported on others whose files were missing or incomplete.

The Council

Islington Council said: “We will do all we can to support care leavers to access records relating to their care.

“We are very sorry for the difficulties Mr Akabusi has faced in trying to access any records.

“We would very much welcome a new application from him and will give all the support and advice we can.

“We will continue to do everything we can to locate any records relating to children in care from previous decades.”

Islington Gazette, 4th April 2024

Exclusive by Charles Thomson, Investigations Reporter

A woman who says she was sexually abused in her bed at an Islington children’s home claims the council is breaking its own rules by asking her to prove it.

Maria – her name has been changed for legal reasons – says she remembers waking up to find someone holding her down and sexually assaulting her.

The alleged attack – which happened in her teens – left her needing therapy as she was unable to form normal relationships.

But she has been denied payment under Islington Council’s ‘Support Payment Scheme’ for abuse victims and told she must face an appeals panel.

“Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient information and material that you suffered qualifying abuse,” solicitors running the scheme wrote in a letter.

“It was distressing to read,” said Maria. “It was nearly 40 years ago. How am I supposed to prove it?”

The scheme’s own rules say applicants should not be expected to provide proof.

But Maria must now face an appeal panel if she wants to access the £10,000 support payment being offered to all survivors of abuse in Islington’s children’s homes.

“I’m fighting it,” said Maria. “Both of my siblings have already received the payment, so I don’t understand why they aren’t giving it to me. It’s distressing to know they were believed and I wasn’t.”

Maria’s story

Maria was placed into care at birth, as her mother left the hospital without her and could not be traced.

Her parents later came forward and claimed her, but Maria went back into care because she was being abused at home.

She was placed in a home called Oak Lodge aged eight, where staff noted she had been “starved of affection” and showed unusual affection towards male staff.

But she was never referred for counselling or psychological assessment, which social work expert Dr Liz Davies, of the Islington Survivors Network (ISN), said qualified as neglect under the support scheme’s rules.

Maria spent time in several homes over the years, but said the sexual assault occurred in Highbury Crescent, where she was placed in her mid-teens.

The attack

“I have a memory of someone holding me down whilst sexually assaulting me and this terrified me,” she wrote in her application.

She does not know who attacked her – only that she woke up to them assaulting her in the dark in her bed at Highbury Crescent children’s home in the 1980s.

The man held her down, put his hand over her mouth and kept telling her to relax, she said.

The alleged incident had a lifelong impact on her ability to form and sustain intimate relationships.

“I ended up going to a sex therapist,” Maria told the Gazette. “I couldn’t have a normal relationship because it haunted me.”

She wrote in her support scheme application that she had sought therapy due to flashbacks.

The rules

In 2017, Islington Council admitted and apologised for decades of abuse in its children’s homes.

It launched the Support Payment Scheme in May 2022.

The rules say applicants do not have to provide proof even to the civil standard of 51% certainty.

“The scheme wishes to facilitate support payments rather than present obstacles,” its website says.

“It does not require or adopt such a standard of proof. It requires only that there be credible information and/or material of an applicant’s eligibility.”

Qualifying abuse includes sexual assault, separation from siblings and general neglect, all of which Maria alleges she suffered.

But she was rejected in March and must now appeal.

“I’m going to have to try to get my information from the sex therapist, but that was years ago now. The records might not exist anymore,” said Maria.

Corroboration

The scheme has come under fire in recent months over allegedly inconsistent decision-making, with some applicants paid and others rejected, despite alleging similar abuse by the same staff in the same homes.

Dr Davies said there was significant corroboration that such sexual assaults occurred at Highbury Crescent.

“Other survivors have reported people coming into their rooms at night and abusing them,” she said.

“It’s completely inconsistent who gets this money and who doesn’t when they’re saying the same things about the same homes in the same years.”

Dr Davies added that other applicants had received pay-outs from the scheme after reporting such abuse at Highbury Crescent.

The council

Islington Council said it would not comment on the specifics of individual cases, but reiterated its apology for its “past failure to protect vulnerable children”.

“Each application is treated equally and carefully assessed on its own merits by the independent service provider,” it said.

“This person’s application is still live and has automatically referred to the independent appeals panel for further consideration, so no final decision has been made.”

ISN can be reached at 0300 302 0930, or islingtonsn@gmail.com.

‘It’s not about the money, it’s about my story,’ says woman brought up in scandal-hit care home

Islington Tribune, 15h March 2024

By Charlotte Chambers

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A WOMAN who says she is a survivor of the Islington children’s home abuse scandal says she has been cut out of the support payment scheme.

Michelle (not her real name) was told her application for a payment was refused on the grounds that Islington could not establish she was at one particular children’s home and that “we do not have sufficient information and material that you suffered qualifying abuse” in a different one.

The mother of two from Highbury said: “I didn’t have a childhood. Stuff like not being fed or like male members of staff just walking into your room. I can’t believe I actually lived like that. I didn’t have that chance to be a child.”

She added: “I’ll be honest with you, I have suffered. It’s the principle of it now. It’s having to be shut down time and time again. And then for them to do what they’ve done – give somebody a promise and then take it away. It was never ever about the money for me. It was about getting my story out there.”

The Town Hall launched its scheme in 2022 with payments of up to £10,000 after apologising for the widescale abuse by staff from 1966 to 1995 – described as the “worst chapter” in the borough’s history. It has so far paid out just under £3m, but has set a deadline of May 31 to claim.

Michelle, a former Mount Carmel student, who said she first experienced abuse while in her home around the age of five, spoke out against the system after Islington issued a notice last week warning that time was running out.

Dr Liz Davies, the social worker-turned-whistleblower who campaigned for decades for survivors to be paid compensation, has been critical of the scheme after 10 people from her Islington Survivors Network (ISN) had their applications rejected. Another 230 from ISN have received the lump sum.

She said: “Ten people from ISN have been denied the payments. They’re just such tragic, awful stories, and how dare they decline these people.”

She said ISN have spent months painstakingly detailing their clients’ previous lives in the homes and the abuse they suffered after at least four of them had no file, while others had massive chunks missing.

Islington recently announced those who have seen their applications rejected would have their cases assessed by a so-called independent panel – but again Dr Davies said the identities of these panelists have been kept a secret and no one from ISN has been allowed to join the panel.

Michelle, one of the 10, was placed in a children’s home aged 14. During her time there, she said she was neglected and told by workers to abort her unborn son. She was taken to pubs by staff, who bought the children alcohol and gave them cannabis and described being locked in her room if she became “verbal” about “something wrong”.

“My claim would come under neglect because we were left to our own devices, they never fed us,” said Michelle, who suffers from insomnia and panic attacks and started therapy at 35. “It was just having to survive on our own. All I can recall is they called it a supper and you’d get a cup of tea and a slice a toast.”

An Islington Council spokesperson said: “Each application is treated equally and carefully assessed on its own merits by the independent service provider against the scheme’s qualifying criteria, which is set out on the Islington Support Payment website.

“This person’s application is still live and has automatically been referred to the independent appeals panel for further consideration, so no final decision has been made.”

He added that 10 ­people were contacted last week to be told their ­cases had been referred to an independent appeals panel.