Abuse allegations surface at Pluscarden Abbey

Fresh allegations of historic sexual abuse at Pluscarden Abbey have emerged just days before Tuesday’s publication of the McLellan Commission report into safeguarding practices in Scotland.

The alleged abuses were brought to the attention of support group White Flowers Alba and have been passed on to Police Scotland, which says that investigations are at a very early stage.

One of the alleged offences is of violent sexual abuse, while two other boys are said to have been physically injured at the Benedictine monastery, a medieval establishment near Elgin that ceased to function in the sixteenth century but was revived in 1948.

The alleged offences are said to have taken place between the 1960s and the 1980s.

The diocese of Aberdeen, whose bishop, Hugh Gilbert, is a former Abbot of Pluscarden, said that it was cooperating fully with the police over the investigation, but made no further comment. No one at Pluscarden was available to answer questions.

The allegations follow a recent investigation into sexual abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School near Inverness, its feeder preparatory school Carlekemp in East Lothian, and at Blairs College in Aberdeenshire.

Earlier in the summer, nine men were reported to the procurator-fiscal in relation to alleged offences at Fort Augustus.

In July, a retired priest, Colman McGrath, was found guilty of sexual offences against boys at Blairs College.

(See Brian Morton, pages 10-11.)