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18.01  Tanllwyfan is a former farmhouse standing in five acres of land at Penmaen Head, Old Colwyn, with the formal address of 510 Abergele Road, Colwyn Bay. It was opened as a children's home in 1916 by the Boys and Girls Welfare Society, whose headquarters moved from Manchester to Cheadle during the period under review. Under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 Tanllwyfan was categorised as an assisted community home with education on the premises (CHE) and it was operated by the Society with Denbighshire County Council and then Clwyd County Council under an instrument of management

18.02  As we have said earlier[261], Tanllwyfan was designated in the 1971 Regional Plan as a special home for up to 16 boys and girls in the junior age range, available to the North Wales counties. Some children, however, were also admitted from English local authorities in the north-west. Denbighshire Education Committee at that time provided teaching facilities and premises (a portakabin classroom) but some children attended local schools. Psychiatric oversight and treatment were provided at a nearby child guidance clinic and a psychiatric social worker attended weekly.

  18.03  In the 1979 Regional Plan the home was said to accommodate up to 18 boys and girls in the junior range, the facility being available to all local authorities within the Welsh region. The educational provision was one teacher and one classroom and there were re-stated provisions for psychiatric, psychological and medical services. However, the future of the home was not very clear from the document because a note stated that it was to close as a CHE in 1980-1981 whereas another section of the plan showed it as continuing to be a community home intended to accommodate up to 18 mainly older boys and girls with the same educational provision as before and available to Gwynedd as well as Clwyd. In the event it seems to have accommodated children in the age range of six to 16 years and it eventually closed on 31 December 1984.

  18.04  Management of the day-to-day running of Tanllwyfan was vested in a local committee (managers), including three local authority (Clwyd) members, which met monthly at Tanllwyfan. A representative of Clwyd Social Services Department attended these meetings: Veronica Pares attended in the early years when she was Principal Residential and Day Care Officer and later Gordon Ramsay (Principal Social Worker Children) did so regularly. The General Secretary of the Boys and Girls Welfare Society also attended these meetings. The managers were responsible for the appointment of staff, including the Officer-in-Charge, and they reviewed admissions and discharges of children (it was usual for two or three members of the committee to attend case conferences). It was the practice for a member of the committee to make a separate visit to Tanllwyfan each month in accordance with a rota. There was also an independent visitor living locally, who was appointed by the General Secretary.

  18.05  The Officer-in-Charge or Warden of Tanllwyfan when Clwyd County Council took over its part of the shared responsibility for the community home was Mr D Shepherd, whose wife was housekeeper contemporaneously. They resigned in July 1976 and were succeeded by Mr and Mrs Groome with effect from 7 August 1976.

  18.06   Richard Francis Groome became 36 years old in the month when he took over as Warden of Tanllwyfan and he had four years' experience of full time social work. Before that he had served as a musician in the Royal Marines for 13 years and had then had varied commercial experience including a spell with the NAAFI in South America. He had done some part-time work with youth clubs before working as an RCCO for Northamptonshire County Council from June 1972 and served subsequently as manager of a children's home in Kingston-upon-Thames and then Team Leader for two years at an assessment centre in Hertfordshire. He had also attended the pre-qualifying In-Service training at Ewell College in 1973 and qualified for the CRCCYP in 1976 at Havering College. The Groomes remained at Tanllwyfan until 11 November 1982 and continued to live in Colwyn Bay until April 1984.

  18.07  From Tanllwyfan Richard Groome went immediately[262] to Clwyd Hall School[263] as head of care and then principal but he left in or about April 1984. His next venture was to found a therapeutic community for young people called Milverton Court at Ludlow in Shropshire which occupied him for six years from 1984. Since 1990 he has been a volunteer worker for SSAFA[264] and director of a leisure company and he has also served as a member of the complaints committee of a regional health authority.

  18.08  We have not investigated the short period of about two years following the Groomes' departure from Tanllwyfan until it closed because we have not received any complaint in respect of that period[265].

1974 to 1976

  18.09  It seems that there was some anxiety on the part of Welsh Office inspectors about conditions at Tanllwyfan at the time when it became an assisted community home because there were three inspections between 17 September 1973 and 19 November 1975. The first inspection was triggered by a request by the Society for a grant towards the cost of work done on the home but SWSO O'Brien was critical of some of the toilet facilities and he thought that the ground floor accommodation and bedrooms "just about reached adequate standards of cleanliness and domestic good order". Other concerns were "breaches of the corporal punishment regulations" and the need to increase the number of care staff.

