Former pupils tell of boarding school beatings

Claims that monk regularly assaulted pupils at Fort Augustus Abbey

A monk at a Roman Catholic boarding school caned pupils until their buttocks bled and used a spiked golf shoe on one teenager, it was claimed yesterday.

Two former pupils were giving evidence in the trial of 83-year-old Thomas Seed, also known as Father Benedict, and one told a jury that bullying was ‘common’ at the Fort Augustus Abbey school.

Tax inspector Sean Stone, 52, from Angus, claimed that Seed had beaten him “in a rage” with a cane until he was bleeding after he retaliated against a school bully.

“I didn’t think it was a caning. This was a beating. Sitting down was impossible and I spent two days off school, at home, lying face down – very uncomfortable.”

Mr Stone was giving evidence in the second day of Seed’s trial at Inverness Sheriff Court.

The monk, of North Brora Muir, Brora, in Sutherland, denies assaulting eight of his pupils over a 14-year period, using a tawse, a cane, a spiked golf shoe and a hockey stick on one pupil’s genitals.

The incidents are alleged to have happened between June 1974 and July 1988 when Father Benedict was a chemistry teacher and headmaster at the school on the shores of Loch Ness.

The court heard that Mr Stone was the son of a lay teacher at the Abbey and said he was “a target.”

He added: “There was a fair amount of bullying at the school. I was about 14 and one boy, Luigi, I didn’t get on with would punch me and kick me. I suffered – put up with it.”

Mr Stone said the abuse continued and “I decided I had had enough.

“I attacked him. I have a vivid memory of Father Benedict in his black cassock running towards me from his bee hives and striking me on the side of the head with his fist.

“Then he took me by the scruff of the neck, bounced my head off the ground a couple of times and punched me on the face. His anger was severe, shouting at me in an uncontrolled rage.”

Mr Stone described how he was dragged up three flights of stairs to Seed’s study, and another pupil held him down while Seed caned him.

“I tried to explain that Luigi had been bullying me for a long time. But he wouldn’t listen. I don’t know how many times I was struck.

“When I went home I showed my parents. I had bruising on my face, nose, forehead and cane marks on my buttocks that were bleeding.”

Another former schoolboy was 51-year-old Clark Baxter, a chef baker from the Wishaw area.

He said that Seed frequently belted and caned him in his four years at Fort Augustus.

The trial continues.