The head of Scotland's flagship secure unit for children has been sacked in the latest fall-out from the Kerelaw abuse investigation.

William McFadyen was dismissed from St Philip's School near Airdrie, Lanarkshire, earlier this month after being named as a suspect by social workers.

Before joining St Philip's, Mr McFadyen was a deputy head at Kerelaw, the residential school at the centre of one of Britain's biggest child abuse scandals.

He is facing claims about his behaviour at Kerelaw in the early 1990s but these, The Herald understands, have never been formally investigated.

Glasgow City Council, which ran Kerelaw in Ayrshire until it closed early last year, admitted earlier this month that 40 of its employees had been directly involved in either sexual or physical abuse of boys and girls in the school's care.

The authority also warned that some of those suspects were still working in other "care settings" and called on the Scottish Executive to help root them out.

Mr McFadyen, it is understood, is the first individual to fall foul of that new drive to make sure people accused of abuse at Kerelaw no longer work with children or other vulnerable people.

Confirmation of his sacking came from the Care Commission, the watchdog responsible for overseeing St Philip's.

A spokesman said in a statement: "The provider has complied with the necessary requirement to notify us that a member of senior management has been dismissed."

The commission, however, has no responsibility for staff issues at St Philip's. That is up to the school itself and its owner, the Roman Catholic charity Cora.

St Philip's would not comment yesterday. Neither would Cora's chairman, Monsignor Peter Smith, who doubles as chancellor of the Archdiocese of Glasgow.

Cora's company secretary, Frank McCormick of Glasgow solicitors McSporran McCormick, failed to return a number of calls to his office to discuss the dismissal of Mr McFadyen.

The charity suspended Mr McFadyen in November after he was provisionally placed on a government blacklist introduced after the Soham murders to ban suspected abusers from working with children. He was one of 17 former Kerelaw employees that Glasgow City Council referred to the blacklist, officially called the Disqualified from Working with Children List or DWCL.

People who are only "provisionally" on the DWCL are allowed to continue to work but Cora decided to send Mr McFadyen home.

Speaking at the time, Monsignor Smith said Cora was "not unaware of difficulties"

at Kerelaw when it hired Mr McFadyen. Several other former Kerelaw employees work at St Philip's, which was built as part of a Scottish Executive push to expand and improve secure accommodation for troubled under-16s.

Glasgow City Council this month said that, although 40 members of staff were directly involved in abuse, a far larger number knew what was happening to young people but said nothing.

Twenty Kerelaw workers have been reported to the procurator-fiscal but, to date, only two have been convicted. The Crown Office has shelved prosecutions against 13, saying it lacks the necessary evidence. The burden of proof for being banned from working with children, however, is far lower than would be needed to get a criminal conviction.

The Herald was unable to contact Mr McFadyen.