Victims of the Church care home Dr Mengele: For Teresa and her children, the damage of drug experiments inflicted on girls in Church of England care homes 20 years ago can never be undone
- Teresa Cooper was force-fed prescription drugs at Kendall House home
- The mother-of-three was tranquilised more than 1,000 times and raped
- She is one of scores of children who endured the same horror at the home
- The mother-of-three's children were all born with health defects as a result
- Care home is being investigated by the Church of England after 30 years
- Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, she reveals her ordeal here
It should be her moment of triumph: a longed-for victory that has taken her the best part of 30 years and £70,000 of her own money to achieve.
Mother-of-three Teresa Cooper has finally pushed the Church of England into launching an investigation into one of the most cruel and bizarre episodes ever in the grim history of British children’s homes: how scores of children at a CofE institution were force-fed huge quantities of prescription drugs by a Dr Mengele-like charlatan seemingly bent on conducting unauthorised medical experiments.
Teresa herself was tranquillised – more than 1,000 times.
Other children were given drugs designed for Parkinson’s sufferers, or adults with severe psychiatric problems.
The consequences for the girls such as Teresa who lived at the church-run Kendall House home in Kent were terrible, not just for their health and state of mind, but for their own offspring, many of whom, like Teresa’s, were born with strange abnormalities.
Yet there is no satisfaction, let alone consolation, in the announcement of the inquiry, issued by the church authorities amid the chaos of Friday’s Paris shootings. For her, the damage is never-ending.
Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, she explains how, in her three years at Kendall House in the early 1980s, she was drugged with tranquillisers 1,248 times despite having no history of violent behaviour.
She was raped on several occasions. Fellow residents of the home have suffered severe ill health following their time there.
More frighteningly, she and more than 90 per cent of the Kendall House residents who have so far come forward had children with birth defects, which the church has privately acknowledged are a result of the drugs that were forced upon them.
More than 20 have had financial compensation from the church, yet there has never been an official explanation of how such an outrage could have happened, let alone an apology.
‘Our children have had brain tumours, cleft palates and learning disabilities,’ Teresa says.
‘Most of the boys have some form of autism, others have had water on the brain, heart defects and bone growth defects. Children have died from their birth problems. One child of a Kendall House girl recently died because of his heart defect.
