Nun, 92, dismisses abuse testimony as ‘pure invention’

A NUN of 92 accused of child abuse at a notorious orphanage yesterday dismissed the evidence as ‘pure invention’.

Using the pseudonym Sister Carol Kane, she suggested her accusers felt ‘someone had to be blamed’ for their separation from parents.

She denied all the claims against her during her time at Smyllum Park, in Lanark, which is at the centre of a major investigation by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI).

An SCAI hearing in Edinburgh heard that Sister Carol told lawyers in a statement in July last year about another nun ‘slapping’ children as a punishment, but yesterday she insisted she had ‘no memory of it now’.

Sister Carol was at Smyllum from 1957 to 1964 and looked after children aged between eight or nine and 16. Confronted yesterday with detailed allegamember tions against her, including physical abuse, she said her accusers must have ‘hated’ her. She also said children were well looked after in a ‘happy’ environment, enjoying ‘lovely hot showers’.

The inquiry has heard children were given cold baths as a pun- ishment for bed-wetting. Some witnesses likened Smyllum to a concentration camp.

Sister Carol strongly denied allegations that those who wet the bed were humiliated, or that physical force was used to punish them. Asked about claims against her, and another staff who was allegedly ‘violent and vicious’, she told inquiry QC Colin MacAulay that they were ‘pure invention’.

The inquiry also heard from Sister Nora O’Sullivan, also a pseudonym, who was in charge of girls at Smyllum aged three to eight or nine between 1958 and 1961. She denied carrying out or witnessing abuse, adding allegations of ‘mass graves’ at Smyllum were ‘incredible’.

On claims children were locked in cupboards, she said: ‘There were very few cupboards… It could have happened, I’m not saying it didn’t happen.’

But she wept as she explained her belief that ‘some of them’ [survivors] ‘have not grown up’. The inquiry continues.

The cost of the SCAI has risen by £2.1million in the past three months, it has emerged, bringing the total to £12million.

A spokesman said the ‘many investigations being undertaken by the inquiry have resulted in an expansion of the team’.