Man criticises Islington Council child abuse support scheme

When Michael Fitch was nine years old, he was sent by Islington Council to Shephall Manor – a boarding school in Stevenage for “maladjusted” boys.

He would be one of several boys who left far more damaged than they arrived.

He first met Roy Caterer, the outdoor activities instructor, in the car park.

“He came up to me and asked me if I liked Christmas,” said Michael. “The next time I saw him he gave me a gold nugget necklace.”

Caterer was always “very friendly, laughing, joking, with a big smile on his face.”

He took the boys canoeing and swimming, told them about his job as a Hertfordshire fire officer.

But, said Michael, about a year after they met, everything changed.

Caterer took him to a secluded park and raped him. He was around nine years old.

Afterwards, he put Michael in a hole.

“He put a shovel of earth over my head and told me if I tell anybody what he’s just done to me, he will bury me alive,” Michael said.

From then on, the abuse was constant.

“It went on until I was 15,” he said.

Shephall Manor school for 'maladjusted boys' was closed down in 1989 (Image: Stevenage Museum)

Whistleblower

The Islington Gazette has spoken to a whistleblower who discovered Caterer had abused multiple boys at Shephall Manor.

The former residential social worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, worked there in the 1980s and was told by a boy: “That man, Roy Caterer, who takes us canoeing – he touches us.”

Caterer was a volunteer and the source had never been comfortable with the arrangement.

“People were watching this guy coming in for years and not saying anything,” they said.

“He shouldn’t have been in the school, but these people have ways of getting into the system.

“This guy was a Herts chief fire officer. He had some authority. I think people were scared of saying anything. He used to come to the school in his full uniform. I had a bad feeling about the guy.”

Caterer was not as senior as he led some to believe. He was a station officer. But he did have political connections, sitting on Hertfordshire County Council’s Fire Authority.

When the school worker reported the boy’s disclosure to the headteacher, Caterer was banned from the premises.

“Little by little,” they said, staff unearthed years of abuse – but with one critical evidential shortcoming.

“Many children from the school talked to me about it – but no one said they were abused personally,” they recalled. “Their pride wouldn’t allow it.”

The source stayed in touch with some of the boys into adulthood. They later admitted they had been abused.

Shephalbury Manor was used as a convalescent home for Polish officers during the Second World War, then as a boarding school for Polish orphans, before becoming Shephall Manor school for troubled boys (Image: Stevenage Museum)

Islington

Shephall boys told staff that Caterer had “started going to London” to visit certain pupils after being banned from the school.

Among them was Michael – but his visits had started earlier.

“Because I ran away from school, he turned up,” Michael said.

“He told my mum he was going to take me back to school. He wormed his way into my mum’s affections.

“He was very good at putting a front on, working his way into families, so he didn’t seem suspicious. He was very manipulative. It was almost like a brainwashing system that he used.”

Caterer began picking Michael up from Islington for outings, even taking him to his own house.

“The man had that much confidence and guts to rape me in his front room, while his wife and children were upstairs,” said Michael.

After a while, Caterer suggested Michael’s younger brother Doug start coming out with them.

Shephall School, also known as Shephalbury Manor, has since become the headquarters for a church, which had nothing to do with the running of the former school (Image: Stevenage Museum)

Doug

Caterer took the brothers swimming, canoeing, bowling and camping.

Suspecting he might try to abuse Doug too, Michael told him not to. He even threatened him with a weapon.

When Caterer offered to teach Michael to drive, he said, he deliberately crashed the car, hoping to kill his abuser.

But Caterer did eventually get Doug on his own.

As with Michael, he threatened to kill Doug after the first time he abused him, then began abusing him regularly.

“It wasn’t just sexual abuse,” Doug said. “It was taking nude photographs of me. I think he was sharing them with other paedophiles.”

Doug would chat politely with Caterer’s family, then be taken up to Caterer’s loft and photographed.

“He had a professional set-up,” said Doug. “Lights, cameras, everything. It was like a photographer’s studio. He was developing them himself.”

