'The child entered the system bewildered, and left it brutalised, sexually damaged, abandoned'

Alison Taylor took the fateful step of approaching police 14 years ago. The social worker with more than 10 years' experience had run a children's home in North Wales for four years and grown increasingly alarmed at the residents' stories of sexual abuse, beatings and bullying.

Alison Taylor took the fateful step of approaching police 14 years ago. The social worker with more than 10 years' experience had run a children's home in North Wales for four years and grown increasingly alarmed at the residents' stories of sexual abuse, beatings and bullying.

When she met Detective Chief Superintendent Gwyn Owen, the head of North Wales CID, at the home of Keith Marshall, a councillor in Bangor, it set off a chain of events that cost her job and her career.

But it also led to the exposure of Britain's biggest child-abuse scandal, a story of criminality and cruelty aided and abetted by ignorance and complicity stretching back two decades and affecting possibility thousands of children.

For more than two years before the meeting, Ms Taylor had collected names and information from children in care who stayed at her residential home in Gwynedd. When one boy was taken to hospital with head injuries after an assault by a teacher, she decided it was time to act. "The children were frightened and when children are scared to death they talk, and you realise something is wrong," she said.

After six months, however, the police investigation ground to a halt and Ms Taylor was sacked. She won her case for unfair dismissal. "I was on the scrap heap, reputation in shreds, prospects non-existent, my family's future very bleak, and all because I refused to turn deaf ears and blind eyes to the abuse of children in care," she said yesterday.

It was to be another decade before the North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry was set up and showed what life in care really meant for some of society's most vulnerable children, who were physically, emotionally and sexually abused by the very people supposed to care for them. It was a catalogue of failure. Starting in 1975, several care workers in North Wales had been brought before the courts and convicted of indecent assault, gross indecency, rape, unlawful sex and sexual attacks. Eight men and one woman employed by local authorities were convicted.

The authorities conducted 16 internal investigations into sexual and physical abuse at children's residential care establishments in North Wales but each inquiry looked only at the latest events and not what had gone before. No findings were published.

Early in 1991, Ms Taylor decided again to put together all the information she had. Since her dismissal she had received allegations from more than 100 people who had been abused while in care. She handed this document to the police.

Clwyd County councillors were also becoming increasingly concerned about the abuse allegations and when Frederick Rutter, who had worked at the Bryn Estyn children's home in Clwyd, was convicted that summer of raping residents at a hostel for the homeless in Connah's Quay and jailed for 12 years, they wrote to North Wales Police. The letter from the secretary of the county council said: "There is, in my view, an unusually high level of convictions and admissions, and the level of suspicion and query is such that the council cannot but be gravely concerned.

"I understand that when your officers investigated the case against Mr Rutter they were at one stage concerned as to the question of the existence of a paedophile ring. This question exercises my mind greatly and I believe it will be a matter of equal concern to you."

In 1991, a major police inquiry centred on allegations of abuse in 11 homes and several foster-care placements. Evidence was collected from 2,700 witnesses and the investigation produced 500 complaints of physical or sexual abuse.

Four men were convicted. Stephen Norris was sentenced to seven years for sexual offences against six boys at Bryn Estyn children's home and at Bryn Alyn, a private children's home. Peter Howarth got 10 years for sexual offences against seven boys at Bryn Estyn. John Allen was jailed for six years for sexual offences against seven boys at Bryn Alyn and Paul Wilson received a two-year suspended sentence for physical assaults on boys.

Before the inquiry began there had been allegations that politicians, members of the House of Lords and businessmen were linked to paedophile activities involving children in care in North Wales. There were rumours of children being taken for sex, of carers and boys making weekend trips to the Continent, and claims of the involvement of homosexual groups, as well as videos of children in care being abused.

There were also a dozen unexplained suicides of young men who had been in care, and a mystery fire in a Brighton house which killed several people who had been in care at one North Wales home.

After the completion of the police inquiry, Clwyd County Council asked John Jillings, the former director of social services in Derbyshire, to chair a tribunal reviewing residential childcare in the county.

He and his team produced a highly detailed and damning report, the first one to examine all the issues across the county. It went into great detail about the shortcomings, about the lack of inspections, the role of the Welsh Office, the difficulties children faced in making complaints, the suicides of a dozen former residents, details of the unpublished reports, and the attempts by the council's insurers to keep adverse reports under wraps.The Jillings report, too, was kept secret by the council. Each copy was numbered and the number stencilled across every page.

But The Independent obtained a copy and published details. The outcry over the report's non-publication and subsequent revelations led to a full public inquiry, the North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry, as well as a national review in England and Wales of childcare by Sir William Utting.

The tribunal, set up by William Hague, then Welsh secretary, was given judicial powers requiring people to give evidence and was chaired by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, a former High Court judge.

Its investigators found allegations of abuse on a huge scale. More than 700 complaints were made at 40 homes, including 138 from former residents of Bryn Estyn, 85 at Ty'r Felin in Gwynedd, and 96 at Bryn Alyn. More than 350 victims gave evidence. The testimony heard during 206 days of the tribunal gave a harrowing picture of life in care. Witnesses repeatedly wept as they told how they were raped, beaten and bullied by their carers.

Boys and girls as young as 10 were raped and sexually assaulted by male and female staff; youngsters were beaten and forced to lick the shoes of their attackers or cut grass with nail scissors. Children who complained had their home leave cancelled, suffered more beatings or were transferred to even harsher homes.

"The child entered the system bewildered and left it having been randomly placed, brutalised, poorly educated, sexually damaged and abandoned to his or her own fate," George Elias QC told the Waterhouse tribunal.

Compensation claims are expected to run into millions and experts fear there may be thousands more victims from children's homes in the United Kingdom. But as horrifying as the actual abuse, is the systematic cover-up by social workers, local authorities, police and even politicians.

Youngsters were trapped in what Mr Elias called "a twilight world of bewildering inconsistency". They were abused by the people they were told would care for them, unable to make their voices heard beyond the walls of the homes. The people society had put charge of the homes and the care system failed to protect the children. Now, as adults, many struggle to come to terms with the years of abuse they suffered.