Inquiry told girl 'abused by priest' at Smyllum Park had arm broken by nun

An eight-year-old girl had her arm broken by a nun after she discovered the child was being sexually abused by a priest, an inquiry has heard.

Theresa Tolmie-McGrane told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry she hoped the nun would protect her after walking in on the assault at Smyllum Park orphanage in 1970.

But she said she was instead verbally abused and thrown at a wall.

She said she then beaten and threatened with having her other arm broken.

Ms Tolmie-McGrane waived her right to anonymity at the inquiry to recount a catalogue of other abuses during her 11 years at the orphanage in Lanark, South Lanarkshire, which closed in the 1980s.

These included beatings, humiliations, freezing showers and children being force-fed inedible food, being told to eat their vomit and having their mouths rinsed out with soap.

The witness told the hearing in Edinburgh how she arrived at the institution, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, at the age of six in 1968 after an abusive early childhood.

She recounted how, about two years later, she had a job dusting pews in the church.

One particular priest would arrive early and ask her to sit on his lap, before progressing to making her to perform a sex act on him or watch as he did so, the inquiry heard.

"He said 'I need you to be a soldier of God, a good little soldier'," she told the inquiry, adding the abuse went on for several months.

On one occasion, a nun walked in to the room as it was happening, she said.

She told the hearing: "I thought 'praise the Lord, she's seeing this, she's going to be angry with him and protect me'.

"Her whole face became distorted. I thought 'she's angry with him', but she was angry with me."

She told how she crawled away and had to go back to church, but when another nun found out she could not raise her arm she was given "a real hiding".

"I said I couldn't lift my arm, my arm hurt. I said a nun has broken my arm," Ms Tolmie-McGrane said.

She told the inquiry how the second nun took her to hospital but warned her: "Don't you dare tell anybody what happened, young lady, or I'll break your other arm" and assured her she would be "lying to protect a man of God, so it's ok to lie".

Ms Tolmie-McGrane, who later went to Glasgow University and now works in Norway as a psychologist, told the inquiry she was at Smyllum from 1968 until 1979.

She described how, on her first night there, she was slapped after waking up screaming from a nightmare, then forced into a freezing cold shower for wetting the bed.

If a child vomited, they would have their faces rubbed in it or be told to eat it, she said.

The witness also described beatings at the hands of nuns, sometimes with the crosses they wore.

"I would say every child at some point would have been hit with a cross," she said.

Children would be made to sleep in soiled sheets for two or three nights as a punishment for bed-wetting, she said.

She also told the hearing that when they went on an annual holiday to Ayrshire, they would end up badly burnt and blistered from the sun.

The inquiry also heard how one girl would run away often but never returned after being run over by a car one day.

Ms Tolmie-McGrane told the inquiry she approached police officers visiting Smyllum on two occasions to tell them "the nuns are hurting me" but was "marched back in" to the institution on both occasions and then beaten by a nun.

Injuries from her time at Smyllum included a facial scar and broken tooth from being "slammed into a wall", broken fingers from being hit with a hair brush and a broken tail bone from having a seat pulled out from underneath her when she was sitting down.

"I have, unfortunately, physical scars, not just emotional ones," she told the hearing.

The public hearing in front of Lady Smith continues.