A BBC Scotland investigation into a children’s home run by the Sailors Society charity has revealed horrific allegations of sexual abuse and physical cruelty spanning decades.

Disclosure: Suffer The Children, which was broadcast on Monday, September 17 at 10.40pm on BBC One Scotland, told the harrowing stories of the victims of alleged abuse at the Lagarie Children’s Home in Rhu, near Helensburgh.

Between 1949 and 1982, hundreds of children were sent to live at Lagarie Children’s Home. They were the children of seafarers taken in by the Sailors Society, a Christian charity supporting the families of men working at sea.

The Disclosure team spent months investigating allegations of abuse that are said to have happened during two separate regimes at the home.

Among the former residents interviewed were Angela Montgomery and her sisters Mary and Norma, who were at the home because their mother had died young and their father was at sea.

Angela told Disclosure she and her sisters were subjected to sustained sexual abuse after Reverend William Barrie and his wife Mary took charge of the home in 1972.

She said Rev Barrie used to visit them at night and at first it was comforting, but one time he said: "No, you’re not kissing me properly."

Angela told the programme: "And he stuck his tongue in my mouth, and I gagged, but I made the fatal mistake of spitting at him. And then I paid dearly for it, because in front of the other girls, he punched me in the face.

"I remember when I eventually did give him a full blown kiss after he’d forced me, I went and told Norma and Mary, and they said – 'well, we’ve been doing that for ages'.

"And so we used to make fun of him, you know, thinking, oh, he’s disgusting...and then laugh about it.

"And then, after a while, it got really serious, and...so…it was no longer a laughing matter. And so none of the girls then spoke about it.’

Angela, Norma and Mary said that over the years at Lagarie they were raped hundreds of times by Barrie.

Angela told the programme that girls were also abused when they were taken away from Lagarie to conventions and introduced to men who were attending the events.

She and her sister Norma also saidthey were taken to spend weekends away where they were abused by people they had never met before.

The Montgomery sisters left Lagarie more than 40 years ago and each of them has struggled with mental health problems.

During an earlier regime which Disclosure investigated, the allegations centred on Anne Millar, the matron of the home, who professed to be a devout Christian but was described as ‘evil’ by Roddy Austin, one of the former residents who lived in fear.

Roddy was a toddler when he was sent to Lagarie in 1960, and he told the programme that on his first day he saw a white-haired lady sitting at a big table.

He said: "To me, she was a granny and I ran up shouting ‘granny, granny, granny‘.

"And the next thing I knew, I was flying across the floor, after she belted me across the face. She then stood over me, and that’s the nightmare I had for years, telling me: 'I am Matron, not your granny.'

"That was Matron Anne Millar. She was the boss."

Philip Donald was in the home for around two and a half years. He told the programme Millar used to pick him up by the ears, throw him into a cold bath and put her soap-covered fingers down his throat.

Philip’s social work records showed he tried to escape, even fleeing from the home naked on one occasion.

The programme reported that it wasn’t just the matron Philip was running from.

He said Millar used to take him to the shed of Lagarie’s gardener Norman Skelton where he would be raped.

Anne Millar’s tenure ended in 1970 when she retired, and she is now dead. Disclosure could not put the allegations to Skelton either, as he died in 1999.

The programme reported the Montgomery sisters and others gave statements to the police about the abuse in the early 2000s but no one was charged.

A second police investigation, prompted by the Sailors Society, concluded in 2016.

Mrs Barrie was questioned, and a report sent to the fiscal, but she was never charged. She died in late 2017, her husband having died years earlier without having to answer any questions.

Stuart Rivers, chief executive of the Southampton-based charity, which has the Queen as its patron, was interviewed for the programme and apologised for the abuse that happened.

He said: "I was horrified when I heard these accounts. We do regret any abuse happened and we have apologised unreservedly that this abuse happened."

Asked if the charity takes full responsibility for the abuse that took place, he said: "I think we have to take some responsibility. I want to see a satisfactory outcome for all who have been affected by this."

When told that the Society did not speak to any of the complainants in the early 2000s, Mr Rivers said: "I can’t answer for those who were here at that time. None of the staff here today were present at that time."

He said that in 2003/4 they were made aware of more allegations and the police were asked to investigate. He said he believed the police did not do a thorough investigation.

He said: "I’m not blaming the police, I’m saying they didn’t do a thorough investigation.

"That doesn’t mean that we don’t have responsibility because clearly we do."

Police confirmed that the former Strathclyde force investigated allegations in the early 2000s, but no charges were brought against anyone.

Disclosure will give the results of its investigation to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which last week announced that Lagarie has now been added to the list of residential homes it will probe.

Disclosure: Suffer the Children is available on the BBC iPlayer here.