Sex abuse victim sent on holiday by nuns... ‘to be molested by a monk’

POLICE are investigating claims that children at a Catholic orphanage were sexually abused by a monk in a ‘stately home’.

A witness told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) that while he was at the home run by nuns, some school holidays were spent at ‘Hetland House’, near Dumfries.

The alleged victim, known as James, said a Marist Brother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sexually abused him during the holiday trips.

James also made allegations of physical abuse meted out by nuns at the home, run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Cardonald, Glasgow. He told the SCAI in Edinburgh he was also ‘groomed’ and sexually assaulted by male members of staff at the orphanage after he was admitted in 1977.

James, who was born in 1968, said a male member of staff saw him kissing a girl and told a nun – who later attacked him. James said she was ‘mental’, adding: ‘I was sleeping and she came in and started slapping me in the face – it burst my nose.’

A male staff member attacked James – ‘All he did was batter me’ – after being told to do so by one of the nuns, he said. One of the men who worked at the home sexually assaulted him when he was nine or ten, he added.

When in P7, James said he went alone on the first of his trips to the ‘stately home’ – but other children accompanied him on future breaks.

On the second trip he said he woke up to find he was being sexually assaulted by the monk. He said he also saw the monk taking a boy to bed, while on another occasion he and a boy were with the monk who had abused him and two other men.

James said he could not remember what happened, but his pyjamas had been partially removed. Describing his