Orphan ‘died af ter nuns made him stand naked in the rain for 3 hours’
A BOY at a notorious orphanage may have f r ozen t o death after nuns forced him to stand naked in the rain for three hours, an inquiry heard yesterday. The claim was made in evidence by a former resident of Smyllum Park in Lanark during the 1940s and 1950s, who said he is still ‘haunted’ by his ordeal.
The witness was aged seven or eight when he and some of his friends were punished for playing football on a Sunday by being made to stand naked outside.
One of the other boys, named only as Joey, was shivering and distressed after going to bed that night – and by the next day he had disappeared.
The witness, known to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) as Victor, said the rumour was that Joey had died of pneumonia, but when Victor asked about his friend, a nun told him: ‘Never mention him again.’
Victor also said that he had been abused by nuns who told him: ‘We will beat the Jewishness out of you.’
He told the SCAI that the abuse at Smyllum should be remembered in the same way that people remember the Holocaust.
Victor said: ‘I’m not looking for retribution, I just want the world to know what happened in this place, so that homes today don’t have to go through what we went through all those years ago.’
He told how Joey was never seen again having been punished for playing football at the home, which was run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul before it shut down in 1981.
On a winter Sunday, he and a few boys had been kicking a ball about when nuns saw them committing the ‘sin’ on the holy day.
The inquiry heard how they were stripped, beaten with a strap and made to stand outside for about three hours.
When they went back to their dormitory for bed, he said Joey had been crying about how cold he was, but a nun told him to ‘shut up’.
Victor said: ‘I went back to bed and fell asleep, and in the morning I woke up and Joey was nowhere to be seen. I asked, “Where’s Joey?”
‘She [a nun] just told me to shut up. Two to three days later, I asked again, “What’s happened to Joey, has he come back?” and she just said, “Never mention him again”.’
It has been alleged that up to 400 children who were resident at Smyllum are buried in unmarked graves at St Mary’s cemetery in Lanark.
Victor, who recently saw stories about the graves in the Press, said: ‘I wonder if one of them was Joey.’
Another witness, called James, who was at Bellevue, a home in Rutherglen, Lanarkshire – also run by the order which was in charge of Smyllum – said a former boxer used to give the children boxing lessons.
When James was about eight, he believes he was punished after a cupboard door was broken, and one of the nuns told him: ‘Just you wait ’til Monday.’
The ex-boxer organised a match on the Monday between James, who was skinny, and a ‘ big lad’ aged about 14 – during which a bone in James’ nose was broken.
Meanwhile, a third witness called Derek, who entered Smyllum at the age of three months, said he saw another boy, Sammy Carr, with the tail of a dead rat in his mouth while they were playing.
The SCAI has heard that Sammy, who may have been malnourished, was allegedly beaten by a nun days before his death, aged six.
A medical expert told the inquiry last month that while a physical attack was not the cause of his death, it was ‘a question of the straw that broke the camel’s back’.
Instead it was likely that Sammy succumbed to an infection – possibly from a dead rat.
The inquiry, before Lady Smith, continues.