‘It will never be the same without Frank’: Fellow child abuse survivor wants to live to see justice served in memory of charity founder

SCOTLAND
Daily Record

BY ANDREA O’NEILL
10 MAY 2017

Elderly survivors of state care child abuse may not live to see the day justice is served.

This is the view of Jim Buckley, vice-president of In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas) as he prepared to pay his final respects to the charity’s late president Frank Docherty yesterday.

Tragically, the death of a leading campaigner for child abuse survivors means the 74-year-old Murray grandad never got the closure he fought more than 20 years for after his own abuse hell.

Frank suffered years of mental and physical abuse from the age of nine at the hands of nuns in Lanark’s brutal Catholic-run orphanage Smyllum Park during the 1950s.

But, thanks to his tireless campaigning, his lasting legacy is a public inquiry into the traumatic childhood experiences of survivors in care.

Along with Frank, Jim was the first in Scotland to give testimony for The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry on the cruel regimes they were forced to endure throughout their childhoods.

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