The regime at Forde Park School in the 1970s was brutal. Being kicked, punched, slapped and having their hair pulled by staff was a daily ritual for the boys as young as 10.

They were sent there by the courts for committing petty crime and under social services care orders. Many of them were also victims of serious sexual assault while at the school, on the edge of Newton Abbot in Devon.

The culture of violence was so extreme that if there was a playground dispute between two boys, they were taken to the boxing ring, given a pair of gloves each and told to thrash it out until only one was left standing.

It was only many years later that the physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the residential school came to light. After a police investigation costing £3m, a series of offenders were sent to prison in the early 2000s.

The school off College Road is long gone, only its playing fields remain after it closed in 1985 and was demolished to be replaced with an upmarket housing estate.

But the memories of what happened there still haunt the survivors.

And the few who are left face having to relive what happened all over again. Their stories are to be told at the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse.

The national inquiry, set up after a series of high-profile child sex abuse cases, is carrying out an investigation into 'accountability and reparations' - the support and compensation systems.

The inquiry will focus on Forde Park as a case study, looking into the services and legal remedies available to the victims.

For many of the boys from Forde Park, the chance to be heard has come too late. Of the around 90 original members of the survivors' group when it was founded in the 1990s, only a handful have come forward again in response to the inquiry. Two of those have died in recent days, just short of the start of public hearings in London.

The survivors say after the criminal cases finished and they received compensation payments - in some cases as low as a few thousand pounds - they were effectively abandoned again.

They feel the legal system not only failed them, but that their treatment by the authorities was like being abused all over again.

One of the Forde Park group, Paul Sinclair, 56, of Newton Abbot, whose evidence helped jail one of the perpetrators, has waived his right to anonymity so he can tell his story publicly.

Mr Sinclair, who is disabled with heart disease and complex post traumatic stress disorder, was sent to Forde Park at the age of 12, after getting involved in petty crime.

Mr Sinclair said: “I suffered sexual abuse, but I was one of the lucky ones - I used to fight back, which used to get me into more trouble.

“We suffered psychological torture. We were told, ‘Your parents don’t want you’.

“We suffered physical abuse on a day to day basis - every single day we would be hurt by a member of staff.

“We would be punched, kicked, have our hair pulled, every single day.”

He recalled: “I had an accident one day, I fell off a climbing frame and had a compound fracture of my wrist, you could see the bone sticking out.

“I went to one of the staff who was on playground duty, he grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me towards him.

“When I came to, he was picking me up by my hair, shouting abuse at me.”

Mr Sinclair spent 18 months at Forde Park from 1974 to 1976, then was sent on to Northbrook Community Home in Exeter, another former approved school.

He joined the Army as a junior leader just short of 16, then left after 18 months and ended up moving around the country, drifting from job to job.

In his mid-30s he was back in Devon at Exmouth, working on boats after gaining his skipper’s certificate. But he had turned to alcohol to blot out childhood trauma, and that all came back when the police inquiry into Forde Park began.

He relived the years of abuse for the police, then for the civil litigation claim.

Mr Sinclair gave a statement about what he went through and was a stand-by witness at one of the trials.

He joined the other survivors in a group legal action for compensation, and was later awarded £2,700, although he says he was initially told his claim was worth around £15,000.

Devon County Council which was responsible for the school fought the compensation case all the way to trial.

But several days into the hearing, the council gave way and the cases were settled, followed by at least 60 more later.

Mr Sinclair recalls going to the solicitors' office to collect his money in cash, then got on a coach and headed to London for a life on the streets of King’s Cross and Whitechapel.

The claimants were offered counselling from trained social workers, but most refused, not trusting the professionals who had let them down in the past.

“It was like being left in a void,” said Mr Sinclair, who suffered years of alcoholism until he completed a rehabilitation course in 2010.

He said of the compensation: “It was an absolute pittance.

“It was an insult, when you think about the years of abuse, and the cost to us of the disruption and loss of our education.

“By the time it was all finished, after everything we had been through, there was nothing left for us.

“It was a case of ‘There we go, now what do we do?’

“We were all left disillusioned with the entire system. We were abandoned by the system again.”