  18.10  New staffing arrangements were implemented in 1974 and SWSO Smith noted the other previous recommendations had been dealt with by the time that he visited Tanllwyfan on 24 September 1974. But there had been considerable problems between the Shepherds and the rest of the staff, including a 'walk-out' because of Shepherd's "autocratic and rigid regime", as it was described by the staff. Smith, however, largely agreed with the staff arrangements that had been put in place and the 'walk-out' did not appear to have damaged the children. Smith's view was that domestic order was satisfactory and that the home provided a reasonable degree of comfort.

  18.11  SWSO Smith made a further visit on 19 November 1975 to follow up matters raised on his previous visit. He was critical of the staffing structure because it left little room for manoeuvre in case of sickness etc and he regarded the day rooms as "bare and cheerless". But, otherwise, he was favourably impressed by the home and he noted that staff/children relationships were very good. He felt that the home was providing good care, more personalised than in the past, and operating effectively. It must also be said that he was informed by the General Secretary of the Society that new furnishings for the day rooms had been ordered and were delivered shortly after his visit.

  18.12  Our major concern about this period is that we are aware that six former boy residents have complained since that they suffered sexual abuse by Kenneth Andrew Scott at Tanllwyfan, and the Tribunal received evidence from two of them to that effect. Kenneth Scott was a care assistant at Tanllwyfan from 1974 to 1976, rising to the position of Third-in-Charge. He was born on 2 July 1951 so that he was still a very young man whilst he worked at Tanllwyfan. He had left school at 16 years to work for the National Coal Board for two years and had then become an Assistant Warden for the Youth Hostels Association for a similar period. This was followed by two years as a barman and about one year as a care assistant for Wandsworth Borough Council before his appointment to Tanllwyfan. He had not received any formal training but he did attend a one year course at Bangor Technical College, gaining an In-Service Certificate of Attendance from the CCETSW, whilst he was at Tanllwyfan, and he says that he "did day release some week-ends".

  18.13  Kenneth Scott appeared before the Crown Court at Leicester on 28 February 1986 when he was sentenced to a total of eight years' imprisonment, having pleaded guilty to two offences of buggery and three offences of gross indecency. The victims of these offences were three boys, aged between 14 and 16 years, and the offences had been committed between 1982 and 1985 at the children's home in Leicestershire of which Scott had been Officer-in-Charge from 1 May 1978 until his arrest on 29 July 1985, at his own home and on holiday[266]. His predecessor at the home, but only for a short period of less than three months as Acting Officer-in-Charge, was Frank Beck[267]. After leaving Tanllwyfan, Scott had remained briefly in the employment of the Society as Deputy Warden of Belmont House, Cheadle, and had then served as a housemaster at a boarding school for children with special needs in Ipswich. We are perturbed to record also that, following his release from prison, he was employed between 1991 and 1993 as Warden at a youth hostel for the YHA, according to his written statement to the Tribunal. He says that they were unaware of his conviction but that "my work, in any event, was involved with adults in the main".

  18.14  The complaints against Scott in respect of his conduct at Tanllwyfan were not made until the police investigation between 1991 and 1993. The first of the two relevant witnesses, who both gave oral evidence before us, said that Scott would examine his bare body when he returned from home visits, purportedly to check for any bruises or abrasions. Then, after he had sustained injuries requiring sutures in a go-kart accident and his dressings had to be changed periodically, Scott started to touch his private parts, apparently accidentally at first. This progressed to regular masturbation and on one occasion Scott inserted a finger in the boy's anus. As a result he started wetting the bed and developed a rash, to which Scott applied cream.

  18.15  That witness was at Tanllwyfan from January 1975 to September 1976 whereas the second witness was there from October 1972 to June 1976. The latter said that Scott touched him indecently on one occasion only, on the last night of a week's camping holiday at Morecambe. About ten boys went on that trip with Scott and the witness was required to sleep near Scott in the centre of a bell tent on the last night as a punishment for talking. After he had been asleep for some time he awoke to find that Scott's hand was on his penis. The witness said that "he supposed it could be put down as masturbating him". He froze and kept still. Scott whispered his name twice but he did not reply: Scott was stroking his penis and whispering and he did not know how to handle the situation. He thinks that he made a waking up gesture, disturbing Scott, who took his (Scott's) hand away. The witness then pulled his sleeping bag tighter round him and feigned sleep. On his return to Tanllwyfan he wanted to tell Mrs Shepherd what had occurred but lacked the courage to do so. He was on his guard from that night onwards.

