FORMER pupils at an approved school who feared their voices had been silenced have begun to give their accounts to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse after a U-turn over their involvement.

The Stanhope Castle Survivor Group, which represents about 30 men who allege they were sexually abused at the school in Stanhope, County Durham, had applied to be a core participant and a case study in the national inquiry.

Its former chair, New Zealand judge Justice Lowell Goddard, provisionally rejected their application, before she quit the inquiry, which is investigating the extent to which institutions failed to protect children from sex abuse.

But in a major breakthrough for the group, her replacement, Professor Alexis Jay reversed that decision after a renewed application from lawyers.

One of the group recently spoke to the inquiry’s Truth Project which now has a regional office in Darlington, backed with resources from rape counselling charity ARCH North East.

Another member, Colin Watson, from Middlesbrough, said he had given a statement detailing 35 allegations of attacks on him.

He said: “This [our involvement with the inquiry] is a massive thing, it’s what we were after years ago.”

The Truth Project has been established in order to give survivors of child sexual abuse a chance to share their experiences, accounts of which will be collated and anonymised.

Formal hearings are due to follow next year and evidence from nine men from the group is expected to be heard as part of the accountability and reparations investigation strand of the inquiry.

The group’s lawyer David Enright, of Howe and Co solicitors, said it appeared from the available evidence that abuse was “pervasive throughout the operation of the school from the 50s to 80s”.

He said Stanhope provided an exceptionally good case study of the failure of civil and criminal authorities to provide access to accountability and reparations with some men waiting for up to 50 years to have their voices heard.

The lawyer had argued Stanhope “survivors” were both emotionally and physically scarred and the human cost of excluding them from the inquiry would be “incalculable”.

The Northern Echo revealed in June last year how detectives from Durham Police were looking into claims of physical and sexual abuse at the school, which closed in 1981.

Police traced and spoke to several ex-members of staff and established the majority of the people accused were now either dead or untraceable, although new lines of enquiry emerged earlier this year after more complainants came forward with fresh allegations.

However, no significant updates have been provided by the force since.

Mr Watson, 67, who has been bedridden for more than a decade and suffers from epileptic fits as a result of flashbacks from his treatment at Stanhope, said he had become frustrated with the response from police.

He said: “They [the police] are not interested, they could not give a toss.”

When approached for a response, Durham Police would only confirm the investigation was continuing.

Stanhope was set up after the Second World War and was run by the Home Office up until the mid 1970s after which it was taken over by the former Cleveland County Council when it became a community controlled home for children.

Middlesbrough Borough Council subsequently inherited its liabilities and its insurers have been in discussions over compensation claims brought by ex-pupils.