We failed to protect boys, monk tells probe
A CATHOLIC order which ran residential schools for children yesterday apologised for an ‘alarming failure to protect the pupils from abuse’.
The De La Salle congregation became the latest religious group to issue an apology and also highlighted a ‘disturbing lack of awareness’ among members on the need to keep children safe.
Brother Laurence Hughes, who is in charge of the historic order in Britain, yesterday said he accepted there had been a ‘systemic failure’ to look after children.
Its schools included St Joseph’s, a boys’ school and orphanage in Tranent, East Lothian. He said the order had been invited by Catholic dioceses to run schools and looked after more than 9,000 children from 1914 until it stopped doing this in 1992.
At a hearing of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in Edinburgh yesterday, Brother Hughes said the confirmed abuse was confined to the case of one brother who was convicted of multiple charges of physical and sexual abuse.
In a submission to the inquiry, the order said brothers who may have been able to help identify other cases of abuse are dead.
Pressed by inquiry chairman Lady Smith, a High Court judge, on whether other abuse had taken place, Brother Hughes said: ‘I would accept other abuse possibly happened.’ He also accepted under questioning by the inquiry’s lead senior counsel, Colin MacAulay, QC, that there was a ‘systemic failure’ to safeguard vulnerable children.
Commenting on St Ninian’s School in Gartshore, near Stirling, Brother Hughes said there had been convictions for sexual and physical abuse there over several years which he accepted was a ‘serious failure to protect children’.
He invited anyone who had experienced abuse in the order’s homes to come and speak to him.
Asked by Mr MacAulay if the order would apologise to victims, he said: ‘Indeed. That is the case.’
Last year, a monk who physically and sexually abused eight boys in his care at St Joseph’s was jailed for seven years. Michael Murphy, known as Brother Benedict or Brother Ben, carried out the abuse in the 1970s and 1980s and was jailed at the High Court in Edinburgh.
The court heard Murphy had a previous conviction for ten earlier assaults on boys at St Ninian’s School between 1960 and 1969, leading to a 12-month jail sentence.
The inquiry continues.
‘Disturbing lack of awareness’