Torment of child ‘sexually abused by a nun’

A NUN at a Catholic children’s home sexually assaulted a young girl – then took her to be raped by a local farmer.

Seven decades later and using the pseudonym Margaret, the victim told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry she was raped by the farmer ‘on a number of occasions’.

She said she was ‘100 per cent’ certain that the nun, who took her to a farmhouse around five minutes’ walk from the home, ‘knew what was happening’.

In a statement read out to the inquiry in Edinburgh she said: ‘It happened on a number of occasions, and when it stopped I heard the nun had left the convent.’

Margaret, who was at the home run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Cardonald, Glasgow between 1943 and 1957, added: ‘The nun also sexually assaulted me – she mauled me all over my body on a regular basis.’

Given a bus ticket by the nuns, she was told to go to London where her father would meet her. But he, too, abused her: ‘I was always scared about what would happen next.’

Another witness at the Cardonald home from 1965 until 1977 and now using the name Yvonne said she was sexually abused by the father of one of the nuns and also by a prospective foster parent. The nuns called her a liar and told her to ‘ask God for forgiveness’.

Another anonymous witness, using the name Bernie and born in 1964, said she was sexually abused at the home by a priest when she was aged nine or ten. When she informed the nuns they told her: ‘People like that don’t do things like this.’

Another witness called Tommy, who was born in 1957 and was admitted to the home in 1963, said the nuns had been ‘evil’ and one was a ‘psychopath’.

A nun hit him across the knuckles with an iron ruler, which cut his skin, because the fact he was left-handed was seen as a ‘sign of the Devil’.

On another occasion he was taken to a cinema by two older girls to see The Sound of Music: ‘I was terrified when I saw the nuns... I thought Julie Andrews was going to batter all these children.’

The inquiry before Lady Smith continues.