SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland
Tuesday 6 August 2013
Colette Douglas Home
Columnist
CHRISTOPHER Walls’s cry from the heart woke me yesterday.
“I was robbed of my childhood. I was robbed of my education. I am left swallowing anger, frustration,’ he told the Today programme on Radio 4. I am left to deal with that on a daily basis, on my own. They can be of no help to me.”
This man, now in his sixties, was responding to an apology from the Bishop of Aberdeen following revelations of abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey School.
Mr Walls, who was beaten daily and sexually abused when he was a pupil at Carlekemp (the Fort Augustus prep school in East Lothian) said: “I think these are sins crying out to heaven for vengeance.’
The Bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Gilbert, has been applauded for offering an apology for the “shameful abuse” days after a documentary that exposed it to the public.
But Mr Walls remains cynical. He finds the apology “thin”. Over the years he has told his story to members of the clergy and been “shushed”. He made an official complaint to Dom Richard Yeo, Abbot President of the Benedictines, in 2010. An inquiry was launched yet no-one interviewed him or his brother David, a fellow victim.
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