A former pupil is suing Loretto for £1 million over the years of sadistic abuse he says he suffered at the elite Scottish boarding school.
Angus Bell has lifted his anonymity in the Herald on Sunday today to tell of the torment he says he endured, and his fight for justice.
His testimony is corroborated by a former Loretto teacher, David Stock. Stock became aware of abuse and says he told school authorities. After he informed school authorities, Stock claims his position became untenable and he had to resign and sign a non-disclosure agreement, he alleges.
Stock says: “If my warnings had been heeded then the abuse which boys like Angus suffered might never have happened.”
Bell’s lawyers say the legal action - thought to be the first of its kind against Loretto - could trigger a flood of other law suits. A spokesperson for the law firm Digby Brown said of Mr Bell: “His courage could be the very catalyst to herald a new wave of justice against yet another institution that failed the children it was responsible for.”
The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has said that in the past Loretto pupils were “exposed to sexual, physical and emotional abuse”.
Read More: 'I was a child in a madhouse of sexual abuse': Ex-Loretto pupil sues for £1 million
Mr Bell says he suffered years of pupil-on-pupil abuse, claimed older pupils subjected younger children to appalling acts of violence and humiliation, often sexual. He and other past pupils at Loretto from the 1990s and earlier decades claim discipline was outsourced by teaching staff to older pupils, resulting in nightmarish acts of cruelty.
He claimed abuse was often linked to ‘the fagging system’, where younger students were effective servants - or ‘fags’ - for older pupils. The Herald on Sunday has previously ran a series of investigations detailing appalling acts of pupil-on-pupil abuse at boarding schools. The revelations were seen as a ‘Me Too’ moment for boarding school victims.
Mr Bell compared his time at Loretto in the 1990s to the novel The Lord of the Flies, where older children tormented younger children.
He claimed: “I witnessed kids set on fire, their genitals mutilated from gang beatings with boots. Boys were raped with objects in front other boys. We were beaten with hockey sticks and cricket bats daily. Beds were urinated and defecated on by our tormentors.
“I was whipped with belt buckles, thrown down flights of stairs, waterboarded in dirty toilets, locked in trunks, strangled. Kids were hung out of windows, their heads beaten off the ground until they foamed at the mouth. We were crushed under furniture.
“Kids were shot the face with BB guns. Teeth were punched out. I was stabbed with compasses, fly-kicked in the stomach. Every day was a cross between The Purge and The Running Man. Children were abducted from their beds at night, stripped naked and tied to trees.
“Even now, decades later, remembering it can make me curl up and cry. We were sanctioned slaves for older pupils.”
Mr Bell now lives in Canada. He suffers from Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “I was a child trapped in a madhouse of violence, and sexual and emotional abuse,” he said. “For eight years, I was driven to the brink of suicide. I thought about throwing myself out the window. I planned to hang myself and practised with belts.”
He added: “For me, we’re talking about thousands of assaults over more than 2000 days - it was eight years in Hell. You’d get less for murder.”
Older boys would masturbate in front of younger pupils, he said. Younger pupils were made to masturbate in front of older pupils.
Mr Bell claimed that some of the school authorities were fully aware of the abuse and violence that he and other children were suffering.
A spokesperson for Loretto said: “In light of the ongoing legal position and our responsibility of confidentiality to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry it is not appropriate for the School to provide any comment at this stage.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel