Child abuse scandal resurfaces

The great majority of children in the Cleveland child-abuse scandal of a decade ago were abused, a controversial television documentary will claim tomorrow night.

The Death of Childhood, on Channel 4, will also state that independent experts under the guidance of the Department of Health later found that at least 70 per cent of the diagnoses made by the much-criticised paediatricians Marietta Higgs and Geoffrey Wyatt had been correct.

It reports that 93 of the 121 children at the centre of the affair had been found by the courts to be at risk of abuse, and that just two years after the original controversy, when all but 27 of the children returned to their homes, a number of the children had been referred again to social services.