Police in Scotland have arrested and charged 12 people - nuns and a number of other former staff - in an investigation into alleged physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at a Catholic children’s home Smyllum Park in Lanark, spanning several decades.

The Scottish child abuse inquiry (SCAI) has been told by former residents that lay staff and nuns at the home, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul until it closed in 1981, repeatedly beat and punched them, verbally abused and humiliated them for wetting beds and left them without food and that some male and female staff sexually abused the children in their care.

Police Scotland said another four former staff at the Catholic institution would be reported to the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, later on Thursday. “Twelve people, 11 women and one man, ages ranging from 62 to 85 years, have been arrested and charged in connection with the non-recent abuse of children,” it said. Their names have not been released.

The allegations of abuse at Smyllum Park, including claims of “satanic” rituals at the home, have been at the centre of a long-running official public inquiry into child sexual abuse at children’s homes in Scotland.

According to The Guardian , the claims of Sexual Ritual Abuse have been 'unsubstantiated'. Well...cough....

Other news outlets reported in 2017 about allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse:

'The traumatised former orphanage resident known only as ‘Janie’ told a child abuse inquiry a man referred to as the 'devil' assaulted her while she lay on a slab surrounded by candles'

She said before the alleged attack, she and other girls were taken from their dorms at night to a nearby field where Catholic sisters from the “cult-like” home danced in a circle around a tree.

The inquiry heard they were later taken to the back of a candlelit chapel and went downstairs. Janie, of primary school age at the time, said: “There was a square slab and everyone sat round.

“I was given a lollipop and told that the devil was coming out.”

She said she was assaulted then taken back outside and “buried alive” in a drain all night. After she was let out the next morning, she said she was put in a “blood bath” — believed to be filled with coloured dye — as part of a terrifying ritual.'

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1938839/girl-forced-into-satanic-sex-ritual-where-devil-buried-her-alive-at-smyllum/#

Janie also told how she and her older sister were taken away from Smyllum in a van late one night.

They were with some nuns and ‘quite a few men’ who tried to put her in a straitjacket which was too big for her. She believes she was drugged but then ‘conked out’ and was later taken back to the home.

Janie was not an orphan and left Smyllum when her mother spotted that she had bruises and immediately contacted a social worker.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5155155/Woman-sexually-assaulted-hooded-figure-called-Devil.html

It is alleged that at least one child, a boy aged six, died as a result of a severe beating that prevented him from recovering from an infection some days later.

Gregor Rolfe, a lawyer for the Daughters of Charity, told the SCAI last year that one male former member of staff may have sexually abused children whom he took on holidays. Those allegations were reported to nuns but not passed to the police.

What exactly would 'male staff' mean? A woman had reported to the Inquiry that she was assaulted by a priest at the home:

...an eight-year-old girl was sexually abused by a priest at Smyllum, then had her arm broken by a nun who had found out about the assault.

Dr Theresa Tolmie-McGrane, now 55, said she was later forced to receive Communion from the priest who abused her – who told her she was ‘a soldier of God’.

The families of former residents were horrified to discover that the remains of up to 400 children were buried in a large plot of unmarked graves in a cemetery nearby.

More than 11,000 children were placed at Smyllum Park from its opening in 1864 to its eventual closure 117 years later. Some were orphaned, but others were from families unable to look after them. Death certificates revealed that many of the children died from tuberculosis, pneumonia and pleurisy.

A special preliminary report on Smyllum Park is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The full report is not expected until some time after October 2019.

@Factfinder2 @letsdothis2 @TrishaUK @DerivaUK @UnicornAndSparkles