Deaf victims end 40-year silence on child sex abuse | UK News | The Observer
Deaf victims end 40-year silence on child sex abuse
They were the easiest prey for a paedophile. For the first time, they tell of their harrowing life at a special school - a living hell that many may still be suffering today
Antony Barnet
Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer
Meena was asleep when he came into the school dormitory. He came over to her bed, shaking her awake. He started kissing her and rubbing his hands all over her body. When she resisted, he slapped her. He pulled down the blankets on the bed, ripped off her clothes. Then he raped her. Meena was four.
The other girls in the small room remained asleep. They would not have heard Meena's muffled screams of pain, nor the sounds of Peter Smith, assaulting her. Like Meena, all the girls were deaf.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I didn't understand. Every day he came straight to me. I suppose it was because none of my family came to see me. I was deaf and I couldn't talk, and that's why he did it' said Meena, now 48, who was born in South Africa.
Her family had sent her to the special deaf school in a prosperous suburban area in southern England because she was an Asian girl growing up under apartheid, and deaf schools were for white children only.
Jack was about eight and running in the school playground when he was summoned over by the bearded Smith, then 38, whose wife was the headmistress. The boy was taken into the school garage with a girl, and they were told to stand on a pile of milk bottle tops that the pupils had collected for charity.
Both children were profoundly deaf, but their sense of smell was acute, and the room stank of the soured milk congealed on the bottle tops. Smith ordered both children to stand on the piles and trample them down. As they were doing this, he stripped them. He stroked their bodies and forced them to have oral sex with him. 'To this day, I can't stand the smell of stale milk. It reminds me of all the evil things that happened in that garage,' said Jack.
Unfortunately for Meena and Jack, these were not isolated incidents. Boarders at the school, they claim they were frequently and regularly sexually assaulted by Smith. It could happen at any time of day or night, and the attacks were sustained over a period of several years. Meena and Jack were not alone.
An Observer investigation has uncovered a horrific catalogue of sexual abuse at the school from 1958 to 1970. Smith attacked the most vulnerable children in society: those who could not hear or speak. For deaf children, there can often be no cry for help. Until today, this story has remained a secret. Some fear it is just the tip of something much uglier and that the abuse of deaf children across the country is far more widespread.
Over the past month, The Observer has spoken to several of the former pupils of this deaf school. With the help of sign language interpreters and relatives, the survivors have spoken publicly for the first time about their experiences.
Many details are too horrific to be reported. Even today some of Smith's victims can't bring themselves to describe what he did to them without breaking down. The Observer knows the name and location of the school, which has now closed, the identity of Smith and has traced him to his home. We have chosen not to reveal his identity or where he now lives in case innocent members of his family might face attack. He is now over 80 and in poor health.
Between the Fifties and the Seventies, the school was viewed as a leading institution for the education of deaf children. Although private, some local authorities paid for pupils to be taught there. The headmistress, Jo Smith, was viewed as a pioneer in teaching children whose hearing was impaired. Hundreds of deaf children passed through the school, which started in 1951 and had a royal patron.
There is no suggestion that Mrs Smith or any other teacher was involved in the sexual abuse of children. But as the headmistress's husband, Peter Smith was the school administrative secretary and caretaker. The couple's large family home was the original location of the nursery where deaf children from the age of three slept in small dormitories.
As a sex offender, Smith could not have been in a better place. As one sister of a former pupil said: 'He had his bag of sweets there, right in front of him, open... It was easy. He gorged himself.'
The world of the deaf child is one of silence, and in the past - before modern attitudes meant that deafness was no longer seen as a disability - they were often left confused and isolated.
Understanding an environment where communication is king, infants born without hearing can feel lonely. They are sometimes unable to speak to friends, siblings or even their own parents. For paedophiles such as Smith, this makes deaf children the perfect target. While the sexual abuse of children in residential homes has received attention, the assault of deaf children has remained hidden.
One of Smith's victims was Shirley, a young girl he regularly forced to have oral sex with him. Another, Stacey, was abused every week between the ages of five and seven. There was Danny, who was stripped naked and taken into Smith's bed with three other boys. Dianne was 'interfered with' several times up until the age of seven, and Lianne was forced to masturbate Smith while he was driving his van.
