One of the biggest North Yorkshire Police investigations into alleged abuse at a children's home has ended with the conviction of Anver Sheikh. Mike Laycock reports on the five-year inquiry, dubbed Operation Courier.

THE complaints dated back 20 or 30 years or more, but that did not matter.

The allegations - that young people staying at a former children's home near Tadcaster had been sexually and physically abused - were serious, and they were dealt with accordingly by North Yorkshire Police through the launch in 2000 of Operation Courier, a major and painstaking inquiry.

A team of officers was dedicated to the operation, and they began interviewing hundreds of former residents of St Camillus.

This community home, situated in rolling countryside at Scarthingwell, between Tadcaster and Sherburn-in-Elmet, and the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, had closed down many years before and, after a refurbishment, re-opened as a nursing home, with no connection to its former use.

The Evening Press exclusively revealed the existence of Operation Courier in 2001. Within weeks, the arrests started, followed later by very serious charges... including cruelty, indecent assault and malicious wounding.

Then the trials started. At first, they went well for the prosecution, with home manager James Bernard Littlewood convicted of cruelty and sex offences at the home and at another one down in Lincolnshire, and jailed for 13 years.

Then former housemaster Anver Sheikh was jailed for eight years for sex offences.

But his convictions were subsequently quashed on appeal, leading eventually to this month's retrial.

Three other members of staff, Anthony Shields, David Peake and Bruce Clark, were all acquitted at further trials.

Littlewood unsuccessfully appealed against his convictions, but his sentence was cut to 11 years.

Also, in December 2002, former staff member John Heap, then 63, was formally acquitted on sex assault charges.

Now that the final court case, Sheikh's retrial, has ended with his conviction, reporting restrictions which prevented the identification of the home and details of the police inquiry have been lifted.

Former members of staff at St Camillus have strongly criticised Operation Courier - and defended the way the school was run.

Former teacher, Geoff Buxton, is proud of what he and other staff achieved at the school.

He says many teenagers arrived at the home from very deprived and poor backgrounds, many having been in trouble with the law.

He claims that many left the school 18 months later with greater confidence, an ability to understand and follow rules and get on with life.

"The average stay was, say, 18 months. By the time they left, the vast majority could stand on their own two feet. They were dealt with in a firm but sympathetic way," he claims. "There were rules that had to be adhered to, but if I had seen any abuse, I would have reported it."

Geoff, who still lives at Scarthingwell, and who has never faced any allegations of abuse, is a member of the Scarthingwell Support Group, set up by former staff and their relatives to provide backing and assistance to colleagues who they believe have been wrongly accused.

The group says major difficulties are presented in such cases for people who worked 20, 30 or even 40 years ago in a children's home, in remembering details of their working lives and trying to prove that something which was alleged to have happened did not.

"Documents that could have proved they were innocent are no longer available," said Geoff.

The group claims that many of the allegations stemmed from Britain's growing compensation culture, which they say encourages people to make and pursue "no-win, no-fee" complaints in the hope of winning huge compensation payments.

It also claims that legal firms have been - and still are - advertising inside prisons for inmates who were in care in their childhoods to come forward with complaints.

It is highly critical of the police investigation, comparing it to the Salem witch-hunt and accusing detectives of "trawling" for complainants by interviewing hundreds of former residents at the home. "We do not think our colleagues have had a fair crack of the whip," he said.

'You had to strip off and wear a prison uniform'

A YORK man who lived at St Camillus for almost two years said it was a brutal place, run like a borstal or military camp.

Kevin Young said he had committed no crime when he arrived at St Camillus, aged 14, in the 1970s. But from the moment he stepped through the door, it felt like he had been sent to Borstal.

"It was like a glorified boot camp," claims Kevin, now aged 44.

"I felt it was a regime of terror from the moment you walked in.

"You had to strip off and wear what was like a prison uniform, with red, green and yellow tops.

"We were marched around like it was a military camp. At least 60 per cent of the staff were recruited from the prison service or the hard-line military, with regimental sergeant-major type characters.

"I had committed no crime, although I was deemed disruptive and I probably was disruptive. I had been in care since I was abandoned by my mother at the age of two."

He claimed that "very few" residents had committed any crime, saying that they had come from broken homes, where they had often been subjected to violence or abuse by their parents.

"It was meant to be a Catholic care home/orphanage."

Kevin, who said he was the national spokesman for CUAN, a charity for "survivors of abuse supporting victims of abuse," said he would challenge anybody who thought that the regime at St Camillus had been appropriate for the people sent there.

He hoped that investigations such as Operation Courier would help prevent people from suffering child abuse in the future. He said that if investigations could be mounted no matter how long ago abuse had taken place, this would serve as a deterrent for potential abusers who would always be "looking over their shoulder."

He dismissed suggestions that allegations had been made by former care home residents across the country because of the "compensation culture", saying very few of the victims he had ever spoken to had received compensation payments.

He said he would like to thank the officers involved in Operation Courier for all their efforts in investigating the abuse allegations.

Updated: 10:13 Saturday, January 22, 2005