Priest in church ‘sexually abused girl of 8’

A GIRL of eight was sexually assaulted by a priest in a confession box while living at a Scottish children’s home, an inquiry heard yesterday.

The witness told how she had handed the clergyman a drawing she had done during a visit to his parish church in Glasgow to win his friendship after being branded a ‘slut’, ‘harlot’ and the ‘spawn of the devil’ by nuns.

But after showing the priest the picture, she said he then entered her side of the confession box, stood behind her and lifted her skirt.

Now in her late 40s and in therapy, the woman told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in Edinburgh that the priest then carried out his sex attack on her during the incident in the late 1970s while she was resident at a children’s home run by the Sisters of Nazareth in the Cardonald area of the city, a short walk away.

She said: ‘I was showing him the picture and he was telling me it was lovely and praising me. He was behind me, he still had the picture in his hand.’ She said she did not complain about the incident to the nuns for fear of retribution: ‘They would have said it was my fault and they wouldn’t have believed me.’

Another witness told how at the age of nine she had been sexually assaulted by a man who nuns at the same home had claimed was her father.

Reliving the day in the late 1970s, the 49-year-old said: ‘A gentleman arrived at the home, we were at school and a member of staff came to the school and told us we had a visitor and we were so excited.’

Separated from her sister, she was taken into a room on the promise of stroking a dog: ‘I went in to see the dog and he [the man] put his arm around me, bearing in mind that nobody had ever put their arm around me, nobody had ever cuddled me or told me they loved me.’

Fighting back tears, she continued: ‘I have never thought of being raped because it wasn’t violent and I consented and I felt loved, but I couldn’t stop him and I went along with it.’

Inquiry chairman Lady Smith reassured the witness that at nine she had not been ‘old enough to give consent’.

The inquiry continues.