Corporal Punishment victims receive justice, 55 years later

Sir Frank Peters

Sir Frank Peters

A court in Airdrie Scotland has jailed two 79-year-old Roman Catholic nuns and a 76-year-old care worker, each to three years imprisonment.

The accused were found guilty of horrific abuses against children at a notorious orphanage run by the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.

The abuses date back over five decades, between 1969 and 1981.

The three women, Sister Sarah McDermott, Sister Eileen Igoe, and carer Margaret Hughes pleaded not guilty to any wrongdoing, but over the six week trial many victims came forward and gave personal accounts of the terrifying ordeals, pain, and suffering that happened to them.

One woman told the court she was beaten by Sister McDermott, after she reported witnessing her three-year-old brother being sexually abused in a toilet cubicle in the orphanage by volunteer worker Brian Dailey. Daily was later jailed for 15 years for abusing a series of youngsters.

Rather than investigating the abuse and taking appropriate action, McDermott slapped the girl and told her she was bringing her ‘filthy home habits into a good Catholic place’. McDermott also repeatedly struck another girl with rosary beads on her head and body.

Sister Igoe was convicted of force feeding children and making one child eat his own vomit as well as striking one boy on the head and body.

Hughes grabbed one boy by the hair and proceeded to strike him with her arm. She also forced a girl into a bath of freezing water and held her head under it.

Sheriff Scott Pattison took into consideration that all three accused were much younger at the time, but as all were adult, in their 20s or 30s, it did not excuse their wrongdoing.

While there was some discussion at trial about the existence of corporal punishment and reasonable chastisement, the jury that sat for three days, concluded what was described by the victims went way beyond what could ever be described as reasonable chastisement in any generation.

“It would have been obvious to you all and anyone at the time, that what you were doing was abusive and that it was criminal and you must have known what you were doing was wrong, ” said Sheriff Scott Pattison.

McDermott’s lawyer said the offences took place at a time when the treatment of children was very different from what it is now. “Furthermore, there was little understanding of the type of impact offending like this would have.”

Just from this one court case, there are many lessons that can be learned to prevent Bangladeshi children from falling prey. We know similar – or considerably worse – has already happened here, but it mustn’t continue. The rot has to stop even if only to prevent court cases of this nature from happening here 50-years from now.

(Sir Frank Peters is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, an award-winning writer, humanitarian, human rights activist Honorary Member of the Bangladesh Freedom Fighters and a foreign friend of Bangladesh.)