Cruelty case care staff sentenced

TWO social workers who ran a two-year regime of cruelty over children at a council-run home walked free from court yesterday.

Glynis Tamblin, 37, and Kevin Roffe, 30, were both given six-month jail sentences, suspended for a year, by the judge at Teesside Crown Court, who said that in 1987, when they committed the offences, he would have sent them to prison. But when the offences were discovered, Sunderland social services did not report them to the police.

Judge Michael Cartlidge said: 'In the circumstances . . . it would be inhuman to send you to prison.'

At an earlier hearing, Newcastle Crown Court was told that Tamblin, of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and Roffe, of Southwick, Sunderland, had set up kangaroo courts, including ritual punishments, for the boys of Witherwack House, in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.

Roffe was found guilty of six out of nine cruelty charges and Tamblin of three out of seven cruelty charges.