SCOTLAND
The Guardian
Press Association
theguardian.com, Sunday 4 August 2013
One of Scotland’s most senior Catholics has apologised to pupils amid claims of sexual and physical abuse by monks at a former boarding school in the Highlands.
Hugh Gilbert, the bishop of Aberdeen, said the allegations were “bitter, shaming and distressing” and that he supported the police inquiry.
Alleged victims who attended the Catholic Fort Augustus Abbey school told a BBC Scotland investigation that they were molested and beaten by monks over a period of three decades from the 1950s.
It has also been claimed that abuse was carried out at Carlekemp, its feeder school in East Lothian. Both schools are now closed.
Five men said on the Sins Of Our Fathers documentary, screened last Monday, that they were raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at Carlekemp and Fort Augustus between 1953 and 1974.
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