'I was hooded, held down and raped'

IT WAS hot inside the hood. It covered eight-year-old Helen Holland’s face loosely down to her neck and she could feel the warmth of her own breath, hear the way it was fast and shallow with fear. Her heart was thumping.

Sister Kevin was shouting that the devil was inside her. Holland was wicked and evil and brazen. And then, recalls Holland, Sister Kevin gripped her while a priest raped her.

Holland is now 44 and has never before spoken publicly about the true nature of the sexual abuse she says she was subjected to in Nazareth House children’s home in Kilmarnock.

But after being informed earlier this month that the Crown Office will not proceed with her case because of Sister Kevin’s age and infirmity, she has decided to reveal the details of the allegations she made to the procurator fiscal.

Her story is a horrific catalogue of sexual abuse allegations which includes being raped by several clergymen. Holland also claims that Sister Kevin, who was usually present during the attacks, kicked her in the stomach over a period of hours to induce a miscarriage when she was just 11.

Her claims are shocking. Some might find them hard to believe. Those who were in Nazareth House don’t.

"Sister Kevin was capable of anything," says one who prefers to remain anonymous.

And after informing Holland of the Crown’s decision, the procurator fiscal told Holland in front of a witness: "I don’t want you leaving this office thinking you haven’t been believed."

Last week Sister Kevin, now in her eighties and living in Ireland, told Scotland on Sunday: "I never abused any child."

But Holland, a former nun herself with Mother Theresa’s order, says: "I have absolutely nothing to gain from lying."

Her claims are consistent with reports of serious abuse in other countries, including the United States, where reporters on a Boston newspaper uncovered a network of paedophile priests guilty of raping children.

"Why should we assume because we are in Scotland it wouldn’t happen here?" asks Holland.

Last week, Holland revealed that Sister Kevin had sexually abused her with a handbrush. But the story did not end there. Holland believed the nun’s claims that she was evil. Looking for help, she went to confession.

But as Holland stammered out her story about the brush, she heard the priest’s door slam. She was hauled back to the convent.

The priest discussed how to deal with Holland’s "wickedness" with Sister Kevin. He pushed her face down against a table. "It was a high shiny table, like a boardroom table, and my feet were dangling," recalls Holland.

Then, she claims, the priest raped her. She can remember the ache in her neck because Sister Kevin insisted in forcing her head up high. "I was crying and upset. Afterwards, Sister Kevin told me to get back to the others and say nothing. I felt like an object. I would never be a child again."

Holland believes the year was 1966, when she was eight.

Over the next three years, Holland alleges she was raped on several occasions.

Nazareth House children were instructed to sleep with their arms crossed, hands to their shoulders. When she was wakened by Sister Kevin and dragged downstairs to a changing room, she assumed she was to be beaten for sleeping out of position. But she says she was tied, stomach down, to a stool; had the hood placed over her head so that she couldn’t see her attacker; and raped.

On another occasion, she alleges she was kept off school and, again with a hood over her head, raped by two men. On this occasion, she says, something happened that she can’t bring herself to disclose, but she has informed the procurator fiscal. The fiscal warned her that the most serious sexual allegations might not form part of charges against Sister Kevin because of lack of corroboration so many years later.

Holland claims she was raped on a final occasion when told to take a visiting clergyman his tea. Holland remembers he wore a brown cassock rather than black priests’ garb. He asked her to sit beside him. Frightened, Holland refused. He took hold of her, informed her Sister Kevin had said she was ‘experienced’, and raped her.

"I’ll never forget those words," says Holland, "‘You are experienced.’ I just felt dead inside. I didn’t feel human anymore. I hated myself."

When three months of sanitary towels piled up in her locker, Holland did not understand the significance. But Sister Kevin did. Holland says she was thrown to the floor in her nun’s cell and suffered a sustained attack, being kicked in the stomach and back.

"I had never seen her so angry," says Holland. "She was sweating."

Holland is now convinced she miscarried shortly afterwards. The details are still imprinted on her memory but are too disturbing to report.

Holland and her MSP Jackie Baillie have requested a meeting with the Lord Advocate to discuss the case.

Baillie said: "When I am sitting in a room with Helen Holland, as I have done a number of times over the last couple of years, I have no doubt that she is telling the truth.

"She is a sensible, ordinary woman who has decided ‘enough now’, and who needs to put it behind her and have society recognise what happened. Do I believe her? Yes."

Baillie added: "I am not a lawyer. I don’t know if there is enough evidence to prove charges of sexual abuse but to the layman there seems to be enough on the grounds of unnatural acts of cruelty.

"There are 30-plus people, all of whom have come forward, and I’m sure there will be more who haven’t come forward. It’s how to balance their interests with the processes of the judicial system."

Even the Catholic Church agrees that it would be better if the case was tried in court.

Pointing out that Archbishop Keith O’Brien apologised to abuse victims two years ago, he insisted the church would prefer accusations of this nature to be properly tested in court.

"These are disturbing and horrific allegations. It is extremely unsatisfactory if the door is closed on legal proceedings. We have seen war criminals being tried for cases relating to half a century ago and they are clearly old and infirm."

Julie Bindel, founder of the action group Justice for Women and a researcher at the child and women abuse department at North London University, urged Holland to take out a private prosecution against the nun.

She said: "This sort of case is not about revenge or punishment but about justice. Victims of sexual abuse need their suffering to be publicly acknowledged and their abuser brought to justice."

Victim Support described Holland’s situation as Catch-22.

"Many women who have been victims of sexual abuse find it hard to come forward," said a spokesman, "but the longer they leave reporting it, the less chance there is that there will be a successful case brought against their alleged attacker.

"The justice system needs to do more to make women have more confidence in it and know that when they come forward it will not add to the distress and trauma they have already experienced."

Despite the trauma she has experienced, Helen Holland says she does not want a penny in compensation.

She wants justice. She feels sorry for those who do not share her religious faith. At least for her, there is belief in a higher court. "I might not get justice on this earth," she says, "but I know that Sister Kevin will be accountable to God. There are no hoods that can hide this from God’s eyes."