A man who worked as a prison officer and caterer in a youth detention centre was able to rape and torture boys for three decades while the abuse was “ignored and dismissed”, according to a report labelling him as possibly Britain’s worst ever sex offender.
Neville Husband carried out at least 388 sexual offences against young men and boys between 1969 and 1985 while working at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham, but is believed have committed hundreds more crimes, which would take the total past the 450 committed by Jimmy Savile.
Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) for England and Wales, has compiled a 202-page report on the conduct of staff at Medomsley from 1961 to 1987, in which he describes Husband as “possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history”.
Husband, a former church minister and scout troop leader who died in 2010, is thought to have groomed and attacked hundreds of trainees in Medomsley’s kitchens, where he worked.
Men and boys aged 17 to 21 who had been convicted of relatively minor crimes were sent to Medomsley where the ethos of the “short, sharp shock” was in place to deter them from reoffending. Usher said the policy was supposed to create an atmosphere “so unpleasant that they would never want to return”.
Usher said there had been evidence that abuse was going on at Medomsley “from the day it opened its doors until the day those doors were closed”, adding that the “knowledge of abuse by the Prison Service, the police, the Home Office and other organisations of authority was ignored and dismissed”.
He said that based on evidence from the investigation, wardens at the centre were “either complicit or incompetent” when dealing with allegations of his crimes, with staff at the centre occasionally referring to inmates abused by him as “Husband’s wives”. When one staff member used this phrase openly, Husband beat him in front of a crowd of inmates and staff.
It was also reported that during a routine inspection of the kitchen, which Usher described as “Husband’s domain”, evidence of abuse was found. Husband reacted angrily to this, and it is believed that no further inspections of the kitchen were conducted during his time there.
Usher said: “It is very likely that his offending did not begin and end at Medomsley and extended to his previous employment at Portland borstal. There were allegations of abuse from when he worked at HMP Frankland and Deerbolt youth custody centre, and during his church and amateur dramatic activity.”
He described Husband as a “powerfully built man and an arch-manipulator” who “physically intimidated, and in some cases assaulted, other members of staff as well as trainees”.
Usher said Husband had told his victims he would make them “disappear” if they reported him, and that he took advantage of the isolated location of Medomsley, as the journey to the centre was “across many miles of bleak and barren moorland”, which would have “compounded in the minds of the trainees” how hopeless escape was.
The report found that detainees and their families who did report physical and sexual abuse at Medomsley to Durham police were largely dismissed, with some threatened with rearrest if they pushed their claims. On two occasions when reports were recorded, they were simply passed on to Medomsley to investigate, which led to no consequences.
Husband had entered the Prison Service in 1963, working at HMP Frankland until 1964, when he was transferred to Portland borstal.
In 1969 he transferred to Medomsley, where he was in charge of the kitchens, a position he used in order to exert his influence. Usher said his “ability to provide or withdraw food gave him opportunities to punish and reward”. Of the 549 documented cases of abuse at Medomsley, 388 were committed by Husband, mostly without the involvement of others.
Husband left Medomsley in 1985, returning to HMP Frankland to work as the senior baker before transferring to Deerbolt in 1987. Victim testimony indicates he continued to abuse inmates across both of these spells.
Husband retired from the Prison Service in 1990 and was awarded the imperial service medal for meritorious duty. He began training as a minister in the Waddington Street United Reformed church and was officially inducted as one in June 1994.
Husband spent the next few years largely unnoticed until 1999, when he was arrested as part of Operation Voice, a Metropolitan police-led UK-wide investigation into the distribution of child sexual abuse materials.
Husband was arrested, charged and suspended from his ministerial roles in the church. However, the case was later dismissed at court and he was reinstated as a minister in June 2000.
Investigations into him began in 2002, and in 2003 he was convicted of 10 counts of indecent assault and one count of rape against five teenagers at Medomsley, initially being sentenced to eight years in prison.
He was subsequently charged with four further offences in 2005 and his sentence was extended to 10 years. The true horror of Husband’s crimes became apparent around this time.
David Greenwood, a lawyer who has represented many Medomsley victims since 2001, described the latest report as “a milestone along the road to exposing the shocking facts of detention centres and borstals around the country” but said that it left “many unanswered questions”.
He called for a public inquiry that would look into “the scale of state-sponsored violence against detainees, the missed opportunities to stop it, and its consequences for a generation of boys”.
Usher dismissed the need for such an inquiry but believed that the victims had been failed by many levels of authority, saying that “the state fed these young men into an abusive system” that had “ruined lives”. He said that for many young men “a short sentence had become a life sentence”.
John McCabe, ex-detainee: ‘I didn’t think I’d get out of Medomsley alive’
“I was sent to Medomsley for nine months for robbing a jewellery shop on 19 February 1983. I was raped by Neville Husband at Medomsley, and out of Medomsley in a church and at the local amateur dramatics society by Husband and one other man. I didn’t think I’d get out of Medomsley alive. I eventually tracked down the other man, and he was arrested by the police but never charged because they couldn’t get any of the other boys to corroborate him. Isn’t it enough to charge someone for repeatedly raping one boy?
“This is no different from any of the other investigations. It’s essentially the police and Ministry of Justice investigating themselves. We have always needed a public inquiry and we still do. Halfway through the special investigation they put out one line saying anybody who was around the area where Medomsley detention centre was in the 70s and 80s is welcome to come down to the local arts centre for a chat and a cup of tea. That’s the kind of investigation it is.
“There are governors who are still alive who have never been held to account. From what I have heard they weren’t even interviewed for the PPO’s report. I was told one of them, who was a friend of Husband’s, said he had Alzheimer’s. Well, if he had been doing his job when he was governor I would never have met Husband and my life wouldn’t have been destroyed.”
Steve (not his real name), ex-detainee: ‘I’m 65, it’s too late for me to move on’
“I was sent to Medomsley for three months in June 1979 for stealing a jacket from a car. I was sexually abused multiple times by Neville Husband in the detention centre and at his house.
“I think this special investigation is a sop. It is an investigation without any powers. There should have been some compulsion to give evidence instead of just saying: ‘Oh come and tell us what you know!’ because they just won’t come.
“The report basically tells us what we know already. In fact most of the things we told them. This is just people telling instances of what happened to them. It’s not a public inquiry, [where] they can order people to come forward instead of asking. At a public inquiry witnesses are on oath so if they lie they can get done for perjury.
“I’m 65, it’s too late for me to move on. The PPO recommends those in authority at the time apologise to us. Well, saying sorry to us now would sound hollow. If they said it now it would mean nothing.”
