Eric says ‘I wouldn’t want anyone to go into a children’s home’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Eric suffered appalling abuse in children’s homes during the 1970s and 80s.
His experiences have convinced him that children in care should never be placed in residential institutions.
When Eric was seven years old, he and his brother were taken into care. Their father was in prison for a serious offence. He says ‘mum tried to look after us but social services came because we were thin and scruffy’. He thinks neighbours may have alerted them.
The boys were told they were going on holiday, but they were sent to a children’s home. Eric says this was a nice place, and he thinks they were there for about six months.
He continues ‘The next home is where all the trouble started’.
Eric describes a regime where the younger boys were encouraged by the older ones to fight each other. The staff would at best turn a blind eye, and at worst, actually encourage bullying. Several members of staff also physically and sexually abused the boys.
He names one senior member of staff who he says was ‘an awful man … evil’. From the ages of eight to 12, this man, Mr Smith, abused Eric. One of his ploys was to lock boys in a room if a fight broke out. He pretended this was to keep them out of harm’s way, but in fact he raped Eric and other boys.
Mr Smith also used to pretend he was putting boys in detention and lock them in a room to rape them. Eric says ‘He was very violent when he did it’.
Eric continues that if one of the boys misbehaved, they would not be told off at the time, but woken in the early hours of the morning and made to stand still for hours on the stairs. This happened two or three times a week.
In this brutal atmosphere, Eric says ‘I became angry, aggressive and violent’. He remembers being seen by a doctor, who said ‘This boy will always be in trouble’.
From his records, Eric knows that he was put forward for adoption when he was 10, but Mr Smith blocked it. ‘It all could have stopped’ he says. ‘He didn’t want me to leave – he wanted me there to abuse me.’
Instead, Eric was sent to another children’s home when he was in his early teens. ‘I was well-trained in being nasty and violent by then.’ He describes getting a ‘good hiding’ from one member of staff.
After he injured someone, Eric was moved to another home. ‘It was a horrible place … I wish I never saw that place. Nasty lads, nasty staff. I was beaten up for six months.’
A member of staff would take him out to visit an ‘uncle’ who was an abuser. At this man’s house, Eric would be given alcohol, made to watch pornographic videos, and sexually abused.
When he went back to the home, he says, ‘no one blinked an eye, no one reported me missing, asked me where I’d been’.
Eric once went to the police and told them he had committed a burglary, because he wanted to be arrested and interviewed. He relates ‘I told the police officer I had been raped and abused at the children’s home. He punched me across the room and said “Stop lying, tell me about the break-in”’.
Eric then confessed to a crime he had not committed.
There were occasions when Eric was in care when he was sent home to stay with his mother. But he says she had a succession of violent boyfriends, so his life was no better during these breaks.
When he was in his mid teens Eric joined the army, but says ‘I had been trained to be so violent and nasty, they couldn’t control me. I had to leave’.
When he left the army, he met the woman who would be his partner then wife for nearly 30 years. He has fond memories of her parents, who fostered children. He says ‘They knew something was wrong with me, but they took me under their wing and let me see their daughter’.
It was 25 years before he broke down one day and told his partner he had been abused. She encouraged him to report it to the police, and he did. When Eric made his report, he said that he had tried to report the abuse 30 years previously while it was actually happening, but the police officer said they didn’t want to hear about that.
Eric is still severely affected by his terrible childhood experiences. He suffers with mental health problems, anger and the impulse to be violent. He has been addicted to alcohol and gambling, and frequently thinks of suicide. He feels it is inevitable that he will take his own life.
He cared for his beloved wife during a long illness, until she passed away. He feels that he manages his anger better now. ‘I think my mind has blocked out what it needs to block out’ he says.
Eric has received some financial compensation for the abuse he suffered in children’s homes run by the local authority. He feels the sum was derisory and has not brought him any comfort. He would prefer an apology from the local authority for what he went through. ‘Trust me, it’s not about the money. And a lot of people won’t come forward for it anyway, because of what’s in their minds’ he says.
He feels that the local authority and social services missed many opportunities to protect him and children like him, particularly in letting his fostering get blocked by one of the abusers. He says ‘They should make an apology … do the decent thing and say sorry’.
Eric recalls a female teacher at one of the homes who was kind, and he kept in touch with her for a few years. He relates ‘When I was older I went to see her; she told me she’d reported incidents to the headmaster and he said “If you want to keep your job, keep your mouth shut”’.
He feels strongly that children should not be sent to homes, but they should be with families where they will have a better quality of life. But, he says, if homes have to exist, there should be more CCTV monitoring, and he thinks social workers should wear body cameras as many police officers now do.
Eric adds that there should be more money for counselling for victims and survivors of abuse ‘... to help people realise the world can be a nice place. So many people just think the world is a nasty place. I used to believe that when I was younger but I don’t believe that any more’.
He has not been for counselling. The closest he came to it was calling a bereavement helpline but they put him on hold.
Eric says ‘I’ve told my story because I want things to get better; hopefully things can be changed but there’s no one for me to lean on when I go home’.