FURTHER ALLEGATIONS of abuse at the former Dunclutha Children’s Home in Kirn have been made public, as the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, (SCAI), continues to hear evidence in Edinburgh.
More witness statements have been posted to the SCAI’s official website and detail similar allegations of abuse laid out by previous witnesses earlier this year.
Now in Phase 10 of it’s investigations the inquiry is currently examining historic abuse which took place in local authority run facilities across Scotland.
Last month this newspaper reported on allegations that American navy servicemen, based at the Holy Loch submarine base, had unrestricted access to the children housed at Dunclutha during the late 60s, early 70s.
It was alleged that children were selected and taken away by the servicemen for the day or sometimes even over the weekend, without any supervision from staff at Dunclutha. In one statement there was an allegation of sexual assault by a US serviceman.
Witnesses allege physical punishment was widespread within the home, with one former resident describing the almost daily spankings as ‘brutal’, with children being belted on the hands and backs of legs, being hit with wooden handled hair brushes and in one instance a former resident described being punched several times on her back to her injury by one of the ‘nurses’.
Another witness described what they alleged was routine physical punishment by staff at Dunclutha, recalling that children were made to sit in a line each morning and hold their feet off the floor. They said if a child’s feet dropped, staff would strike them using a plastic hairbrush. The witness claimed this practice was carried out by multiple members of staff over a prolonged period and appeared to be treated as a form of discipline or routine within the home.
They stated: “I have no idea why they did this.”
In another account a resident known to the Inquiry as ‘John’ explained: “The discipline in the house was brutal. There was a house master for each dorm. I remember getting spanked frequently. We were spanked by various members of staff… The spanking was brutal. It might have been that there had been too much noise the night before. You were told in the morning ‘when youcomebacktoday’,soyou knew the spanking was going to happen when you came back from school. I always remember that. I would be sitting in school waiting all day to go back for it. You knew what was going to happen when you got back. It was emotional cruelty. You couldn’t concentrate on any of your work. How could you?”
He added: “I remember our dorm standing in a queue with our trousers down. I would be in the queue with some of my friends. I would have been about five or six years old. I learned to cry quickly watching the terror in my friends faces as they, too, waited to be spanked. You knew that you were next. After it, we would stand and compare our marks with each other. There was a real camaraderie between us. We’d say “God,look what they’ve done, look what they’ve done.”
A recurring individual who appears in many of the allegations detailing physical abuse and ‘beatings’ is a male member of staff known as FXX. A former resident described the types of punishment he would administer.
She explained: “He was an overseer. He wore grey trousers, a black blazer and sometimes had a belt around his neck. The type they use in schools. If you ever did anything wrong you were sent to FXX. He decided whether you were to be belted or get another punishment, like just a lecture. He just wandered about upstairs and downstairs making his presence known. Everybody was scared of him.”
She added: “We called his belt, ‘Black Bob’. It had two fingers, like straps. I can’t recall the first time I got it from FXX. It didn’t happen every day but I would get it at least once or twice a month. You would get hit three or four times. Other children got it too.
“Sometimes we would go into the back hut and FXX would put boxing gloves on us and tell us to fight if we’d had a disagreement. It happened once with me. He told us to fight it out. Boys were sitting on one side of the hut and girls on the other….I was aged between eleven and thirteen. So we started throwing punches
at each other. I ended up on the floor obviously. We made up after it because we didn’t want to fight in the first place. FXX did this on a regular basis with kids.”
Another male member of staff mentioned in statements was a handyman known to the inquiry as PQZ, who has been accused of sexual abuse. A witness known only as ‘Sandra’ described in her statement her experiences.
She explained: “He was a handyman. He also owned, (redacted), shop I worked in. He sexually abused me. I honestly can’t remember where it happened the first time. It was regular. It was full intercourse. It was from when I was nine or 10 until I left the home. It happened in his workshop at his flat and in his flat when his wife was at work. He lived in Kirn, above a shop. It had a living room, a bathroom and a kitchen, which had a recess where there was a double bed. Most times it happened in there.
“Because I’d worked in (redacted) with him, he would say he needed stock and lock up the shop and we would go along to the flat. Other times I would go along to the workshop or the flat because I’d had a bad
day at the home. He told me that him and his wife were going to foster me. I realised later that this wasn’t true. He would give me five pound or ten pound pocket money to shut me up.”
She added: “He had rowing boats on the beach. There was a big shed, like a garage, at the back of the flat where he repaired the boats. I was always on my own when it happened. I don’t know if he abused other kids there…It happened two or three times a month. PQZ only worked as a handyman at Dunclutha during the winter months. In the summer he would be in, (redacted). It happened in the grounds of Dunclutha too, in a hut. The kids used tositinitandhideinitand have cigarettes there. There was no door on the hut but it was away from the house. He would have been in his late fifties, early sixties. His wife was a tiny little thing. I know they are both dead now.
“I have found out from other people I have spoken to that they were sexually abused. I thought that was just happening to me.”
Like other witness statements ‘Sandra’ claims that any attempt to report the abuse to the relevant authorities was shut down and completely ignored.
In one of the latest witness statements to be published by the Inquiry is the recollection by former resident ‘Alexander Shannon’ of the sexual exploration which he alleges occurred in Dunclutha, which went on without the knowledge of staff.
He states: “Even though I was too young to actually do anything, we would get completely naked and go through the motions of having sex with girls who were sometimes fifteen years old.Idon’tthinkithappened in front of staff at any time. I don’t think any of the staff would have been aware it was going on. I do wonder now how we managed to get away with it all, especially if the dorms were single sex, as I think they were. For some reason I’ve no memory of any of the staff being in the dormitories at all.”
Another witness stated: “I often remember waking up in the middle of night with somebody in my bed. It would be older kids, older boys. That would happen a lot. I don’t remember who it was…. I remember being held when I was in bed. I didn’t tell anyone about that… A few of the older boys told me not to tell anyone. I suppose it was a bit like grooming. You felt like the older person would protect you and that they liked you.”
They added: “There were two sisters in the home. One of them was a really big girl and the other was thin. One day they took me into the woods. The bigger one took my trousers down and made me touch her private parts. When she finished she said “you wait, wait, wait’ and her sister came over. Her sister did the same. The bigger one would then go away. I think people were scared of the big one. They were teenagers. I was only six or seven. This happened more than once. It was always initiated by the bigger one. I never reported what happened at Dunclutha House. I didn’t tell anyone about it, there was no one to tell.”
Nearly all of the published witness statements relating to Dunclutha go on to detail the difficulties victims had adjusting to adult life following their alleged abuse, with many plighted by addiction issues, alcoholism and even self harm.
Its understood that although evidence from witnesses relating to Dunclutha has now concluded the Inquiry intends to address the issue of missing documentation and log books for the facility at a later date within Phase 10 of its investigations.