Each one of the victims knows others who are still too afraid or ashamed to speak publicly. Some claim they were attacked in Smith's Morris Minor or his Bedford van, others in his office or the Smiths' family bedroom. Others recall being assaulted when they went to Smith for 'ear-cleaning' sessions and were made to put their head between his legs as he used instruments to try 'to unblock' their ears.
While many still suffer trauma from the abuse they suffered, Smith has never been to jail for his crimes. He is living out his old age peacefully in the British countryside, still with his wife.
This is why former pupils of the school have come forward and talked publicly for the first time about their experiences. They want Smith exposed, and to bring the hitherto taboo issue of the sexual abuse of the deaf into the public domain.
There has been one attempt at legal redress. On 2 March last year, an attempt by 22 former pupils to prosecute Smith for what he did collapsed when a judge said the case could not proceed.
He ruled that bringing a prosecution was an 'abuse of process', because the events happened so long ago. He said witnesses had died, a school building involved had been demolished and there was no surviving documentary evidence to support their claims. He said it all happened too long ago to rely on memory alone and the fact that Smith, who was 80, was arguably in ill health meant he might not face a fair trial.
The judge said: 'There must surely come a time in the maturity of adult life when wrongs done to a person as a child are recognised for what they are, and action must then be taken. It cannot be right for people to allow another 15 or 20 years to go by before drawing the attention of the competent authorities to instances of historical abuse.'
Many of the survivors of Smith's attacks praised the police investigation, but felt angry about the judge's words.
'How can he say that?' said Meena. 'I remember this [the attacks] as if it was yesterday: the room, his smell, his disgusting smell and beard. He has ruined my life.'
'They talked about his human rights, but deaf people have rights as well,' said Stacey. ' It feels like deaf people don't count.'
Jack said: 'Because we can't speak, we are at the bottom of the pile. The legal system does not favour three groups: the deaf, the disabled and people who speak a foreign language. When it comes to justice, you know as soon as they give you the label "deaf" you are not going to get a fair deal.'
Cases of sexual abuse that hap pened years ago are always fraught with difficulty, particularly when very young children are involved. Yet experts in the deaf community believe the judge's suggestion that the pupils should have come forward earlier shows a lack of understanding about the distinct problems faced by those who cannot hear.
The majority of victims of sexual abuse feel deeply ashamed about what happened to them and even that they were somehow to blame. Many believe they were the only ones affected and have often been threatened with violence if they tell anybody. Even victims who can hear sometimes take many years to tell anybody about the abuse. For deaf children, all these issues are magnified by their inability to communicate easily.
One potentially significant factor in this case was the children's isolation, compounded by the fact that sign language was not allowed at the school. Any child caught signing to another was punished. The idea, now thought to be outdated, was that they should concentrate on trying to speak, even though this was often impossible. The pupils were allowed only to lip-read and the young age of the children meant many did not understand what was happening to them and had no way of expressing it.
Jack recalls using the word 'rude' as he tried to describe the attacks on him. At one stage, he was so frightened that he threw a paper aeroplane over the school fence with the words 'man rude' written on one of its wings. Meena said it was only when she had her first period, at the age of nine, and a teacher explained the facts of life to her, that she understood what Smith had been doing.
Experts believe the sexual abuse of deaf children has been far more widespread than the events at the school. The Observer is aware of at least one other on-going prosecution of historic sex abuse against children at another British deaf school, which cannot be named for legal reasons.
In another case, Graham Gilford was jailed for nine years in 1991 for 'systematically and persistently' sexually abusing 15 boys in his care over seven years at a deaf school in south London. Gilford, a former special constable in the Metropolitan Police, joined the school as a handyman and worked his way into a position of trust.
Gilford used to contrive an opportunity to be alone with a boy, then start some form of horseplay or make an excuse to remove the child's clothing, before sexually assaulting him. The prosecution said the offences went undetected for years because the victims were either too embarrassed or afraid to report them.
Outside Britain, several cases of systematic sexual abuse of deaf children have emerged in recent years. In Canada, the United States and Ireland, major scandals have hit the headlines revealing horrific stories. Research in America has found that disabled children are almost four times more likely to be sexually, physically and emotionally abused and neglected than non-disabled children. One US study found that 53 per cent of deaf children are likely to have been abused.
