Cash payout for sex abuse bungle

Four families whose children were taken from their homes at dawn by social workers during a bungled sex abuse investigation in 1991 yesterday accepted undisclosed damages and costs and a formal apology from Orkney Island Council.

The children spent five weeks in care but a sheriff threw out the prosecution of the parents, describing it as fatally flawed, and a judicial inquiry by Lord Clyde condemned the social workers involved for acting hastily, without enough thought.