Barnardo’s chose to protect my sex abuser... not me
A BOY of 12 was raped by a Barnardo’s home carer after a ‘grooming’ campaign that left him ‘petrified’, an inquiry heard yesterday.
Killian Steele, 54, claimed the charity had issued ‘reprimands’ to the man who had abused him after suspicions were raised – but let him stay on.
At the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) yesterday, Mr Steele said: ‘Barnardo’s chose to protect him over me.
‘This national organisation whose main purpose was to safeguard… disadvantaged children actually ignored allegations of sexual abuse.’
Mr Steele said initially he had an ‘amazing’ relationship with the man who later abused him at Glasclune House in North Berwick. He went there in 1976 aged 12 after being abused in his family home from the age of three – only to fall prey to the Barnardo’s male carer, who was in his early twenties and cannot be named for legal reasons.
Mr Steele claimed that on a camping trip, the man got into his sleeping bag and sexually abused him.
The next night, the man invited him to share his bed in a caravan, where other staff members were sleeping. Mr Steele said he woke to find the man sexually abusing him.
He said he felt ‘incredibly horrible’ afterwards – but the man sexually assaulted him again the next morning, leaving him ‘absolutely petrified’.
Mr Steele, now a sound engineer based in Edinburgh, said he believed he had been a victim of a ‘process of grooming’. The abuser also took Mr Steele for a weekend away at his [the abuser’s] parents’ house, where the inquiry heard he raped Mr Steele – then gave him sweets ‘to help overcome the atrocity’.
Another rape at the age of 12 on a toilet floor left him in ‘excruciating pain’. Mr Steele told the inquiry: ‘I thought that I was going to die.’
In 2001, Mr Steele contacted Lothian and Borders Police, and he said for nearly a decade he was assured that inquiries were being carried out.
Mr Steele told the hearing the now-defunct force later restarted the probe, and a man was arrested and charged but not prosecuted. He said it had ‘ripped his very being apart’ when he discovered in 2012 that his abuser would not be brought to justice. He has attempted suicide eight times.
James Peoples, QC, senior counsel to the inquiry, said the SCAI had found the prosecution did not go ahead because of a lack of corroboration.
The inquiry, before Lady Smith, continues.