Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Falkland, Fife, Scotland, United Kingdom · 2016

Scotland: Christian Brothers headmaster and teacher convicted of physically and sexually abusing boys at St Ninian's, Falkland

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

John Farrell, Christian Brother and headmaster, St Ninian's residential school for troubled boys, Falkland, Fife, Paul Kelly, Christian Brother and teacher, St Ninian's residential school for troubled boys, Falkland, Fife

Organization

Congregation of Christian Brothers, Scotland, St Ninian's, Falkland

Spiritual nexus

The victims were residential pupils at a Christian Brothers-run institution for troubled boys, entirely dependent on Farrell and Kelly in their combined roles as headmaster, teacher and members of the religious order running the school.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2016-08-01 · conviction after 13-week trial; sentences

    High Court of Justiciary, Glasgow, Scotland. Following a 13-week trial, Farrell and Kelly were convicted of 11 charges involving six former pupils at St Ninian's in the late 1970s and 1980s. Farrell, the headmaster, was convicted of physically abusing one boy and sexually abusing three others and sentenced to five years; Kelly was convicted of sexually abusing two boys and sexually and physically abusing a third and sentenced to ten years. Both were placed on the sex offenders register.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • headmaster's and teacher's authority within a residential Christian Brothers institution for boys already removed from their families
  • combined physical and sexual abuse used to enforce control over a captive residential population

Primary record

Sources

regional newspaper court reporting court reporting The Courier, 'Two men found guilty of abuse at Christian Brothers school in Falkland' (2016).

Reports the joint conviction, the 13-week trial, and both men's roles at St Ninian's.

Related record

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