Patterns of Abuse: From Medomsley to Iraq
This article examines the parallels between abuses carried out against young male detainees in Britain by former British Army personnel from the 1960s to the 1980s, and abuses subsequently carried out by active duty British soldiers against young male detainees in Iraq in 2003. As illustrated in this article, in both cases there was a culture of sadism that was allowed to flourish among the state agents who were perpetrating the abuse, with the British government complicit in what was happening through using dangerous and dehumanising language that de facto encouraged abuse, and through granting impunity to perpetrators. Britain as a country has yet to reckon with the abuse that was carried out, either on British soil or in Iraq.
Medomsley Detention Centre
“A true horror story” is how Kevin Young describedhis experience at Medomsley Detention Centre in County Durham, England. Kevin was detained there in 1977 at the age of 17, for receiving a stolen watch. Medomsley was a junior male detention centre that operated from the 1960s through to the late 1980s; it was runon military lines, and mostof the staff there were former British soldiers. In 1979, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher institutedher “short, sharp shock” policy, which introduced into junior male detention centres what the then British Home Secretary William Whitelaw characterisedas “an experiment with a tougher regime for depriving young football hooligans of their leisure time”; this meant “on a regular basis drill, parades, and inspections ... from 6:45am 'til lights out at 9:30pm.” At Medomsley (and multiple other junior male detention centres), the “short, sharp shock” experiment provided a cover for horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the mostly ex-military staff members – although as Kevin Young’s experience and the experiencesof others demonstrate, this militarisedsystem of abuse even preceded the “short, sharp shock” at Medomsley. Kevin Young was one of many victims of the ex-soldierNeville Husband, who was in charge of the kitchens at Medomsley; Husband subjectedboys between 16 and 19 to sadistic sexual abuse at the detention centre, and is estimatedto have abused boys every day during his 16-year tenure working there. He threatenedhis victims that he had served in the British Army and was trained to kill. Kevin Young describedhis treatment by Husband thus: "I was raped repeatedly, tied up and ligatured [around the neck]. It was the worst of the worst." He also stated: “I was told by Husband that you could easily be found hanged at Medomsley, and that that year, six boys had already hanged themselves." Another ex-soldierat Medomsley, Christopher Onslow – who was the fitness instructor at the detention centre, and, as with Husband, was later convicted of some of his crimes – was notorious among the boys for routinely battering them. Stress positions were also commonly used at Medomsley – boys were frequently made to bunny-hop for hours on end while being screamed at, sometimes while naked.
I spoke to a man named Steve (not his real name), who was detained at Medomsley over the summer of 1979 – shortly after Thatcher was elected and the “short, sharp shock” was instituted – as punishment for getting caught taking a coat from a car. He was 19 at the time. He was there for 3 months – from mid-June to the end of August. Steve was sexually abused by Neville Husband during his detention at Medomsley; he says, “to me he was the head chef”, and that he has “since then learned much more” about Husband’s background. According to Steve, “all of the officers knew” what Husband was up to, and yet none of them stopped him. When I ask Steve if he ever tried to report what Husband was doing to him, he says: “I hid from it” – but he was later “one of the first 5 to bring charges against Husband”, who “was found guilty in front of me”. Steve confirmed to me that he was also subjected to physical abuse by Christopher Onslow while detained at Medomsley; he says that he “went through the same violence”, and that he was subjected to punches by “most officers” in the detention centre, illustrating how widespread the violent treatment of detainees was – but he says that to him, “the violence was just the same outside”; he explains that his father “was a violent drunk who made my life hell”. This provides an insight into how the deeply disadvantaged boys who ended up at Medomsley were in many cases no strangers to abuse already, due to how troubled their lives were up to that point; Steve tells me, “most of my life was foster parents and children’s homes where abuse was rife”. Likewise, Kevin Young had also been subjectedto physical and sexual abuse throughout his childhood, before ending up at Medomsley.
Steve has confirmed to me that that while he was detained there, the governor of Medomsley was a man named Tim Newell – Guardian journalists Eric Allison and Simon Hattenstone have noted:
“Tim Newell, a well-known liberal thinker within the prison establishment, was the governor from 1979 to 1981, when Husband was regularly abusing boys in his charge. According to David McClure, a former officer at Medomsley, who gave evidence at Husband's trial, Newell "thought very highly of Husband". McClure said search teams were banned from the kitchen on the orders of management, but that there were always strong rumours that Husband was sexually abusing boys who were working in the kitchen. "There was general knowledge about this – among staff and boys in the centre," he said. But Newell and other governors wrote letters supporting Husband's many applications to remain at Medomsley when the prison service suggested he be promoted and posted elsewhere.”
Parallels With Iraq
The fact that so many staff members at Medomsley knew what Husband was doing to the boys in his charge, and refused to stop him, has echoes of what later happened at Camp Breadbasket on the outskirts of Basra in Iraq in 2003, where at least seven Iraqi male civilians – includingtwo underage boys – were subjected to what the ICC describesas “severe beatings, stress positions, and sexual violence” at the hands of British soldiers in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers; i.e. the same kinds of abuses that ex-soldiers had previously meted out at Medomsley. The ICC notesin the case of Camp Breadbasket a similar culture of sadistic abusers being protected by their colleagues:
“Several notable features stand out from the Camp Breadbasket court martial. First, although multiple military personnel knew about the alleged abuses (including the alleged sexual crimes), each failed in their duty to report them. The conduct only came to light when one of the soldiers involved in taking trophy photographs had the photographs developed in a civilian shop [in the UK] and the shop assistant reported the conduct to civilian police, who made an arrest.”
