Andris Logins jailed for Nottinghamshire children's home sex abuse

Andris Logins, now 57, was in his twenties when he abused the children at Beechwood Community Home

A man who sexually abused children at a care home where he worked in the 1980s has been jailed for 20 years.

Andris Logins, 57, is the first carer to be convicted as part of a police inquiry into historical abuse at children's homes in Nottinghamshire.

He was aged 22 to 27 when he abused the children - two girls and two boys - at Beechwood Community Home in Mapperley.

The former social worker was found guilty of 17 charges at Nottingham Crown Court on Monday.

'Home from hell'

Police became involved when a woman went to officers and told them she had been raped by Logins when she was 15.

Beechwood Community Home, in Mapperley, Nottingham, has now been demolished

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His trial heard Logins had photographed one colleague twisting a boy's heel and burning him with a cigarette. On the back of the photo he had written: "Childcare at its best".

Det Insp Mandy Johnson said the "brutal" regime at the Nottingham care home made children too afraid to report abusive staff.

"Punishments were quite brutal, people being kicked and punched, and split lips and bloodied noses, which made it very difficult for the children to be able to go to staff to disclose what was happening to them," she said.

Sentencing Logins, Judge James Sampson said he had committed "a grave breach of trust".

"What should have been a safe haven was in fact a home from hell," Judge Sampson said. "You were compliant in physical violence, you dished it out in a sadistic fashion.

"You befriended, groomed then sexually abused them."

Andris Logins started working at the children's home in 1981 - the year a BBC documentary featuring the facility was broadcast

Prosecutor Mary Prior QC said Logins would develop a caring rapport with his victims before abusing them.

In his evidence, Logins, of Stiles Road, Arnold, Nottingham, accepted there could have been abuse at the home but was adamant it was not carried out by him.

He claimed his four victims "had got the wrong man" and suggested the descriptions given could have fitted other men who worked at the home.

The charges in full:

• Two counts of raping a girl aged 14 between January and October 1984

• Two counts of raping a girl under 16 between January and October 1984

• Four indecent assaults on a boy aged under 16 between October 1980 and May 1981

• Three indecent assaults on a girl under 16 between January and October 1984

• Three indecent assaults on a girl aged 14 between January and October 1984

• One act of child cruelty between January and September 1984

James - not his real name, was beaten and forced to strip before being sexually humiliated by Logins

One of the male victims was 14 when Logins dragged him into his office, punched him until he "cowed on the floor", forced him to undress and then stared at his penis.

Logins was convicted of child cruelty in relation to this.

His victim told the BBC: "All I remember is crying, thinking to myself why is he doing it to me?

"Every day is now a challenge to get up. I'm off work at the moment with stress.

"I drink every day, cry most days. It was wrong, evil."

Katie, not her real name, was 14 when Logins repeatedly raped and indecently assaulted her

One of the girls abused by Logins said she still has "constant" panic attacks and anxiety attacks because of what happened to her.

"You live with it day in, day out. I feel like I'm doing a life sentence here," she told the BBC.

"He wasn't a carer. He was just nothing more than an abuser."

Logins' lawyer said his client was "suckered into a regime he became part of".

Nottinghamshire County Council leader Alan Rhodes will make "an unreserved apology" to the victims at a council meeting on Thursday as the authority "failed to protect children in its care".

"I welcome this lengthy custodial sentence for a man who blatantly betrayed his position of trust with vulnerable children," Mr Rhodes said.

"The outcome in this case is proof that victims will be listened to and believed."