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When Salem Came to the Boro: The True Story of the Cleveland Child Abuse Crisis
This is the story of events in Cleveland during 1987.
It is right that this story should be told, so that we may all know and better understand the country in which we live, and why it is that such events can happen. The names of the children, their parents and their doctors, among others, have been altered to protect the anonymity of the children, so that they may grow up and live normal lives and forget the traumas that beset them. The vocations and professions of their parents and the location of their homes have also been changed for the same reasons.� These disguises are thick rather than thin but do not detract from the truth of the story.
The names of the other major participants remain, of course, for they too have a tale to tell, they too have voices that should be heard, they too have a case to put. The sincerity and the motives of these participants is not in question.
It is right that this story should be told, so that we may all know and better understand the country in which we live, and why it is that such events can happen. The names of the children, their parents and their doctors, among others, have been altered to protect the anonymity of the children, so that they may grow up and live normal lives and forget the traumas that beset them. The vocations and professions of their parents and the location of their homes have also been changed for the same reasons.� These disguises are thick rather than thin but do not detract from the truth of the story.
The names of the other major participants remain, of course, for they too have a tale to tell, they too have voices that should be heard, they too have a case to put. The sincerity and the motives of these participants is not in question.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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November 27, 2021
Stuart Bell was the Labour MP for Middlesborough from 1983 until his death in 2012. Born in County Durham, the son of a miner who, prior to becoming an MP, qualified as a barrister and practiced law in Paris, this is his well-written account of an infamous episode in modern British history from his perspective as MP for many of those affected and traumatised; parents, children and relatives for who an MP was a potential source of help and hope at a desperate time.
Stuart Bell captures the true story of when members of 'the caring professions', confused 'meaning well' with 'doing good'. Utterly convinced that they were 'on the side of the angels', two relatively young doctors, rapidly promoted to hospital consultant status in a region that had witnessed the impact of industrial decline, used new and questionable methodology to diagnose sexual abuse in many children who came into hospital for the usual range of childhood ailments from asthma to strained ankles and broken bones. Maybe their judgement was clouded by their perceptions of how deprived and benighted Middlesborough and the wider Cleveland area was. They both hailed from abroad (Australia and South Africa) and maybe had something of the driven commitment to their careers often found in first generation immigrants. Either way, Bell's account paints a picture of two relatively inexperienced consultants having complete power over any family unfortunate enough to cross their paths and a relative absence of any 'grey-haired' colleagues who might have challenged or moderated their path.
Bell compares the zealousness with which the two doctors pursued their new diagnostic technique with the Salem witch trials in America nearly three centuries earlier. While the comparison is clearly a metaphorical rather than a literal one, the impact on some families was barely any less. With false allegations made against parents or relatives, families sometimes disintegrated under the pressure and in a few tragic cases lives were lost through suicide or heart attacks.
Bell seeks to understand the motivations of the two doctors who traumatised so many families in Cleveland, the Australian-born Marietta Higgs and the South African Geoffrey Wyatt. Higgs gets the majority of attention and despite her relative youth (she was under 40 at the time of the events) in many ways she seemed the primary catalyst for what unfolded. Higgs was born of a German mother and Yugoslav father in 1948. Her mother's family had lived on a rural estate in occupied Poland and had had to flee the Russian advance at the end of WW2. With the loss of 'living space' in Poland, Higgs' own parents sought alternative land of their own away from the madness of post war Europe and settled initially in Western Australia. Higgs' family life is described as far from settled, involving her parents separating, a complete estrangement from her father (who her siblings later confirmed that they had wrongly believed he had died) and the tragic death of her much loved Uncle Helmut in a motorcycle accident when she was about 12. She met her husband when she 19, married young and ended up with five children of her own, born within 9 years of one another. Despite this she was able to complete her own 'reasonable' medical degrees in Adelaide by the age of 27 in 1975. Soon after she moved to England with her husband and children, taking up hospital posts in Nottingham, Chatham and then Cleveland. At Cleveland she enjoyed rapid promotion and ended up working with the slightly more established Geoffrey Wyatt.
Higgs and Wyatt formed a tight alliance and one that was to prove integral to the Cleveland Scandal, as it became known, when eventually a range of interested parties from police, members of the judiciary and even hospital management began to question the high numbers of allegedly abused children who were being admitted to hospital, removed from their families or placed into foster families. In some cases children were again found to be abused in the new environments they had been placed and removed again. Still Higgs and Wyatt, a united front, apparently showed no signs of self-doubt.
Over a short period in the spring and summer of 1987, nearly 200 children were removed from their families in the Cleveland area and placed into some form of care. The legal mechanism to enable children to be removed from their parents and held at another location had the Orwellian title of "A Place of Safety Order". This merely required the signature of a local magistrate, an authorisation that was to all intents and purposes a rubber stamp as no magistrate challenged the views of the doctors or supporting social work department. The local hospitals were sometimes described as overrun with fit and active children making care for genuinely sick children a challenge.
Eventually following the resulting press coverage, political intervention from Stuart Bell and others and hearings in higher courts not staffed by mere nodding donkeys of magistrates, the majority of children were returned to their families.
Some have criticised Bell's account as one sided and have noted that some of the children under the care of Higgs and Wyatt were indeed abused. Bell's account is undoubtedly coloured by human compassion for the frightened and broken families that sought his help as an MP and Bell does not profess to be a medic or social worker although his research for the book seems extensive. To defend the actions of Higgs and Wyatt along the lines that some of the children concerned were indeed abused while shrugging shoulders about the innocent families traumatised along the way by the unique blend of incompetence and zealotry that Higgs and Wyatt brought to their work seems akin to defending carpet bombing on the grounds that some enemy soldiers got killed with the dead and maimed civilians merely being 'collateral damage'.
