Religious order’s chief apologises for ‘failure’ over care home abuse
THE head of a Catholic order that ran a Scots care home where children were abused has apologised ‘unreservedly’ for what he described as its ‘significant failure’.
Edmund Garvey, European leader of the Christian Brothers, said it was a ‘facile presumption’ that a group of celibate men could care for youngsters just because they were religious.
His statement follows a month of evidence at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry in which witnesses have described being drugged and raped at ‘satanic orgies’ and beaten with golf clubs in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The abuse is said to have taken place at St Ninian’s residential school in Falklands, Fife. Its former headmaster John Farrell and teacher Paul Kelly were jailed after being found guilty of sexual and physical abuse of boys as young as 11.
Giving evidence in Edinburgh yesterday Mr Garvey, 73, said: ‘It was a facile presumption that… a religious community of celibate men were well placed to care for and look after children…’
He added: ‘The failure to train people or to find a way of preparing them for that role was a very significant failure.’ The inquiry heard the abuse happened despite the school being subject to in-house inspections known as ‘visitation reports’.
In one report inspectors raised concerns about a teacher’s behaviour. The staff member, who cannot be named, went on to allegedly tie up and rape a boy in the shower, the inquiry previously heard.
The hearing was told that in 1972 teachers were handed a ‘constitution’ laying out the ‘risks’ of caring for the youngsters and listing a string of rules that forbade brothers and teachers from forming friendships with pupils.
They were also told not to be on their own with a single child and discouraged from ‘fondling’ the boys. But despite this the inquiry heard Kelly would regularly have pupils sleeping in his bedroom.
Giving evidence, Brother John Burke, the order’s director of child safeguarding since 2002, said the rules were ‘not implemented’.
He said: ‘I don’t know why Brother Kelly wasn’t stopped. It was a lack of proper authority, it should never have happened and the frightening thing is it was out in the open and wasn’t reported in the visitations. It’s one of the most awful things I have heard.’
An inspection report of the home read to the hearing said staff were brought in on a ‘trial and error basis’, with Mr Burke telling the inquiry a ‘culture of abuse’ had formed by the late 1970s. He said: ‘There were four or five brothers who should never have been at St Ninian’s and had they not been there, St Ninian’s would have been a completely different experience for the boys.’
He added: ‘The purpose of this inquiry is to shine a light on the shadow, on the dark abusive side of St Ninian’s.’
Summing up, the inquiry chairman, judge Lady Smith, said: ‘What we have heard is that young men could start working at St Ninian’s when they were still quite young and before, not to put too fine a point on it, they had really learnt to deal with the challenge of a vow to live a celibate life, from putting themselves in the way of temptation and protecting children from getting involved in that.’
Mr Garvey replied: ‘My lady, I couldn’t agree more’.
Outside the inquiry, Mr Garvey added: ‘We have issued an apology to the Scottish people and the Scottish survivors and I would certainly want to reiterate that apology today, and to do so unreservedly.’
He added: ‘I would hope that the achievement of this inquiry, particularly the achievement of the brave people who were ready to relive the worst aspects of their past by coming forward, is that we can make sure this can never happen again’.
The inquiry continues.