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Dozens of lives were destroyed by the hellish experience of living in St Aidan's and St Vincent's childrens' homes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Predatory paedophiles targeted vulnerable boys with impunity and helped each other cover up their vile crimes - safe in the belief their chances of being held to account were small.

The abuse was not only sexual. As one survivor told the ECHO, staff delivered ferocious beatings to the boys in their care - and sometimes ordered pupils to attack other boys who crossed them.

St Aidan's, in Widnes , and St Vincent's, in Formby , were run by Liverpool charity the Nugent Care Society, formerly Catholic Social Services, and were intended to give troubled boys care, education and safety to help them enter society as functioning adults.

But the reality behind the walls was a brutal, prison-like regime of beatings, grooming and sexual abuse likened by one survivor to the bleak Ray Winstone film Scum , about the infamous Borstal young offenders institute.

(Image: HBC Libraries)

Confused, traumatised victims went out into the world deeply damaged by the abuse; some falling into a life of crime, some battling drug and alcohol addiction and some eventually taking their own lives.

In the mid 1990s when justice, or partial justice, arrived thanks to the bravery of survivors and the efforts of Cheshire and Merseyside police forces, a series of gruelling cases began winding their way through the courts.

Some sexual predators, including the head-master of St Aidan's, were locked up for years.

But this is the story of how:

Nugent Care Society took decades to acknowledge the pain and suffering of children in their care

The charity forced some victims to spend almost 15 years fighting gruelling court cases before their allegations were accepted

Nugent's insurance company, Royal Sun Alliance (RSA), used "hard-nosed" and "attritional" legal strategies to deal with civil claims

Aggressively exploited laws restricted the time limit that a case can be brought - meaning some claimants never received compensation

Inquiry brings truth to light

Nugent Care has featured heavily in the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), set up to look at the way society failed to protect children and failed to hold abusers to account.

The IICSA's Accountability and Reparations investigation has heard painful evidence of how Nugent's decision to fight many claims until the last affected the mental health of its victims and forced them to re-live their trauma.

Now barristers acting for its victims have issued a stinging critique of the "hard-nosed" conduct of Nugent and Royal Sun Alliance - although RSA disputes the criticism.

(Image: Western Mail)

'If you didn't stand your ground, you were dead'

Rob (not his real name), from north Liverpool, is a survivor of St Aidan's.

The experiences that shaped his childhood are beyond imagination for most people, but Rob, now in his 60s, was forced to build his adult life on those treacherous foundations.

Placed into care at 13 years old, Rob eventually ended up in notorious St Aidan's where he was sexually abused three times by a teacher over 14 months.

Years later, despite Rob being told by two High Court judges that they "believed every word you said", he was denied the chance to sue Nugent Care due to restrictions on the time limit to bring a claim.

He told the ECHO: "The only word I can use to describe it is that it was a little bit like a sort of Gladiator school. You beat him or they beat you. If you didn't stand your ground you were dead.

Mental health support Helplines and support groups The NHS Choices website lists the following helplines and support networks for people to talk to. Samaritans (116 123) operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year. If you prefer to write down how you're feeling, or if you're worried about being overheard on the phone, you can email Samaritans at jo@samaritans.org.

Childline (0800 1111) runs a helpline for children and young people in the UK. Calls are free and the number won't show up on your phone bill.

PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) is an organisation supporting teenagers and young adults who are feeling suicidal.

Mind (0300 123 3393) is a charity based in England providing advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. They campaign to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding.

Students Against Depression is a website for students who are depressed, have a low mood or are having suicidal thoughts.

Bullying UK is a website for both children and adults affected by bullying.

Young Persons Advisory Service – Providing mental health and emotional wellbeing services for Liverpool’s children, young people and families. tel: 0151 707 1025 email: support@ypas.org.uk

"The film Scum, that's exactly what it was like. It was absolutely f****** brutal to be honest.

