A children’s home at the centre of a new sex abuse claim was already linked to a succession of controversies and tragedies, including one kidnapping the killings of two teenage boys.
At least four people who worked at Islington Council’s former home in Conewood Street, later named Park Place, have previously been accused of abusing children, according to privileged council documents.
When another was convicted of kidnapping a child he met at the facility, a paedophile magazine sprang to his defence.
Schoolboy Jason Swift, killed by a child sex trafficking ring dubbed the Dirty Dozen, was linked to the building, as was another boy who was violently killed.
The home is now the subject of a lawsuit claiming a teenage girl was repeatedly sexually abused by strange men who entered her bedroom under the cover of darkness.
As lawyers representing the complainant urged other victims to come forward, the Islington Gazette explored the Conewood home's murky past.
Kidnap
In 1983, social worker John Picton (now deceased) snatched a 13-year-old boy he had met at the Conewood facility.
The boy had moved to an adjoining children’s home in Elwood Street by the time Picton took him.
The homes were joined by their back gardens, so staff and children could move between them.
Picton and the boy he abducted were tracked down almost two months later in Toulouse, France.
He was brought back to the UK and prosecuted, prompting a paedophile magazine called Minor Problems to lament his plight.
In an article titled 'Affection is not a crime', the paedophile rights newsletter claimed to have met Picton and been convinced “of his genuine concern for his chosen ‘son’”.
He was sent to prison for six months, which the paedophile pamphlet called an “inhuman wrong”.
Abuse Allegations
A 1999 council document revealed numerous historic abuse allegations at the Conewood home.
The document, by the council’s Child Protection and Reviews Service, was published under Freedom of Information laws at the request of Dr Liz Davies at the Islington Survivors Network (ISN).
It said two specific staff members were “alleged to be involved in abuse and pornography”.
A third was alleged to have watched a pornographic film with a child, at added.
Two girls separately reported being abused by unidentified persons at Conewood Street.
None of those allegations was dated in the file.
But a fourth identified staff member was “alleged to abuse boys through prostitution and described boys as his boyfriends” between 1986 and 1995, the report said.
After an “unsuccessful disciplinary hearing”, he went to work for another council.
As of 1999, none of these allegations had ever been investigated by police.
Jason Swift
By 1999, police were aware of reports that Jason Swift had been linked to the Conewood facility not long before he died, the document continued.
Numerous staff and children have reported knowing him while he was there, said Dr Davies.
The Hackney teen was not a resident, she added, but attended an education facility there.
Jason, 14, was found in a shallow grave in Essex in November 1985.
He had died during a vicious gang rape by a paedophile gang known as the Dirty Dozen.
The tabloid press described him as a “rent boy”, despite him being a child incapable of consent.
Paedophile Sidney Cooke was convicted of manslaughter over Jason's death in 1989, but how he first came to the attention of Cooke’s gang has never been properly established.
Tony McGrane
Another Conewood boy wrongly described by tabloids as a “rent boy” also met a violent death.
Tony McGrane, 13, was found stabbed to death in a garage in Clerkenwell in October 1986.
His family denied lurid newspaper reports that he – a child incapable of consent – had been “selling sex in Soho”.
Tony’s death was one of 16 child killings investigated under Operation Stranger – the same operation that investigated Jason Swift’s death – as being potentially linked to one another.
But a 19-year-old family friend from Finsbury, called Gary Whelan, was ultimately convicted of manslaughter over Tony’s death in 1989.
New Allegation
In July, the Islington Gazette published a harrowing interview with a woman who says she was repeatedly sexually abused at Conewood in the 1990s.
Her lawyer Andrew Lord, at Leigh Day, has appealed for anyone with knowledge of the home at that time to make contact.
The council said it could not comment on active lawsuits.
However, it has previously admitted and apologised for decades of widespread abuse in its children’s homes, calling it “the worst chapter in this council’s history”.
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