Moors Murderer Ian Brady was able to mix with vulnerable borstal boys in Wormwood Scrubs prison for more than five years, newly released Home Office files reveal. Even after one young prisoner alleged that Brady had had sex with him, no action was taken for several months, the BBC’s Sanchia Berg reports.
For decades he was Britain’s most notorious murderer.
Ian Brady and his girlfriend Myra Hindley tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered children in the mid-1960s and buried some of the bodies on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester.
Following his conviction in 1966, Brady was initially held at Durham prison. He was then sent to Parkhurst, and transferred in 1974 to Wormwood Scrubs in London.
Placed in the segregation unit, used for prisoners likely to be attacked, he began a hunger strike in the summer of 1975, demanding to be moved and allowed to associate with other prisoners.
As he lost weight, he was moved to the prison hospital. He was allowed to stay there even after he began eating again, in a room on the Mental Observation Landing, known as G2.
At this time, boys from Feltham Borstal would be sent to Wormwood Scrubs hospital if they were suffering from mental health problems. They could be as young as 15 – a similar age to some of Brady’s victims.
As early as 1976, the prison’s principal medical officer had spotted the problem.
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“He takes an unusual interest in any adolescent inmate who may be located on the landing and his influence in such a situation is certainly not a wholesome one,” he wrote in a report dated 2 September.
The staff had had to move boys off the landing to get them away from him, he added.
But despite numerous objections made by staff and others over the years, arguing that Brady should be moved, he stayed on the Mental Observation Landing, and his privileges steadily increased.
Brady was allowed to watch television with other patients and given duties that enabled him to move beyond the landing, cleaning toilets and showers.
He lost his job in autumn 1981, after a young person reported that Brady had had sex with him, and he was moved back to Parkhurst the following year.
How was it possible for a prisoner like Brady to be given such treatment?
Part of it has to do with his personality – he was often described as manipulative and arrogant by prison staff. For years he campaigned, complained and threatened in order to get his way. It usually failed, but occasionally it worked.
Brady also benefited from support from the penal reformer, Lord Longford, a former Labour cabinet minister. The Home Office papers reveal how Longford lobbied ministers, including the home secretary, on Brady’s behalf.
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When Brady first arrived at Durham on 6 May 1966 he was described as “a fairly tall person with a tendency to break into a cold smile without apparent reason… Quite unemotional.”
He succeeded in getting a degree of special treatment. He persuaded the prison’s welfare officer to get him homoerotic novels, as well as the works of Machiavelli – the Italian Renaissance writer who described how a ruler could maintain his grip on power by unscrupulous means. He was also given private tutoring in German by academics from Durham University – until the prison education service was asked to pay for it.
But Brady didn’t achieve his main aim at that time, which was to see Myra Hindley for “conjugal” visits. She was in Holloway prison, over 250 miles away. In protest, Brady isolated himself and refused to associate with other prisoners. He even asked for dark glasses and ear plugs so he could shut out the world entirely. In 1969, 1970, 1971 he went on hunger strike. None of it worked.
After Myra Hindley stopped writing to Brady, he changed his campaign. Instead, he started lobbying to get to Broadmoor, the secure hospital. Doctors were reluctant. They considered him a psychopath, who would not benefit from treatment.
It was at this time, 1971, that Brady enlisted Lord Longford’s help – but the peer couldn’t persuade politicians to move him.
Source:Â bbc.com