I spoke to Reverend Nicholas Mercer, who served as the British Army’s chief legal advisor in Iraq in 2003, and blew the whistle on how British soldiers were abusing detainees at the time, which he personally witnessed; I asked Mercer about the parallels between the cases of Medomsley and Camp Breadbasket, in terms of the military subculture of sexual sadism towards young males that these cases appear to evidence. Mercer told me:
“In the 1990s when I was first serving in the army there was a very heavy clampdown on bullying in the lines and, in particular, initiation ceremonies among the soldiers (which very often had a sexual element). I strongly suspect that this had a very long tradition but Camp Breadbasket suggests that this culture still prevailed. It is also worth mentioning that command plays a very important role in all of this. A bad commander often has a bad Regiment. If you have a strong commander then this tends to permeate throughout the battalion/company. The same applies to SNCOs [Senior Non-Commissioned Officers].”
Mercer also told me about how in Iraq, the senior leadership was aware of the abuse and was complicit in what was occurring (much like in the case of Medomsley); when Mercer lodgeda complaint after witnessing British soldiers subjecting Iraqi detainees to hooding and stress positions, the British Army’s intelligence branch objected to Mercer’s complaint and referred the matter to the Higher Headquarters, which in turn told Mercer that the techniques that he witnessed were not illegal. Mercer informed me:
“As far as I recall, I was very clear in advising that hooding and stress positions amounted to “violence and intimidation” of prisoners of war in violation of Article 13 [of the third Geneva Convention]. I also pointed out that Article 13 states that prisoners of war must “at all times be humanely treated” and this treatment could never amount to “humane” treatment. I remember reminding a colleague on the phone that this was “humanitarian” law.
This advice was rejected by the Higher Headquarters in Qatar which put me in an awkward position, until the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] also made the same judgement and issued a formal complaint to the UK Government.”
One can see here how the Higher Headquarters was aware that detainees were being hooded in stress positions, but attempted to make the argument that this was an acceptable way to treat detainees and did not amount to inhumane treatment, in direct contradiction of the legal advice that Mercer was giving – Mercer’s legal judgement was later backed up by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In a similar way, with regards to Medomsley, the BBC has reportedthat “within Home Office circles, it was known that the junior prison’s reputation for being tough sometimes lapsed into brutality” – and yet the abuse was allowed to continue uninterrupted. In both cases, those in authority effectively gave a stamp of approval to detainee abuse.
The “Shock of Capture” and the “Short, Sharp Shock”
In the case of the British Army in Iraq, training programmes for British soldiers included an ambiguous phrase – “shock of capture” – that is easily interpreted as legitimising inhumane treatment; the ICC has notedthat “the Office considers as an aggravating factor the fact that the underlying conduct set out in this report arose, in part, from institutional factors”, such as “training programmes that encouraged maintaining or prolonging the “shock of capture” without sufficient regard for humane treatment”. Exploiting detainees’ “shock of capture” implies keeping them in a state of disorientation and distress, which naturally opens the door to abuse, as the purpose is to deliberately encourage negative emotions in detainees. Likewise, the language that was used by Thatcher’s government in relation to junior male detention centres in Britain – “short, sharp shock” – indicates putting detainees through a stressful and anxiety-inducing experience; Thatcher’s Home Secretary at the time, William Whitelaw, statedominously in 1979: “These will be no holiday camps, and I sincerely hope that those who attend them will not ever want to go back there.” With that framework authorised from above – of encouraging giving detainees a memorably negative experience – and then with no safeguards on the ground, it is very easy to see how a culture of sadism will be allowed to flourish among those handling detainees.
David Greenwood of Switalskis Solicitors has statedregarding the “short, sharp shock”: “These guards were given the green light to assault detainees and there were no questions asked. When boys did make complaints when they were released, they were ignored” – and an ex-inmate of the “short, sharp shock” has stated: “I think the staff thought they were doing their duty for king and country but there were no parameters or system of control.” In the case of Medomsley, those in authority planted the seeds of the abusive culture long before the “short, sharp shock”; the Thatcherite policy watered what had already been growing within the walls of the institution. Within months of Medomsley opening in 1961, Charles Fletcher-Cooke – a Home Office minister under the then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan – announcedthat the purpose of the detention centre was to put boys through an “unpleasant experience”; six years later, boys were already reportingbeing beaten and forced into stress positions – allegations that were dismissedby Home Office officials under the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1967.
In the case of Camp Breadbasket in Iraq, Captain Dan Taylor – who was the Quartermaster of the Camp – instructedthe soldiers under his command to ensure that the captured Iraqi civilians (detained on suspicion of looting) were “worked hard”; which again is an authorisation of putting the detainees through a stressful and unpleasant experience, and the soldiers were then left to their own devices to interpret this as they pleased. The British Army officially exoneratedCaptain Dan Taylor even before the Camp Breadbasket court martial occurred, because it was determinedthat although his order was “unlawful”, he had “acted with well-meaning and sincere but misguided zeal.” Taylor was subsequently promotedfrom the rank of Captain to Major. Charles Fletcher-Cooke, who announced that Medomsley was to be an “unpleasant experience” for the boys there, was knightedin 1981, and William Whitelaw – who implemented the “short, sharp shock” policy in 1979 – became a memberof Britain’s House of Lords in 1983, and was subsequently appointedLeader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.
British justice.
Irfan Chowdhury is a freelance writer who primarily focuses on Western imperialism in the Middle East. He has been published in The Iranian, Mondoweiss, Peace News, Hastings In Focus, The Palestine Chronicle, Roar News and Bella Caledonia, and is now at Substack. His Twitter handle is @irfan_c98.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Iraq Now.