Man beaten, force-fed and humiliated by foster carer horrified as she escapes jail

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A man beaten, force-fed and humiliated by his foster carer when he was five is horrified that she escaped a jail sentence.

Angela Hassan abused three children in the 70s and 80s including the youngest Steve after they were put into her care by social services.

The 78-year-old, of Motherwell, got 300 hours community service as “direct alternative” to custody.

Steve said: “I believe she has been given community service because of her age rather than being sent to prison where she should be. She may be old now, but we were children and she was a sadistic monster.

“She didn’t care how old I was then, why should she be too old to face justice now?”

Steve was separated from his biological mum and sent to live with foster carer Hassan, formerly Deeney, at her home in Wishaw, Lanarkshire in December 1977.

But instead of caring for him, over seven years she beat him with rose bush stem and battered him with a belt and slipper after he wet the bed.

Steve, now 52, who lives in Luton said: “It was a living hell, I was terrified of her. She was meant to care for us, we maybe needed a little extra care, not punishment.

“I was young and I’d regularly wet the bed. She would humiliate me by making me take down my pants and trousers in front of other people.

“She would go out to the garden and snap off a stem from the rose bush and beat me with it. Blood would be all over my bottom and legs and I’d be screaming, begging her to stop.

“She’d also use a belt or slipper and the beatings would go on either til she was tired or I fell to the floor.

“I’d try to hide the bed sheets under the bed. The other children there would help make the bed but sometimes the sheet wouldn’t be changed and I’d just have to lie on the wet sheets.”

Steve said the trauma has stayed with him.

He said: “If I didn’t like what was for dinner or finish it, she’d mush it up, hold me down and force feed me until I was sick. If you didn’t eat it all, you’d be given it again the next night and you’d be faced with this food til it was gone.

“I used to try and throw it down the back of the fridge. But you faced another beating.

“Things that happened in childhood have a lasting impact on your life. I still can’t eat a single vegetable.

“What she did affected my trust in people, relationships, everything.”

Steve left her care around 1981 and was reunited with his mum.

He said: “I was always told my mum had left my abusive dad and had moved to England to be a nanny to create a better life for us. None of that was true and Hassan knew that.

“When I went to court I was handed documents, which were not redacted. That’s when I learned the truth and broke down.

“When my mum had wanted me back, Hassan had told social services I wanted to stay with her.

“Social services never checked in, it was a phone call and she told them what she wanted them to know. There were failings with social services.

“For her, it was all about the money, she got paid per child and that’s why she wanted us there. The day I was reunited with Mum was fantastic, the nightmare was over.”

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The children involved, all between five and 11 when the abuse started, were subjected to repeated attacks over a period of almost 20 years.

Hassan’s offending was only discovered following police enquiries into allegations of child abuse at Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark where a victim had spent time before staying with the foster carer.

North Lanarkshire Council said: “Although this case pre-dates the existence of North Lanarkshire Council, we will continue to do all we can to support victims.”

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