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The documentary Shirley Hell follows Shirley Oaks Survivors Association (SOSA), and their investigation into Lambeth Council which led to them uncovering Britain’s biggest child abuse scandal.

It was one phone call, in 2014 where the caller revealed their personal experience of horrific child abuse from their past whilst in care, which led to SOSA being inundated with hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse, many at the now notorious Shirley Oaks Children’s Home which was run by Lambeth Council. SOSA was set up to bring together all of those who wanted to share their experiences of abuse and seek justice.

With their expertise in the entertainment industry SOSA produced campaign videos, one of which featured on BBC News at Ten. From their basement office in Brixton, they continued to be contacted by more and more survivors coming forward via email, text, Facebook messages; they were even contacted by survivors of Lambeth abuse who were now living abroad.

SOSA endeavoured to take statements and verify each allegation and then they announced to the media, that the sexual abuse in Lambeth children’s homes was ‘on an industrial scale'. The initial media response was disbelief, but seven years later, SOSA’s report Looking for a Place Called Home, forced Lambeth Council to set up a compensation scheme and pay out over £100m to over 2,000 former Lambeth care children who had been abused in their ‘care’.

However, SOSA's work was not finished because they had promised the survivors and their childhood friends who had passed, to investigate the role the Metropolitan Police had played in the cover up of an earlier flawed investigation carried out between 1999 and 2003.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) 2020, confirmed that 177 paedophiles had abused children at Shirley Oaks Children’s Home. At the end of the hearings, the Met Police were  forced to apologise for ‘their failure to follow up leads’ during the 1999 flawed investigation. Despite this apology, SOSA believed that these failings had been by design.

They always knew the key to opening the Pandora’s box of wider child sexual abuse was Shirley Oaks Children’s Home.

It was only when they started to review the claims of abuse in the home back in the 1950s that they uncovered a group they would refer to as the ‘metropolitan occult’. They knew they needed to watch their backs because this group was still wielding power as indicated in a Home Office report.
This documentary is about former Lambeth care children who suffered horrendous abuse, coming together to demand justice on their terms – ‘All for One and One for All.’