Exclusive:Police launch new child abuse investigation into Aberdeen residential school

The facility was for 11 to 16-year-olds with emotional and behavioural problems before its closure

Police have launched a fresh investigation into allegations of child abuse at a former residential school in Aberdeen.

Detectives from the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit have been contacting former pupils of Oakbank School, which closed in 2008.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

They are re-investigating allegations made by various Oakbank residents against members of staff.

The school has been the subject of hearings at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in recent weeks.

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “Officers are re-investigating allegations of abuse made at a children’s home in the Aberdeen area.”

Former pupils have been receiving letters and emails from officers, as well as being contacted at home.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Scotsman understands some former pupils have been upset by the contact, while others have responded by posting poems on social media about their time at the school.

Aberdeen Aberdeen
Aberdeen | Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Oakbank was an independent residential school in Aberdeen’s Midstocket Road area for teenagers with emotional and behaviour problems.

Controversy engulfed it in the early 1990s when a series of critical inspection reports was followed by allegations against some staff members.

There was also a political row at the time of its closure, with the site later sold to a developer. It is now an upmarket housing development in the city’s west end.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In 2019, a special reunion was arranged by former pupils to celebrate the lives of a number of ex-residents who had died within a period of a few years.

At the time of the reunion, around 30 former pupils who attended the school from the mid-1990s to its closure in 2008 were thought to have died young, often as a result of drug abuse, with the true figure feared to be even higher.

The school had about 50 residents in 1995, before the number dropped progressively to just 18 when it was closed.

Initially called the Oakbank Industrial School for Boys, it opened in Aberdeen’s west end in 1879, having previously been part of a mixed establishment in Skene Square.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In the 1930s, it was named an “Approved School” for boys aged six to 12 under nationwide reforms, before such facilities were put under the control of local authorities in the 1960s.

Oakbank later became the main residential school for 11 to 16-year-olds with emotional and behavioural problems in northern Scotland, although youngsters from other areas also attended.

More than 100 staff lost their jobs when it closed because of the drop in referrals and rising debts.

In 2013, the North East Scotland Pension Fund launched legal action against the board of Oakbank. An agreement was reached for £4 million to be given to the local authority pension fund. A decade after its closure, in 2018, it was announced that the Oakbank School Trust would be wound up.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

However, a spokesperson for the Office of the Scottish Charity Register (OSCR) said this week: “This charity has previously informed OSCR of its intention to wind up, but has not yet done so.

“We have contacted the charity again to seek further information on this delay, and to establish the reasons for this.”

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.