Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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1. 

   You get drivel about aliens, abduction etc from all sorts of people, not just Christians – there are atheists, agnostics…

2. 

   […] last time I had had occasion to write about Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, above, was three years ago…

3. 

   Whatever is presented on the BBC, and I must admit I do not watch the TV, the fact is that…

4. 

   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

5. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

SMYLLUM Park Orphanage in Lanark came to public attention back in 2017 after the horrifying discovery of the bodies of hundreds of children buried in a mass grave.

A Scottish child Abuse Inquiry later revealed that youngsters had been sexually abused and beaten with leather straps, hairbrushes, crucifixes and even rosary beads at Smyllum Park, run by The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.

This week the orphanage was back in the news when nuns Sarah McDermott, 79, and Eileen Igoe, 79, were jailed for three years each for their cruel treatment of children under their care. Also jailed for three years was care worker Margaret Hughes, 76.

During sentencing at Airdrie Sheriff Court, Sheriff Scott Pattison there was no alternative to prison for the three women.

He said:

I am satisfied that the focus of my sentences should be punishment and deterrence, to punish you for the crimes committed and to deter all who have care of young children from similar conduct now and in the future.

As I said to you when you were found guilty, you failed in your duty of care to the children in Smyllum and fell far short of your moral calling and commitment.

The judge said the “lasting harm” and “the serious nature” of the offences meant only custodial sentences were appropriate.

He added that the sentences were shorter than they otherwise would have been on account of the women’s ages and health.

A number of former residents told Airdrie Sheriff Court they had been abused at Smyllum during the six-week trial of the three sadists.

One woman said she was beaten by McDermott, of London, after she reported witnessing her brother being sexually abused in a toilet in the orphanage.

She said volunteer worker Brian Dailey, who was later jailed for 15 years for abusing youngsters, molested the three-year-old in a cubicle.

But rather than investigate the abuse, McDermott slapped the girl and told her she was bringing her “filthy home habits into a good Catholic place.”

McDermott also struck another girl with rosary beads and repeatedly hit her on the head and body.

Igoe, of Edinburgh, was convicted of abuse which included force feeding children and making one eat their own vomit as well as striking one boy on the head and body.

Hughes, of Lanark, seized one boy by the hair before striking him with her arm. She also forced a girl into a freezing bath and held her head under water.

Smyllum closed in 1981. In 2017 Radio 4’s File on 4 programme discovered evidence that at least 400 children who died at the orphanage were buried in unmarked graves.

A report by Lady Smith, who is chairing the inquiry, said it was a place of “fear, threat and excessive discipline” and that children found “no love, no compassion, no dignity and no comfort” in Smyllum.

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