'Culture of cover-up' saw Lambeth care home children abused
The council was mired in corruption and financial mismanagement during the decades of abuse, with "politicised behaviour and turmoil" dominating its culture, according to the report
The IICSA is calling on the Metropolitan Police to consider a criminal investigation into why allegations of sexual abuse made by a boy, later found dead at the Shirley Oaks care home, were not passed on to the coroner by Lambeth Council in 1977. Sandra Fearon, who was at Shirley Oaks between 1964 and 1969 with her siblings, said she was violently sexually abused by a doctor from the age of 12.
Children spent time with "social aunts" or "social uncles", volunteers who worked with children without proper vetting. Clarke was charged with numerous abuse offences as part of Operation Middleton, one of five police investigations into child sexual abuse linked to Lambeth Council from 1992 to the present date. Clarke took his own life before his trial.
Lambeth Council has accepted the recommendations and apologised to the inquiry for creating and overseeing conditions "where appalling and absolutely shocking and horrendous abuse was perpetrated".