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Other allegations of abuse during this period

  15.21  The Deputy Officer-in-Charge of Cartrefle from 1 December 1980 to 14 September 1990 was Heather Patricia Lynn, who was 29 years old at the date of her appointment. She had previously been employed by Clwyd County Council as an RCCO at Upper Downing Children's Home from 1 October 1975[241] and then at Cartrefle from 20 December 1976. She was appointed to the post of Deputy after an interview by a panel of three, presided over by Geoffrey Wyatt, following advertisement of the post externally and internally. She was, however, largely untrained and comparatively inexperienced. After clerical work, she had been employed as a residential nursery assistant at a Leonard Cheshire home, working with handicapped children, for 12 months before going to Upper Downing. At that time she attended a brief introduction course and she later followed, in her own time, an Open University course on the care of children but she had no formal qualifications.

  15.22  Heather Lynn had to resign from her post with effect from 14 September 1990 following her admission that she had had a sexual relationship with a boy resident at Cartrefle. That boy (W), who was born on 6 April 1973, was resident at Cartrefle for six months from about January 1986 and then from January 1987 to 6 April 1990, when he moved to approved lodgings with Henry Morton Stanley, who had been an RCCO at Cartrefle since December 1985, and his wife Jane.

  15.23  According to W, he was sexually abused by Norris persistently up to February 1990, although he was never buggered. His sexual relationship with Heather Lynn began when he was helping her to decorate her own house and intercourse occurred between them on seven or eight occasions in the staff room at Cartrefle and at her home over a period of about six months. It ended, said W, when Heather Lynn was "becoming serious".

  15.24  The precise circumstances in which this liaison came to be disclosed are unclear. Lynn said in a written statement to the Tribunal that she told the police about it when she was interviewed in the course of their first Norris investigation and the Social Services Department was then informed. The admission was not included in her statements to the police but this may be because it was not relevant to the Norris investigation. What is clear is that she made a written statement to Geoffrey Wyatt in the presence of others on 8 August 1990, at the Shire Hall, Mold, in which she admitted having sexual intercourse with W three or four times at her home in April and May 1989, "just after his" (16th) "birthday". She attributed her conduct to her low emotional state on the ending of an 11 years relationship but added "I knew that W was in care and that it should not have happened, it was my fault not W's". She alleged, however, that both Stanley and Norris were aware of the affair and that Stanley had told her he knew. W confirmed in his own statement that he told Stanley about it.

  15.25  Following the making of this statement, a disciplinary hearing was arranged for 17 August 1990 but had to be adjourned to 14 September 1990 because Lynn was unwell. She then sent her letter of resignation the day before the hearing was to take place. It is to be noted that in a statement made to the Tribunal on 17 March 1997 Lynn disclosed that she had an affair with another former resident of Cartrefle, who came to her as a lodger on his discharge from care at the age of 18 years. The dates when this occurred are not stated but she alleged that she made enquiries of the Officer-in-Charge of Cartrefle who confirmed that she did not need any authority to take the man as a lodger because he had been discharged from care. W subsequently lodged with her on and off between 1993 and 1996 but the sexual relationship was not resumed.

  15.26  W's relationship with another member of the Cartrefle staff, namely, Henry Morton Stanley, was yet another cause for concern. There has not been any allegation by W against Stanley but a number of members of staff were concerned that Stanley had become unhealthily emotionally involved with W. Stanley was still a young man when he was at Cartrefle, having been born on 7 January 1963. He had entered social service young, at the age of 19 years, and had initially served for three years at children's homes in Prestatyn before moving to Cartrefle in December 1985. Throughout the period from 1982 he was employed as a temporary RCCO and member of the Temporary Relief Pool but he was appointed to a permanent post as RCCO at Cartrefle from 24 April 1988. He held a Preliminary Certificate in Social Care which he had obtained in July 1982 but he said in evidence that he has more recently obtained a degree in youth and community education.

  15.27  He remained at Cartrefle until about 12 July 1990, when he began sick leave, which was extended as special leave to December 1990. From 5 December 1990 he was redeployed as a temporary social worker attached to the East Division, subject to review after six months, but he resigned on 30 May 1991, saying that he felt that he had no alternative "under the circumstances of the pending conclusion of the review"[242]. However, in accepting the resignation the following day, the Director of Social Services, John Jevons, said "I am not aware of any reason why you should feel that the Review of Cartrefle Children's Home should cause you to resign".

