Two Brothers talk about the child abuse in Bryn Estyn North Wales

 A tragic tale of two brothers Keith and Tom Gregory  From Wales on-line.

"Two brothers brutalised in a notorious Welsh care home have opened up on the abuse they endured.

Keith and Tony Gregory, from Wrexham, ended up in the town’s Bryn Estyn home after playing truant from school.

Keith, 55, now a Wrexham councillor, says his problems began because he suffered deafness and was an undiagnosed dyslexic who struggled to keep up in his infants and junior schools.

He was first sent to a Liverpool care home, where he says he experienced the kind of abuse that would later define the three years he spent in Bryn Estyn between 1972 and 1975.

On the first day he arrived at Bryn Estyn, Keith says he was left bloodied and battered by a master with cane marks from his neck down to his legs after leaning against a wall instead of standing to attention.

Tony, 50, who was at Bryn Estyn for around 18 months between 1977 and 1978, said he became aggressive and would threaten violence to successfully ward off the advances of paedophile staff members and other boys.

He said: “I wasn’t sexually abused because I managed to fight them off. It was that scary being in there that I had to go around with a persona saying, ‘Don’t mess with me or I’ll take your head off’, just to survive.”

Among former Bryn Estyn staff convicted of offences was former house master Peter Howarth, locked up for 10 years in 1994 for violating boys as young as 12. He died behind bars.

Steven Norris, another senior member of staff at Bryn Estyn, pleaded guilty to three offences of buggery, one of attempted buggery and three of indecent assault.

Tony said staff and boys at Bryn Estyn were involved in grooming youngsters to recruit fresh victims to the ranks of those abused by Howarth and Norris.

“I was up against the paedophiles that were there and quite a lot of them would try to get me into a situation or talking and interested in going in that direction.

Read more: North Wales child abuse scandal: 'Don't forget the real victims'

“He (Howarth) would just hang around when you were doing things and try to get you to talk about things and walk you down that path of what sort of sexuality you preferred and what you liked to do.”

Because he refused to acquiesce, the then 15-year-old Tony was denied access to the education Howarth reserved for those boys who complied with his sordid demands.

At first, his requests to go to classes were approved by the school’s head, who was not involved in abuse, before Howarth would deny them.

Tony, who admits being involved in burglaries and thefts before he was sent to Bryn Estyn, added: “I cottoned on that I was seen as a bit of a threat to the ring. I tried to get education in school and it was denied because all the boys that were being abused were all in one little clique in the school and all friends.

“Because I was seen as a loose cannon, I was kept well away from them. I was made to work in the gardens from when I was in there until the day I left.

“He (Howarth) was one of the teachers in the school. They had school huts away from the main hall building where kids went to be educated.”

Read more: North Wales child abuse scandal: the long road to justice

Tony Gregory

Tony, who maintains he was punched, kicked and beaten up by staff in Bryn Estyn, said though some of the boys didn’t resist their abusers, he still regards them as victims because submitting to the paedophiles was the only way to survive.

He said those who escaped were brought back and in the 1970s and 1980s police were often contemptuously dismissive of boys in care who complained about abuse.

Tony, who was paid £6,000 in compensation for the physical abuse, added: “You’ve got to bear in mind that we were all in a system that was dark and an environment where people couldn’t run away because if they were caught, they were brought back and got a good hammering.

“If they involved the police, the police would come in and say ‘There’s nothing to answer to, you’re talking crap’.

“I would say all the lads who were gay had probably gone in there straight. They were just trying to survive like I was. We were all victims to some degree.”

As well as those sent to Bryn Estyn for truanting or crime, highly vulnerable orphans also ended up there, said Tony.

“There were people who were sent there who had lost their parents and they had no choice.

“A lot of them were in a really, really sad state and it was easy prey for them (the paedophiles). If you were vulnerable, young and little, there wasn’t much you could do about it.”

Tony, who has suffered with depression all his adult life and has struggled to hold down a job, says his experiences left him with a deep mistrust of authority figures like police and social workers and even gay people.

Keith has backed fellow former Bryn Estyn resident Steve Messham’s claims that children were taken out of Bryn Estyn to be abused in Wrexham’s Crest Hotel.

Keith says up to 13 victims have committed suicide since the 1970s, some of whom might now be alive had their complaints and allegations been listened to.

The Gregory brothers suggest the abuse went much wider than the Waterhouse Inquiry, which published its report Lost in Care in 2000, found.

In line with its remit, this £13m inquiry focused on abuse in care homes in the former North Wales counties of Clwyd and Gwynedd.

The report dealt with more than 650 cases of child abuse in 40 care homes over a 20-year period.

Keith has said two MPs were involved in the abuse, plus judges and serving police officers.

Channel 4 News has reported an eye witness account that former Chester MP Sir Peter Morrison, who died in 1995, visited the home five times.

Sir Peter was former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary and was at the heart of the Tory establishment in the 1980s.

Keith said: “We used to go to bed and they would drag people out of bed in open dormitories. There was a door that led to the main corridor into the dormitories.

“They used to come and pick people and you used to pray to God that they wouldn’t get you.”

Earlier at the care home in Liverpool, he recalls being electrocuted, stripped naked and having his genitalia fondled by staff.

Keith, who as well as being beaten says he was sexually molested at Bryn Estyn, said: “There was a thing called the Borstal showers that was horrendous.

“It was a circle of showers where all boys had to shower while being watched.

“They would run you through them so you’d be frozen, scolded, frozen, scolded and you’d do this for an hour.

“They’d stand there whipping you and they’d touch you with a stick.”

Keith, who was 12 when he went to Bryn Estyn after playing truant and committing petty thefts, believes his disabilities were the underlying reason he ended up in care.

“I was born deaf and I had dyslexia and in those days, they didn’t know what dyslexia was.

“I struggled all through my junior and infants schools, but managed to get through.

“Then when we went to high school, I just couldn’t cope and the teachers were giving me hidings because they thought I wouldn’t do the work.

“In the end, I just had to play truant because I couldn’t do the work.”

Like his brother, once in Bryn Estyn he never went to school again, but was given a series of menial tasks to keep him occupied.

Keith, who received £3,000 in compensation for the abuse he suffered, says it impacted on the rest of his life.

A divorced father-of-four, he has had several long-term relationships but says he found it impossible to trust his partners and has previously told Wales on Sunday’s sister paper the Western Mail he was violent towards them.

Prime Minister David Cameron ordered an urgent investigation into whether the Waterhouse inquiry “properly did its job” after the allegations of abuse at Bryn Estyn re-emerged.

Home Secretary Theresa May ordered the separate police inquiry led by the National Crime Agency into claims of abuse.