Public inquiry call into alleged abuse at children's home

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

A public inquiry should be held into alleged child abuse at a Maidenhead children’s home in the 1960s, a councillor has said.

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 at the time that the home’s manager, Don Prescott, ran a paedophile ring from it between 1964 and 1970.

Councillor Neil Knowles wants the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to call for an inquiry into how no action was taken.

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.

The home closed before Berkshire County Council dissolved in 1998.

The abuse only came to light in 2000 when one of the survivors, then aged in his 40s, went to Thames Valley Police after suffering a nervous breakdown.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead never ran the home itself but responsibility passed to it after Berkshire County Council dissolved and it paid the settlement.

Alan Collins, a solicitor who acted for the nine men, said Mr Prescott was a violent man whose abuse ranged from humiliating the boys when they wet the bed to "the worst type of sexual abuse".

Mr Collins said in 2006: "Unfortunately for the boys staying at Green Field House, it was the centre of a paedophile ring numbering so many men some of the boys lost count of those who abused them.

"They suffered the most horrendous abuse – it was the worst type of sexual abuse. They were filmed, photographed and had to take part in the abuse. What was surprising was that it went on for six years."

Mr Knowles, who represents Old Windsor, will ask councillors to support the public inquiry at a meeting on Wednesday.