  15.28  The immediate reason for Stanley's earlier departure from Cartrefle on sick leave was that he felt himself to be on the verge of a breakdown. The causes of his condition were, however, complex and may never be fully disclosed. He had himself been abused as a child so that the disclosures of abuse by Norris were likely to have had a particularly severe impact on him. He denied in evidence that he had been obsessed with W but the fact remains that he did obtain approval for W to lodge with him and his wife on leaving Cartrefle with the result that W stayed with them from 6 April 1990; and some time after 17 June 1990, when Stanley was told by the first complainant of Norris' sexual abuse, W also confided in Stanley that Norris had abused him similarly.

  15.29 Another factor in Stanley's overall state was his allegedly poor relationship with other members of the residential care staff. He had reported Heather Lynn's association with W to Norris in 1989 after W had told him about it and had said that he (W) wanted it to stop. Stanley had assumed that Norris would report the matter to his line manager but Norris had not done so: a serious disciplinary matter, therefore, remained unresolved. There was also wider tension because other members of the residential staff did not believe the boys' allegations against Norris, whereas Stanley firmly did; and had been instrumental in bringing them to official notice and some may have resented Stanley's assumption of some administrative responsibilities, outside his actual duties, due to Norris' failings.

  15.30  Stanley initially expressed his willingness to return to Cartrefle after his sick leave because the counselling that he had received had been very supportive and he was prepared to try to work through any problems arising from the feelings of other members of the staff towards him. A meeting with the other members of staff was then held at Cartrefle on 14 November 1990, when all of them expressed their willingness to work with Stanley but he said that, on balance, he did not wish to return to Cartrefle because to do so would probably affect the stability of the staff and children built up over many months.

  15.31  A further perturbing development was that, shortly before Stanley resigned, he discovered that W was having an affair with his wife, then aged 32 years and employed as a cook and care assistant at Park House Children's Home. W thereupon ceased to lodge with the Stanleys and Mrs Stanley resigned her employment.

  15.32  Only one former resident of Cartrefle has alleged sexual abuse by Stanley and the circumstances of that isolated and uncorroborated allegation are such that we are unable to regard it as reliable. The witness's main complaints were of frequent abuse by Norris and he did not make any allegations against Stanley to the police or to anyone else until January 1992. Since then his allegations against Stanley have varied and his oral evidence, alleging buggery by Stanley in the vicinity of water towers, (misplaced by him as near Buckley when they are near Broughton airfield), mirrored unconvincingly one of his allegations against Norris. This witness alleged also that Stanley, on a different occasion, slashed the witness's left thigh when they were in a wood together as a warning to him not to tell anyone what had happened, but Stanley refuted this and the primary allegation of sexual abuse vehemently, stressing his own response to the disclosures of Norris' abuse. For similar reasons we were unimpressed by the suggestion by another witness, who was unwilling to give oral evidence, that Stanley must have observed Norris abusing him in his bedroom on one occasion in or about 1987.

  15.33  Our conclusion about Stanley is that there is no acceptable evidence that he was guilty of sexual or other abuse of children during his period as a residential care worker. However, in the light of the events that had happened and his own vulnerability, we think that his decision not to return to Cartrefle was wise, in his own best interests and those of the children.

  15.34  The one Cartrefle complainant of this period who did not complain of abuse by Norris singled out a long standing woman member of the residential care staff, Paula Dean, for criticism; and it was his complaint that led to her dismissal. He alleged that, at teatime on 19 July 1988, she had become angry when he was unable ("too full") to eat a barbecue rib that she had provided for him. In her anger she "ripped his T-shirt off his back" and hit him once with the back of her left hand, which was in plaster. The boy had run out of the house and stayed out an hour. On his return, according to his oral evidence, Paula Dean behaved as if nothing had happened and he reported the matter to his "carer", another member of the staff, the next day. However, a note of what the boy said on August 1988 reads:

"After lunch or about 1 pm.

I refused to eat king ribs, if you don't eat them, then you go to bed.

I ran out through the door. David told me to come in as Paula wanted me. I said 'no'. David pushed me towards her and she caught hold of my tee-shirt.

