NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV
An 89-year-old man – the oldest person to come forward to speak to the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry – has described how he was beaten every day by a nun and constantly sexually abused by older boys in Nazareth Lodge in Belfast.
Helped to the witness box in his wheelchair, the 89-year-old man told the inquiry he had been sent to Nazareth Lodge in 1929 when he was just three years old.
He described a life of fear and abuse, telling the panel that because he wet the bed every morning he would be placed in an ice cold bath and had buckets of water thrown over him.
He would then be forced to kneel naked outside the office of a particular nun, belonging to the Sisters of Nazareth, and when she came out of her office she would force him to lie on the tiled floor and beat him with a leather strap.
“It was so sore,” he said, “it made me cry.”
The 89-year-old recalled how he was sexually abused by the older boys at night in the bathroom and he would cry in bed every night because of the abuse.
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