The 1961 1961 1961, Liverpool, London.

An eight-year-old boy and his three older siblings stand outside the Nazareth house, a Roman Catholic orphanage, waiting to go home.

For many children in the child care systems around the world, this would

be a happy occasion. But for Robert Maudsley, this was one of the worst days of his life.

Robert was fourth in line of what would eventually be 12 children, born to George Maltzley,

a man whose name would become almost as infamous as one of his own children would later on. The truth is that Robert and his older siblings had been taken into care because of the dire conditions at home, and particularly because of the way George treated them. Older brother to Robert, Paul Maudsley,

spoke about their childhood and said, at the orphanage, we had all got on really well. Our parents

would come to visit, but they were just strangers. The nuns were our family, and we all used to

stick together. Then our parents took us home and we were subjected to physical abuse.

It was something we'd never experienced before. They just picked on us one by one, gave us a beating

and sent us off to our room. But it was Robert who seemed to be the biggest target of all.

All I remember of my childhood is the beatings, he later said. Once I was locked in my

room for six months and my father only opened the door to come in and beat me, four or six times a day.

He used to hit me with sticks or rods, and once he busted a 22 caliber air rifle over my back.

Robert also claimed that during this period he was sexually abused and raped by his father.

And that was the life that waited for Robert and his siblings back at home,

and it was the life that he would return to whenever the Liverpool childcare services

would send them back

to the Maudsley household for trial periods. These periods were never permanent, but the damage

inflicted during most of them certainly was. During the late 1960s, when Robert became a teenager,

he decided that enough was enough. He moved to London to

Finn for himself and resorted to selling himself to men on the London streets just to get by.

...