She pushed me outside by the caravan. She told me to get my shirt off. I said 'no' so she tore it off. She pushed me into the kitchen and told me to take my trousers off. I said 'no'. So she got hold of my arm and pushed it up my back, doing this her nails scratched my back. She then pushed me upstairs and told me to get my pants off then into bed. I did it. The bruise was when she pushed me onto the radiator in my bedroom."

  15.35  It appears that the boy complained to his parents as well as his "carer" and the upshot was a formal complaint to the Director of Social Services by solicitors acting for the parents. Paula Dean was suspended from 12 August 1988 and a disciplinary hearing took place in November 1988. She denied then and in her evidence to us that she had caused any injury to the boy. She had written an account of the incident in the occurrence file describing the boy's misbehaviour, starting with a tantrum over a toy car, and his clothes had been taken from him only because he had said that "he was doing a runner".

  15.36  In the event no finding was made that Dean had assaulted the boy. The decision to dismiss her was based on a finding that she had caused him undue distress by requiring him to undress and remain in his bedroom when she knew or should have known from the background to his entry into care that the effect of her action would be much more disturbing to him than to other boys. This finding of misconduct, following an earlier final written warning of 11 May 1988, was regarded as sufficient to justify Dean's dismissal and an appeal against the decision was dismissed on 16 December 1988. She then made an application to an industrial tribunal on the ground of unfair dismissal but her claim was settled on terms that have not been disclosed to us. From Cartrefle she went to work at a home for the elderly.

  15.37  The only other complaint that we heard against Paula Dean was that she struck another boy resident several times after he had made a particularly obscene suggestion to her. He alleged that the blows were backhanders and that a permanent slight indentation on his right cheek had been caused by one of the large rings on her fingers. It was not this incident, however, that led to Dean's final warning. Stanley's evidence was that she was disciplined for throwing a chair at a child following a complaint by him about her action and that this was a factor in staff hostility towards him.

  15.38  We are aware of significant complaints of abuse against only one other identified person (X) who was a member of the staff at Cartrefle during Norris' period. The allegations by a witness who gave oral evidence to the Tribunal are that X repeatedly abused him sexually on visits to a sauna bath on Deeside and that X assaulted him physically also on one occasion at Cartrefle with the result that he needed treatment to his neck at a Chester hospital. It was not possible to serve a 'Salmon Letter' on X, however, and the allegations were not made until the witness was interviewed by Tribunal staff in January 1997 so that it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.

The regime generally during Norris' period

  15.39  It would be misleading to conclude the account of Cartrefle during this period without reference to severe wider criticisms that we heard in evidence of the regime and conditions at Cartrefle. Raymond Bew, for example, who had been a colleague (but not a friend) of Norris at Bryn Estyn, described the home as "a Mickey Mouse operation": it was neglected and rundown. There was no direction for the children and nothing to do other than watch television; they did not do what normal children of their age did but just lounged about and they were not encouraged to mix with the local community. This witness was also sufficiently concerned about the level of violence in the home to make a log entry to that effect.

  15.40  Stanley was equally trenchant in his observations. He said that the home was like a zoo, chaotic. The children, the staff, nobody knew what anybody was doing or where anybody was because that was the way it functioned. There were no policies, no protocols, no staff meetings, no liaison, no recommendations, no constructive criticism. Other staff members regarded Norris as a joke and field workers regarded him as an idiot but he seemed to be held in high regard by more senior officials for his unorthodox approach. Stanley's view, which we accept, is that Norris was incapable of running the home administratively. He was almost illiterate and unable to deal with the routine paperwork in an acceptable manner. As for the physical condition of the home, the picture given by Stanley was bleak and depressing. He said:

"It was threadbare carpets and three-piece suites that came from somebody else's skip or other home that had closed. The curtains were poor, the beds were poor, they were soiled. The decor was dismal and it was atrocious really. Sorry, but it was."

  15.41  In the light of these views of two former members of the staff, it is not surprising that a disabled former resident said in his oral evidence to the Tribunal that he hated Cartrefle. He had been in a wheelchair all his life and he wondered why he had been put there (initially for short periods of respite care but later for months at a time) with offenders, when he had no criminal record. He was picked on a lot by the other boys, who used to call him "spastic" and things like that, and he got blamed for things that he did not do. He felt frustrated. This witness was one of Norris' many sexual victims and his opinion was that Norris could not run the place: it was out of control.

