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A man who worked as a prison officer and caterer in a youth detention centre was able to rape and torture boys for three decades while the abuse was “ignored and dismissed”, according to a report labelling him as possibly Britain’s worst ever sex offender.
Neville Husband carried out at least 368 sexual offences against young men and boys between 1969 and 1985 while working at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham, but is believed have committed hundreds more crimes, taking the total past the 450 committed by Jimmy Savile.
Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman for England and Wales, has compiled a 202-page report on the conduct of staff at Medomsley from 1961 to 1987, in which he described Husband as “possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history”.
Husband, a former church minister and scout troop leader, was thought to have groomed and attacked hundreds of trainees in Medomsley’s kitchens, where he worked.
Men and boys aged 17-21 who had been convicted of relatively minor crimes, were sent to Medomsley where the ethos of the “short, sharp shock” was in place to deter them from reoffending. Usher said the policy was supposed to create an atmosphere “so unpleasant that they would never want to return”.
Usher said that there was evidence that abuse was going on at Medomsley “from the day it opened its doors until the day those doors were closed”, adding that the “knowledge of abuse by the Prison Service, the police, the Home Office and other organisations of authority was ignored and dismissed”.
He said that based on evidence from the investigation wardens at the centre were “either complicit or incompetent” when dealing with allegations of his crimes.
Usher said: “It is very likely that his offending did not begin and end at Medomsley and extended to his previous employment at Portland borstal. There were allegations of abuse from when he worked at HMP Frankland and Deerbolt youth custody centre, and during his church and amateur dramatic activity.”
He described Husband as “powerfully built man and an arch-manipulator” who “physically intimidated, and in some cases assaulted, other members of staff as well as trainees”.
Usher also said that Husband told his victims he would make them “disappear” if they reported him, and that he took advantage of the isolated location of Medomsley, as the journey to the centre was “across many miles of bleak and barren moorland” which would have “compounded in the minds of the trainees” how hopeless escape was.
The report found that detainees and their families who did report physical and sexual abuse at Medomsley to Durham police were largely dismissed, with some threatened with rearrest if they pushed their claims. On two occasions where reports were recorded, they were simply passed on to Medomsley to investigate themselves, which led to no consequences
Husband had entered the Prison Service in 1963, working at HMP Franklin’s until 1964, when he was transferred to Portland borstal.
In 1969 he transferred to Medomsley where he was in charge of the kitchens, a position he used in order to exert his influence. Usher said his “ability to provide or withdraw food gave him opportunities to punish and reward”. Of the 549 documented cases of abuse at Medomsley, 388 were committed by Husband, mostly without the help of others.
Husband left Medomsley in 1985, returning to HMP Frankland to work as the senior baker before transferring to Deerbolt in 1987. Victim testimony indicates that he continued to abuse inmates across both of these spells.
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Husband retired from the Prison Service in 1990, being awarded the imperial service medal for meritorious duty during this time.
He also began training as a minister in the Waddington Street United Reformed Church, being officially inducted as one in June 1994.
Husband spent the next few years largely unnoticed until 1999, when he was arrested as part of Operation Voice, a Metropolitan police-led UK-wide investigation into the distribution of child sexual abuse materials.
Husband was arrested, charged and suspended from his ministerial roles in the Waddington Street United Reformed Church. However, the case was later dismissed at court, and he was reinstated as a minister in June 2000.
Investigations into him began in 2002, and in 2003 he was convicted of 10 counts of indecent assault and one count of rape against five teenagers at Medomsley, initially being sentenced to eight years in prison.
He was subsequently charged with four further offences in 2005 with his sentence extended to 10 years. The true horror of Husband’s crimes only became apparent around this time. He died in 2010.
David Greenwood, the lawyer who has represented many Medomsley victims since 2001, described the report as “a milestone along the road to exposing the shocking facts of detention centres and borstals around the country” but said that it left “many unanswered questions”, calling for a public inquiry that would look into “the scale of state-sponsored violence against detainees, the missed opportunities to stop it, and its consequences for a generation of boys.”
Usher dismissed the need for such an inquiry, but said that the victims had been failed by many levels of authority, who allowed abuse that had “ruined lives”, saying that for many young men, “a short sentence had become a life sentence.”
