Abuse inquiry to investigate Fettes and Gordonstoun

SOME of Scotland’s top private schools are to be investigated by the national inquiry into child abuse this summer.

Gordonstoun – Prince Charles’s former school – and Fettes College, where Tony Blair was a pupil, will feature in the statutory probe.

Judge Lady Smith, chairman of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI), yesterday released a YouTube video urging former pupils and staff who suffered or witnessed abuse at Scottish boarding schools to come forward.

In the appeal, she says: ‘If you have any such information, even if you have already made a report to the police, or been involved in another investigation... you can still speak to us.

‘I know that it can be difficult and very emotional to talk about such experiences. However, we have a highly experienced witness support team and they will help and support you throughout the process.’

Lady Smith said the hearings this summer would also probe Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh; Scotland’s oldest boarding school, Loretto, in Musselburgh; and the now-closed Keil School in Dumbarton.

Morrison’s Academy in Crieff, Perthshire, where actor Ewan

McGregor was a pupil, will also feature, relating to the period when it was a boarding school.

Queen Victoria School in Dunblane, Perthshire – the patron of which is the Duke of Edinburgh – will be part of the ‘case study’. Fettes College in Edinburgh has said it ‘will assist fully’ with the inquiry.

The boarding schools case study is expected to start in July. Abuse, for the purpose of the long-running inquiry, is defined as ‘primarily physical abuse and sexual abuse, with associated psychological and emotional abuse’.

The SCAI has examined allegations of abuse at institutions run by religious orders and charities. In a damning report this month, it concluded that children had suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse at Barnardo’s, Quarriers and the Aberlour Child Care Trust.

Lady Smith said the charities’ founders ‘would surely have been appalled’.

The £30million probe will publish its final findings ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’.

The SCAI is currently examining the alleged abuse of children whose departure from Scotland was part of child migration programmes.

The child migrant case study got under way last month before taking a short break, with hearings set to resume at the end of February.

■ The SCAI witness support team can be contacted on 0800 0929300, or via email: talktous@childabuseinquiry.scot.