SCOTLAND (UK)
The Washington Post
September 11, 2017
By Samantha Schmidt
400 children from Scottish orphanage of ‘horrors’ believed buried in mass grave, media report says
The children taken to the notorious Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanarkshire, Scotland, came from poor, working-class families and broken homes. About 11,600 children passed through the institution from its opening in 1864 through its closure in 1981, left in the care of an order of Catholic nuns.
Former residents have detailed allegations of being brutally beaten, kicked in the head, neglected and publicly humiliated by the orphanage’s staff and being forced to take freezing cold showers, according to British and Scottish news outlets. One former resident’s physical and psychological abuse was described in the Scotsman newspaper as “hideous treatment at the hands of nuns.”
For many years, an unknown number of children were believed to have died in the home, but exactly how they perished — and where they were laid to rest — remained a mystery.
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