Vile Nottinghamshire care home worker who raped teenage girls dies in prison

A notorious Nottinghamshire care home worker who took advantage of his position to rape teenage girls has died in prison. Dean Gathercole was jailed for 19 years in 2018 for raping and sexually abusing teenagers at the former Amberdale Observation and Assessment Centre in Stapleford.

The vile former social worker, who was 53 at the time of his trial, was convicted by a jury of six indecent assaults and three rapes. He had cared for the teenagers he abused during the 1980s, with his first victim approaching police in 2000 after being raped and indecently assaulted at the age of 16.

A second woman, who had been 15 when abused by Gathercole, reported him to police in 2014. After he was imprisoned another woman, who was in her 40s, came forward to speak about how had abused her at First Avenue children’s home in Carlton.

Gathercole was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against the woman in March 2023, resulting in four more years being added to his existing prison sentence. Nottinghamshire Live now understands the child abuser died five years into his sentence at HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire earlier this year.

He died on February 8 at the 1,220-inmate prison, which exclusively holds sex offenders, according to a fatal incident report from the Prisons and Probation Service. The service, which investigates the deaths of prisoners in custody in England and Wales, is currently investigating Gathercole's death.

It explained on its website that it was waiting for the outcome of a coroner's inquest into his death before progressing further. The Ministry of Justice was approached for comment but had not responded by time of publication.

Gathercole was named in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s investigation (IICSA) into services in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, which was released in July 2019. This report detailed that Gathercole had faced charges of sexual assault of girls at Amberdale back in 1988, but no evidence was offered at trial and he was discharged.

A disciplinary hearing incorrectly accepted his claim that the allegations against him were unfounded but concluded that his actions prior to the allegations had been inappropriate. This report concluded that there had been widespread physical violence and sexual abuse in many of the children’s homes run by Nottinghamshire County Council.

The report found some 350 individuals reported being sexually abused whilst in the care of Nottingham City Council and the county council's homes from the 1960s onwards. The true number is likely to be considerably higher.

From the late 1970s to 2019, 16 residential staff were convicted of sexual abuse of children in residential care, 10 foster carers were convicted of sexual abuse of their foster children and there were 12 further convictions relating to the harmful sexual behaviour of children against other children in care.