SCOTLAND
BBC News
[Abuse claims at former Catholic boarding school]
[BBC tracks down paedophile priest]
Accounts of serious physical and sexual abuse at one of Scotland’s most prestigious Catholic boarding schools are to be broadcast in a BBC documentary.
‘Sins of Our Fathers’ will reveal that some pupils were abused at the now closed Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands, and Carlekemp Preparatory School in East Lothian, over a period spanning three decades.
Two of the school’s headmasters, Francis Davidson and Augustine Green, have been accused of covering up the abuse.
The BBC has spoken to 50 former pupils about their experiences at the schools, which were run by Benedictine monks. Many said they had nothing but good memories of the place, but others had a very different experience. Here is some of that testimony. …
DONALD MACLEOD
Donald arrived at Fort Augustus from Sydney in Australia as a 14-year-old, in the early 1960s.
He was struck by the remoteness of the school, situated on the banks of Loch Ness, and felt lonely “being stuck way out in the middle of nowhere”.
“I don’t suppose you could be sent much further away,” he said.
The new entrant was befriended by Fr Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who lived at the abbey and taught at the attached school.
“He offered to give me some rudimentary help with the piano,” he said.
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