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| Smyllum Park Catholic Children Abuse Centre, Lanarkshire, Scotlanda |
When a nun caring for children at the Catholic-run Smyllum Park children's home in Lanarkshire, Scotland walked into the chapel and found a priest sexually abusing an eight year-old girl, she sprang immediately into action.
She grabbed the girl by one arm and flung her against the wall, breaking her arm, called her a 'whore' and shouted “get the f*** out of here” at her.
According to this report, the victim, Theresa Tolmie-McGrane, who waived her right to anonymity, told the enquiry into child abuse at the home, this abuse had been going on for some time. She had been taken into 'care' and placed at the home at the age of six following an abusive early childhood.
Her 'job' was to dust the pews in the chapel. One priest in particular used to come onto the chapel and make her sit on his lap telling here he needed her to be a good little soldier for God. He would then make her perform a sex act on him or watch while he did so.
She told the enquiry that when another nun noticed she couldn't raise here arm and realised it was broken, she told her what had happened. This nun took her to hospital but warned her that if she told anyone else, she would break her other arm for her. She told her to lie and explained that lying to protect a 'man of God' was okay, as no-doubt was lying to protect the nuns and the reputation of the Smyllum Park Chilren's Abuse Centre.
Ms Tolmie-McGrane went on to relate a catalogue of abuse at the home, which closed in 1981. On her first night at the home, she was slapped for waking up screaming from a nightmare then given a freezing cold shower for wetting the bed.
Children who vomited had their faces rubbed in it or were forced to eat it. Nuns even used the crosses they wore as weapons to beat the children with. The punishment for bed-wetting was being made to sleep in the soiled bed for several nights.
When, on two separate occasions she reported being beaten to visiting police officers, she was handed over to the nuns and beaten again. Her 'souvenirs' of her time at the home include a facial scar, a broken tooth from being slammed into a wall, broken fingers from being hit with a hairbrush and a broken coccyx from a chair being pulled from under her as she sat down.
As I reported here last September, a File on Four program on BBC Radio 4 revealed multiple allegation of physical and mental abuse at Smyllum Park, carried out by nuns of the Daughters of Charity order, including possible attempts to conceal evidence of unlawful killings. In 2003, former residents of the orphanage, Frank Docherty and Jim Kane, who sadly both died in early 2017, found a burial plot containing the bodies of a number of children in nearby St Marys Cemetery. They had alleged that physical and mental abuse of the children was commonplace, with routine punching, beating and public humiliation. They believed that the number of deaths was far higher then the 120 the nuns had admitted to. File on Four researchers working with Sunday Post reporters found evidence of 402 deaths.
From 1864 until it closed in 1981, nuns of the Catholic order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul 'cared' for some 11,600 children, either orphaned or from broke homes, at the orphanage. The death rate at the orphanage was some three times that for children of the same age in that area of Scotland at that time.
As I said at the time, but it bears repeating, what makes these cases all the more appalling is the social attitudes displayed by the nuns, where orphans and children from broken homes, like the victims of Tuam and the Magdalen Laundries in Ireland, were considered lesser beings, not deserving respect and dignity as human beings and children in need. This comes from a creed that teaches that children are the product of sin and somehow deserve their lowly position. These abuses don't just amount to abuse or neglect; they amount to contempt and a wanton disregard for the rights and entitlement to dignity of the children in their care.
The enquiry continues. No doubt this child's torture at the hands of Catholic priests and nuns will be shown to be just one of many at this one home alone.
Religions that debase human beings in this way have something rotten at their core. They are not faiths, they are excuses.
'via Blog this'
This angers me incredibly. And they never go to jail. They are protected by the Jesusgod. A partner in crime, thus.
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