Staff at Aberdeen’s Nazareth House Forced Girl to ‘kiss a Dead Nun’ before Beating Her for Refusing
By Conor Riordan
The woman, who stayed at Nazareth House between 1969 and 1974, wrote that she was made to kiss a dead nun and was then beaten for refusing to do so. Her statement went on to detail how she was force fed her food with a fork by one of the nuns, after complaining about it. Chair Lady Smith also heard from a former orphanage volunteer who told how she tried to cover up a child’s bed wetting after nuns branded him a “dirty boy”. Margaret White was studying at the University of Aberdeen between 1974 and 1977 when she helped out at Nazareth House. The 63-year-old claims she had never seen children being hit but she felt the way one boy was treated for bed wetting was “wrong”. She said: “There was a young lad who did wet the bed and he was, probably, very harshly done by by the sister. He was never physically hurt. “From what I know now, it was very wrong – a nine-year-old boy wetting the bed and being punished verbally. “If he was dirty, we would clear away the sheets.”
The witness said the nun would call him “stupid boy” and “dirty boy”. She added: “They would ridicule him. “He was upset, that’s why we wanted to protect him. He would cry, he was distressed.” Ms White said she never reported her concerns because it was “40 years ago” and that she would have been aged around 19 at the time and the nun was much older. She described the Catholic-run orphanage as being “fun” and set up like it was family environment. The inquiry heard Ms White did not see why nuns would try to “cover things up” and still let volunteers into the orphanage and go on summer holidays with the children. Officers have received 308 complaints about 194 people associated with institutions run by the Sisters of Nazareth from the 1930s to 1980s. The inquiry in Edinburgh continues before Lady Smith on Thursday.
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