Margaret Kennedy, a social worker and lecturer on sexual abuse, who runs an organisation training professionals on disability and abuse, commented: 'We know this did not happen just at this one deaf school and there are other cases to come out. The difficulty is that the deaf community is not yet speaking about its experiences like the hearing community. The fact is that paedophiles go after the most vulnerable people, and deaf children are in that category.'
Kennedy firmly believes that that banning sign language was a critical factor in allowing the abuse to flourish. 'People put barriers up and the children could not communicate. They just didn't know where to go.'
This view is echoed by Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS). 'There is a real need for proper studies into this to assess the scale of the problem. We cannot simply extrapolate from the research in the US. We strongly urge the Government to fund the research,' she said.
Daniels believes that, while historic cases might come to light, the situation has vastly improved. She said: 'We know it is vital that deaf children can communicate fluently about their experiences, know what is unacceptable behaviour and must have an adult they can trust.'
Daniels's charity has been working with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to find ways of supporting deaf children in vulnerable situations. 'The processes of child protection in place for the deaf community are far more robust than in the past,' she said.
There are also many hurdles for the deaf community to overcome within the legal system, because evidence cannot be presented in traditional ways and deaf people can be seen as less credible witnesses.
One case alleging physical - not sexual - abuse at a deaf school in northern England illustrates the point. An NSPCC investigation revealed a 'very disturbing' series of unexplained injuries to children there and concerns about standards of care. The deaf children's society said pupils had been 'subjected to an appalling catalogue of abuse and neglect'.
Police presented files to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges. It said one of the problems in proving the offences in court was the result of the children's communication problems. The detective chief inspector who led the inquiry said then that alleged victims were 'not in a position to inform the police'.
'In this investigation it has been very difficult, because we are talking about children with high levels of disabilities and historic cases of abuse going back years.'
For the children of the deaf school, it is not just their lack of hearing that has stood in the way of redress, but also a dismissive view of the ordeal they suffered from the authorities at the time. The Observer has uncovered a disturbing piece of evidence that some of the sexual assaults could have been prevented.
Court records reveal that, in May 1964, Smith was prosecuted for indecently assaulting two 11-year-old girls at the school. He pleaded guilty and asked for seven similar offences to be taken into consideration.
Smith blamed overwork and said none of the children was alarmed or upset. A former mayor spoke up for him, saying that he had visited the school on numerous occasions and had been struck by the extremely happy relationship between both the Smiths and the children, who called them 'mummy and daddy'.
Peter Smith was fined £50. He was never jailed, despite admitting the sexual abuse of nine deaf children. Smith was supposed to stay away from the school for two years after the case.
Shirley started at the Smiths' school as a seven-year-old in 1965. She was sent there by the local authority. She claims she was abused almost from the first day, and the abuse carried on two or three times a week until she left four years later. Shirley had no idea that the man abusing her had already been prosecuted as a serial sex offender. The Observer showed her a press cutting of the case from a local newspaper. She almost burst into tears. 'What! They knew he was a paedophile and they sent me there. How could they do that?'
The deaf school was at the time licensed by the Ministry of Education and regularly inspected. This leads Malcolm Johnson, a lawyer specialising in abuse cases, to believe there may be a case for the authorities to answer.
'In cases involving sexual abuse in school, there might be grounds for a case against the government or local authorities, if it can be shown that the perpetrator was in fact prosecuted for offences against children and subsequently allowed to carry on work in close proximity to those children. The central allegation would be that the responsible authorities were negligent in their duty of care,' said Johnson.
Just off a quiet country road is a modern house where Smith lives with his wife. He is now 82 and walks with a stick. His wife said he is very ill and had Parkinson's disease.
Smith is indeed frail and, although he could not hear to answer questions, he can talk. His wife does not accept the allegations against her husband, shaking her head saying, 'It just couldn't have happened, it couldn't have happened.' She even dismisses his 1964 conviction. She claims her former pupils have all made it up and are just trying to get compensation. 'I helped so many of these children, why would they want to drag all this up now?'
Her school may indeed have helped many deaf children to overcome their disability, but for others who suffered at the hands of her husband, their lives have been ruined.
· The names of the children have been changed to protect their identity. Peter Smith is a fictional name.
