A former residential social worker has been convicted of abusing children at a Mapperley children’s home in the early 1980s.

Andris Imants Logins, 57, was found guilty of 17 offences yesterday (March 21) following a two-week trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

The jury unanimously found him guilty of four counts of rape, 12 counts of indecent assault and one count of cruelty. He was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on Wednesday (March 23).

Logins committed the offences between 1981 and 1984 while working at the former Beechwood Children’s Home in Mapperley.

The case was investigated under Operation Daybreak, which was set up in 2011 to investigate allegations of historic abuse in children’s homes in Nottinghamshire.

Logins is the first former employee of a children’s home to be convicted following an investigation under Operation Daybreak.

Detective Inspector Rob McKinnell said: “Logins was employed to look after some of the most vulnerable children in Nottinghamshire. He was expected not just to be a carer, but a protector and a role model too for young people who had endured very difficult early lives. Some had already suffered abuse at home.

“Those victims have spoken of the trust they placed in him at a time when they needed adults they could trust and rely upon. One even spoke of seeing Logins as a friend.

“Despite being given a position of such great trust and responsibility, not just by his employers but by the children themselves, he exploited at least three young people for his own sexual gratification and inflicted violence upon at least one.”

He added: “Victims have told us that life at Beechwood at that time was, to use their words, ‘brutal’.  Without going over the harrowing detail of how these victims were abused, it is sufficient to say that Logins took advantage of their vulnerability and used it not only to abuse them but to also buy their silence.

“For too many years the victims of Logins’ abuse have felt that no one would believe them – their families, their friends, the local authority and even the police.

“I hope that this case and this verdict demonstrates that victims are being heard and they are being believed, while their abusers are at long last facing the consequences of crimes they perhaps thought they had got away with.”