Kerelaw – ‘They Wanted Enough Rope To Hang Me’

It has taken more than four years, but last month the former principal teacher of the residential school at the centre of one of Scotland’s biggest child abuse investigations finally cleared his name.

There were never any allegations of abuse against Jim Hunter, who was in charge of the Kerelaw Residential School between December 2000 and June 2004. Rather, Glasgow City Council (GCC), who ran the school, claimed that he “failed to protect young people from inappropriate practices by staff and failed to ensure adequate management scrutiny in cases of violent incident reporting”.

Hunter was removed in June 2004 and sacked in August 2005. But after an 11-day employment tribunal, the 57-year-old was finally vindicated when it was concluded that his dismissal from the school, near Stevenston in Ayrshire, was unfair, as GCC had no grounds on which it could reasonably conclude his actions had serious consequences.

Now, for the first time, Hunter has spoken of his battle against his former employer, giving a different picture of what led to the school’s closure in 2006.

Due to the nature of the school, which catered for “some of the most damaged and in turn damaging youngsters in the country,” Kerelaw, he says, was never far from crisis, but was failed by a lack of adequate external line management. He believes that when the council caught the whiff of scandal it opted to scapegoat staff at what was seen as a remote and intractable establishment.

As a result of the council’s investigation, which began after allegations were made against staff in 2004, two men have been jailed. Art teacher Matthew George was sentenced for 10 years and care manager John Muldoon received a two-and-a-half year sentence, each for physically and sexually abusing children.

The council reported that up to 40 staff had abused children over the years, with many more accused of ignoring what was going on.

The council did not specify, but insiders said that most of the allegations referred to excessively rough or inappropriate restraint, rather than sexual abuse.

Of that initial figure, 20 names were referred to the procurator fiscal. However, of those 20, only three were taken to court and only two prosecuted – the case against care worker Elaine Graham was found not proven. A total of 13 staff were sacked – but two of those, Hunter and his deputy Chris Johnson, have since won tribunals, two have been withdrawn, one has been struck out and another three are pending.

Kerelaw was made up of two units: an open residential school for up to 50 children, and a secure unit for a further 24. Youngsters tended to be referred there by children’s panels, often following episodes of violence. Resources were often scarce and there were frequent abscondings, but Hunter insists his stewardship was a successful one.

He says: “We were catering for some of the most difficult kids in the country, but I think, by and large, we were successful. If you look at the inspection reports, the Care Commission were extremely positive about the school. The education department had criticisms, but we were dealing with kids who were extremely difficult to educate and motivate.”

Hunter says things became increasingly difficult during the course of his tenure. “When I took the job, there was balance in the open school of about 50% kids from Glasgow and 50% from other local authority areas. Gradually that mixture changed to about 80% Glasgow and that was extremely difficult to manage.

“The Glasgow kids who came to us tended to have had failed placements in Glasgow’s children’s units. Many of them had been involved in violent incidents with staff in those units and were transferred to us a last resort. By late 2003 things had got really bad. The only way I was able to manage things was to start reducing numbers.

“There is a language which is used to describe these youngsters – disadvantaged, deprived, vulnerable. Some of them may have been vulnerable, but they were also highly volatile, often violent and they were at Kerelaw because they were a risk to others.

“The open school was in ferment. There were kids absconding, stealing drink, assaulting people. My depute went off sick in the middle of April 2004 and for two months I basically ran on empty. I phoned my line manager at social work services and told him how I felt, but I didn’t get any help.”

In April 2004, following a claim of bullying and harassment against staff, one of the unit managers was transferred. A council social work services team then came down to interview staff, and while the team was there some children made allegations against members of staff about restraints they had been involved in.

Hunter says: “I then got a letter from a boy in the school saying others had been advised they could get compensation if they had been inappropriately restrained and complaining that he hadn’t received the same advice.”

Hunter thinks that, wherever this advice came from, it had the effect of encouraging the children to make complaints.

“External managers also got wind of other historical complaints but, in all honesty, I believe they put two and two together and got about 19.”

Bill Adam, the school’s immediate external line-manager, wrote a secret report in 2004 detailing allegations, and on the basis of that Hunter was removed from his post pending an investigation into inappropriate restraints at Kerelaw.

Hunter says: “This was all reported in the press and I think from there things snowballed and people who had been at the school started ringing up and making all sorts of allegations.”

After Adam took over the running of the school following Hunter’s suspension, a Care Commission inspection in August 2004 found order in the school had crumbled. They issued a Condition Notice which decreed Kerelaw would only be allowed to stay open if an adequate external management structure was put in place.

Hunter says: “Firstly, they weren’t running the school well enough – kids were running around drinking and taking drugs – and secondly, it wasn’t being externally line-managed, not just then but right away into the past.”

Hunter believes the figure of 40 staff the council alleged were involved in abusing children was both inaccurate and misleading. “I suspect what they did was open up the files of people who had worked in the school and decided to treat any manner of complaint as potentially criminal. This is borne out by the fact that the vast majority of police inquiries went nowhere.

“In this line of work there are always going to be accusations thrown around because a large number of the kids, and certainly a majority of the boys who passed through the school, had to be restrained at some point. Restraints were never pleasant but they were carried out according to strict guidelines and complaints were always taken seriously.”

All of the offences for which George and Muldoon were convicted date from well before Hunter’s time in charge. Indeed, most go back to the 1970s and early 1980s. Hunter accepts the court verdicts, but points out that there were no witnesses to their crimes and finds it difficult to fathom that such things took place and were not reported until years later.

“At Kerelaw there were weekly visits from a consultant psychiatrist and consultant educational psychologist. We had visits from children’s panel members, children’s rights officers, social workers, parents – and kids in the open school went home every weekend; even kids in the secure unit had leave. To me it’s just too far-fetched.”

Hunter maintains that the charges levelled at him by GCC were so vague as to be almost impossible to defend against. “The difficulty was that they never told me what it was members of staff were supposed to have done or what it was I should have been doing to prevent them from doing those things.”

Every violent incident at Kerelaw, he claims, was logged. He also remembers making himself unpopular among staff by referring complaints from residents to be investigated externally, even though this took longer.

Hunter’s disciplinary appeal process dragged on for a further year after he was sacked. He believes the council were hoping there would be multiple convictions in court relating to the period of his headship, which would have strengthened their case against him. “They wanted to have enough rope to hang me,” he said.

A council spokesman said: “The independent inquiry jointly commissioned by Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government is expected to report on Kerelaw in the near future. There are clearly many, complex issues arising from Kerelaw and it therefore it would be inappropriate to comment on an individual case at this time.”

The independent inquiry into what happened at the school is due to report next year.

‘A horrifying catalogue of offences’

In June 2006, at the High Court in Edinburgh, Kerelaw art teacher Matthew George, then 56, was given 10 years for what Judge Lady Paton called “a horrifying catalogue of offences” and his “gross breach of trust”.

George, from Largs, was found guilty after a marathon trial of 18 charges of physical and sexual abuse dating back almost 30 years.

The court was told unruly pupils were pushed and shaken, and that martial arts enthusiast George liked to practise Kung Fu on them and would force victims to perform sex acts.

The gym wall was pockmarked with holes made by flying golf balls – backing up pupils’ claims that they were taken there to be pelted with missiles as a punishment.

Residential care manager John Muldoon, 53, was jailed for two-and-a-half years for indecency.

George and Muldoon originally faced 85 charges all of which they had denied. Lady Paton told George, a married man with a grown-up family and grandchildren, that his crimes had a lasting effect on his victims.