‘THE overall view I formed of St Ninian’s was depressing. The institution was established in naivety, on the basis of facile assumptions and burdensome borrowings. Brothers and staff (and visitors) included paedophiles, violent men, and inadequate teachers. It was an undesirable outpost, remote from the Order’s centre of operations in Great Britain. Causes for concern were known about, noted in reports, but not acted upon. There was confusion over its own status. It was a place that immersed some children in a culture of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, a place where –during its limited life (1951-83) – the positives were achieved more by good luck than by good management. The latter was absent and was, instead, characterised by remarkable ineptitude. Such was St Ninian’s.”