A "sadistic" teacher who abused young girls in residential care over a 15-year period has been spared jail and instructed to pay £1,000 per victim. Patricia Robertson, 77, was convicted of a litany of offences committed between 1969 and 1984 on girls as young as five at Fornethy House in Kilry, Angus.

The offences included delivering punishments for wetting the bed, force-feeding, banging girls' heads together and dragging children by their hair, the High Court in Glasgow heard. Robertson, who was 21 at the time of her first offence, was convicted of cruel and unnatural treatment against 18 victims in October following a trial.

Many of Robertson's victims were in court on Wednesday for sentencing, and they branded her sentence "disgusting" and an "absolute joke" from the public gal

See Full Page