My kids’ home sex abuse hell
A WOMAN claims she was sexually abused by a priest at an orphanage run by nuns.
Theresa Tolmie-McGrane, who arrived at Smyllum Park in Lanark in 1968, said she was first targeted when she was eight as she did a parttime job cleaning pews.
Theresa, who is now a psychologist in Norway, said that on one occasion a nun walked in on them.
She added: “Instead of being angry at him, she got really angry at me.
“She yanked me by the left arm so hard and flung me across the room and called me a whore and told me to get out of there.
“I didn’t know my arm was broken at the time.”
She claimed abuse at the orphanage was widespread, saying: “Every child was beaten, punished, locked in a dark room, made to eat their own vomit.”
A spokesman for the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, who ran the home until it closed in 1981, said they were “shocked and saddened” by the claims.
An investigation recently found that at least 400 children from the institution are thought to be buried in an unmarked grave at the town’s St Mary’s Cemetery.