Children's rights campaigners will argue in the High Court this week that the authorities have a duty to notify former detainees of secure training centres (STCs) that they may have been unlawfully restrained and are entitled to compensation and other forms of redress.

The two-day hearing coincides with new statistics being released to Parliament showing that Government officials have been handed 285 separate reports of children's lives being endangered and of restraint leading to serious injuries and hospitalisation in the four STCs since 2006.

Carolyne Willow, CRAE's national co-ordinator, says:

This case raises a fundamental question about the state's responsibility to vulnerable children in its care. Faced with the knowledge that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children were unlawfully and abusively treated in these private prisons, and where the treatment was presented at the time as being entirely lawful, should Government officials now have a responsibility to notify potential victims that their rights were infringed; or should these abuses remain hidden and unchallenged.

Lawyers for the Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) will put forward devastating evidence of unlawful and dangerous restraint, going back to when the first centre opened in 1998. They will argue there was a chronic failure on the part of the authorities to protect vulnerable children over many years.

Last year, CRAE obtained the training manual governing restraint in these privately-run prisons after a three-year Freedom of Information battle with the Youth Justice Board. The document contained fundamental legal errors and even included restraint techniques banned by Ministers.

The Ministry of Justice claims that detained children could have challenged any treatment they were unhappy with at the time. Carolyne Willow adds:

It was not children's responsibility to know about, challenge and stop unlawful and abusive treatment. Children in custody are among the most disadvantaged in society and they were held in closed institutions where unlawful restraint was routine and ordinary. It was the state, and the private contractors, who were duty-bound to protect the welfare and rights of these vulnerable children.

G4S and SERCO PLC, which operate the four STCs, are joining the case as interested parties – they will support the Ministry of Justice's position that it has no duty to notify former detainees.

CRAE wants the following former detainees to be informed they may have been unlawfully restrained and entitled to redress:

- Those who were restrained for “good order and discipline: restraint for these purposes is not permitted by The Secure Training Centre Rules 1998 but is known to have been widespread
- Those who were subject to the very painful “distraction” techniques in circumstances that were not life threatening. This is where children receive a severe blow to the nose; have their thumbs pulled back; or are assaulted in the ribs.

The nose “distraction” was suspended in STCs in December 2007; three years after 14 year-old Adam Rickwood hanged himself by his shoelaces at Hassockfield STC hours after being restrained. Adam left a note in his cell: 'When I calmed down I asked them why they hit me in the nose and jumped on me. They said it was because I wouldn’t go in my room so I said what gives them the right to hit a 14-year-old child in the nose and they said it was restraint'.

When CRAE first obtained data on these brutal techniques in 2005, it learned they had been used 768 times in 2004/05, resulting in 51 recorded child injuries. Painful restraint techniques have been condemned by a large number of bodies, including the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, the UK's four Children's Commissioners, the Prisons Inspectorate and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Department of Health officials told the restraint review set up by Government: 'children and young people displaying challenging and difficult behaviour can be successfully managed without the use of restraints or methods involving pain compliance'.

The case will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice on 22 and 23 November 2011.