The Forgotten Boys
During the 1960s and 1970s, Britain’s youth justice system removed children from their
homes and placed them into Remand Homes, Approved Schools, and Borstals under the
language of reform. In reality, many of those children, particularly boys, were exposed to
widespread institutional abuse, silenced by fear, and forgotten by the state.
Lewis Gell was one of them. At the age of ten, he was sent to a pre-Borstal Remand Home.
The abuse he suffered there marked the beginning of a lifelong impact, diagnosed
decades later as PTSD with complex triggers. Now, as a trauma recovery specialist, CSE
caseworker, and safeguarding consultant, Lewis draws on both his personal history and
his professional expertise to confront what the system still refuses to face.
The Forgotten Boys: A Borstal Legacy is not a memoir in the traditional sense. It is
a professional, victim-led reference work designed for those in safeguarding, social care,
criminal justice, education, and mental health sectors. The book serves as a valuable
resource for students, academics, and practitioners, featuring a wider gutter margin for
annotations, notes, and references, perfect for those using this book as a learning tool to
enhance their understanding of institutional abuse and trauma recovery.
This book explores:
- The legacy of institutional abuse in the UK’s youth justice system
- The psychological and emotional cost borne by boys who are now ageing,
traumatised men - The structural ignorance that continues to exclude victims from support
- The failure of statutory services to understand lives shaped by institutions that no
longer exist - A call for victim-led, trauma-informed, and reality-based reform
The boys failed in Borstal are now men in their sixties and seventies. Many live in silence,
unacknowledged by the systems that once harmed them. This book is not just their
record. It is their voice.
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