Woman challenges time bar to sue nuns

Lawyers for Adeline Bowden will challenge a time bar at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, to allow the case to be heard more than 20 years after she left the children's home.

Hundreds of child-abuse victims are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the hearing this week that will determine their future. In a landmark case, lawyers will question a rule that complaints must be lodged within three years of the abuse taking place.

In one of the first test cases, Ms Bowden, 41, claims she was the victim of physical and mental abuse as a child, over a period of years at Nazareth House in Glasgow. She is one of a number of former residents who are hoping to claim 50,000 in compensation.

Last night her lawyer, Cameron Fyfe, who is representing 1,000 clients, said many of them had attended the same institution. He believes that in the 1960s and 1970s very few people were aware that child abuse existed, and many children who made allegations were simply ignored.

He said: "If we win, it will be a huge boost and it will unlock all the other cases.

"Adeline’s case was in the early 1970s and the general rule is that we have to raise an action within three years. However, you could not expect a 19-year-old girl to take on the Catholic Church at that time."

The courts have the discretion to lift the time bar in exceptional circumstances. Mr Fyfe said many people had pinned their hopes on this case, and to lose would be catastrophic.

"These people have found strength in numbers to come forward. The consequences of having the case thrown out would be dire.

"We raised the action previously and it has taken us four years to get to this stage. We are confident of getting a result."

Ms Bowden arrived at Nazareth House at the age of two and says she was punished repeatedly for wetting the bed. She was placed in the nursery with her brother, but at the age of five she claims to have been permanently separated from him.

A Nazareth resident for 13 years, she claims that she and other children were subjected to a range of assaults and cruel punishments. She recalls an incident when she was just four, of being beaten with a coat-hanger because she was caught giggling in the chapel. On another occasion, she claims to have been attacked with a spade.

Ms Bowden, who now lives in Edinburgh, was diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder, and insists her troubled state of mind is linked to her childhood experiences. In 1996, she suffered a breakdown and was prescribed anti-depressants.

She claims that one of the nuns pinned her to the floor and punched her, while another force-fed children, with their arms pinned behind their backs.

In one of the worst of the alleged incidents, Ms Bowden says that she was knocked unconscious and awoke to find a nun on top of her, screaming and battering her head off the floor. She ran away from the home but was returned by the police who, she says, sided with those in charge of the home.

Nazareth House is part of a religious order, the Congregation of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth, which was formed in Hammersmith, London, in 1851 after nuns from France were invited to Britain on the advice of members of the St Vincent de Paul Society. The order had the specific remit of caring for children.

The first Nazareth House opened there in 1857 and the order subsequently spread throughout the UK and Ireland to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

No-one was available to comment yesterday, although the organisation denies all the allegations.