Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry

Halley's book A Judicial Monstering: Child Sex Abuse Cover Up And Corruption In Scotland documents his experience of the removal of the first panel by seconded civil servants working for the inquiry and the Scottish government.

[9] This panel consisted of Susan O'Brien KC, Professor Michael Lamb and Glenn Houston with John Halley as counsel.

Halley if he had remained in his position would have continued to push for the investigation of child abuse allegations against senior legal establishment including Lord Hardie.

[10] Prior to the appointment of Smith, the inquiry had a chair, Susan O'Brien, and two panel members, Michael Lamb and Glen Houston.

[30] In August 2018 police arrested and charged nuns and other former staff of Smyllum Park, eleven women and a man (later increased to 17[34]), regarding alleged child physical and sexual abuse.

[39] Five former pupils at Carlekemp Priory School in North Berwick and Fort Augustus Abbey said in this documentary that they were raped by Father Aidan Duggan between 1953 and 1974 when they were young boys.

[40] Denis Alexander, who had emigrated to Australia, in 2021 pleaded guilty to two charges of lewd, indecent and libidinous practices against two boys at Fort Augustus between 1973 and 1976[41] and was jailed for four years and five months.

[47] The inquiry found in their report that, between 1933 and 1984, children who had been in the care of Sisters of Nazareth orphanages had encountered sexual abuse "of the utmost depravity.

[57] There have been reports of Sexual abuse cases in the Congregation of Christian Brothers in Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and the USA.

Aberlour was also reported by the inquiry to be a child care institution where children suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

[30] The inquiry concluded in their report that children in care of Barnardo's homes at Tyneholm, Balcary, Glasclune and Craigerne in Scotland in the 1950s and 1960s suffered emotional, sexual and physical abuse.

Barnardo's agreed to pay £1 million to the Redress Scotland Scheme which was set up to compensate those who were abused as children in residential care.

Quarriers Homes were summarised in the inquiry's report as institutions where children in their care suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Graham Buck, a former pupil at the junior boarding house, described how, from the age of eight and a half, he was subjected to a systematic campaign of physical and sexual abuse by teacher Iain Wares.

Campbell also witnessed sexual abuse on his class mates[61] and described Wares as "one of the worst paedophiles in British criminal history".

[62] Fettes College accepted that Iain Wares, one of its teachers in the junior school, sexually molested boys from 1973 to 1979 and admitted liability.

[62] After refusing to prosecute Wares until January 2021, the Scottish Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service later in 2021 agreed to seek his extradition from South Africa where he was then living.

Loretto school admitted that pupils were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by Guy Ray-Hills a French teacher in the 1950s and 1960s.

[72] David Stock, a former teacher at Loretto described a horrifying culture of sexual and physical abuse by older bullies at the school on younger pupils in the 1980s and early 1990s.

[73] The school responded: "...To anyone who suffered abuse while attending Loretto, we deeply regret the distress caused and offer an unreserved apology.".

Kids were hung out of windows, their heads beaten off the ground until they foamed at the mouth...."[74][76] Abuse survivors have accused Smith of displaying bias after claiming she cut and pasted positive descriptions about Loretto directly from its website and placing this in the final report.

[72] A few teachers physically and emotionally abused children under the pretense of corporal punishment, using belts, slippers, a cricket bat, and heavy wooden dusters to instill fear.

[87] Survivors of child abuse have criticised the Inquiry for not investigating sports and leisure clubs or faith based organisations attended on a day-to-day basis.

Graeme Pearson Labour's justice spokesman said there should have been an investigation as to why the child abuse allegations against Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn and barrister Robert Henderson were dropped by police, stating "Given the new knowledge we have of the powerful people involved in some of these cases, I think the time is right to revisit this and get a clear understanding of what went on and to ask if [the case] was abandoned, was it abandoned for the right reasons?

I believe this disservice repudiates a fundamental right of the victims of child sexual abuse and of the subsequent repercussions in relation to the safeguarding of our children within state schools.

[99] Another similar but much larger inquiry, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse completed the hearings and final report in just 5 years.

On 23 February 2022, an appeal court ruled Smith was found to be acting beyond her powers to prevent the BBC from fully reporting a £2.6m legal claim against Scotland's child abuse inquiry.

The 2019 disclosure from the Crown Office came after a lawyer appointed to the inquiry brought up concerns that young people in care were being let down by a prosecution policy that did not capture sexual exploitation through prostitution.

In 1997 they issued the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Bringing them home) - sometimes known as the "Stolen Generations" controversy.

"[111] The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was started in 2008 and between 2009 and 2015 it documented the history and lasting impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system on Indigenous students and their families.