JIM BUCKLEY has been campaigning for 19 years for an inquiry into the abuse he suffered in care, he said.
But the 72-year-old has waited more than six decades for an apology from the Sisters of Nazareth, to whom he and his three younger brothers were entrusted when he was just seven, after leukaemia left them without a mother and with a father who couldn’t cope.
When the apology came, he was stunned. “I can’t describe how I feel,” he said outside the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yesterday.
“I was quite surprised by some of the things Sister Doolan admitted. It was an apology, and it’s the first time I’ve actually heard that. It meant a lot.”
As a Glasgow family sent to the Nazareth House in Aberdeen, all four boys were told they were the “lowest of the low”, he said. Bed-wetters were humiliated, he claimed, and nuns were liberal with the use of sticks which they kept up their sleeves.
Jim and one of his brothers contracted rheumatic fever, which he said was never treated and which has left Jim with lifelong heart problems: “We didn’t even see a doctor”.
However, they realised they were lucky, he said, when they attended a reunion of former residents recently. “Half the people had succumbed to alcoholism or drug abuse or had never worked.”
He resents not only the damage of his childhood but the response of the Catholic Church. “Archbishop Conti wrote a letter accusing us of being money-grabbing so-and-so’s, that that was all we were interested in. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Jim said. That is why he is so pleased to see the inquiry, when many fellow alleged victims are nearing the end of their lives.
The work of the inquiry was also praised by other former residentsalso praised the work of the inquiry, including two sisters who did not want their identities revealed, who had lived in Glasgow’s Nazareth House.
Both said they had been abused by nuns, but also said many sisters had been caring and kind.
“There were some sisters who were decent human beings and treated all the children equally,” said one woman, aged 49, who was in the care of the order 42 years ago. “But some were almost psychotic and very vicious to the children.
“There were definitely some who shouldn’t have been looking after children and who weren’t qualified for their role.”
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