Council calls for children's home abuse inquiry

The council paid out more than £300,000 to the alleged victims in 2006

A council has unanimously supported a call for a public inquiry into alleged child abuse at a Maidenhead children's home in the 1960s.

Nine men received an out-of-court settlement totalling more than £300,000 in 2006 after they said they were abused at Green Field House.

The victims' solicitor said the home’s manager, Don Prescott, ran a paedophile ring from it between 1964 and 1970.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead backed a councillor’s call for a government-led inquiry into why no action was taken to stop it.

The home was run by the now-defunct Berkshire County Council as a boarding home for “maladjusted” boys, who had problems at school or home.

Mr Prescott, who is thought to have died in the late 1980s, is alleged to have rented out boys to paedophiles as far afield as Leicester and Cambridge.

He left the home in 1970 and was never charged with any offences.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead did not run the home itself but responsibility passed to it after Berkshire County Council was dissolved in 1998.

Councillor Carole Da Costa, who said she is a survivor of abuse at another home, said the inquiry could help victims to “heal”.

She said: “I speak as a care-experienced survivor who was placed into residential care as a place of safety from my abusers.

"This children’s home did not meet that description and was not a place of safety with physical, emotional and sexual abuse being a daily occurrence.

“As such I understand the harm these boys have lived through and the need for them to have their experience acknowledged.”

She said an inquiry could help those “rendered voiceless”.

Councillor Neil Knowles, who has led the call for an inquiry, said the Royal Borough doesn’t have "extensive archives" about the home as it was never in charge of it.

But he said the council must find out the truth about how authorities allowed the abuse to continue.

"Sadly none of this can bring the childhood back for these boys and I don’t think it will bring closure, but it might provide answers to questions in the minds of each of them," he said.