  18.16  Scott denied the allegations of both these witnesses in his statement to the Tribunal made on 21 January 1997 and he had earlier (in 1993) denied to the police the allegations in relation to Tanllwyfan that had been made against him at that time. However, both the witnesses that we heard were very credible witnesses and, bearing in mind Scott's subsequent convictions, there is no sensible reason for doubting the truth of what they said. We should add that it became apparent during the first witness' evidence that he was not aware of Scott's later imprisonment until told about it in the course of his evidence. It must be stressed, however, that Scott did not have any criminal record before or during the period when he served at Tanllwyfan.

  18.17  There have been very few other complaints relating to this period from former residents and three of the five of which we know were made against unidentified persons. We accept that Shepherd did impose a strict regime in the early part of the period giving rise to some anxiety in the Welsh Office but that had been ameliorated by 1975, when the third inspection to which we have referred took place.

1976 to 1982

  18.18  There was one further Welsh Office inspection of Tanllwyfan during the period of Richard Groome's wardenship, again by SWSO Smith. This took place on 13 April 1978 when there were 14 boys and four girls in residence in the age range of eight to 15 years (mostly, ten to 13 years). Records showed that the school had been operating at close to maximum capacity for the preceding two and a half years. The living pattern was based on a "group system" approach of two (junior and senior) living units, but this was said to be "modified in the absence of purpose built accommodation". Lengths of stay varied between a few weeks and four and a half years.

  18.19  There were 11 care staff in post, including a qualified teacher, and eight of them were resident on the premises. Five members of the staff had a professional qualification in working with children, another had a nursing qualification and all the rest had undertaken formal in-service training. There had been, however, a total turnover of staff, save for two, since the previous inspection in 1975. Support was provided by the equivalent of five full time domestic staff, including a gardener. No active night supervision was provided but two members of staff slept in to provide an 'on call' duty system. Five of the children presenting special difficulties and requiring intensive remedial teaching were being taught on the premises whilst the rest were attending one or other of five local schools.

  18.20  SWSO Smith was impressed by what he saw. In his opinion the home "demonstrated further advance under the new leadership of Mr Groome and in all aspects of its operation Tanllwyfan was seen to be offering a good quality of care to the residents and a useful service to the local authorities using it" (Clwyd, Gwynedd, Liverpool, Stockport, Sefton and Trafford at that time). Rather remarkably, it was claimed that there had been no absconding for 18 months despite the fact that some of the resident children had long histories of truanting and absconding. Behavioural problems also were said to be rare and were dealt with by admonition, being sent early to bed or reduction of pocket money to no less than 50% of entitlement. The home looked well cared for and there were no signs of damage or neglect.

  18.21  Of the eight known complainants who were at Tanllwyfan in this period five have made allegations against Richard Groome himself. In the event we received evidence from only two of the five and the evidence of both of them was read. The first of these (born in February 1965) was at Tanllwyfan from 7 August 1979 and 22 May 1981 and, when he was interviewed by the police in 1992, he said expressly that he had no complaints about the way he was treated at Tanllwyfan, although he made serious allegations about what had happened to him at Bersham Hall earlier. In his Tribunal statement dated 22 October 1996, however, he said that he wished to add the following:

"I have never said this before but whilst I was at Tanllwyfan Richard Groom(e) who was a housemaster found out that a boy called "A" had been messing about with the younger boys and because of that he made myself and about seven other boys give "A" a hiding in the gym."

  We know no more about the alleged incident than that.

  18.22  The other witness, X, who was 12 years old when he began a three and a quarter years stay at Tanllwyfan on 8 September 1981, told the police in October 1992 that he had problems with Groome on a couple of occasions over small matters. He alleged that, in one incident, he told another boy that Groome's new leather jacket was PVC, whereupon Groome smacked him on the side of the head with the result that his head hit a door. On another occasion X was taken from the school on the premises by Groome to the latter's office because he had been blamed for something. When X told Groome that he had not done anything, Groome smacked him on the side of the head and told him to shut up. However, X added "Mr Groome when he was nice you couldn't wish for a better person but if he got upset you steered clear of him. The only injury I ever received from him was a slight bump when my head hit the door but I don't want to make a complaint about anything that went on while I was in Tanllwyfan".