Absolute & utter terror

She tormented girls sent for summer holidays in 70s & 80s Survivors fear Robertson will dodge jail because of age

- BY RUTH SUTER

CRUMBLING Fornethy House in Angus has fallen into disrepair since it was a school.

A VICTIM of an evil teacher who force fed, attacked and tormented girls at the Fornethy "House of Horrors" has welcomed her abuser's conviction.

Patricia Robertson, 77, subjected pupils as young as six to a torrent of emotional and physical abuse at the all-girls' residential school in Kilry, Angus, between 1969 and 1984.

The pensioner was found guilty of 18 charges of cruel and unnatural treatment of the youngsters following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow on Wednesday.

Robertson, now living in Essex, is the first member of staff to be convicted of the crimes. The remaining perpetrators are all believed to be dead.

Survivor Sharon Cruden, 60, was battered "black and blue by Robertson during her six-week stay in 1974 at the school, run by Glasgow Corporation, which has since become Glasgow City Council.

The then nine-year-old Sharon was promised a "summer holiday" at the facility but was met with beatings, force feeding and humiliation on arrival.

Sharon, from Glasgow, told the Record: "This woman instilled absolute and utter terror in the girls that attended Fornethy.

"She was very regimental and sergeant-major in her stance.

Decades on, I am still haunted by what this woman put us through. I suffer flashbacks from that building and how we were treated.

Sharon attended the school with her younger sister Shona more than five decades ago while their parents went through a divorce.

She said the abuse started when her sister wet the bed.