Nun accuses victims of ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ for cash

A NUN has told an inquiry investigating claims of child abuse that many of the alleged victims were ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ for financial reward. Using the pseudonym Sister Katrina, she conceded some allegations of abuse ‘may have been’ true but insisted she ‘never came across it’ – and that the children had grown up in a ‘happy environment’.

But she was challenged by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) chairman Lady Smith, who told her that the statutory probe does not have the power to order compensation for abuse survivors.

The SCAI is looking at claims of abuse at homes run by the Sisters of Nazareth, where victims have alleged they were subject to beatings, emotional abuse, forcefeeding and humiliation.

Sister Katrina, who was born in 1941, was at the Nazareth House in Aberdeen in the late 1970s. She told the inquiry there was no corporal punishment and that children were not forced to share bath water.

The nun had told the inquiry in a statement read out yesterday: ‘I think a lot of them [survivors] are jumping on the bandwagon and looking for financial compensation because I don’t think all of it is true.’

Questioned yesterday on what she had meant, Sister Katrina said that having to leave their own homes meant some children may have ‘resented the sisters taking them into care’.

Lady Smith, a High Court judge, told her: ‘I wonder if you appreciate that I have no power to award anybody any compensation… do you appreciate that?’

Sister Katrina replied that she did, and Lady Smith asked her: ‘Do you really think the reason people come to the inquiry… can be explained by a desire for compensation?’

The nun said the survivors ‘get together, they know each other… they may have a resentment against the sisters’.

The inquiry’s lead counsel, Colin MacAulay, QC, asked if she believed some of the abuse allegations may have been true, given that she had said she did not think ‘all of it is true’. Sister Katrina said: ‘They may have been but I never came across it.’

Later, Sister Anthony Joseph MacDonald, 72, who was at the Nazareth House in Lasswade, Midlothian, in 1975, said she believed there had not been enough social work involvement at the home.

She added: ‘I thought it was not frequent enough because I thought the children needed support – the social worker was the liaison officer between their families and themselves.’

The nun said there had been no guidance on disciplining children and they had been punished by being deprived of their favourite TV programmes or pocket money. She said: ‘There was no physical punishment whatsoever.’

Meanwhile, a nun using the pseudonym Jane, who worked at Nazareth House in Aberdeen, denied a series of claims against her, including an allegation that children were isolated in darkened rooms as a form of punishment. Jane, who said she was born in 1941 and had worked at the home in the 1970s, said: ‘None of that ever happened.’

She added: ‘I never hit any child with any object, with my hand or anything.’

Asked why she believed so many victims had come forward with abuse allegations, Jane said she did not know, adding that it made her ‘a bit sad’ to think people she had looked after were now making accusations of abuse.

She added: ‘I don’t know about that, why that is happening. The thing that makes me a bit sad is to think that children... are making allegations against me.

‘It makes me sad to think [about it] because I cared about those children very much and I thought they cared about me.

‘We chatted, we went out together, played games, did various things – and years later they decide to make complaints. I don’t understand it.’

Mr MacAulay confirmed that she believed the allegations to be ‘invention’. He asked: ‘That is your position, these are lies?’ She replied: ‘Yes.’ The SCAI heard last year that the Sisters of Nazareth are facing more than 400 allegations of abuse.

Sister Anna Maria Doolan, regional superior, said in June 2017 that the order was ‘very sorry’ for any child who suffered abuse.

She disclosed to the inquiry last year that the order was facing 257 civil actions and 147 complaints, and that the claims first came to light in the 1990s.

The inquiry continues on Tuesday.

‘None of that ever happened’