Infected blood scandal: Memorial to haemophiliac children infected from experimental treatments

Boys who were infected with HIV and hepatitis after being experimental on with new haemophilia treatments have been recognised with a new memorial at their school.

Pupils with the blood-clotting disorder were given experimental blood products while they were at Lord Mayor's Treloar's College, a boarding school in Hampshire, during the 1970s and '80s.

Of the 122 pupils with haemophilia who went to the school between 1970 and 1987, only around 30 were still alive when the Infected Blood Public Inquiry published its main report into the scandal in 2024.

"Very few" of the pupils with haemophilia at the school during those decades "escaped being infected", the report said.

Treloar Boys, as the pupils were known, had been treated as "objects of research" after being experimented on without their knowledge by NHS clinicians, who knew the dangers it posed.

A bronze statue of two boys, one with a sling and the other holding a cane, embracing each other, has been installed at the college as a memorial to them.

The text at the bottom reads: "Remembering 122 haemophiliac pupils of Treloar's. Infected as children, victims of unethical research" along with a quote from public inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, which says: "This disaster was not an accident."

Adrian Goodyear, 55, who was infected with hepatitis and HIV while at school, said that when he first arrived it felt like a "new dawn", but he and other pupils "left school with death sentences".

He added: "In 1985, a doctor tearfully said that I had two to three years to live.

"I was told this with five other boys and the doctor went round the room and said: 'You have...you haven't...you have...you haven't...you have got HIV'.

"I'm the last remaining boy in that room."

Gary Webster, 61, who contracted HIV and hepatitis C, recalled how he was called to the doctor's office one dinner time as a child, was told he had HIV "and had two years to live".

More than 90 boys who were there have died, he said.

Steve Nicholls, 59, said: "My parents put their trust in the school and they were betrayed. We were subject of unethical research behind our parents' backs, it's as wrong then as it is today."

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Richard Warwick said the memorial was a "symbol of comradeship, friendship and support".

Haemophilia is an inherited disorder where the blood does not clot properly, most often due to the absence of a protein known as factor VIII.

In the 1970s, a new treatment was developed - factor concentrate - to replace the missing clotting agent which was made from donated human blood plasma.

The inquiry concluded children at Treloar's were treated with multiple commercial concentrates that were known to carry higher risks of infection and staff favoured the "advancement of research" above the best interests of the children.

Rachel Halford, chief executive of the Hepatitis C Trust, said: "Decades later, still no one has been prosecuted for what was done to the [Treloar's boys]. We urge their police reports to be dealt with thoroughly and urgently.

"And we urge the government to reconsider why they have set such a pitifully low sum of £60,000 to compensate them for the unethical research undertaken on them."

(c) Sky News 2026: Infected blood scandal: Memorial to haemophiliac children infected from experimental treatments