NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal
A former resident of a boys’ home run by the Nazareth nuns in Derry says he was beaten for being left-handed.
Jon McCourt, a resident of St Joseph’s Boys’ Home, Termonbacca, in the 1950s and 1960s, yesterday waived his right to anonymity at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.
He told the inquiry: “I remember, when I was about five years old, being constantly beaten by one particular nun, to get me to stop writing with my left hand.”
He said this was a common practice at the time, adding: “They were messing up with how we were wired.”
Mr. McCourt, who campaigned for years for an inquiry into abuse at children’s institutions, also told the inquiry he blamed unionist domination in Derry in the 1950s for him ending up in Termonbacca.
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