Cardinal offered hush money to sexual abuse victim, inquiry is told
A CARDINAL tried to pay off a child abuse victim to keep her quiet, an inquiry heard yesterday.
The victim, who wished only to be known as Maureen, said after three meetings with Cardinal Thomas Winning in 1997 he offered her hush money.
Maureen had confided in the cardinal that she had been sexually abused by a member of the Knights of St Columba, a benefactor to Nazareth House in Cardonald, Glasgow, where she had stayed between 1962 and 1970.
She also said that she told the cardinal of the terrifying abuse she had suffered at the hands of the Sisters of Nazareth. At first, the Cardinal tried to track her abuser down – and discovered that he had died.
But on their third meeting at the Archdiocese in Glasgow, Cardinal Winning offered to pay her off.
The claims came as Maureen gave evidence at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) in Edinburgh yesterday.
The victim told the inquiry of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the Sisters of Nazareth.
When she arrived at the orphanage aged eight, an older girl ‘deloused’ her hair, scrubbing it so hard her scalp bled.
After wetting herself, she was forced to stand with the dirty bedsheet over her head while the other children mocked her.
The woman never got to read her school report cards, believing for most of her life she was ‘stupid’ and she would ‘never amount to anything’ as the nuns told her. It was only years later when she got to see them that she discovered she had been a bright child.
The sisters frequently ‘battered’ her and refused to believe her when she told them one of the orphanage’s benefactors had sexually abused her.
She told the inquiry: ‘I was at his home. He would come in my room at night and abuse me.’
Maureen said she tried to confide in one of the sisters. ‘She said, “Get away from me you filthy little brat and stop telling me lies”.’ In 1997, Maureen decided to write to Cardinal Winning and tell him about her experience.
However, after their third meeting, she claimed the Cardinal offered to pay her off to keep her quiet. She added: ‘He said “How much money will it take?”’
Senior counsel to the inquiry Colin MacAulay, QC, then asked if Cardinal Winning had ever apologised. She replied: ‘No. He said it was the way priests and nuns were at the time. They were resentful, and that they took it out on us.’
The inquiry, before Lady Smith, continues.