Dr Liz Davies, a former Islington Council social worker, now runs the Islington Survivors Network, helping complainants to apply to the council's Support Payment Scheme (Image: Charles Thomson)

Catch up on our investigation into the Islington abuse scandal:

• Timeline: How the Islington abuse scandal unfolded
• Met Police officer: 'Children's home neglect left me at paedophile's mercy'
• Revealed: The north London paedophile who kept getting jobs with children

Prosecution

Both Michael and Doug said they separately told Islington Council social workers about the abuse.

“It was like they didn’t want to know,” said Doug.

But when social worker Liz Davies heard of the allegations, she called the police.

In his attic studio, officers found photo albums labelled “Roy’s Boys”.

Doug was in them. So were many others.

Caterer’s family had been oblivious to his depraved activities.

He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years at St Albans Crown Court in March 1991, for eight counts of gross indecency with a child and three counts of buggery.

At that time, Islington Social Services was divided into 24 neighbourhood areas.

In April 1991, a council report said five victims of Caterer had been identified in just one area of Hornsey.

The report suggested checking for more victims in the other 23 neighbourhoods.

To Liz’s knowledge, that never happened.

Caterer died of natural causes at Lister Hospital in December 1999.

Caterer was sentenced in 1991 at the old St Albans Crown Court - now the St Albans Museum and Gallery (Image: Google Streetview)

“We don’t matter”

Both brothers’ lives have been marred.

“It’s led to me being scarred for life because I self-harm,” said Michael.

He has also struggled with substance abuse and been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

He has spent his life plagued by guilt.

“I think that’s one of the reasons I started self-harming,” he sobbed.

“I hate that Roy did it to Douglas. He didn’t deserve that. He really didn’t. He was my brother and I loved him. I constantly sit here thinking, ‘Why did I put Douglas in that situation?’”

Doug has been diagnosed with PTSD and clinical depression so severe that he is classed as disabled.

“If I try to get close to someone, I can’t trust them,” he said. “I think I’m going to get hurt.”

But what haunts him the most are the indecent images.

“I worry about it every day,” he said, tearfully. “I get on a tube or a bus and people are looking at me and I think, ‘Have they seen the photographs?’”

But while the impact on both brothers was profound, only Michael is eligible for help from Islington Council’s Support Payment Scheme.

Set up last year, it offers £10,000 to survivors of childhood abuse linked to Islington children's homes.

After Shephall, Michael spent some time in the Conewood Street children’s home, from which Caterer “would pick me up, take me somewhere and rape me.”

After leaving Shephall Manor, Michael was placed at 14 Conewood Street - then an Islington Council children's home. It is no longer a children's home and the current occupants had no involvement in its former activities (Image: Charles Thomson)

But Doug was never in a children’s home. He was the subject of a supervision order, monitored by social workers at home.

“My brother can claim and I can’t, even though [Caterer] did the same thing to me,” said Doug.

“People like me have been left to the side like we don’t exist. Because we weren’t in children’s homes, we don’t matter.”

The £10,000 payment “would mean a lot to me,” said Doug.

“I want to get away from London. There’s too many memories. I go to Brighton with my partner. When I’m there, I’m relaxed, calm. I forget about everything that has gone on.”

He would forfeit his Islington Council home and put a deposit on a rental property by the sea.

“I just feel let down and forgotten about,” he sighed.

Doug Fitch said he felt forgotten and let down by Islington Council, whose support payment scheme for child abuse victims excludes him because he was never in a children's home (Image: Charles Thomson)

Council

Islington said it was “deeply sorry” for its “past failure to protect vulnerable children”.

“All abuse is absolutely and equally legitimate and valid,” it said.

But, it continued, the scheme was “specifically designed for survivors who experienced abuse when placed by Islington Council in its children’s homes.

“We were conscious of the length of time it had taken to develop this legally and financially complex scheme and did not want to delay it any longer for these survivors."

The council said being excluded from the support scheme did not stop Doug from pursuing a civil claim.

“As a minimum, the council’s wider support for survivors – which includes trauma support – will be available for the duration of the payment scheme," it added.

*For more information about the scheme, which ends next spring, call 0207 527 3254 or email supportpayment@islington.gov.uk.

Islington Survivors Network, run by Dr Liz Davies, can be reached on 0300 302 0930 or islingtonsn@gmail.com.

When life is difficult, the Samaritans is available 365 days, 24/7. Call for free on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org.