The country was fortunate to have MPs of the calibre and with the compassion of Stuart Bell, and in an age of jaded views on politics this is a fine account of the good that those who serve in politics can do. It would be comforting to view all this tale as the errors of a bygone age using legislation that has been repealed and medical techniques that are discredited. However that would probably be wishful thinking as evidence presented to the current Macalister review into childrens' social care suggests. Over-zealous, incompetent professionals convinced of their righteous motivations not only wreck lives under the defence of 'meaning well', but in misapplying limited resources they also neglect the less visible children who really do need help.
Highly recommended both as a first hand account of the Cleveland Scandal and a salutary reminder of the damage well-intentioned, incompetent zealots can do.
"I meant well" should not stand as a defence.
Stuart Bell captures the true story of when members of 'the caring professions', confused 'meaning well' with 'doing good'. Utterly convinced that they were 'on the side of the angels', two relatively young doctors, rapidly promoted to hospital consultant status in a region that had witnessed the impact of industrial decline, used new and questionable methodology to diagnose sexual abuse in many children who came into hospital for the usual range of childhood ailments from asthma to strained ankles and broken bones. Maybe their judgement was clouded by their perceptions of how deprived and benighted Middlesborough and the wider Cleveland area was. They both hailed from abroad (Australia and South Africa) and maybe had something of the driven commitment to their careers often found in first generation immigrants. Either way, Bell's account paints a picture of two relatively inexperienced consultants having complete power over any family unfortunate enough to cross their paths and a relative absence of any 'grey-haired' colleagues who might have challenged or moderated their path.
Bell compares the zealousness with which the two doctors pursued their new diagnostic technique with the Salem witch trials in America nearly three centuries earlier. While the comparison is clearly a metaphorical rather than a literal one, the impact on some families was barely any less. With false allegations made against parents or relatives, families sometimes disintegrated under the pressure and in a few tragic cases lives were lost through suicide or heart attacks.
Bell seeks to understand the motivations of the two doctors who traumatised so many families in Cleveland, the Australian-born Marietta Higgs and the South African Geoffrey Wyatt. Higgs gets the majority of attention and despite her relative youth (she was under 40 at the time of the events) in many ways she seemed the primary catalyst for what unfolded. Higgs was born of a German mother and Yugoslav father in 1948. Her mother's family had lived on a rural estate in occupied Poland and had had to flee the Russian advance at the end of WW2. With the loss of 'living space' in Poland, Higgs' own parents sought alternative land of their own away from the madness of post war Europe and settled initially in Western Australia. Higgs' family life is described as far from settled, involving her parents separating, a complete estrangement from her father (who her siblings later confirmed that they had wrongly believed he had died) and the tragic death of her much loved Uncle Helmut in a motorcycle accident when she was about 12. She met her husband when she 19, married young and ended up with five children of her own, born within 9 years of one another. Despite this she was able to complete her own 'reasonable' medical degrees in Adelaide by the age of 27 in 1975. Soon after she moved to England with her husband and children, taking up hospital posts in Nottingham, Chatham and then Cleveland. At Cleveland she enjoyed rapid promotion and ended up working with the slightly more established Geoffrey Wyatt.
Higgs and Wyatt formed a tight alliance and one that was to prove integral to the Cleveland Scandal, as it became known, when eventually a range of interested parties from police, members of the judiciary and even hospital management began to question the high numbers of allegedly abused children who were being admitted to hospital, removed from their families or placed into foster families. In some cases children were again found to be abused in the new environments they had been placed and removed again. Still Higgs and Wyatt, a united front, apparently showed no signs of self-doubt.
Over a short period in the spring and summer of 1987, nearly 200 children were removed from their families in the Cleveland area and placed into some form of care. The legal mechanism to enable children to be removed from their parents and held at another location had the Orwellian title of "A Place of Safety Order". This merely required the signature of a local magistrate, an authorisation that was to all intents and purposes a rubber stamp as no magistrate challenged the views of the doctors or supporting social work department. The local hospitals were sometimes described as overrun with fit and active children making care for genuinely sick children a challenge.
Eventually following the resulting press coverage, political intervention from Stuart Bell and others and hearings in higher courts not staffed by mere nodding donkeys of magistrates, the majority of children were returned to their families.
Some have criticised Bell's account as one sided and have noted that some of the children under the care of Higgs and Wyatt were indeed abused. Bell's account is undoubtedly coloured by human compassion for the frightened and broken families that sought his help as an MP and Bell does not profess to be a medic or social worker although his research for the book seems extensive. To defend the actions of Higgs and Wyatt along the lines that some of the children concerned were indeed abused while shrugging shoulders about the innocent families traumatised along the way by the unique blend of incompetence and zealotry that Higgs and Wyatt brought to their work seems akin to defending carpet bombing on the grounds that some enemy soldiers got killed with the dead and maimed civilians merely being 'collateral damage'.
The country was fortunate to have MPs of the calibre and with the compassion of Stuart Bell, and in an age of jaded views on politics this is a fine account of the good that those who serve in politics can do. It would be comforting to view all this tale as the errors of a bygone age using legislation that has been repealed and medical techniques that are discredited. However that would probably be wishful thinking as evidence presented to the current Macalister review into childrens' social care suggests. Over-zealous, incompetent professionals convinced of their righteous motivations not only wreck lives under the defence of 'meaning well', but in misapplying limited resources they also neglect the less visible children who really do need help.
Highly recommended both as a first hand account of the Cleveland Scandal and a salutary reminder of the damage well-intentioned, incompetent zealots can do.
"I meant well" should not stand as a defence.
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