Multiple women to sue Scottish council over country school abuse
More than 200 survivors of abuse at Fornethy House in Angus have legal representation.
Survivors of abuse inflicted at a rural residential school for vulnerable city girls are set to launch multiple claims for damages against Scotland’s largest local authority.
Lawyers for former pupils at Fornethy School near Alyth, Angus, are preparing a civil action against Glasgow City Council following the conviction of a former teacher earlier this month.
Patricia Robertson, 77, was found guilty of 18 charges of cruel and unnatural treatment of youngsters between 1969 and 1984, with the court hearing evidence that she force fed, humiliated and assaulted the girls in her care.
One victim, now 69, has told Scotland on Sunday of the routine physical abuse inflicted on her by teachers at the school, where she was battered several times, the first time aged six, and punished for speaking.
Fornethy School was used as part of a broader scheme to improve the health and physical condition of the city’s children, with girls sent to the house in the country, often during the summer holidays, by the Glasgow Corporation and then Strathclyde Regional Council.
Now, Thompsons Solicitors, which represents more than 200 Fornethy survivors, said that civil action would now be raised against Glasgow City Council, the successor authority.
Laura Connor, Partner and Head of Life Impact Team at Thompsons, said that cases related to former pupils of Robertson’s and other teachers at the school.
Ms Connor said: “At the moment we are now very much reacting to the conviction and what I have heard during the course of the trial, and assessing what will now be the best next step.
“The claims are very much ongoing and at the moment we are trying to decide how best we can advance as many as possible through the civil courts now.”
Some cases have already been intimated against the local authority, with the conviction clearing the way for more to be pursued, given the weight of evidence now available.
It is expected that the claims will be raised as individual actions, rather than a group claim.
Lawyers will argue the council is vicariously liable as the relevant successor local authority for the actions of the perpetrators, who abused children during the course of their employment.
Ms Connor added: “We will be saying that there were other teachers that abused the children and not only Robertson, who has been convicted.”
Medical evidence is now being sought by Thompsons for all Fornethy victims it represents to “understand the abuse at Fornethy has had on the lives of each individual,” Ms Connor said.
A separate case in relation to historic abuse at Fornethy is being prepared by law firm Digby Brown, which said it was supporting several women who attended the school.
Jackie, 69, from Glasgow is one woman being represented by Digby Brown.
Raised in the East End of the city in a large family, she was sent to Fornethy for spells between 1964 and 1968, with her older and younger sister also attending at points between these years.
She was six-years-old during her first visit and recalled being beaten, force fed and forbidden from speaking. She also recalled Patricia Robertson.
Jackie did not give evidence during the recent trial, which focussed on Robertson’s offending between 1969 and 1984.
Jackie said: “I was delighted when I got to Fornethy because, to be honest, we didn’t have a bed at home. I couldn’t believe I had a bed and a wee wardrobe.
“I’m fixing my bed on the first morning I was there and a teacher punched me right off my feet and I hit the locker. That was in front of the whole dormitory.
“Still to this day, I’ll make sure my bed is straight.”
Jackie said she was punched again by the same teacher after being recognised coming off the bus at the start of another spell at the school.
She said:“I was punched off the wall in front of all the lassies. My wee sister froze. There was an adult, a big butch thing, leathering me for nothing apart from recognising me.”
Another year, she was “knocked out” by another teacher, who punched her on her ear before she fell and hit her head off a stone floor.
Jackie said: “I had a sixpence to spend as your mum had to send a postal order. But I didn’t want to buy sweeties as I didn’t want to eat - you were being force fed anyway.
“I told them I didn’t want sweeties, I just wanted to get my mum and brothers . I hadn’t even finished telling her and it was ‘bang’, right to my ear. I fell to the stone floor
“I woke up in a room and I knew there was a doctor there because he had a stethoscope. I was stripped into a nightgown and two teachers, who are now dead, were at my left side.
“When I woke up and I saw the two teachers, I fainted again.”
Around 11 years ago, she learned that the bones in her ear had broken and she underwent a mastoidectomy to remove them.
“My doctor asked me if I had been in a car crash and I said, no I was punched in the ear by a teacher when I was a girl. He was shocked. That was when I decided I was going to do something about it,” she said.
Jackie later saw Patricia Robertson in court and ‘took palpitations’ after seeing her laugh with a member of her legal team, she said.
“I couldn’t believe that, knowing what we had been through,” Jackie added.
“But out came some of the truth, and she wasn’t laughing so much.”
On news of the verdict, she added: “I was delighted. It lifted my spirits, it lifted me and it made me feel that there was justice. I never thought I would live to see the day.
Jackie said she went through life with memories of Fornethy “buried”, but was later put on Valium, stopped eating and then tried to take her life by walking in front of a car
“I felt alone. We were always told not to speak. I came through it, now I want to speak up about it, and speak up for others who have now died and my sister who was at Fornethy. She is no longer here.”
A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council said: “Our thoughts are with the victims of these crimes and know that this will have been a harrowing process to go through.
“Last year Glasgow’s Council Leader issued a public apology to victims of Fornethy House.
“We will now be considering matters in light of these convictions.”
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.