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The Nazareth House orphanages in Scotland were places of fear, hostility and confusion, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has found.

Children were physically abused and emotionally degraded "with impunity".

And in some instances youngsters were subjected to sexual abuse of the "utmost depravity".

The Sisters of Nazareth, which ran the children's homes, said it had apologised for any abuse that took place in its institutions.

The inquiry heard evidence from former residents of four institutions in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Midlothian and Ayrshire.

Its findings about the Nazareth Houses between 1933 and 1984 form part of a wider investigation into the abuse of children in care in Scotland.

Chairwoman Lady Smith said the child victims were "deprived of compassion, dignity, care and comfort".

And she rejected all suggestions that witnesses colluded on "fictitious accounts" about their time in care.

During 27 days of evidence last year, Archbishop Mario Conti apologised for what happened in the children's homes.

He said he was "blindly satisfied" that children were being cared for at Nazareth House while he was Bishop of Aberdeen.

He said he was at the inquiry to "apologise for what we now know to be truthful".

A spokesman for the Sisters of Nazareth said it no longer ran any residential services for children in the UK.

He added: "The congregation has and continues to co-operate with all inquiries into the historical abuse of children, including in Scotland."

What happened at the Nazareth House orphanages?

Yvonne Radzevicius was one of more than 70 former residents of the Nazareth Houses whose evidence was heard by the child abuse inquiry.

The 76-year-old said she was lied to by nuns at the institution in Cardonald, Glasgow, who told her that her parents had died and she had no family.

Decades later she discovered that her mother and father were alive and that she had five brothers and sisters.

At the age of 10, she was sent to a Nazareth House facility in Australia where she was physically, emotionally and sexually abused.

Paula Chambers told the inquiry she was sent to a shrine in France to cure her of a "mental illness" by a nun who called her evil.

The 45-year-old spent time at Nazareth House in Cardonald in the 1980s.

She said one nun told her she was in the institution because she was a "bad child" and her mother could not cope with her.

"I was evil, she said to me on a few occasions," she added.

Helen Holland said she was eight-years-old when a priest and a nun began to sexually abuse her at Nazareth House in Kilmarnock.

She told the inquiry she suffered years of physical and emotional cruelty at the children's home in the 1960s and 1970s.

The nun repeatedly told her "the devil was inside her". She held Ms Holland down while the priest raped her.

Ms Holland was sexually abused over four years and raped by several men.

One man told the inquiry he was sexually abused by priests, care assistants and older boys over two years at Nazareth House in Lasswade, Midlothian.

The abuse began in the 1970s when he was seven.

The man, who cannot be named, said when he tried to report the abuse he was beaten or told to "stop telling lies".

"If the devil had come and said 'I'm taking you away from this place', I would have gone with him just to get out of there," he said.

Another woman told the inquiry that she and her two sisters were beaten until they bled on their first day at Nazareth House in Aberdeen.

She was 10-years-old when she arrived at the city orphanage in 1967, while her youngest sister was just a toddler.

Giving evidence, she said the nuns put on a show of "niceness" but became violent as soon as the sisters' social worker left the building.

She said they were "battered" until they were left bleeding all over their bodies.

Christopher Booth said he was 11-years-old when he was sent to Australia from Scotland, after a Nazareth House nun told him he was "garbage".

Now 77, Mr Booth told the inquiry the nun said: "Your family doesn't want you, your country doesn't want you."

He spent seven months enduring a "brutal" regime at the Aberdeen orphanage before being forced to emigrate in 1952.

The child was then sexually abused by priests at a care home in Tasmania.

The independent inquiry, taking place in Edinburgh, continues.