A legal blunder allowed the man who abused us at school to escape justice – until now

When William Brydson was sentenced to 10 years in jail last week, Dawn Crawford and Michelle Kilpatrick allowed themselves a brief celebration.

As runaway children at a boarding school in Dumfries and Galloway in the 1980s, they had been preyed on by the man hired to look after them.

Brydson, the "head of care" at Monken Hadley in Newton Stewart, had attacked and molested pupils. But when he was originally taken to court in 2003, sexual abuse charges were dropped.

It was reported at the time that a “catalogue of blunders" by prosecutors led to court deadlines being missed.

Brydson did admit assault in 2003 and was sentenced to two years in prison, reduced to nine months on appeal.

More than two decades later, his former pupils faced him in court again and the 78-year-old was found guilty of a series of historical sexual offences, including rape.

Hand-in-hand at the sentencing, Dawn and Michelle were ecstatic. Yet the never-ending reckoning with their childhood trauma continued, barely interrupted.

"I still go to sleep and I'm back in the building with him and I can't get away, " Dawn tells BBC Scotland News.

"He's got 10 years and I've had 40 years of it.

"It doesn't add up. It's not fair."

Brydson, an ex-army corporal from Renfrew, was housemaster at Monken Hadley. His non-teaching role involved keeping an eye on boarders, and enforcing discipline.

Later called Woodlands, the school housed so-called "troubled" pupils deemed to have behavioural problems.

Dawn, who ran away from home aged 11, was among them.

"It was horrific," she tells BBC Scotland News.

A boarder between the ages of 13 and 16, she recalls being made to do manual labour, moving a huge pile of bricks by hand or sweeping the yard with a toothbrush.

She says Brydson imposed a militaristic regime, with children tipped out of bed, lined up for inspection and taken on forced runs.

"He would pull you by the hair, smack your head off the window," Dawn says.

At night he would lure them with cigarettes before molesting them under a blanket, she says.

Dawn, who is unable to work following decades of mental and physical health issues, says her experiences transformed her from a "very sociable child" into a "recluse".

She has suffered from depression as well as drug and alcohol issues, but is now sober.

"He just made me feel so small," Dawn says.

"I haven't got a partner. I don't like being touched.

"I am very much alone, a loner. No family and very few friends. And that's the effect he's had on me."

Her hopes of justice were raised ahead of the court case in 2003, only to be let down by legal "blundering".

"I just felt like a statistic, like a piece of paper they wanted to shuffle away somewhere," Dawn says.

Finally, she feels she has been believed, and is encouraging other people who have had similar experiences to come forward.

Michelle went to Monken Hadley from the age of 14 to 16 after fleeing abuse in her own home.

The security guard, who lives in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, describes her time there in the early 1980s as a "nightmare".

She says her experiences have left her with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other health problems.

"I shouldn't have been there," says Michelle.

"I deserved to get the help that I needed at the time. We were vulnerable kids in there, needing help to get sorted out. And we never, we got abused.

"We got sexually abused, we got battered... and nobody was interested."

When Brydson was eventually prosecuted in 2003, he admitted physically assaulting nine boys and two girls aged as young as nine.

But Michelle says she was "disgusted" that the sexual abuse charges were dropped.

It is understood that the fresh criminal prosecution, which led to Brydson being jailed for 10 years last week, began after new evidence came to light.

Brydson, who had been living in Auldearn, near Nairn, was found guilty of brutally assaulting and molesting children. He has been placed indefinitely on the sex offenders register.

His crimes took place between 1979 and 1986 and involved nine victims, including Dawn and Michelle - who have waived their right to anonymity to speak publicly about their experiences.

"At the end of the day, the damage is done to us all," Michelle says.

"We try and move on the best way we can, live our life the best way we can, get counselling the best way we can."

"But do you know what, the scars are right in the heart.

"It doesn't matter if he was younger and he got 30 years, it's never going to be enough because there are folk that were at that school that are no longer here and me and Dawn are fighting for them."

Procurator fiscal Faye Cook said that historical child abuse cases were among the most challenging cases for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, but that it was "committed to continually improving how we investigate and prosecute them".

She added: "In understanding and acknowledging the deficiencies of the past, lessons can be learned for the future."

The treatment of children at Monken Hadley is being investigated as part of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

Initially opened as Corsbie Hall in the 1970s, the school's name changed twice before it was closed in the early 2000s.

The fire-damaged building, on the outskirts of Newton Stewart, has since been demolished.

The trauma of those who spent parts of their childhood there will be harder to erase.