The every exploding sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church continues around the world, especially in Australia and now Guam (India is also seeing more exposes of abuse). It seems that literally, wherever the Church went and proselytized, sexual abuse by clergy followed. Now reports out of Scotland - once a Catholic bastion - are rivaling some of the most horrific stories out of Ireland where Catholic religious orders that were supposed to care for children inflicted untold suffering. Like many of the nuns from my childhood, these Scottish nuns seemed to take coldness and cruelty to terrible levels. The Church says a "full investigation" will be made - most likely in an effort to cover up the truth. A piece in the Washington Post looks at these revelations. Here are highlights:
The children taken to the notorious Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanarkshire, Scotland came from poor, working-class families and broken homes. About 11,600 children passed through the institution from its opening in 1864 through its closure in 1981, left in the care of an order of Catholic nuns.
Former residents have detailed allegations of being brutally beaten, kicked in the head, neglected and publicly humiliated by the orphanage’s staff, and being forced to take freezing cold showers, according to British and Scottish news outlets. One former resident’s physical and psychological abuse was described in the Scotsman newspaper as “hideous treatment at the hands of nuns.”
For many years, an unknown number of children were believed to have died in the home, but exactly how they perished — and where they were laid to rest — remained a mystery.
Then, in 2003, two former residents uncovered a troubling discovery: an overgrown, unmarked burial plot at a nearby cemetery, which they believed might be filled with the bodies of children. The religious organization that ran the home, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul, confirmed that Smyllum residents were indeed buried there, according to the BBC and Scottish newspapers. In 2004, the group said records suggested that 120 children had died at the orphanage.
But the two former residents who found the unmarked graves believed the number of children buried was much higher. It turns out, they may have been correct. According to a lengthy joint investigation by the BBC and Scotland’s Sunday Postpublished Sunday, up to 400 children are believed to be buried in the mass grave.
By sifting through archived death certificates, the BBC and Sunday Post found 402 certificates listing Smyllum as the place of death or normal residence. After checking with surrounding cemeteries and local authorities, the reporters found only 2 two of those 402 were buried elsewhere, according to the BBC.
Based on the death records the reports cited, an average of one child died every three months at Smyllum. In some periods, the recorded death rate was about three times the average for children in Scotland, . . . About a third of those who perished were age 5 or under, the BBC reported.
The revelations evoked comparisons to a home for mothers and children in Tuam, Ireland, where a forensic examinationrevealed 17 underground chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains,” the remnants of young children of “unwed mothers” dating from 1925 to 1961. Estimates have put the number of bodies at Tuam at 700 to 800.
“The true scale of the horrors of Smyllum long hidden by the Roman Catholic church are only being now revealed,” the organization White Flowers Alba, which advocates for survivors of the orphanage, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
In an interview with The Post, the group’s founder, Andi Lavery, said the residents at Smyllum were given a stipend from the Scottish government for food and proper medical treatment. Lavery said he read the death certificates cited by the BBC and Sunday Post, and said many causes of death included malnutrition and blunt trauma to the head.
“Why should they be dying from starvation? Why should they be dying from treatable infections? Why should they be dying from beatings?” Lavery said. He said he is currently working with about 20 of the home’s remaining former residents, but has heard from more than 100 survivors over the years.
“The kids were put in sacks and thrown in the ground in the hole,” Lavery said. “They were harshly beaten and quite a large number were sexually abused.”
The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent DePaul, which ran the home, refused to comment on the findings, according to both reports.
Following the BBC and Sunday Post reports, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Scotland told Scottish newspaper the National that a “full investigation” should be made into the allegations.
Horrific accounts from survivors of the orphanage have been detailed in Scottish press over the years.
I ask again a question I pose often: how and why can decent, moral people continue to support the morally bankrupt and hypocrisy filled Catholic Church?
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