The Cartrefle Inquiry

  15.42  In November 1990, after Norris' conviction and sentence on the first indictment brought against him[243], Clwyd County Council instructedJohn F Banham, a retired senior officer of Cheshire Social Services Department, to act as an independent reviewing officer on its behalf and to present a report into the events at and around Cartrefle Children's Home when residents were victims of sexual abuse. The Clwyd Area Child Protection Committee was informed of this initiative and decided to call for agency case reviews from the Health Authority and the Education Department in an attempt to conform with procedures recommended in Part Nine of Working Together (1988)[244] . The review on behalf of the Health Authority was carried out by Dr Kathleen Dalzell and that on behalf of the Education Department by David Lund, Co-ordinator of Support Services. The three reports were presented by June 1991 and the Clwyd ACPC then appointed an independent panel of inquiry of five senior professionals to provide an overview, envisaging that four days at the beginning of July would be required to carry out their terms of reference. A robust response was given to this time estimate and the panel's own report was presented in February 1992 or soon thereafter.

  15.43  The Banham report and the panel's own report of its overview of the three reports that it considered together form a strong indictment of the regime at Cartrefle and of its management, both internally and externally. The panel's report extended to 39 pages, excluding its appendices, and the Banham report to 32 pages so that it is impracticable here even to summarise them in great detail. It is, however, necessary to refer to the most striking and relevant points that emerged from them.

  15.44  Banham's findings in relation to the internal management of the home included the following:

(a)  Norris failed to manage the home in any acceptable way.

(b)  He hated administration and the state of the paperwork was chaotic.

(c)  Stanley's status within the home appeared to be inappropriate having regard to his seniority and caused resentment.

(d)  The staff group under Norris were largely recruited from a pool and untrained.

(e)  Norris failed to give any induction training to new staff and left them to operate as they pleased.

(f)  The sickness records of Norris and Heather Lynn were appalling, showing a pattern of absences.

(g)  The staff at Cartrefle were frequently required to run the home without their supervisors and there was no practice of staff supervision. There was no set work programme; no clear role definition was given or agreed; no planned or progressive approach was made to help with the considerable range of problems presented by the boys in residence; and no staff meetings were held.

(h)  The home was used for cases outside its brief, purpose and resources. Placed under emergency, the boys' needs were not assessed and they seemed to have emotional and psychological problems that called for skilled and expert handling unavailable at Cartrefle.

(i)  Prior to the discovery of Norris' abuse the ambience of the home and physical facilities had been described as "run down, poor, unhomely and uninviting".

(j)  There was no evidence that anyone read the log books, other than members of staff on hand over from one shift to another.

(k)  Norris discouraged any close involvement by staff as 'key workers' and there were few actual case reviews within the home.

15.45  Banham identified three members of the headquarters staff as responsible externally for the management of Cartrefle at the time when Norris' abuse was disclosed and before a major departmental re-structuring was put into effect in October 1990. The first line manager was Michael Barnes as Principal Social Worker from 1988 onwards; and he had as his assistant a Residential and Day Care Officer - Child Care (Norman Green). Barnes, in turn, was responsible to the Principal Officer (Children and Family Services), who was John Llewellyn Thomas.

  15.46  Commenting upon the responsibilities of this trio of officers, Banham said "There is no doubt that theirs was a heavy workload, which was added to when certain duties from the retired Assistant Director were devolved. The Residential and Day Care Officer focussed more onto the "commendable effort" to extend training to residential staff....... The Principal Officer took on responsibility for the Children Act 1989 implementation, whilst the Principal Social Worker faced demands which often had him work long and tiring hours". Nevertheless, Banham's conclusion was that many specific duties resting with the management team had not been fulfilled: in his opinion, if they had been met, the climate of sexuality could not have matured and the inhibitions to abuse would have been greater. Discovery too should have been made possible earlier and easier.

