Barnardo’s home boys ‘raped and abused’

CHILDREN were raped and physically abused while in the care of Barnardo’s, an inquiry heard yesterday.

A former resident of a children’s home told an ex-employee of the charity that he had been sexually abused as a teenager.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) heard the boy had lived at Barnardo’s-run Balcary House in Hawick, Roxburghshire, and had a weekend job away from the home.

The inquiry, sitting in Edinburgh, was read a statement by Jasmine Bell, who worked at Balcary between 1963 and 1966.

She said she had been contacted later in life by a former resident who claimed a man he reported to for his weekend job ‘would rape and sexually abuse’ him. He was 14 at the time.

Meanwhile, another former Balcary employee, using the

‘Children were let down’

pseudonym Eric, told the SCAI a Barnardo’s worker was once dismissed after he was ‘goaded’ by a ten-year-old boy and punched the child in the chest.

Eric, now in his 60s, said he did not recall corporal punishment being used there in the early 1970s. But he added: ‘We weren’t working in terms of helping people emotionally... back then, staff were let down, children were let down.’

Another witness, Mary Roebuck, born in 1955, said she had worked at Glasclune House, a Barnardo’s home in North Berwick, East Lothian, in the 1970s.

She told the SCAI she once raised concerns about a staff member – who was later investigated by police over sexual abuse allegations – but was told by a senior employee ‘it might do the child good’ to form a bond.

The hearings, before Lady Smith, continue.