When Richard Baldwin was three years old, he was put in a children's home by his own father, along with his brother and sister .

During his eleven-year stay at care homes throughout the country, he was separated from his siblings and subjected to a shocking catalogue of physical and emotional abuse, which included being starved, beaten and made to sleep on a bed of straw.

The New Addington resident this week speaks to Kerry McQueeney about his experience in a children's home during wartime Britain.

The smiling face of Richard Baldwin in this picture paints an inaccurate depiction of his childhood.

While on the surface the youngster seemed happy, his youth is marred by memories of being made to sleep on a bed of straw and being beaten on a daily basis.

Richard says his so-called guardians in various care homes acted more like his tormentors and made his childhood the most miserable chapter of his life.

"I had never experienced such cruelty," he says from his Ivers Way home in New Addington, "and I can never forgive them.

"We are all smiling in that picture, but only because we were told that if we didn't look happy we would get the beating of our lives."

Now approaching the age of 64, Richard vividly remembers the day he decided to trace his own history five years ago.

He explained: "I was watching a television programme called Leaving Liverpool, which was about children being carted off to homes during the war.

"It really upset me and it stirred memories of my own experiences. I was determined to find out about my own past and the people who made my life hell.

"I had tried to ask my brother what our life was like before we were put in a home but he finds it very difficult to talk about it."

Richard was just three years old when his own father took him, his older brother and his younger sister from their family house in Godstone Road, Purley, and dumped them in a Church Army home for "motherless children."

In actual fact, Richard's mother was alive and well, but had been caught out having an affair with a local soldier.

Richard believes his father got rid of them to punish his adulterous wife.

He said: "I have no memories of my mother. As far as I knew I didn't have one because I was in a home for motherless children.

"I grew up thinking my father was wonderful because he was in the RAF but he only came to see me three times in the eleven years I spent in homes.

"I was separated from my sister and, eventually, my brother. I hated it from the start."

Richard spent 11 years in a total of four care homes run by the Church Army in different parts of the country between 1941 and 1952.

He was a child with emotional problems and, because of his unruly' behaviour and a persistent bed-wetting, he was labelled a problem child'.

As punishment, he was made to sleep on a straw mattress and was regularly beaten by the home's staff.

He says he was also subjected to regular emotional torment, with staff taunting him about his mother's death'.

Richard said: "I was told at the age of seven that I was no good just like my mother. What kind of person tells a young child that?

"These people were consistently cruel to us and seemed to enjoy tormenting us. They weren't concerned for our welfare at all and seemed to get a kick out of our misery."

During Richard's search for information, he came across a significant document from the Department of Health which confirmed his cruel physical and emotional abuse while at one home in Somerset.

The Chief Inspector's report into the Church Army home, Rodney Stoke, in 1945 strongly criticised the state of the living quarters and the organisation's care of the children.

One paragraph even highlighted the fact that Richard was sleeping on straw and rubber sheeting.

Richard said: "I couldn't believe it when I saw it. There was my name, in black and white, being used as an example of how the Church Army were mistreating us.

"These people were cruel and wicked. They made me sleep on straw like a dog in a kennel and would beat me with shoes if I wet the bed.

"You never knew what they would punish you for. Sometimes I'd be refused food and made to stand in the corner while everyone else ate. I have a vivid memory of picking up apple cores from the gutter on my way to school because I was so hungry."

Richard left the Church Army homes and joined the navy in 1952 at the age of 14 years. He had kept in touch with his older brother and younger sister and met up with them when he could.

When he was 17, he met his mother for the first and only time when she visited him in Portsmouth.

He said: "She showed no signs of emotion. She was a complete stranger to me. My sister had managed to track her down and she had come to see me when I was on leave from the navy.

"I never saw her again."

Richard and his siblings all returned to the Croydon area to start their own families and have lived in the area ever since.

Richard, a father-of-one and grandfather-of-two, lives with his wife in New Addington.

Richard says that his miserable childhood was not uncommon of boys and girls in care during the war, but he believes conditions have improved for children in care these days.

He added: "My experiences left me deeply disturbed and it upsets me terribly when I hear about children being abused in homes.

"I just hope that my story will help another person in a similar situation."

The Church Army were unavailable for comment.