Former Treloar pupils claim school ‘failed’ them amid compensation battle

Four men who claim they were “guinea pigs” at a school where pupils received medical treatments using contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 80s have said that they were “failed” by the institution.

Richard Warwick, Gary Webster, Steve Nicholls and Adrian Goodyear all attended the Lord Mayor Treloar School and College in Hampshire in the 1970s and 80s, which at the time was a boarding school for children with haemophilia, an inherited disorder where the blood does not clot properly.

They are now part of a group of dozens of former pupils taking legal action against the charity which operates the site, the Treloar Trust, claiming the school gave them unlawful treatments involving contaminated blood products, which infected them with a variety of diseases including HIV and hepatitis A, B and C, without their or their parents’ knowledge.

Last year, the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, written by inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff, found that the children at Treloar’s were “often regarded as objects for research”, and that there was “no doubt” that healthcare professionals at the school were aware of the risks of virus transmission.

None of the four men can work because of health problems, and Mr Warwick told the PA news agency on Tuesday that they were given a “death sentence”.

Mr Goodyear, 54, attended the school from 1980 to 1989 and now suffers from HIV and hepatitis A, B and C. He said what took place at the school was “insidious”.

He said: “Treloar’s sold us a dream, and that dream failed us.

“The dream failed us completely, and it left us with fear of dying on our friends and our families. We all had to take that fear, and so did the families.

“Treloar’s must take some sort of responsibility for that. We were in their care, and they failed us.”

Pupils at the school were given treatment at an on-site NHS centre while receiving their education, but it was later found that they were treated with contaminated plasma blood products.

Mr Webster, 59, who went to the school from 1975 to 1983 and now has HIV and hepatitis B and C, said the school had a discipline system in which pupils received a “black mark” if they missed an injection or other treatment.

He said he was informed he had HIV when he was 17, and that the school “did what they liked with us”.

He said: “We all feel it has been a bit of a wasted life.

“We got a good education at Treloar’s, and many of us left going straight into jobs, but because of this we haven’t been able to do the jobs we wished we could have done, or the activities we wished we could have done, so it’s partly a wasted life, and it should never have been that way.

“We could have done so much more.”

The contaminated blood scandal is widely seen as the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history.

Victims will receive up to £2.7 million each, with a £10,000 “unethical research” fee in addition, and a higher award of £15,000 has been offered to those who were experimented on at the Treloar.

This sum has previously been described as a “kick in the teeth” by former pupils, but while the legal claims could result in the former pupils being awarded further compensation, Mr Warwick said the battle was “about getting some form of accountability for the wrongdoings that children had to endure”.

He said: “They completely failed in their duty of care towards the children, we were kept in the dark, we didn’t know what was going on, we were uninformed, as were our parents.

“We were treated essentially as guinea pigs, there was no safeguarding, there was no compassion.”

Mr Nicholls, 58, who attended the school from 1976 to 1983 and now has hepatitis A, B and C, said that more than 70 former Treloar pupils have died since their time at the school and that those still alive felt “survivors’ guilt”.

He said: “It (the legal claim) is not about us. It’s about the 80 dead boys.

“We are their voices, and we are going to fight until the end for this, to get them justice.”At a hearing at the High Court on Wednesday, lawyers for the trust apologised to the former pupils, saying it was “so sorry” that they “have been victims of this tragedy”.

Reading a statement on behalf of the trust, Toby Riley-Smith KC said: “It is so sorry that as a result, they and their loved ones have suffered so much, and for so long.

“It is so sorry that they have been victims of this tragedy, which Sir Brian Langstaff has described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, a tragedy that has been compounded by the fact that it has taken so long for their plight to be recognised.”

A spokesperson for Treloar’s said: “While we fully sympathise with our former students’ campaign, we firmly believe that the best route to receive timely and substantial recompense is via the Government compensation scheme.

“We urge the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) to pay the levels of compensation that have already been set as soon as possible.”