Nottingham child sex abuse whistleblower Melanie Shaw: ‘I’ve done my bit, now I want to move on.’

Melanie Shaw has now spoken out for the first time in an exclusive interview with Nottinghamshire Live

Melanie Shaw will be a name familiar to many of our readers for her horrific experiences of child sex abuse at Nottinghamshire children’s homes. The prominent whistleblower played a key role in bringing the issues to light. Now, two years on from her hospital release, Melanie has spoken exclusively to Nottinghamshire Live about life in the public eye and what comes next for her.

‘20,000 letters is what got me through it, ‘ Melanie tells us. We’re sitting in a meeting room of the supported living accommodation in Nottinghamshire she now calls home, speaking after she called our newsdesk with a request to finally get her side of the story out.

She’s spent years behind bars, in solitary confinement and in psychiatric units and is clearly still vulnerable – something we’re acutely aware of.

We take the time to speak with the manager of her new home before our conversation starts. We’re told Melanie is in a good place on the day we arrive, calmer, if anything, than usual.

Fresh from a Christmas party, Melanie seems content with her new way of life after years in ‘the system’.

“I’ve done my bit,” she says.

But what was ‘her bit’? Melanie is one of the most prominent figures in the horrific story of historic child sex abuse carried out in Nottinghamshire children’s homes.

You can read more of Nottinghamshire Live’s coverage of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse here.

Melanie, born in October 1970, was placed in foster care at a young age and sent to Beechwood children’s home in Mapperley at the age of 16. It was there, she says, that she was raped, and physically and sexually abused. She also reported seeing other abuse taking place.

Melanie was one of the very the first people to make allegations about what had happened at Beechwood – allegations that eventually played a major role in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which published its final report in 2019.

The report found that around 350 individuals reported being sexually abused whilst in the care of the Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Councils from the 1960s onwards.

The true number could be considerably higher.

In April 2019, Melanie was given a hospital order after she was found to have committed three counts of arson following a ‘finding of facts’ trial.

She was deemed unfit to stand trial and was handed the order in her absence at Leeds Crown Court.

Melanie says she wants to live a peaceful life, following the conclusion of her hospital and restriction order. It’s a wish you hope is granted for her.

This is a woman who was once searched for on Google an average of 14,000 times per month, had ten different Facebook groups dedicated to her, and whose name was chanted at a Tommy Robinson court appearance.

Melanie explains how she has been welcomed back into the community. “My social worker worked hard to get me back into Nottingham, so I came home.

How has she been progressing? “It’s been alright,” she explains.

“It’s been hard work for me, adjusting after what happened in prison. As soon as I got into the NHS, I got a lot better.

“The circumstances made me really poorly.

“Now I can go out on my own, I can visit people, and I can travel the country.

“I have to occupy my time now, and I look forward to work.

“I’ve been told I can leave at any time, but I don’t want to go into private renting, not yet.”

Since her release, Melanie claims she now wants to move on, after 10 years of ‘lost time’.

She wants to start volunteering and integrating back into her community.

When asked about how she found her time away, Melanie is very clear that it was her supporters who helped her through.

Melanie became a focal point of various groups online, where people claimed she had been silenced after speaking out about the historic abuse at Beechwood.

This led to a series of campaigns for her freedom, including her photo being displayed as a centre piece at a court appearance of Stephen Lennon Yaxley, otherwise known as Tommy Robinson.

Despite the robust nature of some of those groups, Melanie says they are the thing that kept her going. While in solitary confinement, she says she was sent more than 20,000 letters.

“They were the only thing that got me through.

“I was in hospital for three years at Rampton, and then I was at Milton Keynes,” she explains.

“I was locked in solitary confinement for three and a half years. What got me through was knowing that the public was fighting for me.

“There were letters coming in from New Zealand, America, China, Spain, France. It got me through it all.

“Sometimes they would withhold the mail from me, but then they would come in with a big sack of mail the day before I would leave that hospital.

“It was difficult, I wasn’t really aware of what was going on, the magnitude of support that was there for me, I heard the people shouting over the fences for me.

“People were fighting for me. Never give up on me, because I won’t let you down.

“The support has been unbelievable, a lot of support came from people who had never met me.

“I was treated with grace and love [by her supporters].”

“There are a few special people I stay in touch with. I get a lot of messages still.

“What happened in Nottingham, I can’t talk about it. I’m out of the loop now. I’ve done my bit, and it cost me 10 years.”

Melanie wants to let her supporters know that she is recovering and eager to move on from her past.

“Not everybody is going to like me.

“I’ve remained silent for quite a bit, but I’m starting to feel a part of a community in Nottingham again, and I just want to say thank you, Nottingham, for welcoming me back.

“You just have to dig into your inner strength to get well. It was so tough, I can’t explain it. This new job is going to be the making of me.

“I’d like to be in the countryside later in life.”

Melanie is clear on what it means to be a whistleblower though.

“I don’t want to go back to where my life was- it’s been a relief.

“It’s taken 55 years to get me to this place where I am now.

“I’ve done what I had to do.

“I went to four prisons. It wasn’t a good time at all.

“What I would say is I can’t do it anymore. [I can’t] fight for survivors of institutional abuse, and I can’t fight for the survivors of the grooming gangs.

“I just hope that the girls on those panels would reconsider, as people will empathise with you when they hear your story and see your face, people will speak out, and you might just change someone’s life [by speaking out].”

Police believe that more than 136 former residents were abused at Beechwood, which was considered “the small tip of a very large iceberg”.

Four people were eventually convicted as a result of Operation Daybreak, with the heaviest sentence given to Andris Logins. He was sentenced for two counts of raping an under-14-year-old, two counts of raping an under-16-year-old, seven counts of indecently assaulting an under-16-year-old and indecently assaulting a 14-year-old and child cruelty.