The headlights of the police car cut through the early morning mist on the Hebridean island. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, police officers took up their positions outside properties in Leicestershire, West Yorkshire and Dorset.

After weeks of meticulous planning, the detectives were about to swoop on their targets: suspected members of what they believed was a satanic child abuse ring on the Isle of Lewis with tentacles stretching down to the south of England. The police had built up a picture of black magic rituals on the island that involved child abuse, orgies and the sacrifice of animals.

Shortly after 6am, the officers loomed out of the darkness and moved on their targets.

“There was a loud knocking on our bedroom window,” recalls Susan Sellwood, 51, who lives in a two-bedroomed cottage in Ness, north of Lewis with her husband, John. “Our son was asleep in a caravan in the front drive, he was woken by the police marching up the drive, he said it sounded like a stampede.”

According to Susan, four officers barged their way into her home, waving an arrest warrant. “They stood and watched me get dressed, which was very degrading. They bundled each of us into two unmarked cars and they only decided to tell us what was going on when we were in the interview room. We were treated atrociously.”

The Sellwoods were among 11 people arrested during the dawn raids that morning in 2003. Three people, including Susan, were released without charge later that day. Eight others, including John and a 75-year-old grandmother, were charged with sexual offences against children between 1995 and 2001.

The eight, who protested their innocence throughout, found themselves ostracised by many in the close-knit community. People shouted abuse in the street and the walls of their homes were daubed with graffiti. The trauma was such that one of the accused, Peter Nelson, attempted suicide. “The stress of everything, the hatred that was being shown to us — it was like living a nightmare,” he said.

Then, in July last year, the Crown Office dropped all charges. There was no explanation other than a statement, which said: “We can say that all the available evidence was carefully examined before this decision was taken.”

Cold comfort for the eight people whose lives had been shattered after being accused of repellent crimes. Since then, they have been waiting for the official investigation into the case, carried out by the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA), hoping that it would explain why they had been thrust into a nightmare they insist was based on “rumour, gossip and lies”.

Now, almost two years after the dawn raids, the findings of that inquiry are about to be published. However, the document, details of which have been passed to The Sunday Times, raises as many questions as it answers.

According to government sources, it highlights failings in the investigation that have “serious implications” for “all those involved in child protection services across Scotland”. It will also criticise guidelines issued by ministers on how to handle child witnesses as “inadequate” and question the way information on vulnerable children is shared among agencies throughout the UK. It will highlight concerns about NHS staff and teachers failing to report suspicions of child abuse. But the report will fail to explain why a case — built on a £100,000 investigation involving more than 100 police officers across four forces — was dropped. Most alarmingly, it will conclude that the girls at the centre of investigation had suffered “prolonged” sexual and physical abuse.

If the children did, as the report claims, suffer such appalling abuse and neglect, who was responsible? Will the culprits be brought to justice? And how can the child protection system be reformed to ensure there is never a repeat of the fiasco?

THE Lewis child abuse case was not the first to cast a shadow over Scotland’s remote island communities. In 1991, nine children aged 8 to 15 were placed in care after claims of ritual abuse.

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