A “UPSTANDING citizen” MAN given an MBE for services to a Fife town has been exposed as a child abuser who battered and sexually attacked youngsters in his care at a notorious children’s home.

Trevor Francis was given the honour in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to the community in Aberdour, Fife, where he worked as a station master.

But it hid the reality of the abuse he doled out to those in his care at the St Margaret’s children’s home in Elie, Fife, in the mid-1970s.

Francis, a qualified nurse, took over as a manager at the home in 1973 after twisted paedophile David Murphy was forced out of a job at the home after allegations were made against him that were never followed up by police.

Francis was part of a new regime at the home that should have removed the children from the threat of abuse.

But instead he was described as “creepy” and a “Jekyll and Hyde character” who subjected kids there to brutal physical attacks and sickening sexual assaults.

But it was only when one victim spoke out in 2014 that police could build a case against him.

Sheriff Alastair Brown deferred sentence until next month, but said prison for social work background reports and released Francis on bail meantime.

He said: “A prison sentence is a serious possibility”.