"For the first couple of months it was fairly quiet as far as the members of staff were concerned, until they got the measure of you. That's when the sexual abuse started with certain members of staff.

"They could pin-point the ones they could sexually abuse and know they could get away with it.

"It was grooming. They used to pick on the weaker ones. Certain members of staff, they had their own boys, if you upset that particular member of staff he would tell his boys to sort you out, and that would be a thorough beating.”

"If I told anyone, I was dead meat"

Rob was targeted by house-master James McEvoy who was prosecuted but later acquitted when the case was thrown out due to the loss of vital documents relating to police investigations in the 1970s.

Mr McEvoy died in 2007, but during the IICSA hearings in December his acquittal was described as a "legal technicality".

Rob describes how one night Mr McEvoy crept into Rob's dorm and got into his bed while he slept, touching his penis.

He said: "I remember waking up and saying 'what the f*** are you doing?'. He said 'have you been smoking in bed?' that was it, then he went.

"I could not tell anyone. I thought if I tell anyone you are dead meat. I had to keep it to myself, you had to hide your feelings which was very hard."

Rob said he was grabbed and molested again by Mr McEvoy on an isolated staircase as he tried to return cleaning equipment to a storage cupboard known as the 'cage', and a third time in similar circumstances.

But Rob eventually found out another boy, Paul, was also being targeted and sexually abused by Mr McEvoy.

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The pair hatched a plan to blackmail the paedophile teacher and run away.

Rob said: "We would slip him a note saying we want 20 Embassy (cigarettes) or else. This went on for a couple of weeks but it came to the point where we decided to abscond."

The pair demanded £10 from Mr McEvoy and slipped away one night intending to head for Manchester where Paul was from.

However Paul's family caught him trying to pick up clothes and sent him back to St Aidan's.

Rob, alone and without a plan, handed himself in to police.

He said: "On the way back from Manchester I did get asked why I absconded. I told them I am being sexually abused by a member of staff but they took no action."

In a sign of the lasting trauma of the boys of St Aidan's, Paul later killed himself.

'He used to beat you like an adult man'

Rob said when back at St Aidan's his housemaster gave him a "terrible hiding".

He said: "He used to beat you like he would beat an adult man. He was my house-master, the one I was supposed to be able to go to. I did tell him what had happened and he asked me to write it down on a piece of paper.

"That was in 1972, and I told him all about what had happened with me and Paul."

Rob said he was "f****** terrified" after he realised Mr McEvoy was going nowhere, but was suddenly summoned to his house-master's office and told "you're going home tomorrow".

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He said: "I could not believe it, they said they had found me a school, and the following day I was released."

Although physically, Rob was free from the paedophiles and bullies who had tormented him, the impact of his time in St Aidan's lingers to this day.

Rob described how while police, years later, focused on the sexual abuse, he was also traumatised by the brutal physical violence meted out by teachers at St Aidan's.

He said: "The boys would fight all the time. If you didn't fight, you were dead. My house-master would get his boys to go after you. I remember one time I was pinned down in the shower and they put carbolic soap in my mouth. I was forced to chew it."

After leaving St Aidan's Rob described how he became "very, very violent" and would fight at any opportunity.

He later spent time in prison for assault, where he said he made a vow never to go back.

Justice catches up - for some

Decades later, now living a normal life with his wife and children, Rob was stunned to find a letter from Cheshire Police, asking to speak about his time as a pupil at St Aidan's.

He later found out Paul had mentioned his name, and a major police investigation was underway aiming to bring a number of ex teachers and staff to justice, named Operation Emily.

Initially Rob said he felt the "ground opening up" when he received the letter and finally explained his past to his horrified wife.

Despite the setback when Mr McEvoy walked free from court, Rob helped testify on behalf of victims of other paedophiles at St Aidan's.

He decided to pursue justice until the end - without realising it would be a battle which would take nearly 15 years.

He told the ECHO: "This is nothing against my legal team, but I think the only people who benefited were the lawyers. I was glad when I was eventually believed, but the only thing I ever got was £10 petrol money from my solicitor."