  15.47  This report contained an account also of how Barnes' early intention to make monthly visits to Cartrefle had waned because of his disapproval of Norris and his inability to get through to him. Barnes reprimanded Norris about his use of foul and sexual language and raised various concerns about the running of Cartrefle without any positive response, with the result that Barnes made fewer visits than he had planned. Banham commented "This type of situation has classic elements and symptoms to it, which any manager must guard against and overcome" and he stressed Clwyd's need for a training programme to enable their managers to develop the skills needed in middle ranking and senior posts.

  15.48  Both the panel and Banham discussed also the response of Clwyd Social Services Department to the disclosures of Norris' abuse when they were eventually made in June 1990. Major criticisms were of (a) the failure to implement properly the Child Protection procedures because of confusion or at least uncertainty about the applicability of those procedures to children in care, attributable possibly to an assumption that such children were "safe", (b) the arrangements for the disposal of some of the victims without adequate case conferences, exchanges of information and counselling for residents and staff and (c) inexcusable delay of five months in setting up an inquiry into what had occurred.

15.49  Other points emerging from the conclusions and recommendations of these reports were:

(i)  The need for a full rigorous interview of candidates for appointment to key child care posts, over-riding any redeployment agreement with trades unions.

(ii) External advertisement and open competition should be automatic when filling all middle and senior manager posts and rigorous attempts should be made to recruit women into such posts.

(iii) It was a sad indictment of the child care service in Clwyd that not one of the children at Cartrefle had a written assessment or care plan. Amongst the contributory factors to this were an unintegrated fieldwork and residential structure leading to lack of co-ordination and communication on assessment, planning and review matters; and the failure of managers to set a clear expectation of the standards to be maintained in this area and to monitor performance.

(iv) There was poor liaison with the Health Authority and Education Departments.

(v) The evidence suggested that it was not established practice to involve the child, parents, residential staff and other interested persons in the review process. Senior managers (it was suggested) were more concerned to have the reviews carried out in time than that they should be comprehensive and purposeful.

(vi) Managers and senior managers in Clwyd must ensure that programmes using the Central Government specific grant and internal training budgets reflected the essential priority of relevant training of residential care staff, including such matters as communicating with children, awareness of child abuse, awareness of child protection procedures, the management of disruptive and aggressive behaviour.

(vii) A practice manual was needed for residential care workers.

(viii) Children should have access to information and procedures by which they might express their anxieties/dissatisfactions about their care, make a complaint or challenge decisions about them. They should also have an A - Z guide containing all relevant information about their position etc.

(ix) Clwyd Social Services Department should review its policy in respect of staff becoming foster parents, providing lodging for young people in care and, generally, taking children in care into their private homes.

(x)  Written guidance for staff should make clear their duty to report abusive behaviour to the line manager (or above, if the line manager is involved or condones the behaviour or fails to take appropriate action about it).

  15.50  There were many other excellent detailed recommendations in these reports to which it is not necessary to refer at this stage. They dealt, for example, with the need to create a senior post with lead responsibility for Child Care Services; the evaluation, monitoring and inspection of residential care services; the role of councillors; and various inter-agency issues. We will comment on most of these matters in a later part of this report and will refer again to the Cartrefle Inquiry in that context.

The final period, 8 July 1990 to 12 March 1993

  15.51   Frederick Marshall Jones took over as Temporary or Acting Officer-in-Charge of Cartrefle with effect from 8 July 1990[245]. It does not appear that he was interviewed for the post formally but he had been interviewed by a panel of four, including John Llewellyn Thomas, Michael Barnes and Norman Green, as recently as 19 September 1989, when it was decided to appoint him as Assistant Centre Manager of Bersham Hall. His temporary appointment at Cartrefle was made permanent early in December 1990, probably from 1 December 1990, but John Llewellyn Thomas admitted two months later that the Council's failure to advertise the post had been a mistake.

  15.52  Marshall Jones was suspended from duty with effect from 17 September 1992 as the result of a preliminary investigation carried out the previous day by Karen Anne Reilly, the Deputy Service Manager, Children's Services, for the East Division. This investigation had, in turn, been triggered by reports from the NUPE representative, Kevin Mallon, who had relayed to the Staffing Officer the concerns and anxieties of the staff at Cartrefle about Marshall Jones' conduct towards the children. Heather Lynn and Henry Morton Stanley had departed shortly after Marshall Jones had arrived and the new Deputy Officer-in-Charge from 22 April 1991 was Paul Arthur Kenyon so that it was he and five RCCOs employed at Cartrefle who were interviewed by Reilly.

