Shirley Oaks Survivors Association: Call out to children in care of Lambeth 1950-2003

Shirley Oaks Survivors Association (SOSA) is a support group that has been set up to listen and document the accounts of those who have suffered or witnessed a variety of horrific abuse whilst in care in Lambeth Children’s Homes. Not all children suffered sexual abuse but to date we now know the victims ran into the hundreds. The destruction didn’t stop there. When you add those who were physically abused and those who suffered mental trauma the numbers become alarming.

Please see: www.shirleyoakssurvivorsassociation.co.uk for further information.

SOSA is calling out for survivors of abuse and those that witnessed abuse whilst in the care of Lambeth from 1950-2003 to come forward and speak to them in confidence. They are looking to trace children from South Vale, Angell Road, Highland Road, Nottingham Road, The Den and Chevington.

 

The song “Don’t Touch It. It’s Mine” is available to buy from iTunes (Link: http://smarturl.it/DontTouchItItsMine iTunes Search: EtherMia). All proceeds go towards SOSA and their fight for justice.

 

Inquiries into alleged sex assault on child in care (31.07.86)

Community Care, 31st July 1986

Norman Walker: A link between UK children’s homes and the Amsterdam sex trade

Daily Star, 1st August 1983

Daily Star, 2nd August 1983

Community Care, 1st September 1983

The Why Not club that Norman Walker owned is mentioned in a Nick Davies article:

By 1990, these two clubs on Spuistraat – together with Boys for Men, De Boys, the Blue Boy and the Why Not – had become the busiest watering hole in the international paedophile jungle. Dutch police at the time estimated there were 250 paedophiles involved in the production of child pornography in Amsterdam with an unknown floating population of child sex tourists from all over the world. A Swiss businessman, for example, was caught in the city with handcuffs, a gag and a large suitcase with airholes in the side; police found a video of him abusing two young girls with electrodes. A wealthy New York attorney was caught ferrying child pornography from Asia. But it was the British who formed the hard core of the new industry: Stephen Smith, who had helped to found the Paedophile Information Exchange, fled there to avoid imprisonment in England; Russell Tricker, now aged 58, a former private school teacher who was convicted of child-sex offences in the UK, moved to Amsterdam, where he used his job as a coach-driver to ferry suitable boys from London; Tricker’s friend, John Broomhall, opened a porn shop on Spuistraat and was caught with more than a thousand copies of videos of under-aged boys; Mark Enfield, now aged 41, sold a video of himself abusing a drugged boy; Andrew Prichodsky, now aged 50, jumped bail in England on the eve of his third trial for child sex offences. Full article

Notorious British paedophile Warwick Spinks later ran the Why Not club:

Spinks was convicted in 1995 of abducting the 14-year-old. He drugged the lad, who had run away from a children’s home, and sold him as a rent boy in Holland. British and Dutch police launched an investigation after the boy fled to the British Embassy. Spinks got seven years, cut to five years on appeal. Officers from Scotland Yard’s Paedophile Squad were furious when he got parole in 1997 after 30 months. He ignored conditions that he be supervised by probation officers and sign the Sex Offenders Register and fled – sending cops a taunting postcard from Holland.

International businessmen, lawyers and politicians were among Spinks’s clients when he ran the notorious Why Not boy brothel in Amsterdam before his arrest. Cops in Amsterdam secretly taped Spinks offering to supply a video in which a 10-year-old boy was killed. He also said an associate had seen a boy die in the making of a film. Full article

See also:

 

Council Rocked By Nursery Sex Row (16.01.87)

South London Press, 16th January 1987

Boy rape beasts escape the law (31.11.86)

News of the World, 31st November 1986

More on Monkton Street Nursing Home here

Lambeth Council’s Monkton Street Nursing Home

Community Care, 31st July 1986

Daily Mail, 1st September 1986

Evening Standard, 1st September 1986

Daily Mail, 2nd September 1986

The Guardian, 2nd September 1986

South London Press, 2nd September 1986

The Times, 2nd September 1986

Scotland Yard is investigating claims of sexual abuse by staff on mentally handicapped children at a nursing home in south London.

The police said yesterday that an inquiry into the allegations had begun after a complaint by the mother of a boy aged 12 at the Monkton Street Nursing Home in Kennington.

Staff at the home, which is run by Lambeth council, are being interviewed by detectives.

Lambeth council, which is also carrying out its own investigations into the claims, said yesterday that the police were talking about attacks on at least six young people.

The boy at the centre of the allegations has a mental age of four.

But, according to his mother, he is able to speak coherently and could tell her how serious his injuries were and how they happened.

Officials from Lambeth council hope to present a report shortly to Mrs Phyllis Dunipace, head of Lambeth’s social service committee.

Social Work Today, 8th September 1986

South London Press, 3rd October 1986South London Press, 25th November 1986

News of the World, 31st November 1986

South London Press, 5th December 1986

South London Press, 5th December 1986

South London Press, 19th December 1986

Daily Mail, 3rd December 1986

Daily Mail, 16th January 1987

Charter to Abuse (05.12.86)

South London Press, 5th December 1986

No Charges In Kids’ Home Sex Row (25.11.86)

South London Press, 25th November 1986

Cops Rapped in Sex Abuse Row (05.12.86)

South London Press, 5th December 1986

Cops quiz man on sex assault (03.10.86)

South London Press, 3rd October 1986