Victims colluded over care abuse claims, says nun
A NUN has accused victims of alleged child abuse of colluding in their statements to an inquiry.
Elizabeth Hackett told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry she ‘never’ saw or heard allegations of cruelty during years of service at two children’s homes run by the Sisters of Nazareth in the 1970s.
Giving evidence at a hearing in Edinburgh yesterday, she also claimed previous witthe nesses had ‘spoken to each other’ and simply reported hearsay.
The 78-year-old was being quizzed about previous inquiry evidence in which children at the homes in Cardonald, Glasgow, and Lasswade, Midlothian, claimed to have been force-fed, beaten, made to kiss the faces of dead nuns and wrapped in urinesoaked sheets as a punishment for wetting bed. In her statement, read out at the hearing, Sister Hackett stated: ‘It’s as if people have heard this or that and are writing them down in a different way.’
Asked to clarify by Colin MacAuley, QC, counsel to the inquiry, she said: ‘I can’t fathom why bed-wetting and kissing of the nuns is in lots of statements because I never heard it until these statements came out.
‘It comes up in a lot of allegations towards different sisters, and I’m amazed because these sisters never lived together and it happened like that in so many houses.
‘I remember (hearing it) at the time and saying to myself, “Are these people meeting each other saying, put this in your statement, put that in your statement”.’
Sister Hackett was asked if she was aware of allegations against a colleague known as Sister Alphonso, now 77, who was convicted of four acts of child cruelty while working at Lasswade and a home in Aberdeen in the 1960s and 70s.
Asked about the conviction Sister Hackett told the inquiry: ‘I was shocked because I never heard it and never saw it and I lived with her for such a long time. I’m very sorry.’
Inquiry chairman Lady Smith said she had heard no evidence of ‘collusion’ by alleged victims. She told Sister Hackett: ‘Maybe I’m hearing the same thing from so many people because it did happen.
‘I’m not suggesting you saw it or did it but you have to realise that bad things may well have happened.’
The inquiry continues.