  15.53  The general tenor of the complaints by these members of the staff about Marshall Jones was that his behaviour towards the resident children was threatening and intimidating and that, on occasions, he would use physical force towards them. Both the children and some members of the staff were frightened of him. Particular reference was made to Marshall Jones' conduct when four of the children had barricaded themselves in the bedroom of one of them shortly after Christmas 1991 and had placed furniture against the door. It was alleged that one boy had been dragged by the hair downstairs despite already having stitches in his head, and later held in a stranglehold as well as by the hair. Another boy had been grabbed and pushed downstairs. The staff spoke also of incidents that had occurred on 10 or 11 August 1992, the morning of the children's departure to France on holiday with Marshall Jones and some other members of the staff, when another boy had been held by the throat and punched. It was said also by most of the staff interviewed that they suspected that Marshall Jones was being forced to bribe some of the boys not to complain about him.

  15.54  It was on the basis of these disclosures that Marshall Jones was suspended from duty the following day by Graham Harper, the Divisional Director (East), in the presence of his NALGO representative: in a letter dated 21 September 1992 it was stated that the allegations against him were that from December 1991 he had assaulted three of the child residents at Cartrefle. The allegations were passed on to the North Wales Police and Marshall Jones was interviewed in February 1993 about these and many other allegations, arising mainly from his employment at Chevet Hey[246]. The papers were passed to the Crown Prosecution Service in June 1993 but we do not know when the decision not to prosecute him was taken. He remained on full pay, despite the closure of Cartrefle in March 1993, until his employment was terminated (as we understand it, by agreement) on the ground of redundancy on 30 November 1994, following discussions with his union representative.

  15.55  Apart from the three boys referred to in the letter confirming Marshall Jones' suspension, we are aware of two other former residents of Cartrefle who allege that they were assaulted by him; and we received in evidence the statements of two of these five complainants, who gave a sufficient account of the main incidents.

  15.56  One of these two witnesses was the boy who was pushed downstairs following the barricading incident. He alleged a deliberate push that caused him to slide down about seven steps but he was not hurt in any way. He did not allege any other violence by Marshall Jones on that occasion but he was threatened and he cried. The barricading had been a spur of the moment prank at about 12.30 am by four of the six boys in the home at the time. Of Marshall Jones generally, he said "Marshall wasn't liked by the staff and lots of the kids. They didn't like his attitude and some of the grudges he used to have. I did like him sometimes and he did a lot for me, he sorted out a lot of my problems"[247]. This witness did not want to pursue any charges against him.

  15.57  The other witness, who was not admitted to Cartrefle until 12 March 1992, when he was 14 years old, was more critical and said that Marshall Jones was one of the worst people he had ever met. Both witnesses referred to the incidents that occurred in August 1992 just before the departure for France and during the holiday there. There is no doubt that two of the residents behaved provocatively on the morning of the departure by demanding to go to Chester before they left in a minibus. Marshall Jones suspected that they wanted to buy alcohol and was understandably annoyed. The result was that there was some physical interplay and shouting between him and one of the boys and he was called an offensive name. The allegation is that Marshall Jones grabbed the boy by the collar and either threw him across the room or back on to the sofa on which he had been sitting.

  15.58  As for the main alleged incident during the holiday, it appears that an argument flared up at a camp site because Marshall Jones thought (wrongly) that the boys had been sniggering at a suggestion that he was "fiddling" the petty cash. On failing to obtain an answer about what had been said from one of the boys, Marshall Jones is alleged to have taken his revenge by squashing the boy's neck with his forearm in a wrestling hold, punching the boy in the chest and pushing him into a prickly hedge, after which Marshall Jones invited the boy to play 'crazy golf' with him by way of amends.

