I watched nun lay ing into girl, 14, during fist fight

A HELPER at a notorious children’s home saw a nun ‘laying into’ a teenage girl but could not remember reporting it to her superiors, an inquiry heard yesterday.

The civilian worker at Nazareth House in Cardonald, Glasgow, known to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) as Elizabeth, said she saw the nun and the girl involved in a violent confrontation.

Under questioning by lead counsel Colin MacAulay, QC, Elizabeth said she saw the nun, who was in charge of a group of children, fighting with a girl she believed was aged 14.

She told a hearing in Edinburgh: ‘I don’t know why – I just pulled them apart, one of the staff took the child away, the sister did not answer me.’

Later she checked if the child was ‘all right’, and she told the inquiry the girl said ‘yes’.

Elizabeth, who was born in 1943 and started work at the home in 1974, said ‘punching’ not kicking was involved, adding: ‘I saw the two of them hitting each other.’

SCAI chairman Lady Smith asked if it had occurred to her to report the incident and Elizabeth said: ‘I don’t know if I did. I cannot remember if I did.’

Lady Smith said: ‘How did you feel that there was a nun “laying into” a child?’ Elizabeth said: ‘I know… it’s terrible.’

Elizabeth agreed with Lady Smith that she had been ‘troubled’ by the fight. She also said she had been unaware of other allegations that children were sexually abused by a man while on a trip.

Asked by Mr MacAulay if she felt she should have been told about the allegations, Elizabeth said: ‘It really had nothing to do with me, I don’t feel.

‘I just cannot believe they’re making these allegations… they [survivors] were coming back [to the home] bringing their children and husbands to see the place, they met up with me.

‘I cannot understand why they would say this. If the place was so bad, why did they come back?’

Another witness, known to the inquiry as Sister Monica, said she began working at the Cardonald home in 1965 and looked after children up to the age of four.

The nun said she had loved the children in her care ‘like they were my own’ but told the inquiry some would get a ‘smack on the hands. It would not be punishing; it would be directing them in the right direction to go. They were too young to give them a row.’

She denied survivors’ claims that babies had been assaulted with wooden spoons, saying: ‘We would not have wooden spoons because we never did any cooking.’

Asked why she felt people had made abuse allegations, Sister Monica said some of the youngsters at the home had had ‘deepseated problems’ before they arrived and were ‘very damaged little children’. She added: ‘When older children came, they were even more damaged. They carried a lot of baggage.’

Later, a nun born in 1945 and giving evidence under the name Sister Clio said she had started work at the Cardonald home in 1966, leaving in 1970, and looked after primary school age children.

She said a policy of separating siblings, who rarely or never had contact with each other, had not been ‘easy to do’ but ‘that was the process then’.

She described allegations that children had been humiliated and caned for bed-wetting as ‘awful’ but she added: ‘I never experienced anything like that… in my time.’

She said it had been ‘very stressful’ to read about the abuse claims, adding: ‘I would not have expected it to go on, but apparently it did.’

The inquiry continues.