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Mum’s anger over ‘betrayal’ following death of her infant
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A SECRET report into the baby ashes scandal at an Aberdeen crematorium claims council staff misled a senior judge.
A probe was ordered in 2013 after it was found babies had been cremated alongside unrelated adults at Hazlehead Crematorium over a five-year period.
Distraught parents were told no ashes were recoverable – but that was not the case.
A grieving mum said she felt “physically sick” after finding out that Aberdeen council officials misled the probe into the ashes scandal.
Nicola Merchant lost her son Liam in 2002 after he was born prematurely at just 24 weeks.
The youngster lived for six hours before dying of a brain haemorrhage.
The mum of four, from Aberdeen, was told she could not get any remains after her baby boy was cremated at Hazlehead on Christmas Eve in 2002.
She told BBC Scotland: “I feel physically sick. I feel hurt and betrayed by Aberdeen City Council. I feel lost because there’s nothing I can do.
“You’re supposed to rely on the council and you can’t rely on them anymore. I’m just hurt.
“They don’t realise how much hurt they’ve caused, not just me. There’s other parents, there’s the people whose loved one was in with the infants being cremated. It’s just awful.
“I don’t think they understand how much they’ve hurt people. I mean even if we found out that there was remains and they scattered them, then we’d know where to go but there’s just nothing.”
Dad Paul Wells, who lost his one-month-old son Scott to cot death in 2006, also blasted the council for their initial decision not to publish the report.
The painter and decorator said: “I don’t
think what actually has happened will bring much in the way of closure but the parents and everybody else need to know what the council have been doing and what they haven’t been doing and what is in the report.
“Withholding that report, there is no transparency. You can’t say they’re being transparent when they are keeping reports secret.”
An independent study into how Aberdeen City Council handled the investigation was carried out last year but local authority chiefs refused to publish the report.
They were forced into an embarrassing U-turn after a challenge from BBC Scotland through the Scottish Information Commissioner.
The damning report – conducted by independent investigator Richard Penn – found that judge Lord Bonomy, who led the 2013 probe, had “clearly not been given
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