I was raped by teacher...he was also my father

A FORMER pupil of a prestigious Catholic boarding school was raped by a teacher he believed was his biological father, an inquiry heard.

The man, who can only be known as Jack, told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry he was sexually assaulted by the man during a family trip to Middlesbrough when he was aged seven.

In a written statement the witness said his mother had been in a ‘sexual relationship’ with the man, a member of religious order the Marist Brothers, for several years before the attack in the late 1960s.

He then told the inquiry he later suspected his birth had come as a result of the affair.

Jack, from Dumfries, told the inquiry: ‘(He) took me up to his room. He had been drinking heavily, he made me carry out acts of a sexual nature on him.

‘I was naked from the waist down. He then raped me.’

He continued: ‘He betrayed my trust. He raped me and told me not say to anybody.’

The inquiry heard that Jack’s family had ‘strong links’ to St Joseph’s College in Dumfries, where the man worked, as they lived nearby.

Soon after the attack, he was enrolled by his mother at the college’s feeder school St Colum(him) ba’s, in Largs, Ayrshire, also run by the religious order.

Jack said he had suffered anxiety in the first two years at the school as he feared he would be attacked again.

He added that the religious brother had continued to visit his mother and he eventually became suspicious that ‘my mother had a relationship with and he was my biological father’. Jack told the hearing in Edinburgh the abuse he suffered left him with mental health problems.

He said: ‘I like to describe myself as a 20 stone man with the temper of a seven-yearold boy. I take a lot of tablets to cope with my mental health problems.’

The witness also said that in later years, he contacted the religious order to tell them about the abuse but added that his pleas had been ignored.

Meanwhile, another witness who attended St Columba’s told the inquiry sexual abuse at the school had become ‘normalised’, with pupils being attacked several times a week.

The witness, using the name John, said he was abused from the age of eight after being enrolled at the boarding school in 1978. He added: ‘It was constant, I’m not saying every day, but a number of times a week. It just seemed to be something that was part of life at the school.’

The inquiry, before judge Lady Smith, continues.