Friday, January 09, 2015

Church of England announces inquiry into Kendall House

BBC News reports:
The Church of England is to carry out a review of one of its former homes in Gravesend, where it is claimed children were forcibly drugged,
I blogged about Kendall House as long ago as 2009. Reading that post, I find that the Church of England took a very different view and that I was in rather a cutting mood:
I have just been watching the Newsnight report on the drugging of girls at Kendall House, a children's home in Gravesend, between the 1960s and 1980s. The story was also covered on the Today programme this morning. 
The home was run by the Church of England. And what is the response of the Diocese of Rochester? 
A statement quoted by the BBC says: 
It would be inappropriate for the diocese to initiate any internal inquiries since we are not qualified to do this. In any event, it would be essential for any investigation to be conducted both professionally and impartially. 
So they are perfectly qualified to lock children up and drug them, but not qualified to consider whether they were right to do this? This is simply nonsensical.
A few days later I found that an account of the regime at Kendall House had been published in a book in 1980 and that extracts from it could be found on the no 2 abuse site.

One of the depressing things about the current concern over historical child abuse is that so much of the evidence now being sought was easily available decades ago.

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