Deaf victims end 40-year silence on child sex abuse
They were the easiest prey for a paedophile. For the first time, they tell of their harrowing life at a special school - a living hell that many may still be suffering today
Antony Barnet
Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer
Meena was asleep when he came into the school dormitory. He came over to her bed, shaking her awake. He started kissing her and rubbing his hands all over her body. When she resisted, he slapped her. He pulled down the blankets on the bed, ripped off her clothes. Then he raped her. Meena was four.
The other girls in the small room remained asleep. They would not have heard Meena's muffled screams of pain, nor the sounds of Peter Smith, assaulting her. Like Meena, all the girls were deaf.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I didn't understand. Every day he came straight to me. I suppose it was because none of my family came to see me. I was deaf and I couldn't talk, and that's why he did it' said Meena, now 48, who was born in South Africa.
Her family had sent her to the special deaf school in a prosperous suburban area in southern England because she was an Asian girl growing up under apartheid, and deaf schools were for white children only.
Jack was about eight and running in the school playground when he was summoned over by the bearded Smith, then 38, whose wife was the headmistress. The boy was taken into the school garage with a girl, and they were told to stand on a pile of milk bottle tops that the pupils had collected for charity.
Both children were profoundly deaf, but their sense of smell was acute, and the room stank of the soured milk congealed on the bottle tops. Smith ordered both children to stand on the piles and trample them down. As they were doing this, he stripped them. He stroked their bodies and forced them to have oral sex with him. 'To this day, I can't stand the smell of stale milk. It reminds me of all the evil things that happened in that garage,' said Jack.
Unfortunately for Meena and Jack, these were not isolated incidents. Boarders at the school, they claim they were frequently and regularly sexually assaulted by Smith. It could happen at any time of day or night, and the attacks were sustained over a period of several years. Meena and Jack were not alone.
An Observer investigation has uncovered a horrific catalogue of sexual abuse at the school from 1958 to 1970. Smith attacked the most vulnerable children in society: those who could not hear or speak. For deaf children, there can often be no cry for help. Until today, this story has remained a secret. Some fear it is just the tip of something much uglier and that the abuse of deaf children across the country is far more widespread.
Over the past month, The Observer has spoken to several of the former pupils of this deaf school. With the help of sign language interpreters and relatives, the survivors have spoken publicly for the first time about their experiences.
Many details are too horrific to be reported. Even today some of Smith's victims can't bring themselves to describe what he did to them without breaking down. The Observer knows the name and location of the school, which has now closed, the identity of Smith and has traced him to his home. We have chosen not to reveal his identity or where he now lives in case innocent members of his family might face attack. He is now over 80 and in poor health.
Between the Fifties and the Seventies, the school was viewed as a leading institution for the education of deaf children. Although private, some local authorities paid for pupils to be taught there. The headmistress, Jo Smith, was viewed as a pioneer in teaching children whose hearing was impaired. Hundreds of deaf children passed through the school, which started in 1951 and had a royal patron.
There is no suggestion that Mrs Smith or any other teacher was involved in the sexual abuse of children. But as the headmistress's husband, Peter Smith was the school administrative secretary and caretaker. The couple's large family home was the original location of the nursery where deaf children from the age of three slept in small dormitories.
As a sex offender, Smith could not have been in a better place. As one sister of a former pupil said: 'He had his bag of sweets there, right in front of him, open... It was easy. He gorged himself.'
The world of the deaf child is one of silence, and in the past - before modern attitudes meant that deafness was no longer seen as a disability - they were often left confused and isolated.
Understanding an environment where communication is king, infants born without hearing can feel lonely. They are sometimes unable to speak to friends, siblings or even their own parents. For paedophiles such as Smith, this makes deaf children the perfect target. While the sexual abuse of children in residential homes has received attention, the assault of deaf children has remained hidden.
One of Smith's victims was Shirley, a young girl he regularly forced to have oral sex with him. Another, Stacey, was abused every week between the ages of five and seven. There was Danny, who was stripped naked and taken into Smith's bed with three other boys. Dianne was 'interfered with' several times up until the age of seven, and Lianne was forced to masturbate Smith while he was driving his van.
