Medomsley’s Official Center Is ‘Prolific Sex Hurts’

An officer at a notorious detention center for young offenders is “probably the worst sex offender in history”, an inquiry has concluded.

Neville’s husband was jailed in 2003 for abusing five teenagers at MediSley in County Durham, where correctional staff were physically and sexually abused between 1961 and 1987.

A report by prisons and trial Ombudsman Adriles Catalogs a string of opportunities to stop the abuse and failures of the home forces, police failures and prison managers.

Durham Police apologized. The Ministry of Justice has been approached for comment.

The report said that the prisoners who complained were not believed and were effectively left to report abuse by the people who assaulted them.

It warns that what is happening is a “conversation of the weak” which is “another issue” throughout the youth in the custody of the youth.

Medomsley Poused Young Men aged 17-21 for periods of three or six months for consistently low levels of offending.

It was intended to give prisoners a “short, sharp, shock” but the investigation found physical violence and summary punishment.

The sexual assaults often centered on the institution’s kitchen, where the housekeeper’s husband allegedly raped young inmates. He was later convicted of sex crimes and died in 2010.

Chief Constable Rachel Bacon said the report made for “extremely difficult reading” and exposed the “shameful failings of the police at the time”.

“On behalf of DURHHA Constabulary I would like to make public my sincere apologies to the victims and their families for the failures,” he said.

“Thousands of young men were initiated into the system and continue to live with the scars left by that abuse. The victims are, and remain, our primary concern.”

In the report, Mr Usher said: “I have chosen to omit many of the most damning details of the … abuse but I believe it is necessary to include the extent of the horrors endured by some of the young men.”

He said that the “silence of many” is necessary so that the order “for the most serious extreme sexual abuse goes on for a long time without being detected”.

The report says

• Police dismissed allegations of abuse without recording them and threatening inmates to be sent back to Medomsley if they continued
• Leadership staff known for abuse and therefore complex, or lacking curiosity and therefore incompetent
• The victims have yet to receive a public apology – and all bodies must “examine their organizational consciences”
• The deaths of two young prisoners, within a few months of each other in 1981-2, “could not have been avoided”

Some of those who served time at Medomsley said the experience still scares them.

Peter Soule, from Newcastle, was sent there in 1985.

“You don’t even last a minute and the abuse starts,” he said. “I just thought ‘this, this is medomsley, just go and take it in the mouth’.”

Jimmy Coffey came to Medomsley when he was 18 in 1979.

“For the first week I was there, I always saw violence and brutality and corruption,” he said. “I still have problems now with flashbacks.”

The inquiry, ordered by the Ministry of Justice, said that Medomsley had 26 years “effectively beyond the reach of the law”.

As well as the husband’s later convictions, Triceman Leslie Johnson was jailed in 2005 for sexual assaults on inmates, while other guards were jailed for physical assaults and misconduct in a public office.

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