  15.59  Marshall Jones denied using any violence on these occasions although he admitted gently pushing the first of the two witnesses by his back through the door of the barricaded room and ushering him to his own dormitory. One member of the staff under him also gave him some support in her evidence. She worked at Cartrefle from March 1990 for about three years as an unqualified care worker, during the evenings and at week-ends. She thought that Marshall Jones had been given a very difficult job, bearing in mind the attention being given to the home by newspapers and other media: the staff had been told that they could not afford another scandal and that the place had to be "squeaky clean". Nevertheless, there was often a near riot at Cartrefle. Marshall Jones was quite patient and would spend long periods trying to communicate with the boys even though he came across as brusque and as a sergeant-major type. In her experience his bark was worse than his bite and she never saw him use excessive force against a child, nor did she ever receive a complaint to that effect.

  15.60  This last witness spoke also of a conversation that she had had with two of the complainants in which they had said that they had made false allegations to the police about the barricaded room incident in order to have Marshall Jones prosecuted, because they did not like him. On another occasion they had said that they were going to get a woman member of the staff the sack; and one of the two had cut his forearms after another incident involving a male member of the staff. However, the witness who alleged that he was pushed downstairs was one of those two complainants and his statements to the police coupled with the accounts given by members of the staff when interviewed by Reilly do not bear out the suggestion that false or exaggerated allegations were made. If the conversations took place, the boys may simply have been bragging mischievously.

  15.61  Our conclusion about this period is that Marshall Jones was very ill-suited to the particularly difficult task that he had been set as Officer-in-Charge in succession to Norris. He continued to rule by intimidation, which affected other members of the staff as well as the resident children, and he resorted to violence on some occasions when dealing with provocative and difficult boys. We are not satisfied, however, that he regularly used excessive force during this period and there were some positive aspects to his regime. He did, for example, introduce a complaints box for the children to use and he did make some successful efforts to involve himself in the problems of the children under his care. Overall, however, the many failings of this community home identified in the reports that we have summarised remained largely unremedied because the inquiry came too late for effective remedial action to be taken at Cartrefle.

Other allegations of abuse during this period

  15.62  As far as we are aware only three other members of the staff at Cartrefle during this last period have been named by complainants and each of these staff members was named by only one complainant. In the event we received evidence from only one of the complainants who described a minimal incident in which he was grabbed by the hand, after taking a male staff member's cigarette lighter as a joke, and suffered no injury. It is sufficient to say that the boy himself said that he did not wish any police action to be taken against the member of staff and asked "that no further interest be taken by any agency into this incident".

General conclusions about Cartrefle

  15.63  Despite the fact that Cartrefle was a purpose built community home caring for quite a small number of children, its history from 1984 onwards was disastrous. We consider later in this report the failures of higher management that contributed to this lamentable result but the reports of the Cartrefle Inquiry gave clear pointers to the scale of the shortcomings of Clwyd Social Services Department generally in relation to this home. At the root of the problem was unsuitable staffing: in particular, Norris, Lynn and Marshall Jones, in varying degrees, were manifestly unsuitable for the senior posts to which they were appointed and this should have been known to the Department in the light of their respective records of employment and the information that ought to have been available. But there was a wide spectrum of other failures embracing such matters as the placement policy for children in care, the recruitment of untrained staff and use of a reserve pool to fill vacancies, the absence of training opportunities, the lack of adequate supervision and monitoring procedures, inadequate documentation and liaison with field staff and failure to prepare and implement proper plans for each child in care. The consequences of all these failings were highly damaging to the individual children, many with serious problems, who were placed at Cartrefle; and there was a signal failure in 1990 to tackle effectively and promptly the special problems of each of the children who had been affected, directly or indirectly, by Norris' persistent abuse.

Footnotes:

234   See para 4.02(13).

235   See, in particular, paras 8.23 to 8.34, 10.02 and 10.157

236   ie not to be proceeded with unless with the leave of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) or the Crown Court itself.

237   See para 8.30 for an earlier reference to this caravan.

238   See para 8.28.

239   See footnote 3 to this chapter

240   See para 8.31 for his evidence about Bryn Estyn.

241   See paras 17.08 to 17.14 for an account of the complaint about her at Upper Downing.

242   See para 15.42 et seq.

243   See para 15.08.

244   At pages 44 to 49 of Working Together: A guide to arrangements for inter-agency co-operation for the protection of children from abuse. (Department of Health and the Welsh Office, HMSO).

245   For a summary of his full employment history, see paras 14.12 and 14.13

246   See paras 14.12 to 14.19 and 14.57 to 14.62.

247   Statement made to the police on 15 October 1992.