Bishop of Aberdeen to Apologise to Parishioners over Alleged Sexual Abuse at Former Catholic Boarding School

Daily Record
August 4, 2013

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/bishop-aberdeen-apologise-parishioners-over-2123571

Bishop Hugh Gilbert

FORT AUGUSTUS ABBEY

ONE of Scotland's most senior Catholics has apologised amid claims of sexual and physical abuse by monks at a former boarding school in the Highlands.

Alleged victims who attended the Catholic Fort Augustus Abbey school told a BBC Scotland investigation that they were molested and beaten by monks over a period of three decades from the 1950s.

It has also been claimed that abuse was carried out at Carlekemp, its feeder school in East Lothian. Both schools are now closed.

Five men said on the Sins Of Our Fathers documentary, screened last Monday, that they were raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at Carlekemp and Fort Augustus between 1953 and 1974.

Fr Duggan died in 2004 but some abuse claims relate to men who are still alive. Police are investigating the allegations.

Hugh Gilbert, the Bishop of Aberdeen, is to speak to parishioners at Fort Augustus church today and will address the issues in his sermon during the 12.30pm mass.

A church spokesman said the Bishop returned from a pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro this week and wanted to personally go to Fort Augustus to speak to parishioners.

Bishop Gilbert told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper: "I will be going there (Fort Augustus) in order to speak to parishioners and to say how distressed we have all been by the allegations that came out in the recent programme...and just to say sorry for the hurt caused to the victims.

"We are truly distressed to have learned that these things have happened and I want to articulate that for the parishioners there.

Some of the older ones will remember that community and many of them will have positive memories of it and the work of the monks, but sadly there appear to have been these terrible breaches of right conduct."

The school was run by Catholic Benedictine monks and Dom Richard Yeo, abbot president of the English Benedictine Congregation apologised for "any abuse that may have been committed at Fort Augustus" in the BBC programme, but Bishop Gilbert, 61, is the first senior Scottish Catholic to speak out.

He has been Bishop of Aberdeen for more than two years and the diocese covers much of the north of Scotland, including Fort Augustus.

It has also been reported that the Church is planning to publish annual audits dealing with abuse allegations against Scottish clergy.