"They abused me again in court"

Rob's claim fell foul of laws intended to prevent claims where evidence has been lost and and memories have faded - even though two High Court judges told him they "believe every word you say" and it was widely accepted the abuse had taken place.

During the IICSA hearings, barrister Aswini Weereratne, QC, representing Rob, told the panel: "At each stage, the defendants attack his credibility on the basis of an examination of peripheral inconsistencies in his recollection...

"His claim was ultimately rejected on limitation grounds due to causation and proportionality. He was told that his abuse was less severe than that of others. He was told that causation was difficult to disentangle in his claim.

"He told the panel that repeating evidence about his abuse on these several occasions made him unwell and nearly destroyed his marriage. It was a very hard thing to do...

"He didn't realise at the time that he was mentally unwell and he described the pressure of the court hearing in giving evidence. He has been taking medication since the police came to his door in the late 1990s."

Rob told the ECHO he is glad Nugent has apologised, but feels it is too little, too late.

(Image: Midweek Visiter)

He said: "Giving evidence brought back all the memories but Nugent Care still denied it. There was never any sign of them saying we know what was happening at the home.

"They abused me again by making me go through what was basically a rape trial. They said lets drag it out and take it all the way through."

The law has since been updated but the IICSA is examining what can be done to make things easier for victims of child abuse.

Faces of evil

(Image: Unknown)

While Mr McEvoy died before he saw the inside of a jail cell, other vicious rapists were eventually locked up.

The IICSA also heard from victims of another St Aidan's teacher - monstrous paedophile Colin Dick.

One of the boys, a resident at St Aidan's from the age of 12, ran away and joined the traveling community, only to be apprehended and sent to St Thomas More's in Southport, where he was raped by another convicted abuser, Keith Sutton.

Another victim raped by Colin Dick, 22-year-old James Stewart, later hung himself in a prison cell after a life of petty crime.

While complaints did filter through about men like Dick, to the devastating misfortune of children in St Aidan's its head master, Terence Hoskin, was also a child rapist.

A 1997 episode of Panorama about the scandal, entitled Hear no Evil, was told by one victim how Hoskin beat him with a cane, before progressing to sexually assaulting and then raping him.

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The explosive BBC programme also heard how Dick was protected by Hoskin, who visited parents who had made accusations about Dick and assured them their children would be placed in a "different part of the school".

Shockingly, Hoskin wrote him a "glowing reference" even after Dick was fired for plying boys with alcohol.

Thanks in part to Hoskin, Dick was able to get another job working at a children's home in Manchester.

The police investigation of the mid 1990s did catch up with the pair, and Dick was jailed for four years while Hoskin was jailed for eight.

But Hoskin and Dick were not the only paedophiles stalking the grounds of Nugent Care childrens' homes.

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In St Vincent's, principal Alan Langshaw and lab technician Edward Stanton were launching vile attacks on boys in their care.

Complaints had been raised about Langshaw, who had abused boys at Greystone Heath approved school in Warrington before moving to St Vincent's in the 1980s - but an investigation concluded there had been no abuse.

As reported by Panorama, local MPs intervened and questioned whether police and prosecutors had been thorough enough.

But Langshaw continued working with children for eight years, even writing the complaints procedure on sexual abuse while working at Halton College in Widnes.

In November, 1994, Langshaw admitted 30 specimen charges of what now would be rape, indecent assault and gross indecency with a child and was jailed for 10 years, after admitting a 22 year career of abusing children.

Stanton, who also was able to brush off earlier complaints, abused dozens of boys at St Vincent's and in a children's home in Scotland.

(Image: Unknown)

He pleaded guilty to specimen charges involving seven boys but was accused of serious assaults by as many as 18 others.

The fight to restrict liability

One of the focuses on the IICSA, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, is how to make the system easier for the victim of sexual abuse to apply for compensation and recognition.

