Chapter 15 — Daingean

Physical abuse

The evidence of the dreadful effect of these screams was most graphically brought home to the Committee by the evidence of Fr Luca himself. He was the penultimate Resident Manager of Daingean. He told the Committee: we had an oratory which was just on the other side of the square from – the square was a small one, maybe not much wider than this room, and I was there saying my office in the evening and I heard the leather being used on some boy at that time. I thought it was a most revolting thing and said here am I inside to praise God and Christ himself is being punished now right beside me. It sunk into me as a kind of a horror, that it was such a contradiction to all that we were working about.

He was asked if this had left a big impression on him and he said ‘To this day it still does. When I hear of anybody being beaten up, we say in the north it annoys me, but it is much deeper than annoyance’. He added: it shook me. It confirmed my determination as soon as possible and when possible I would try to get rid of it ... It seemed to me to be an awful contradiction to what my life was about and what our life as religious was about to have this thing happening within this house ... In my mind any punishment is brutal as far as the recipient is concerned. I would have a feeling for the recipient of the punishment. I certainly wouldn’t advocate it at all.

He also said: I was never in favour of it because I always had an abhorrence of that kind people using this kind of domination over another person by beating them ...

He was asked, ‘Would it be fair to say that you delegated the role of punishment and thereafter you didn’t really know exactly what was happening, you left it to the people who were your delegates to get on with it, is that fair or not?’

Fr Luca replied: That’s fair. When I went in there the School was in action, as it were, there was movement. I acquainted myself with what each person’s function was within the School. I didn’t change them from the different jobs or that, I took it that they knew what they were about ... I didn’t involve myself in it, I think only twice I asked the Brother to punish a boy.

He added: when I moved in there in 1964 the School had been going for over 100 years at that stage. There were things, there was a certain structure in place. What would need to be changed I gradually tried to change it. There were certain things I had to accept when I went in there because I had no previous experience of running the School.

Despite his assertion that the practice revolted him, Fr Luca did nothing to stop the ritualistic flogging of boys in Daingean. This punishment was stopped in Daingean, after vigorous intervention by a Department of Justice official, and not because of any initiative on the part of the management. The banning of all corporal punishment followed in 1970. A full account of events at that time is given later in this chapter.

The open and frank discussion between the Oblates and the Department of Education throughout the 1940s and 1950s, on the way in which flogging was administered, revealed indifference by the Department to a flagrant breach of the rules. Flogging was administered in Daingean in a cruel, sadistic and excessive manner designed to maximise the terror of all the boys. It was used in Daingean for a wide range of offences, including those which even at the time would have been considered trivial. The pain caused by the punishment was intense, and victims graphically described to the Committee the physical impact on their bodies. Bruising and scars remained long after the beating was administered. Fr Luca’s stated revulsion to the practice of flogging was contradictory. It was within his power as Manager to put a stop to it and he chose not to do so. The Oblates did not condemn the practice of flogging in their Submission to the Investigation Committee. They contended that it was used only for a breach of the school rules and was administered by the Prefect. They did, however, acknowledge that punishment for absconding was ‘over severe’ but not abusive.

One complainant gave an account of his first day in Daingean, when he got ‘clattered’ unfairly: The first day I got there we were saying the rosary ... when you are brought up to the dormitory, you put on your nightshirt, you stand at your bed, the whole dormitory stands by their beds and [Brother] would stay down in the middle. It was an L shaped dormitory ... he said the rosary and you answered the rosary to him. You kneel at your bed. I fell asleep, I dozed off. I was woke up with a clatter on the back of the head ... He made me stand for a long time after the lads went to bed for falling asleep at the rosary. That was the first day I was actually down there.

When asked why he fell asleep, he explained: I was just tired. I was anxious. I know that I was anxious because I was in Marlborough House, I was in court the first day. Then I got sentenced, then I was brought back to Marlborough House. Then I was waiting on the police to come to collect me to bring me down to Daingean. It is a fairly long journey in them days, it’s not far now. I was kind of tired and I was anxious. It was all kind of new, I remember it quite clear, the day that I went there. The two years, the sentence I got looked like a lifetime to me, that was all on top of me.

A witness described how his name was put down to play Gaelic football but, because he could not play it, he never went out: ‘About a half an hour later the Brother came into the playground and he had a hurling stick and he beat me with he hurling stick ... On my head’. He also indicated that he was hit on the lip with the hurling stick and he ‘... carried the scar for nearly 50 years’.

The same man described another occasion when he was talking in the washroom, ‘... and from nowhere he came behind me and gave me the flat of his hand right across my ear ... It was full force ... I was just thrown across ... a few feet’. This left him with a buzzing or ringing in his ear to this day.

Another complainant made light of many of the blows he had received by saying, ‘I got smacks on the hand and things like that, nothing to cry about ... It was probably something I deserved ...’. He described one beating that he felt was very unfair. He explained: I was having a friendly argument with [Brother], we would always contradict him about football and various things. We were arguing one afternoon ... about soccer. We just contradicted one another. Before I knew it ... [another Brother] ... grabbed me by the shoulders, back of the hair and turned me round and gave me one or two unmerciful thumps in the stomach. I was doubled over. I was sick for a week afterwards or more. [Brother] explained to him about what happened, we were only arguing about football and said “apologise to the man” but he said something under his breath and walked out the same way he came in. That was it.

One complainant gave an account of being kneed in the groin by a Brother: It was just before we said the Angelus. We were in our ranks ready to go to the refectory ... It was about the beginning of the prayers and I was speaking to someone else next to me and then he come up and got me talking. He got so angry and just kneed me ... He just came up with his knee ... There was a couple of fellows held me up ... I was in pain ... I couldn’t eat or couldn’t drink or anything. Shortly after that I was taken away in a car.

Records show that the complainant was admitted to Tullamore Hospital for two weeks, and was operated on for a hernia. He said: ‘I never got a visit’. He added. ‘I was just left there on my own for two weeks and my parents weren’t told about it’.