“ROTTEN to the core” was the verdict of Frances Crook, head of the world’s oldest penal reform charity, who was left in tears yesterday after watching a BBC Panorama investigation into child abuse at a privately run borstal youth jail. 

Ms Cook, the Howard League chief executive for 20 years, said that what was shown going on at Medway Secure Training Centre was “one of the most upsetting things” she had ever seen and demanded immediate action to shut it down.

Security firm G4S runs the institution in Rochester, Kent, which holds 56 children aged 12 to 17, most of them boys. 

The company confirmed it had sacked four of the seven suspended members of staff after the programme aired on Monday night.

Ms Crook said: “The deliberate cruelty against children was one of the most upsetting things I have seen in this country. 

“Shocking also was the institutionalised fraud being perpetrated to cover up that abuse.

“The children in Medway must be found other places within the next few days because this institution is rotten to the core. 

“The contract should then be rescinded.”

She called for G4S to compensate taxpayers after being contracted by the government to mind vulnerable children, which it had failed to do so. 

Her group represented some of the children in Medway, including a 14-year-old boy who was regularly violently restrained and a 16-year-old girl who said staff forced their way into her room. 

The Howard League added that it had warned about “systemic problems” in young offenders facilities for years.

In 2004 two minors died in detention after being forcibly restrained at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Northamptonshire and Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in County Durham. 

Seven Medway staff were suspended by G4S on December 30 pending an internal investigation and another person was said to have been “removed from the premises” in connection with the inquiry. 

G4S children’s services managing director Paul Cook said he was “appalled” with the behaviour of some of the Medway staff shown in the programme. 

“I would like to apologise personally to any young people involved in these incidents,” he said.