The school had space for up to 110 boys to be locked up at any one time, sent by the courts for minor offences such as truancy or as a result of a social services referral, for example if their parents felt they were out of control.

Formerly an approved school run by the Home Office, it became a so-called Community Home with Education in 1973, under the control of Devon County Council.

Set in a series of old buildings on a large rambling site, the regime was military-style, with a uniform of threadbare polo shirts and flannel shorts. The boys wore sandals, and in the winter months were given socks.

The former pupils say there was no real formal education, and they had to perform a daily series of outdoor military-style parades in all weathers.

Every Monday morning staff and boys gathered in a hall for a grading assembly. Boys who had been marked down to D or D-minus were beaten with a cane.

One recalled that they were sent out as forced labour on work parties, and described having to clear moss from the school drive with a scrubbing brush.

A team was sent to break the ice in the outdoor swimming pool near the playing fields through the winter months. The boys were made to go into the icy water to clean the sides.

Boys were sent to Dartmoor to paint stones white alongside a drive, and on one occasion were taken to Shaldon, near Teignmouth, to scrub barnacles off a boat.

The former pupil who recalled those jobs discovered the authorities even considered paying the boys for their work at one stage, but nothing came of it while he was there.

The group member, who has been granted anonymity by the inquiry, suffered physical and sexual abuse at the school in the early 1970s.

Brought up in Redruth, Cornwall, he became involved in petty crime and was sent to Forde Park at the age of 12 from the Fairholme assessment centre at Camborne.

Now aged 57, the former pupil, who now lives in North Cornwall, told how he was raped by one member of staff and was beaten unconscious by another, ending up in hospital in Torquay after his front teeth were knocked out. In the later civil action settlement, he was given a payout of £4,000.

The group member, who has been given an inquiry code number F16, said: “There would not be a day go by when you did not get punched, kicked, or slapped. At least one pupil every day would be the victim of an assault by a staff member.”

The workings of the civil law, and the handling of cases by solicitors, insurers and councils, are all due to come under scrutiny at the inquiry.

But members of the group fear that the full truth may never be uncovered. They say official records relating to their time at the school have gone missing.

In one case documents were supposedly destroyed in a fire at the old County Hall in Truro, but when group members investigated, no one could provide proof the fire had actually happened.

Nigel O’Mara, 54, from Bude, Cornwall, a counsellor, founded Survivors UK in 1986, the first helpline for male survivors of sexual abuse. He is due to give evidence on support services.

Mr O’Mara said of the inquiry: “We hope it will get to the bottom of the whole matter, but whether we have got much faith as to what will happen is another matter.”

The inquiry says its investigation “responds to multiple reports of inadequate support services, obstructive insurance companies and a civil justice system that may not deliver genuine reparation.

“We will also examine the adequacy of other compensation schemes, including awards made following conviction in criminal proceedings and awards by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.”

The Forde Park Survivors Group solicitor David Enright has told the inquiry that members felt the civil justice system “completely failed them”.

They suggested it should be replaced with a Government-backed reparation system providing a one-off “life-changing” sum to make up for the abuse they suffered while in the care of the state.

They felt excluded from involvement in the past claim and powerless - that their views and experiences of abuse were treated as almost irrelevant.

They felt the legal process benefited the councils and lawyers more than the victims, Mr Enright said in a statement to the inquiry.

They were unable to change their representation despite losing faith, felt major decision were taken without their input and they felt threatened with bankruptcy if they refused to accept the settlements on offer.

Mr Enright said the members remained enraged that Devon County Council was able to settle the claims without admitting liability or acknowledging the physical and sexual abuse that happened while they were in its care, and failed to offer an apology.

The group believed that the system added to the abuse they had already suffered.

A three-week public hearing as part of the investigation will start in London on Monday, November 26. Witnesses are due to give evidence about the experiences of the Forde Park survivors.

Operation Lentisk was launched by Devon & Cornwall Police in July 1999 to investigate allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the school.

The police inquiry ran for more than three years and ended up covering 41 institutions across Devon and Cornwall.

The inquiry resulted in allegations made by 302 victims against 190 people.

Eight were convicted, receiving sentences from six months to 18 years for sexual and physical abuse. Three were found not guilty and one was cautioned.