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Monday 17 October 2011

FIDDAMAN victim, convicted murderer Peter Bastin sues Leicestershire County Council

Murderer sues over childhood sex abuse


by Jan Colley

A CONVICTED murderer yesterday sued for damages over the alleged systematic physical, psychological and sexual abuse suffered when he was taken into care as a child.

Peter Bastin, 37, is currently at Leyhill Open Prison, near Bristol, where he has served nearly 19 years for the murder and buggery of a 10-year-old boy in 1978 — only a matter of months after he left Leicestershire County Council's care.

Bastin claims that the crime was one of the consequences of the abuse inflicted upon him by social worker Frank Beck, and two fellow council employees, Colin Fiddaman and Peter Jaynes, in children's homes in Market Harborough and Leicester in the mid-'70s.

His counsel, Richard Maxwell QC, said that Beck, who died in prison in 1994 while serving five life terms for the sexual abuse of up to 200 children, was offered to Bastin as the father figure who he had been lacking throughout his life.

The boy, who went into care in 1973 when his prostitute mother could not cope with him, was also subjected to Beck's so-called regression therapy, which broke a child's will by a combination of confrontation, provocation and physical restraint.

Mr Maxwell told Mr Justice Potts at the High Court in London, yesterday that whatever sympathy one might have for Bastin had to run alongside a deep sense of revulsion at the plaintiff's own crime.

But Bastin, who was known when he went into care to be both sexually promiscuous and also confused, was subjected to systematic abuse at the hands of someone who should have been a safe role-model.

Beck, he said, became the dominant influence on Bastin, so much so that he became totally dependent upon him.

"The consequences of that dependency are still there, at least in a vestigial form, even today," he added to the court.

Bastin's claim for more than £50,000 damages is based on the Leicestershire County Council authority's alleged negligence in the management and administration of their children's homes.

The authority has accepted that it owed a common law duty to Bastin to prevent him suffering personal injury while he was in their care.

But it does not admit the extent of the abuse alleged by him nor causation — and claims that the case has been brought outside the statutory time limit.

The hearing, expected to last 10 days, was adjourned until tomorrow morning.



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