Though holding only a 'middle management' grade within the hierarchy of Leicestershire Social Services, Beck quickly established an esteemed reputation among his professional peers as an innovative, dynamic and extraordinarily effective practitioner in dealing with the emotional and behavioural complexities of troubled young people placed in his charge.
Leaving secondary modern school without any qualifications, Beck trained to be a pig keeper and spent three years working on a farm before joining the Royal Marines.
[6] Beck also believed that emotions should not be 'bottled up' and it is said that children were deliberately provoked into temper tantrums, thereby creating opportunities to exercise violent physical restraint.
During the early 1980s, the number of complaints made about Beck's deployment of sexual and physical abuse and the unconventional methods he used as a child-care practitioner began to escalate.
The boy had stayed at The Beeches Children's Home in Leicester for weekend respite care and Beck was subsequently arrested after the child's mother reported matters to the police.
This time, Beck was suspended from duty and he subsequently handed in his resignation rather than subject himself to investigations under the council's protracted disciplinary procedures and risk dismissal.
A reference was supplied to them by Brian Rice, the Director of Leicestershire Social Services who had replaced Dorothy Edwards in 1980 and which gave a positive appraisal of Beck's abilities in working with young people, with only a suggestion that the agency might wish to discuss with him the exact reasons for his resignation.
[8] The same reference enabled him to gain a post at the Woodcock Hill Children's Home in Brent and he later moved on to Hertfordshire, where he was accused of sexual relationships with two clients, one an adolescent boy.
In 1989, she made disclosures of historical abuse suffered under the Beck regime, whilst attending parent-craft meetings run by her social worker at the Regent Street Nursery in Loughborough, Leicestershire.
[12] On 29 November 1991, following an eleven-week trial at the Leicester Crown Court, Beck was sentenced to five life-terms for sexual and physical assaults against more than one hundred children in his care.
In their book, Abuse of Trust, Mark D'Arcy and Paul Gosling suggest that in 1977, Beck and a co-worker, Colin Fiddaman, killed a 12-year-old boy, Simon O'Donnell, by throttling him whilst he was being sexually abused, though the subsequent inquest into O'Donnell's death concluded that the boy had committed suicide after running away from a children's home run by Beck.
The authors state that other children living in the home at that time have since given evidence to say that the injuries allegedly caused to O'Donnell were consistent with the system of physical restraint used by Beck and Fiddaman, which entailed wrapping a towel around the neck of a child during the course of abuse.
In 1998, a former resident, Peter Bastin, stated that he witnessed Beck and Fiddaman removing what he believed to be O'Donnell's body from the home on the night before the child was found dead in a local factory.
[16] Throughout the trial and up until his death, Beck emphatically protested his innocence as a victim of mass conspiracy and sought to launch an appeal to secure his release and clear his name.
Beck spent much of his time in Whitemoor prison vigorously planning his appeal and such eminent barristers as Anthony Scrivener and Michael Manning are said to have shown an interest in taking his case.
Beck's solicitor, Oliver D'Sa, had also come to fully believe in his innocence and acted not merely as a paid lawyer "just doing his job", but as someone absolutely committed to his case.
I have received during the course of the case many testimonials and references from children who have been in the care of Mr Beck and fellow social workers, who testify to the help, kindness and devotion to his work.
"[18] Beck died, aged 51,[21] on the evening of 31 May 1994, two and a half years after his imprisonment, apparently as a result of a heart attack whilst playing badminton at Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire.
D'Arcy and Gosling, in their book, Abuse of Trust, claim that fellow prisoners (some of whom had allegedly been his victims) attributed his death to amphetamine, which had supposedly been surreptitiously added to his food over a period of months.
It bears little resemblance to the photograph of Beck within the book, which shows him as a burly and confident much younger man, depicted outside the Beeches Children's Home at Leicester Forest East during the 1980s.
The more they worked on the case, the more Henning and Greaves became convinced that Beck had become the victim of an unprecedented trawling operation in which police officers, in their anxiety to gain a conviction, had inadvertently suggested allegations to the witness they were interviewing.