Boy Number 26

Book excerpt: Placing a child in care doesn't mean caring for a child. When little Tommy Rhattigan was taken into care in 1963 aged just 7, he entered a closed off world of institutional sexual abuse. Moved between a care home in Manchester to a reform school in Liverpool, the state was supposed to pick up the duty of care that his parents had failed to give him. But instead, separated from his siblings, young Tommy was thrown to the wolves. Tommy Rhattigan takes us, in his own inimitable way, back to his own childhood of pranks, cruelty and laughter grown from a need to survive his daily torment and to stick two fingers up to the system that was failing him so spectacularly.