BBC 7 April 2009De zoveelste zaak van medische "therapie" in kinderbeschermingstehuizen.
Tehuisbeleid en experimenten uitgehaald op kinderen. De ene keer door een overheidsbeleid, de andere keer als proefkonijnen tbv tests voor de industrie, of tehuisbeleid ter gedragscontrole van fysiek gezonde meiden Of gewoon door 'n individuele witte- jas -met-hobby, die zijn kansen tijdens het naziregime elders had gemist en zijn gang kon gaan. Gefinancieerd en onder staats- en kerkelijk toezicht, geprezen door blinden en weldoeners.
Hundreds of girls heavily sedated in UK care homes during the 1970s and 1980s may be at risk of having children with birth defects, the BBC has found.
Radio 4's Today found 10 ex-residents of a children's home run by the Church of England in Gravesend, Kent, have had children with a birth defect.
They were given massive doses of tranquilisers and other drugs while being restrained as teenagers.
The Diocese of Rochester says it will co-operate with any future inquiry.
One childcare expert said hundreds of children may have been drugged in the care system across the UK throughout the 70s and 80s, potentially subjecting them to the same health risks as those learnt about by the BBC.
Mike Lindsay, national co-ordinator for the Children's Rights Alliance for England, said: "Using drugs to control the behaviour of children was perfectly acceptable as far as their own professional understanding at that time went."
The Kendall House home in Gravesend was run by the Church of England in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but the site is no longer a children's home.
The Truth Hurts: Why the Government has refused No 2 Abuse its Enquiry
In the wake of startling new discoveries made by Teresa Cooper and in what can only be described as an appalling act of political cowardice, the government has issued a statement confirming that it will resist an enquiry into the illegal drugging of girls at Kendall House and possibly at least six other major care homes around the country.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families has stated that she could not “see the merits” of raising an enquiry in relation to the treatment these girls received during a period which spanned over twenty years. The merits, according to the DCSF have been diminished by the sands of time and by past attempts at addressing similar issues, most notably in Sir William Utting’s 1996 report ‘People Like Us’ and Sir Ronald Waterhouse’s report ‘Lost in care’.
An investigation revealed at least ten women at Kendall House care home run by the Church of England in Gravesend, Kent, went on to have children with problems such as learning difficulties, cleft palates, water on the brain and brain tumours.
The women may have been given the drugs as part of an experiment conducted by a doctor working at the home.
Records at Kendall House show children were restrained and forced to take pills prescribed for schizophrenics, psychotics and Parkinson's disease, even though none suffered from these conditions.
One former resident, Teresa Cooper, 41, is petitioning the Government for an inquiry into the care home after three of her children were born with defects.
Files seen by Radio 4's Today Programme show that during the 32 months Miss Cooper was at the home, she was given medication at least 1,248 times, including three major tranquilisers and anti-depressants.
She was also given up to ten times the recommended dose of Valium.
Reports show Miss Cooper had no mental illness.
She claims girls were restrained and made to undergo chemotherapy, despite not having cancer.
Children were also allegedly subjected to sexual, physical and psychological abuse at the home, which closed in 1986 following concerns about the drugs prescribed.
Nine other former residents of Kendall House who were similarly drugged, have told how their children born decades later suffer from defects including hydrocephalus, heart and joint problems and neurofibromatosis - small tumours on the nerve endings - as well as dyslexia and learning difficulties.
The doctor who prescribed the drugs, Dr Marenthiran Perinpanayagam wrote to a medical journal describing his experiments with tranquilisers on girls in 1977 but the location of the experiments was not mentioned.
Dr Perinpanayagam died in 1988.
Jeffrey Aronson, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Oxford University, said: 'Even in the 1980s, for a 14-year-old girl, with no history of psychiatric illness whatsoever, who is in a home for social reasons, to be given large doses of many different psychoactive drugs in this way is very, very unusual.
'Changes in genes and chromosomes induced by drugs may lead to birth defects or abnormalities later in life.
'But the fact that there were ten of them affected is quite suggestive.'
Teresa Cooper was sent to Kendall House care home at the age of 14 due
to 'difficult home circumstances'.
Miss Cooper, who wrote Trust No One about her experiences at the home, already has hundreds of signatures for her online petition demanding Gordon Brown launch an investigation.
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