Abuse survivor says Lambeth Council has blood on its hands

Sandra Fearon endured the notorious council-run Shirley Oaks children’s home and became suicidal after being raped every week for two years from the age of 12.

Sandra has demanded the council be held accountable for its role in the scandal.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, she said: “Lambeth Council has blood on its hands. It was complicit and employed paedophiles at Shirley Oaks – there should be a criminal investigation into staff who covered it up.

“A lot of children from Shirley Oaks killed themselves. The list is horrendous.”

She also slammed the authority for cutting funding to a group gathering evidence of the widespread abuse, leaving survivors to fund it themselves.

The council said it has paid out millions to survivors through its redress scheme and has offered counselling and support to victims.

Sandra’s story On Sandra’s ninth birthday, her mother suffered a blood clot and passed away.

She had been living with both parents in West London, but her father was unable to cope with the death.

Sandra, now 69, said: “He was grieving because of my mum. He developed mental issues and started drinking.”

She and her two brothers moved in with their grandmother but after a couple of years they were placed in care.

Both Sandra’s brothers went straight to Shirley Oaks in Croydon, but she spent three months in a home in Wandsworth – where she was drugged and repeatedly raped.

Sandra was 12 when she moved to Shirley Oaks. She said: “I had only been there two weeks when I was asked by a house parent to go and see the doctor on site. When I got there this man violently raped me.

“He started off my telling me to take all my clothes off and I knew it was wrong. I was brought up in a Catholic home – the only person who had ever seen me without my clothes on was my mum.

“He held me down and put something over my head. I was tiny, I actually looked about nine or 10.

“After I was hysterical and covered in blood because I was haemorrhaging. He told me to get up, put my clothes on and go.

“When I went back, my house parent said just go upstairs and lay down. She was aware, she was a brutal lady.”

The abuse from the same man continued for two years on a weekly basis before a teacher stepped in after seeing Sandra’s health deteriorate.

She said: “I got to a point where I couldn’t cope anymore. My system was so depressed that my hair started falling out.

“The class teacher noticed and pulled me out of class one day and said the headmaster needs to have a word with you.

“I said to him and my teacher that ‘I just want to die’. There was a situation when I was going to school one day and I was seconds from killing myself, chucking myself under a bus.”

The headmaster sent her to the school nurse, who coaxed it out of her.

Sandra said: “At first I didn’t answer because I’d been threatened. He said something worse would happen to me, that I’d be taken away and locked up somewhere and I’d never see my brothers again.”

The nurse asked to look at the top of Sandra’s legs, which were badly infected.

She said: “I don’t know what action the school took but I was never asked to go back to see the man again.”

But police were never called and Sandra has internal damage from the abuse she suffered. She said the man responsible and the house parent are both dead.

Racial abuse The abuse in the home was not just sexual. Sandra said staff used to fill a bath of water and dunk children’s heads under so they would “feel like they were drowning”.

Her older brother, who was also abused, was often beaten and left outside during the night in winter in his pyjamas. Food delivered for the children was sold off by staff.

Sandra said there was “extreme and violent racial abuse” of the black children in the home, some of them just five years old.

She said: “My parents didn’t have those prejudices so I didn’t understand what racial abuse was – I didn’t understand the language.

“The children bonded in the home, whether we were black or white. When you’re a child you don’t see black or white and we only had each other.”

Sandra did a secretarial course when she was 14, passed her exams, and eventually started work for the City of London.

She was later sponsored by a company to do a business college course and studied the stock market, accountancy, and contract law.

At 21 she bought her own flat in Surrey. She moved to north Devon in 1997 and now runs a holiday home letting business.

Until she was contacted the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association (SOSA) seven years ago, she never spoke about the abuse to anyone.

The group was set up by survivor Raymond Stevenson and his business partner Lucia Hinton.

Both Raymond and Lucia have dedicated the last seven years to gathering evidence and are responsible for highlighting the horrific scale of the abuse suffered by children.

Sandra said: “I was reluctant to ring up because it stirs up everything, you’re reliving it all again.

“It’s the shame – you don’t know how someone’s reaction is going to be. From the first meeting with SOSA had massive faith in them.

“Raymond and Lucia told us whatever happens, we will never let you down. We’ll be here for you right until the end.”

The inquiry and what the council says After the survivor’s group uncovered the scale of abuse in children’s homes, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was launched and took place in summer, 2020.

Its report, published on July 27, found that for decades children in Lambeth’s care were subjected to levels of cruelty and sexual abuse that are “hard to comprehend”.

The inquiry, which looked at abuse from the 1960s onwards, heard that already vulnerable children were targeted by paedophiles working at children’s homes controlled by the council.

It also heard that prominent politicians and businessmen were alleged to have been involved in the abuse against children.

Despite the widespread abuse, the authorities failed to look into allegations at the time.

The Inquiry has called for a criminal investigation to be considered into the council’s handling of the case of a child who took his own life while in care.

A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “As the IICSA Report sets out, the council of the past failed to protect many of its most vulnerable children. A disproportionate number of those children were from Black, Asian and Multi-Ethnic backgrounds.

“The extent and scale of the horrendous abuse, which took place over many decades, is deeply shocking.

“The Lambeth Children’s Homes Redress Scheme in part honours our pledge to face up to the mistakes of the past. Lambeth is the first local authority in England and Wales to develop its own redress scheme, and has so far it has paid £71.5million in compensation.

“It is quicker on average than going through court, and of 1,877 applications made to the scheme so far more than 75 per cent fully completed and processed.

“All applicants are offered independent legal representation at the council’s expense. We also offer advisory support for survivors, counselling services, the offer of a meeting with a senior council representative and a formal letter of apology.

“There is also an Independent Appeal Panel for survivors wanting to challenge their award, and Equality Impact Assessments on the scheme have been carried out.

“Lambeth has gone further than any council in the UK in developing the redress scheme which was established in 2018 after extensive consultation with victims and survivors. It is regrettable that the survivors group did not endorse the scheme.

“But as the abuse dates back as far as the 1930s some survivors have been nearing the end of their lives without redress, acknowledgement or the support they deserve, so it was important the Redress Scheme opened as soon as possible.

“The scheme is designed in an open and transparent way, with external and internal reviews to ensure that’s the case. It offers far more comprehensive financial and non-financial redress than any other alternative in the country, and we believe it is just and fair.

“We will continue to listen to survivors as we formulate our proposals to formally mark, and ensure, the events of the past in our borough are never forgotten.”