Seven sue council in child abuse test

Seven men and women who say they suffered at the hands of child abuser Frank Beck yesterday began a claim for compensation in a test case.

More than 30 others will await the outcome of the hearing at the High Court in Nottingham before deciding whether to take similar action.

The seven claim Leicestershire county council, which employed Beck during his 13-year reign of abuse at three children's homes, was negligent in failing to provide a duty of care. The authority is contesting the case.

Beck was sentenced to five life terms for sexually abusing more than 100 children. Dozens of witnesses spoke of his cruelty during an 11-week trial at Leicester Crown Court in 1991.

His offences included rape and buggery. He died, aged 52, from a heart attack at Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire, in June 1994.

Between 1973 and 1986, Beck abused those in his care at three children's homes in Leicestershire. Only a chance remark by a mother accused of ill- treating her son sparked an investigation in 1989, three years after Beck had quit as head of the three homes.

Richard Maxwell QC, representing the alleged victims, told the court yesterday that the council had originally accepted the findings of an independent inquiry, the Kirkwood report, which criticised the authority.But he said the council was now "ducking and weaving".

Mr Maxwell said that in 1992 the council accepted that the seven were "all victims of either physical abuse or psychological trauma or sexual abuse".

He went on: "There was a time when the defendant accepted without equivocation there was no doubt there were very serious management failings in the period 1973-1986 ... There was a time when the defendant accepted the Kirkwood report spelt out how these management failings contributed to the evidence that culminated in the conviction of Beck."

One finding of the report was that the authority generally assumed children should not be believed. Mr Maxwell said: "We say that it was because of that assumption the defendant never investigated properly what the children were saying."

The report, written by Andrew Kirkwood QC, and published in February 1993, further showed poor monitoring of childcare standards. Files on children who had died or left the homes were destroyed after two years to save space.

He said the council denied it had any duty of care to protect the children.

Beck, formerly of Leicester, always protested his innocence. At his trial, Mr Justice Jowitt told him: "You are a man whose character combines considerable talents and very great evil."

The present case is likely to last up to three months.