Nuns, including one aged 93, are arrested over abuse allegations at notorious orphanage where they 'beat residents, forced them to eat vomit and ritually humiliated them for bed-wetting'

More nuns have been reported to prosecutors amid a widening police investigation into claims of abuse at a notorious orphanage. The Mail revealed yesterday that police probing Smyllum Park in Lanark had arrested 12 people, including nuns.

A further four have now been reported to the Crown Office, some of them nuns, with ages ranging between 71 and 93.

Police Scotland also disclosed that the 12 who have been arrested and charged consisted of 11 women and one man, aged between 62 and 85. Yesterday a force spokesman said: ‘A further four individuals will be reported today. Inquiries are continuing.’ Claims of historic abuse at the home have come under scrutiny at the ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI).

News of the arrests comes as SCAI chairman Lady Smith prepares to publish a damning report on Smyllum within days. Last night Alan Draper of In Care Abuse Survivors said: ‘The news today is a vindication of all those survivors who had the courage to come forward.

‘We look forward to a successful prosecution of all those who committed crimes with impunity, in the knowledge that they would be protected by their superiors.

‘Bishops and religious superiors will also have questions to answer for their failures.’

It is understood that those arrested within the last few weeks include nuns and former lay members of staff at the now-closed institution.

Former residents of the home have told SCAI during hearings that nuns beat them, forced them to eat vomit and ritually humiliated them for bed-wetting. One recalled satanic abuse and another claimed a fellow child may have died after being left naked in the rain for three hours as punishment. Another former resident compared the Daughters of Charity, who ran the Catholic institution until it closed in 1981, to Nazi concentration camp commandants.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6092645/More-nuns-reported-historic-abuse-allegations-notorious-orphanage.html

Daughters of Charity? I wonder if any of them have ever out checked the religious meaning of charity.
I remember seeing a programme about the unmarried mothers consigned by their families and parish priests to the 'charity' of the laundries at mother and baby homes, then I saw the drama made about this, I may have been naive about it all but I was incredibly shocked at how these supposedly religious women - and the priests and bishops treated these girls, most of whom didn't even understand how they'd got into their situation or had been raped. It stunned me, I was already wavering, not understanding a god who could allow such suffering from people who tried to follow his rules only to be tormented by his 'representatives' on earth for sins they didn't realise they had committed or were forced to commit, yet the men in the cases getting off scot free, its happening now in Muslim society, always the woman's fault/sin. These people are the very antithesis of Jesus' teaching, they should be pilloried in the town square. What evil people.

Vintage wrote:Daughters of Charity? I wonder if any of them have ever out checked the religious meaning of charity.
I remember seeing a programme about the unmarried mothers consigned by their families and parish priests to the 'charity' of the laundries at mother and baby homes, then I saw the drama made about this, I may have been naive about it all but I was incredibly shocked at how these supposedly religious women - and the priests and bishops treated these girls, most of whom didn't even understand how they'd got into their situation or had been raped. It stunned me, I was already wavering, not understanding a god who could allow such suffering from people who tried to follow his rules only to be tormented by his 'representatives' on earth for sins they didn't realise they had committed or were forced to commit, yet the men in the cases getting off scot free, its happening now in Muslim society, always the woman's fault/sin. These people are the very antithesis of Jesus' teaching, they should be pilloried in the town square. What evil people.

Is this what you mean Vintage?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland

The Catholic Church has numereous skeletons in the closet and still attempts to hide them

Yes those are the ones, charity seems to be a scarcity in so many religious establishments.

Quite right Vintage...!