17/05/2017 Midlands Today

Police investigating the sexual abuse of boys at a school

in Worcestershire decades ago say they've sent a file

It comes more than two and a half years after the BBC uncovered

allegations against Catholic monks who ran St Gilberts.

No one's been charged, though, and some of the victims fear

50 years on, Paul Sprayson, is still looking peace.

50 years on, Paul Sprayson, is still looking for peace.

In the 1960s, aged 13, he was packed off to a catholic run

approved school full of delinquents and runaways from Birmingham.

He went on to spend 30 years in a series of jails,

but says that school and the abuse he suffered in it was the worst.

You're talking two or three holding you down, sexually assaulting you.

St Gilbert's at Hartlebury near Kidderminster was run

by the De La Salle order of Christian Brothers.

It's thought as many as 30 former pupils have come forward to tell

police of horrendous abuse at the hands of school staff.

You couldn't close your eyes at night, you didn't know

Operation Quayle was launched over two and a half years ago

to investigate allegations of abuse at St Gilbert's from 1945 to 1975.

In September last year, a file was sent to the Crown

Prosecution Service and four suspects have been

But today, no charges have been brought.

One alleged abuser, named by many former pupils is Brother Roderick.

He and others are now dead, but a lawyer representing some

of the victims says the police have to pursue the enquiry.

They have written to all the victims to tell them what's going on,

but that doesn't help the anxiety the victims feel and the resolve

nature of the enquiry is making their psychological condition worse.

but that doesn't help the anxiety the victims feel and the unresolved

nature of the enquiry is making their psychological condition worse.

When we asked them in February, the police said two suspects had

been released from bail conditions but were continuing

Today, they told us matters are at a delicate stage.

What do you want now from the police enquiry?

Get some progress in it and perhaps a lot more will come out.

Some will say, but it was 50 years ago, let bygones be bygones.

It makes no difference, these things still happen.

I don't want no gain out of it or anything.

The De La Salle order has apologised to Paul and others.

But for him though, time hasn't healed and the time

Businesses in Birmingham have been assessing the damage caused

by the controlled explosion of a wartime bomb

One owner says he's losing thousands of pounds a day and doesn't know

when it'll be safe to go back inside his building.

The 500lb device was discovered on Monday morning

and was judged to be too dangerous to be moved.

The full impact of yesterday's controlled explosion

is still being felt by a number of businesses on the Priory

Today, they are dealing with the aftermath.

Zahir Husain's warehouse is just yards from where the bomb was found

He says he has now lost three days of production and it's costing him.

Thousands a day, plus my main loss I'm worried about,

He's not sure whether or not it's structurally safe

His neighbour next door though says he couldn't wait any longer.

We had already lost two days of production.

We had some deliveries also scheduled to come into day

Are you convinced it's safe to return to work?

We checked, I came inside and I looked for any breakages

The Second World War German shell had lay undiscovered here for more

than 70 years and is one of the biggest devices of its kind

Fred Groves was just a lad at the time.

Still in the area now, he lived through the bombings

The only thing you remember is the noise of the explosions

because my parents would keep me confined to the air raid shelter.

So I could stick my head out sometimes, looking

It could be days before Mr Husain's businesses back to normal.

It could be days before Mr Husain's business is back to normal.

He says the priority now should be to clear the roads so suppliers can

A postmortem examination has revealed an 11-year-old girl,

who fell from a water ride at Drayton Manor Theme Park,

Evha Jannath, from Leicester, was on a school trip when she fell

from the Splash Canyon ride last week.

An inquest into her death was opened and adjourned this afternoon.

The Royal College of Surgeons has called for a review of the way

private hospitals are regulated following the case of Ian Paterson.

The breast cancer surgeon is due to be sentenced at the end of this

month after being convicted of unlawfully wounding ten patients,

by carrying out "needless" operations at private clinics

The number of English cities rivalling Birmingham to host

the 2022 Commonwealth Games has been reduced to just one.

Birmingham has officially confirmed it would like to take over

the staging of The Games from Durban.

The South African city was stripped of the right earlier this year.

Manchester and London have now dropped out,

leaving Liverpool as the only other competitor in England.

A video of a Gloucestershire student finishing his assignment

in a nightclub has gone viral and made the news around the world.

But it turns out the film and story was entirely fake.

University students created it to see just how far

They've been speaking exclusively to our Gloucestershire

It started as a project to create a comedy video to see how far it

could spread online and it soon went viral.

Not long after, the Press Association, a well-respected,

trusted source contacted the students who decided to then

PA then published the story, which was picked up by several news

organisations online, including the BBC Local

A university student filmed working on an essay in a nightclub has

revealed he got a first for the assignment...

It shows the lack of diligence in regards to the press.

It kind of makes you question what's real and fake out there, definitely.

And I think people should be a bit wiser when they open the newspapers.

I'm a little bit shocked in terms of they haven't

checked their sources, they've literally taken

At the end of the day, we're just a group of students

We never thought how easy it would be to do it.

I call the fake news the enemy of the people.

Of course, faking news isn't new as we know,

But the Press Association said it spoke to the students and acted

Were the students right to mislead the press in that way?

We don't condone any students or any members of staff,

or anybody at this university to deliberately mislead the press.

What the Press Association didn't do was to contact our press office

at the University of Gloucestershire and talk to us about the story.

Had they done that, we would very clearly have

This is the second time the Film Direction course

This is the second time the Film Production course

has fooled the press, and in this era of the Internet,

you read and see may, on occasion, be true.

Yes, I'm telling you the truth, it's all staged.

Steve Knibbs, BBC Midlands Today, Cheltenham.

A water mill in Worcestershire which dates back to the 14th

Century has been restored to full working order.

The Shelsley Walsh Watermill is found on the famous

motor racing circuit, renowned for its steep hill climb.

After lying in ruin for decades, a group called the Dibnahs decided

to raise money and do all the work themselves.

It was estimated by a mill guy, it would take between 40 and ?50,000 to

But because we do it as a hobby and we don't obviously

charge for labour, we had to buy in certain parts like wood

It probably cost between 15 and 20,000.

And that's almost all from us tonight.

I'll leave you with the weather from Rebecca.

We had almost an inch of rain, but it turned out quite nice. We saw it

slowly progressing eastwards. Behind that we were starting to see things

easing a bit and has given a spectacular sunset. Lovely scenes

across the region and it looks like the sky was on fire. But tonight we

get more sunshine in our forecast. But we cannot rule out the odd

shower. We will continue to see the rain band progressing eastwards.

Cloud linger in the eastern part but further west we look at some breaks

in the Cloud and temperatures will fall away. It will be a chilly night

with loans of five Celsius. But in the countryside it could be more

like three. Tomorrow, the rain band has cleared away but we have another

one waiting in the wings for the weekend. Tomorrow, it looks largely

dry. There will be a few showers possible at times. Lots of lovely

sunshine and in light winds, temperatures may be 17 Celsius.

Feeling pleasant and a few more showers around