Red House: 62 people now say they experienced abuse at children’s home run by a ‘cult’
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“It was like hell on Earth.”
Warning: This article includes references to sexual abuse and suicide that some readers may find distressing.
Colin (not his real name) is one of 19 alleged abuse victims who has come forward following a Sky News investigation into a closed children’s home in Norfolk.
The total number is now 62.
Numerous people have told us that they experienced physical, emotional and sexual abuse at The Small School at Red House run by a Danish organisation called Tvind, which has been described as a cult.
Colin was taken into care after being a victim of sexual exploitation, but when he arrived at The Red House at 15, his personal, painful history was used against him.
“A couple of the lads grabbed hold of me,” he said. “They’d been told that I was a rent boy before I got there, they wanted to knock me into shape. I contemplated killing myself. I’d never experienced that humiliation.”
Children were sent to The Red House from all over the country. Some have told Sky News that violent staff broke their fingers, threw them down the stairs and even locked them in rooms with Alsatians.
Sadly for Colin, his experience of sexual exploitation continued at the home.
“They put these three lads in my room, they squeezed me round my neck and I passed out,” he said. “When I came round they were sexually abusing me. I was screaming and screaming. The next day I ran and I never went back there.”
The home was run by the Tvind School Cooperative of Denmark. A controversial group founded in the late 1960s, they opened around 30 radical schools in Denmark, mostly for disadvantaged children, and two in England. Many have since closed.
Inspections by regulatory bodies reveal growing concerns about The Red House. In 1990, the Social Services Inspectorate wrote to directors of local authorities warning them against sending children to the home.
An inspection report made by Norfolk County Council in 1994 shows they were aware of alleged “sexual abuse” and “physical abuse” involving 20 children.
Yet the home continued to operate and three years after that inspection report, Norfolk County Council sent a teenage boy to the Red House.
“Red House was this black hole where they could just dump people and not worry about them,” he says.
“Whilst I was there I can’t even think of one instance when my social worker turned up to come and check on me.”
Content retrieved from: https://news.sky.com/story/red-house-62-people-now-say-they-experienced-abuse-at-childrens-home-run-by-a-cult-13397372.
