Victim ‘haunted’ by loss of friend
● Witness tells abuse inquiry that his friend vanished after football game
A former resident of a notorious children’s home has told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry that he never saw his friend again after nuns made them strip and stand in the rain for up to three hours after being caught playing football on a Sunday.
The witness was at Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark between 1947 and 1955. He also told the inquiry he was made to eat his own vomit and that nuns attempted to beat his “Jewishness” out of him.
A former resident of a notorious children’s home has spent his life “haunted” by an incident which led to his friend’s disappearance, an inquiry has heard.
“Victor” told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yesterday that he never saw his friend again after nuns made them strip and stand in the rain for up to three hours after being caught playing football on a Sunday.
The witness, now in his 70s, was at Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark between 1947 and 1955 after his parents arrived in Britain as refugees at the outbreak of the Second World War.
He told the inquiry he was made to eat his own vomit after being force-fed by nuns, who also routinely attempted to beat his “Jewishness” out of him.
But he said his “abiding memory” of Smyllum was an incident in which a group of boys were made to strip and then were hit with a strap for playing football on a Sunday.
After being made to stand for two to three hours in the rain, the boys were told to go to bed, where Victor could hear his friend crying. He told the inquiry: “I could hear him crying out in the night. He was so cold. I think the nun came and told him to shut up.”
The next day his friend had disappeared, and Victor was told not to speak of him again.
He added: “I never saw him again. It still haunts me to this day.
“It’s probably the worst thing that happened at Smyllum, mainly because I lost my friend and I don’t know to this day what happened to him.”
Led by Lady Smith, the inquiry has heard from a number of witnesses about alleged physical and sexual abuse at Smyllum, which closed as a children’s home in 1981.
Victor was taken to the children’s home after his mother became ill with tuberculosis.
He only found out his mother was still alive when she came to collect him in 1955, after fighting for a number of years to have her son returned.
More than 60 years on, he told the inquiry he still has nightmares about his time in Smyllum, and retains a fear of nuns which prevented him watching the comedy film Sister Act with his daughter.
Asked why he wanted to give evidence to the inquiry, he said: “Being Jewish, you learn about the Holocaust. I believe, just like Smyllum, people should also learn about the Holocaust.
“I’m not looking for retribution in any way,” he said. “I just want the world to know what happened.”
Lawyers for the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, which ran Smyllum, last year offered a “most sincere and heartfelt apology to anyone who suffered any form of abuse while in our care”.
More than 60 institutions including leading boarding schools and residential homes run by religious groups are being investigated by the inquiry, which is due to report next year.
Yesterday the inquiry also heard from another witness who was at Smyllum in the 1960s and told how he saw a boy with a dead rat in his mouth shortly before he died.
In December, the inquiry heard that Sammy Carr died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of six following an E.coli infection, which he could have caught by touching a dead rat.
The inquiry continues.
“I never saw him again. It still haunts me to this day. It’s probably the worst thing that happened at Smyllum because I lost my friend”
WITNESS ‘VICTOR’