Each one of the victims knows others who are still too afraid or ashamed to speak publicly. Some claim they were attacked in Smith's Morris Minor or his Bedford van, others in his office or the Smiths' family bedroom. Others recall being assaulted when they went to Smith for 'ear-cleaning' sessions and were made to put their head between his legs as he used instruments to try 'to unblock' their ears.
While many still suffer trauma from the abuse they suffered, Smith has never been to jail for his crimes. He is living out his old age peacefully in the British countryside, still with his wife.
This is why former pupils of the school have come forward and talked publicly for the first time about their experiences. They want Smith exposed, and to bring the hitherto taboo issue of the sexual abuse of the deaf into the public domain.
There has been one attempt at legal redress. On 2 March last year, an attempt by 22 former pupils to prosecute Smith for what he did collapsed when a judge said the case could not proceed.
He ruled that bringing a prosecution was an 'abuse of process', because the events happened so long ago. He said witnesses had died, a school building involved had been demolished and there was no surviving documentary evidence to support their claims. He said it all happened too long ago to rely on memory alone and the fact that Smith, who was 80, was arguably in ill health meant he might not face a fair trial.
The judge said: 'There must surely come a time in the maturity of adult life when wrongs done to a person as a child are recognised for what they are, and action must then be taken. It cannot be right for people to allow another 15 or 20 years to go by before drawing the attention of the competent authorities to instances of historical abuse.'
Many of the survivors of Smith's attacks praised the police investigation, but felt angry about the judge's words.
'How can he say that?' said Meena. 'I remember this [the attacks] as if it was yesterday: the room, his smell, his disgusting smell and beard. He has ruined my life.'
'They talked about his human rights, but deaf people have rights as well,' said Stacey. ' It feels like deaf people don't count.'
Jack said: 'Because we can't speak, we are at the bottom of the pile. The legal system does not favour three groups: the deaf, the disabled and people who speak a foreign language. When it comes to justice, you know as soon as they give you the label "deaf" you are not going to get a fair deal.'
Cases of sexual abuse that hap pened years ago are always fraught with difficulty, particularly when very young children are involved. Yet experts in the deaf community believe the judge's suggestion that the pupils should have come forward earlier shows a lack of understanding about the distinct problems faced by those who cannot hear.
The majority of victims of sexual abuse feel deeply ashamed about what happened to them and even that they were somehow to blame. Many believe they were the only ones affected and have often been threatened with violence if they tell anybody. Even victims who can hear sometimes take many years to tell anybody about the abuse. For deaf children, all these issues are magnified by their inability to communicate easily.
One potentially significant factor in this case was the children's isolation, compounded by the fact that sign language was not allowed at the school. Any child caught signing to another was punished. The idea, now thought to be outdated, was that they should concentrate on trying to speak, even though this was often impossible. The pupils were allowed only to lip-read and the young age of the children meant many did not understand what was happening to them and had no way of expressing it.
Jack recalls using the word 'rude' as he tried to describe the attacks on him. At one stage, he was so frightened that he threw a paper aeroplane over the school fence with the words 'man rude' written on one of its wings. Meena said it was only when she had her first period, at the age of nine, and a teacher explained the facts of life to her, that she understood what Smith had been doing.
Experts believe the sexual abuse of deaf children has been far more widespread than the events at the school. The Observer is aware of at least one other on-going prosecution of historic sex abuse against children at another British deaf school, which cannot be named for legal reasons.
In another case, Graham Gilford was jailed for nine years in 1991 for 'systematically and persistently' sexually abusing 15 boys in his care over seven years at a deaf school in south London. Gilford, a former special constable in the Metropolitan Police, joined the school as a handyman and worked his way into a position of trust.
Gilford used to contrive an opportunity to be alone with a boy, then start some form of horseplay or make an excuse to remove the child's clothing, before sexually assaulting him. The prosecution said the offences went undetected for years because the victims were either too embarrassed or afraid to report them.
Outside Britain, several cases of systematic sexual abuse of deaf children have emerged in recent years. In Canada, the United States and Ireland, major scandals have hit the headlines revealing horrific stories. Research in America has found that disabled children are almost four times more likely to be sexually, physically and emotionally abused and neglected than non-disabled children. One US study found that 53 per cent of deaf children are likely to have been abused.
