Man jailed over bid to import \u00a35m of cocaine from Mexico to Scotland<\/strong><\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n The pensioner was convicted of a total of 18 charges of cruel and unnatural treatment of the youngsters.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The charges spanned between January 1969 and August 1984.\n<\/p>\n
\n A large group of women affected by the abuse at Fornethy were in court for the verdict.\n<\/p>\n
\n There were shouts of “Yes” by the women in attendance as the guilty verdicts were read out.\n<\/p>\n
\n They also hugged and cheered as they left the court building together.\n<\/p>\n
\n Fornethy had been run by the former Glasgow Corporation and latterly Strathclyde Regional Council.\n<\/p>\n
\n It was said to offer “convalescent care” for girls aged between five and 12 for up to eight weeks at a time.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0But, the horrors of what went on there were revealed during harrowing accounts at the three-week trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n One now woman recalled a “Miss Robertson”, who she believed was a teacher.\n<\/p>\n
\n She then told how she was force-fed semolina, which she had been struggling to swallow.\n<\/p>\n
\n The witness: “I remember Robertson was over at the other table and she came over to me shouting and bawling.\n<\/p>\n
\n “She was saying: ‘You need to eat. It is good for you’.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I was like: ‘I do not like it’. The next minute, I got my hair pulled back and the spoon was put down my throat.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0“She just would not let go.”\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0The then girl claimed she was made to stand in a corner of the room facing away from others.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0She remembers this sort of incident would “happen to everyone”.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0Asked how she felt, the witness said: “Alone, embarrassed. I just wanted to go home.\n<\/p>\n
\n “What did I do wrong?”\n<\/p>\n
\n She claimed this sort of thing happened more than once, also when she refused to eat blancmange.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The witness: “It is sick. You just do not do that.”\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0The woman alleged she was also hit during a latter stay at Fornethy while helping scrub floors.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0She said Robertson commented she had “missed a bit” and the then girl “tutted”.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0The woman said her clothing was grabbed tight and she struggled to breathe. She was pulled back and forward “like a rag doll” before ending up on the floor on her knees.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0The woman recalled: “I just wanted my mum.” She said she got beaten for “trying to do a good job”.\n<\/p>\n
\n The witness also made to go on a long walk despite stating at one stage she was injured. The woman stated she was spoken to “as if she was nothing”.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another survivor\u00a0described the atmosphere at Fornethy as being “scary, cold, unloved”.\n<\/p>\n
\n She added: “You would be able to write letters (for family), but only what they dictated and you had to copy that.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Prosecutor Eilidh Robertson put to her during her pre-recorded testimony: “If we were to hear evidence from other teachers and staff that children were well looked after and happy, does that reflect your experience there?”\n<\/p>\n
\n The woman replied: “No.”\n<\/p>\n
\n She said\u00a0she was “scared” to report any incidents at the time.\n<\/p>\n
\n Many other girls suffered similar ordeals.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Robertson targeted one youngster was slapped, punched and had a blackboard duster hurled at her.\n<\/p>\n
\n One child was put over Robertson’s knee and slapped on the bare buttocks.\n<\/p>\n
\n Robertson, now of Essex, gave evidence during the trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mark Stewart KC, defending, put to her at one stage was she ever violent or “make derogatory comments and use unpleasant nicknames” against the girls.\n<\/p>\n
\n Robertson\u00a0denied the claims.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sentence was deferred on the first offender until December at the High Court in Glasgow.\n<\/p>\n
\n Judge Lord Colbeck granted her bail meantime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The girls – sent there for supposed “short-term respite” from their homes – were force fed, assaulted, humiliated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-503590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115382700224350917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}