David Enright, a solicitor representing men abused by Colin Dick, told the IICSA: "The Nugent Care Society operated St Aidan's and St Vincent's after they took it over from the Home Office.

"A group action was launched with over 100 claimants alleging they had been victims of child abuse under the care of the Nugent Society.

"Many of those claims were settled with two winning claims in the High Court in 2010.

"Two employees of the Nugent Care Society, Alan Langshaw and Colin Dick, were convicted of sexually abusing children.

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"To the Nugent Care Society, I ask: why have our clients not received an apology after both the criminal and civil trials have found that men you employed abused and raped boys in their care?

"Will you now, during the course of this three-week inquiry, provide that apology and commit to provide the necessary support to the children you failed?"

Rob's barrister, Ms Weereratne, also suggested the Royal Sun Alliance used "hard-nosed" case tactics designed to deny compensation to claimaints.

She said: "Here was an insurer, RSA, which doggedly pursued defence arguments, especially on limitation...

"An insurer supporting the use, we say, of hard-nosed case tactics designed to deny compensation to claimants...

"An insurer whose practice does not appear to support or encourage a policyholder to apologise through statements of regret or admissions of liability, and a defendant, Nugent Care, that distanced itself from the plight of the children in its care and maintained a stony silence until this inquiry."

In response to questions from the ECHO spokesman for RSA said: "As shared in our recent contributions to the Inquiry, RSA is committed to ensuring that all such cases are handled with extreme care and sensitivity, and we strongly refute any suggestion to the contrary.

"In keeping with this, the large majority of claims against Nugent Care were settled out of court, and all were resolved as quickly as their complexity would allow."

After decades of "stony silence" - an apology

In December, after decades of "stony silence", Nugent issued an apology on behalf of its Chair of Trustees, Father Michael Fitzsimons.

The letter, read to the IICSA panel by RSA barrister Jonathan Hough, QC, said: "The trustees of Nugent Care are deeply sorry that former residents suffered under the abuse at the hands of individuals who were employed by our charity and committed appalling crimes.

"It is with regret that residents continue to feel the effects of the hurt and trauma they have experienced, hurt and trauma that they have shared with the inquiry.

"We will never be able to right the wrongs of the individuals who committed these crimes, but we can, and we should, recognise and acknowledge what has taken place.

"The trustees of Nugent Care are very willing to help former residents to access appropriate support and counselling through signposting and facilitation of contact.

"As chair of the trustees, I am also willing to meet individuals to listen to their experiences and offer a personal and organisational apology."

A similar letter, issued to victims including Rob via Simpson Millar LLP solicitor Peter Garsden, said: "Nugent is determined to do all in its power to prevent this from ever happening again.

"Our safeguarding systems are positively unrecognisable to those in place many years ago, and the Trustees and their dedicated staff at Nugent are completely committed to providing the best possible standards of care."

A statement from Nugent Care said: "Nugent Care has over the last 20 years faced a number of claims for compensation in respect of non-recent abuse at certain homes which have been resolved with or without litigation.

"In most cases, no request for an apology was made by the claimant. This may be because the claims were put forward long after the events. In a recent hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, solicitors for certain former residents of Nugent Care homes made requests for apologies.

"As was explained by Nugent Care’s representatives in the Inquiry, the Chair of Trustees of Nugent Care readily gave a general apology in response to those requests."

Mr Garsden said: "The abuse survivors who suffered horrifically whilst in the care of St Aidan’s have waited many decades for this apology. It is incomprehensible to think that it may never reach their ears, and Nugent Care should do all it takes to ensure that does not happen!

“Whilst it is by no means a remedy to the abuse they endured, it can provide an important validation of their courage, and a first step towards healing.”

The full report of the IICSA's Accountability and Reparations investigation could be published in around eight months, a spokesman for the Inquiry said.

You can call the Inquiry Information line on: 0800 917 1000 weekdays 8am-10pm, Saturdays 10am-12pm, or email share@truthproject.org.uk or using this online form .