Join Brian Gerrish and Diane Rasmussen as they speak with Fornethy Residential School survivors Lynne Sheerin, Sharon Cruden, Frances Campbell, Margaret, Carol Robertson, Carol Whyte, Rona Hargan, and Kellie Fox about the trial and sentencing of former Fornethy teacher Patricia Robertson.
Since 2022, UK Column has covered the scandal surrounding the historical institutional child abuse that occurred at Fornethy Residential School in Angus, Scotland, from 1960-1991. Primary school-age Glaswegian girls were sent to Fornethy for six to eight weeks at a time. They were taken out of the custody of their parents and placed into the care of the Education Committee of Glasgow Corporation and then Strathclyde Regional Council. Fornethy staff abused the girls in all horrific ways imaginable. It was never meant to be for a summer holiday, for convalescence, or for “deprived” girls, although these false narratives exist in the official archives and continue to pervade in mainstream media.
Fornethy survivors have spent years campaigning together for justice in Scottish Parliament, where a petition asking for the survivors to be allowed to access Scotland's redress scheme has been under consideration since 2022. The request has been denied previously due to lack of records documenting their time at Fornethy, although there is no strict requirement for records according to Redress Scotland, which says that “survivors are at the heart” of its process, within which Scottish survivors who suffered abuse in care are entitled to apply for financial or other compensation. Another difficulty for the Fornethy survivors is that the criteria state that redress is only available to survivors who endured long-term residential school abuse. As girls attended Fornethy for six to eight weeks at a time, this is considered short-term abuse, and therefore, they are ineligible. Members of Scottish Parliament such as Fergus Ewing MSP, Colin Smyth MSP, and Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP have agreed this is unjust, an evaluation based partially on written evidence that the UK Column team had previously submitted to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.
Fornethy survivors have also been seeking justice in the criminal and civil courts. In October 2025, after a long wait for the delayed trial, former Fornethy teacher Patricia Robertson or Baxter was finally found guilty of 18/25 “cruel and unnatural treatment” charges by a jury in the Glasgow High Court for her abuse of Fornethy pupils. (The other seven charges, which were the most serious allegations, were found to be Not Proven). Many survivors who wanted to testify in the trial were not allowed to take the stand, leaving them to feel unheard. Despite this, the guilty verdict left the survivors feeling elated by the possibility that they had finally made progress toward receiving the justice they deserved.
On 3 December 2025, Baxter received her sentencing, when Judge Lord Colbeck said to her, in part:
You were convicted by the jury of cruelly and unnaturally treating no less than 18 separate young girls and of causing each of them unnecessary suffering and injury to their health. Those offences were committed over the entirety of your time working at Fornethy, that commencing in 1970 and ending in 1984.
Your victims were aged between 5 and 12. Many, but not all of them, were particularly vulnerable due to poverty and difficult family circumstances. The majority of them had never had a proper holiday before. They all thought that their stay at Fornethy would be an adventure. Many of them spoke at their excitement at the prospect of going to Fornethy.
Such thoughts appear to have ended as soon as the doors to Fornethy closed upon them and the horror began.
For the entirety of your time at Fornethy, it is clear that you behaved in a cruel and sadistic manner towards many young girls. The examples spoken to in evidence are too numerous to mention, however, amongst other cruel acts you:
Made derogatory remarks to children and ridiculed children when they wet the bed;
Forced children to wear soiled clothing;
Struck, slapped, punched and kicked children;
Forced children to eat food, causing them to gag and vomit, and forced them to eat vomit; and
Forced children to stand facing walls for prolonged periods.
Put shortly, you were in a position of trust and responsibility and used that position to abuse vulnerable children in your care over a period of many years.
It now falls to the court to sentence you for the crimes you have been convicted of.
Shockingly, Baxter received a noncustodial sentencing, leaving the survivors angry and deflated. After Lord Colbeck stated that a convicted criminal who has never been sent to prison previously can only go if “there is no appropriate alternative”, she was sentenced to probation. This includes being under supervision for three years and staying at home between 3pm and midnight for 12 months. She was also ordered to pay the 18 survivors whose charge received a Guilty verdict £1000 each. Some survivors have called this “blood money”, especially because the amount is so small in comparison to the years of trauma the survivors have suffered throughout their lifespan.
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) has stated that an appeal has been started into this “unduly lenient” sentencing.
In late December 2025, Brian Gerrish and Diane Rasmussen sat down with the brave survivors to hear their thoughts about the trial and sentencing, which are presented in this unique video. They made statements about their anger regarding Baxter’s noncustodial sentencing, such as:
"Her going to prison will give her a wee bit of the feeling and acknowledgement of what we went through. Because that is what it was like. It was like being in prison".
"And when she hears that door shutting, it’s like that door shutting on us when we went into Fornethy. Everything changed the minute we went into that door".
After one hour and 45 minutes of interviews with the survivors, the last 45 minutes of this video present Brian and Diane in conversation about the Fornethy story to state including their reflections on UK Column’s ongoing work with the Fornethy survivors since 2022, and Diane’s experiences of attending one day of Baxter’s trial as well as her sentencing day.
Brian and Diane agree that it was a “show trial”, meant to placate the survivors by pretending that justice had been served whilst hiding the state’s systemic approach to covering up the larger programme of historical institutional child abuse that has existed in the UK for many years.
Scotland's justice system has been used to deny justice.
But the Fornethy survivors will continue to fight for justice together, offering a ray of hope to an otherwise dark story. They are not going away, and neither are UK Column, until the survivors have received the justice and peace they deserve.
