IRELAND
Portadown Times
Published on Wednesday 12 December 2012
A RICHHILL man who claims he and several others were abused as children in a Protestant Church-funded orphanage in County Wicklow is heading a campaign for justice.
Sidney Herdman (48), a printer with a partner and two children, lived in the now notorious Westbank Home in Greystones during the late 1960s and early 1970s after his mother moved from Northern Ireland to Dublin to give birth to him.
He claims he and other young boys and girls were abused and wants a full investigation along the lines of the Ryan Report into abuse in the Catholic Church.
“There was terrible physical, sexual and mental abuse, the scars of which I still wrestle with every day,” said Sidney.
The home was run by an Adeline Mathers who came from Portadown – she died in 1999. And while she was not involved in sexual abuse, Mr Herdman said, “She often beat us with electric cable and injected us if we wet the bed – she was a tyrant of a woman, who claimed to be a born-again Christian. We lived in constant fear.”
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