Child abuse campaigner

Born: May 25, 1944;

Died: April 30, 2017

AS a child, Frank Docherty, who has died aged 72, was mentally and physically abused by catholic nuns at an orphanage in Lanark, the abuse often bordering on the sexual. The trauma of regular beatings affected him for the rest of his life, including problems with alcohol, but he eventually overcame his demons by campaigning on behalf of other abused children at state-run institutions.

He became a hero to abuse survivors around Scotland, particularly those of his own generation who, like him, may not live to receive acknowledgement or reparations for what they went through in institutions for which the state was responsible.

Mr Docherty co-founded and became honorary president of the charity INCAS (In Care Abuse Survivors), where he served tirelessly for the last 20 years of his life. For him, it was not first and foremost about money, although compensation schemes have been introduced elsewhere, including in London, Northern Ireland, Canada and Australia. He merely wanted justice and redress for the abused children in the form of recognition of what they had suffered and by naming and shaming the perpetrators.

He died without receiving personal justice but his campaign has forced the Scottish Government to take notice, albeit slowly, and his death brought calls for Deputy First Minister John Swinney to come up with an interim compensation scheme for abuse victims of state institutions.

One problem facing Mr Docherty personally, and abuse victims of his generation, is that current rules and laws cover only people abused from the year 1964, a decade after his own abuse. He was campaigning for that "time-barred" rule to be lifted for the sake of elderly, often sick, victims but found himself up against the European Convention of Human Rights.

Frank Docherty was born in Glasgow on May 25, 1944, to alcoholic parents and worked as a child with his father as a Steptoe-style rag and bone man on a horse-drawn cart. He was nine when he and his sibling were taken from their parents and sent to Smyllum Park orphanage in Lanark, run by the catholic Sisters of Charity, who carried out regular beatings and humiliation. "60 years on, the feelings are still raw from the merciless beatings," Mr Docherty recalled recently. "I can still see the hatred in the nuns' eyes."

At Smyllum Park, Mr Docherty's best friend was 11-year-old Jim Kane, almost the same age, and the two would go on to be close friends in later life. Mr Kane, of Forth, Lanarkshire, told The Herald: "There were three groups - 'babies' up to the age of five, then 5-8 year-olds and the big boys of 8-14. There was nothing unusual about being laid face down on a table and being laid into by a nun with a big stick. The sister in charge, Mary Magdalene, would smash your knuckles with the stick. Sometimes she would face you, stand on your bare feet and squeeze your cheeks until it was agony.

"After I wet my bed from fear, she made me pull my nightshirt up to the back of my head in front of 40 boys and beat me with a big stick on my back and bare bottom. I went on to join the armed forces but never experienced anything so horrific. She was a cruel, cruel evil woman, the most evil person I have ever met. From age 14, we were moved to another orphanage, in Fife, without our parents being informed. They never knew whether we were still alive, and vice-versa."

Smyllum Park closed down in the 1980s but is still under investigation by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry - set up by the Scottish Government - which, still working in slow-motion, has promised to issue a report by 2019. Mr Docherty was due to give testimony to the inquiry on July 4 this year. The fact that the Catholic Church made a huge profit by selling the old orphanage in the 1990s to make way for flats and houses merely added to its victims' anguish.

"In my eyes, Frank was like a healer," Helen Holland, herself a child sexual abuse victim at Nazareth House, Kilmarnock, told The Herald. "When abuse victims called INCAS, he'd explain he'd been abused himself, have a joke with them and make them feel they were not alone. Despite recurring setbacks, he refused to give up." Ms Holland became a passionate anti-abuse campaigner with Mr Docherty at INCAS.

Earlier this year, Deputy First Minister Swinney said Scotland might try to follow the example of Northern Ireland, where a child abuse inquiry has recommended a state-backed compensation scheme with payments of up to £100,000.

It has been reported that an unknown number of children at Smyllum Park died there, most probably as a result of beatings. In a forlorn corner of St Mary's cemetery in Lanark, there are some 100 tiny mounds of earth and indentations - unmarked graves of nameless children who died in the orphanage. Having been robbed of their lives, they were then robbed of their very identity. Mr Docherty had been campaigning for the Catholic Church to fund a proper memorial for the children and to release records that might include their identities.

Mr Docherty said that when children suddenly disappeared from the orphanage, the nuns gave no explanation. No requiem mass was ever held, he said, whereas he was once ordered to kiss the forehead of a dead nun at her own requiem mass, a moment he recalled vividly for the rest of his life. "The nuns were a law unto themselves at Smyllum," he said. "I fear that years ago many of these children were buried without proper records being kept of who they were."

Frank Docherty died at his home in East Kilbride. He is survived by his wife Janet.

PHIL DAVISON