By
Dana Gloger
Police have taken a statement from a man who claims to have been abused on a holiday organised by a Jewish charity 50 years ago.
Brian Ingram, 59, from Hampstead, North-West London, told police that children were beaten with a belt on a trip to Seaford, Sussex, with the Jewish Children’s Holiday Fund, which provides free trips for deprived youngsters. He also said he was made to lick toilet seats.
Det Con Vincent Curtis of Sussex police said: “When I first spoke to Mr Ingram, he couldn’t give details of anyone who could corroborate his statement. Now he has done that. Inquiries with other witnesses will be ongoing over the coming weeks .
“The issue for us is to ascertain if this offender is still alive.”
Father-of-two Mr Ingram is unclear on the actual date but thinks it was 1957. He says he was reluctant to mention it earlier but spurred to act when hearing of the Jersey children’s-home inquiry.
“Back then, I wouldn’t have known who to complain to,” he told the JC. “I didn’t tell my mother as she would not have come to terms with it. It is something that I’d pushed to the back of my mind, but it was always there.”
In a letter to Mr Ingram, JCHF vice chairman David Freedman said the charity had been a subsidiary of the national charity, Children’s Country Holidays Fund (CCHF), until 1986, adding: “There is no one alive any more involved with JCHF now who might be able to assist you in identifying who was in charge in 1957.”
He told the JC: “The allegation of abuse relates to a time prior to the establishment of the JCHF, in September 1986. Any suggestion that the matter is in any way connected with the current registered charity would be misleading and factually incorrect.”