Nursery abuse report was 'flawed'

Mr Lillie and Ms Reed were awarded £200,000

A council has admitted to a catalogue of mistakes over the way a review team was set up to investigate allegations of abuse at a nursery.

Former nursery workers Dawn Reed, 31, and Christopher Lillie, 37, won their libel battle in July against false accusations that they had abused children in their care.

Newcastle City Council is now facing a £5m bill after it commissioned a report which made the unfounded allegations.

The council has admitted that none of the review team had any legal training or experience and the task given to them was flawed.

Acted maliciously

Summing up after the five-month High Court trial which ended in July, Mr Justice Eady said the workers "merited an award at the highest permitted level".

He ordered the four authors of the report, Abuse in the Early Years, to pay £200,000 each in damages.

He also branded the 1998 report a shambles and found the review team had "forfeited" the protection of qualified privilege because they acted "maliciously".

On Thursday Newcastle City Council published a new report entitled Lessons to be Learned.

In it the council admits none of the members of the review team had any legal training or experience and the task given to them was flawed.

Sexual offences

It also admits the review team's brief was allowed to expand during the investigation without being reigned in by the council.

Ms Reed and Mr Lillie sued the authors of a report which they say had a "nightmare impact" on their lives.

It was published four years after the pair were originally acquitted of sexual offences against children in their care in 1994.

Ms Reed and Mr Lillie found themselves unemployable as nursery nurses after their acquittal and had moved away from the area to rebuild their lives when the independent report came out.

The review team was led by Dr Richard Barker, a social worker in an academic post at the University of Northumbria; Roy Wardell, a former director of social services for Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council; Jacqui Saradjian, a clinical psychologist and Judith Jones, a senior social worker.