TWO boys were beaten to death at an orphanage, one at the hands of a nun and the other by a caretaker wielding a golf club, Scotland’s child abuse inquiry has heard.
The allegations were made as the inquiry heard from four witnesses about their experiences while living in Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark, which was run by the Catholic Order the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.
Two of the witnesses gave evidence in person, their identities protected by pseudonyms, while statements were read out from two more former residents – Jim Kane and Frank Docherty, who both died last year, before they could attend in person.
READ MORE: Abusers could yet face justice as Crown Office re-examines cases
The inquiry heard a catalogue of horrific claims about the treatment of children sent into the care of the charity, including:
* “Routine” beatings, and children at Smyllum Park being force-fed by nuns, even as they were vomiting
* Bed-wetters being forced to stand with their soiled linen around their necks before being made to take a cold bath
* A nun at another home run by the order in Newcastle pinning a boy against a wall and holding a bread knife to his throat
* Another nun at the same home picking up an infant, dropping him, and kicking him before he hit the floor.
“David”, who was born in 1957 and stayed at Smyllum Park from 1959 until he was seven, told the inquiry he had seen a nun punch and kick his friend Sammy Carr as he lay on the ground, after the six-year-old had accidentally burned David’s hand while playing with a match.
David said the blows to Sammy’s head and upper body were so brutal he had jumped on top of his friend pleading with the nun – who under the inquiry’s rules cannot be named – to stop.
READ MORE: Abusers could yet face justice as Crown Office re-examines cases
He broke down yesterday as the inquiry heard that the boy had died 10 days later after being admitted to hospital.
David said that beatings at the orphanage were routine.
He told how he was sexually abused by a nun who rubbed his penis with her thumb while talking to him about bedwetting.
He also described abuse by a lay female member of staff who had asked him to help change beds.
In August 1965 when he was aged around seven he had been moved to St Vincent in Newcastle.
Colin MacAulay QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “In your statement you go on to say it was another place run by psychopaths.”
Describing an incident when boys were queuing for washrooms, David said a nun had taken offence to something he had said.
“She pinned me up against the wall with her forearm with a bread knife to my throat," he said.
"I genuinely thought I was going to die.”
READ MORE: Abusers could yet face justice as Crown Office re-examines cases
Another witness, identified as “Fergie”, spoke about girls being beaten with hairbrushes if their hair was tangled, and being force fed with porridge.
“You would be held by your neck or chin and porridge forced into your mouth,” she said.
“This happened to me. Sometimes you were being sick and still being forced to eat”.
She also described nuns using crosses as weapons to hit children and regular verbal abuse.
“You were called devil’s child, devil’s spawn, immoral, you would be nothing in life, you were the scum of the earth, in their books.
"Not even your parents wanted you,” she said.
In a sworn statement made prior to his death in 2016, former Smyllum resident Jim Kane told the inquiry that deaths of children at the orphanage had gone unrecorded, including that of a 13-year-old boy who had died of a brain haemorrhage, after being struck with a golf club by a member of staff.
In an opening statement, John Scott QC, senior counsel for In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas), said the name Smyllum will be “forever associated with suffering”.
He said: “Either people knew because they were involved or they knew and did nothing to stop it or or noone cared enough about the children at Smyllum to take an enough interest to find out what life was like in this showpiece home.
“ The Smyllum Way did not involve only one or two abusers, it involved many abusers and took place over decades.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel