Former Lanark religious care home workers have sentences for abuse of children reduced

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2024] HCJAC 19
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary
• Judge:
  Lord Matthews

Margaret Hughes, 77, and Eileen Igoe, 79, were both originally sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for various charges libelling abuse of children in a religious care home in Lanark. It was argued that the appellants acted within a context of systemic failures to protect children in care, and that various mitigating factors ought to have reduced the sentences imposed.

The appeal was heard by Lord Matthews and Lord Beckett. The first appellant was represented by Gebbie, advocate, the second by Nicolson, advocate, and the Crown by McKenna, solicitor advocate.

Excessive discipline

The offences took place between 1969 and 1981 mostly at Smyllum House in Lanark, a children’s home owned and operated by the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent De Paul. The first appellant was a sister in the order while the second appellant was a care worker. Witnesses spoke of a routine culture of excessive discipline, which manifested predominantly in the slapping and hitting of children by the nuns and care workers.

Complainer LO said in her evidence that the first appellant had singled her out for mistreatment, including an incident where she was repeatedly kicked in the head and body and another where her head was held underwater in a cold bath. The appellant had denied the allegations, and at most admitted to smacking in a form consistent with what was considered reasonable at the time.

The second appellant, among other things, was said to have banged the head of a boy, JM, against a door six to eight times after finding him playing football in a prohibited area. The sheriff’s reports noted that many of the witnesses were badly affected by what had happened to them while they were in care and found the experience of giving evidence very difficult.

Both appellants submitted that they posed a minimum risk of reoffending given their advanced age and lack of previous convictions. The first appellant had led a productive, exemplary life in the time since the offences were committed, including voluntary work in a local primary school. In addition, both appellants spoke of health difficulties, including significant anxiety and shame.

No future risk

Lord Matthews, delivering the opinion of the court, began: “We do not think that much can be made of the different culture which existed in institutions at the time of these offences. We are cognisant of adages such as ‘spare the rod spoil the child’, the attitude to corporal punishment and the methods which were sometimes used to teach children not to waste food. However, while it may have been the norm for at least some individuals to go along with corporal punishment and teach harsh lessons about food, the jury, unsurprisingly, found that what was done went beyond reasonable chastisement.”

He continued: “There is some force in the submission that there was a context for the violence in that many of the children had misbehaved. The answer, however, was not to engage in the behaviour which the jury found established but to treat the children with kindness and understanding of their vulnerabilities and the adverse circumstances in which, through no fault of their own, they found themselves.”

Noting that the sentencing exercise was “not an easy one” for the sheriff, Lord Matthews said: “We are satisfied that the sheriff attached insufficient weight to the age and state of health of the appellants and the length of time which has passed, during which they have led useful and pro-social lives. They present no future risk to the public so that the important sentencing purpose of public protection does not arise.”

He concluded: “The very fact of conviction of such elderly people well over four decades past the commission of their crimes is punitive, serves to mark the community’s disapproval of it and can be taken to have some generally deterrent effect. In all the circumstances, relevant sentencing aims could have been met by sentences of a different nature.”

The court therefore quashed the sentences imposed by the sheriff and for each appellant substitute a sentence of seven months’ imprisonment, to run from the original date of sentencing.