Margaret Kennedy, a social worker and lecturer on sexual abuse, who runs an organisation training professionals on disability and abuse, commented: 'We know this did not happen just at this one deaf school and there are other cases to come out. The difficulty is that the deaf community is not yet speaking about its experiences like the hearing community. The fact is that paedophiles go after the most vulnerable people, and deaf children are in that category.'
Kennedy firmly believes that that banning sign language was a critical factor in allowing the abuse to flourish. 'People put barriers up and the children could not communicate. They just didn't know where to go.'
This view is echoed by Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS). 'There is a real need for proper studies into this to assess the scale of the problem. We cannot simply extrapolate from the research in the US. We strongly urge the Government to fund the research,' she said.
Daniels believes that, while historic cases might come to light, the situation has vastly improved. She said: 'We know it is vital that deaf children can communicate fluently about their experiences, know what is unacceptable behaviour and must have an adult they can trust.'
Daniels's charity has been working with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to find ways of supporting deaf children in vulnerable situations. 'The processes of child protection in place for the deaf community are far more robust than in the past,' she said.
There are also many hurdles for the deaf community to overcome within the legal system, because evidence cannot be presented in traditional ways and deaf people can be seen as less credible witnesses.
One case alleging physical - not sexual - abuse at a deaf school in northern England illustrates the point. An NSPCC investigation revealed a 'very disturbing' series of unexplained injuries to children there and concerns about standards of care. The deaf children's society said pupils had been 'subjected to an appalling catalogue of abuse and neglect'.
Police presented files to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges. It said one of the problems in proving the offences in court was the result of the children's communication problems. The detective chief inspector who led the inquiry said then that alleged victims were 'not in a position to inform the police'.
'In this investigation it has been very difficult, because we are talking about children with high levels of disabilities and historic cases of abuse going back years.'
For the children of the deaf school, it is not just their lack of hearing that has stood in the way of redress, but also a dismissive view of the ordeal they suffered from the authorities at the time. The Observer has uncovered a disturbing piece of evidence that some of the sexual assaults could have been prevented.
Court records reveal that, in May 1964, Smith was prosecuted for indecently assaulting two 11-year-old girls at the school. He pleaded guilty and asked for seven similar offences to be taken into consideration.
Smith blamed overwork and said none of the children was alarmed or upset. A former mayor spoke up for him, saying that he had visited the school on numerous occasions and had been struck by the extremely happy relationship between both the Smiths and the children, who called them 'mummy and daddy'.
Peter Smith was fined £50. He was never jailed, despite admitting the sexual abuse of nine deaf children. Smith was supposed to stay away from the school for two years after the case.
Shirley started at the Smiths' school as a seven-year-old in 1965. She was sent there by the local authority. She claims she was abused almost from the first day, and the abuse carried on two or three times a week until she left four years later. Shirley had no idea that the man abusing her had already been prosecuted as a serial sex offender. The Observer showed her a press cutting of the case from a local newspaper. She almost burst into tears. 'What! They knew he was a paedophile and they sent me there. How could they do that?'
The deaf school was at the time licensed by the Ministry of Education and regularly inspected. This leads Malcolm Johnson, a lawyer specialising in abuse cases, to believe there may be a case for the authorities to answer.
'In cases involving sexual abuse in school, there might be grounds for a case against the government or local authorities, if it can be shown that the perpetrator was in fact prosecuted for offences against children and subsequently allowed to carry on work in close proximity to those children. The central allegation would be that the responsible authorities were negligent in their duty of care,' said Johnson.
Just off a quiet country road is a modern house where Smith lives with his wife. He is now 82 and walks with a stick. His wife said he is very ill and had Parkinson's disease.
Smith is indeed frail and, although he could not hear to answer questions, he can talk. His wife does not accept the allegations against her husband, shaking her head saying, 'It just couldn't have happened, it couldn't have happened.' She even dismisses his 1964 conviction. She claims her former pupils have all made it up and are just trying to get compensation. 'I helped so many of these children, why would they want to drag all this up now?'
Her school may indeed have helped many deaf children to overcome their disability, but for others who suffered at the hands of her husband, their lives have been ruined.
· The names of the children have been changed to protect their identity. Peter Smith is a fictional name.
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