EXTRACT –

Listening to Melanie’s detailed accounts of life at Beechwood children’s home as a young teenager, a culture of institutionalised rape, violence and murder emerges.

“When you’re being maltreated, if you put up a fight against it, if you’re not passive, you get it worse,” she says.

She recalls the terrifying moment when a senior care worker (now deceased) assaulted her in the grounds of Beechwood, holding her hostage for an hour, and her lucky escape from death thanks to a passing gardener who confronted the man. She was sixteen years old at the time.

“I was held hostage under the giant rhododendron bush with a leather belt held around my throat, forced to carry out a sex act… I ‘d already been raped at that point. He said: ‘Keep your mouth shut or I’ll kill you like the others.’ ”

During the attack, which lasted an hour, the worker, nicknamed the ‘cellar rapist,’ confessed to killing children at the home, the intelligent ones who talked.

The body of a young boy is allegedly buried under a multi-surface football pitch at The Lindens, one of two residential units within Beechwood’s grounds. Other bodies may lay hidden in other areas of the site, recently demolished by bulldozers.

Kind regards,