Chapter 15 — Daingean

Sexual abuse

He was then questioned about his allegations. He insisted, ‘Br. Ramon tried to abuse me. I took the beatings rather than let them abuse me ... He got a hold of you and he groped you. I never let him go all the way with me, if you know what I mean’. Under cross-examination he added: You would be in a room and he grab you by the private parts and pull you into it and he tried to grope you ... I would knock him away and take a slap.

The cross-examination ended with a simple statement: I don’t have any more questions. I should just point out, as I have done, that the Brothers concerned are dead. Br. Ramon is long time dead ...

One complainant was asked whether he or anybody else had been shown kindness or fairness. He replied that he had never received any kindness, but identified the boys who worked for Br Ramon in the laundry as receiving special treatment: Maybe to one or two of the people that was working in the laundry. Br. Ramon was over the laundry and if you said anything to any of the boys that worked in the laundry Br. Ramon would give you a hiding for it because he didn’t like his boys to be abused or given out.

In circumstances where a Brother had such long service in Daingean, his conviction for sexual abuse was a relevant piece of information that should have been revealed to the complainants who made allegations against him. The allegation made in 1967 – the O’Brien25 case

On 20th June 1967, a firm of solicitors acting on behalf of a former pupil of Daingean wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Justice about a matter that had caused them deep concern. A 15-year-old boy had recently been discharged from Daingean after being in the Institution for over two years. They were writing, they explained, ‘as Officers of the Court and indeed as responsible citizens to bring immediately to the notice of the Department’ a serious allegation of sexual misconduct. They wrote: We are instructed and we have no reason to doubt our instructions that this boy, who was mentally retarded when sent to Daingean, was sexually assaulted and perverted while an in-mate of the Reformatory and his unfortunate lapse into criminality immediately on his release is due solely to what occurred while he was there. We feel that the best course for us to adopt in this case is to have the boy medically examined by a competent psychiatrist who can elicit from him the full circumstances of his perversion and we feel that the Department might like to have him examined by their own medical advisor in view of the circumstances.

The alleged abuser was not named in the letter, although it is now known that it was Br Ramon. It seems that this letter was forwarded to the Department of Education, because the next letter on file is a letter of 14th December 1967, written by the solicitors acting for the Resident Manager of Daingean, Fr Luca. It was addressed to the Secretary of the Department of Education. It stated: We understand that a firm of Solicitors, acting on behalf of ... a former detainee at Daingean, wrote to you making serious allegations concerning occurrences in the School involving a member of the staff ... We are writing to advise you that following the allegations our client, The Reverend Superior, investigated the allegation and it was also investigated, with the full co-operation of our client, by the Garda Authorities. Following their enquiries the Garda Authorities were satisfied that there was no evidence of any improper conduct by any member of the Staff ... In view of the serious allegation made in the letter to your Department based on the story of this unfortunate boy our client wishes this unequivocable denial of the allegations placed on your file.

Again, the name of the member of staff against whom the allegations were made was not disclosed and no record was kept of any action taken.

The boy who made the allegations appeared in court and pleaded guilty. The Central Criminal Court imposed a suspended sentence of 12 months, expressing its dismay that there was no in-patient unit available for the treatment of disturbed psychiatric adolescents.

In his letter to the Provincial at Christmas 1967, Fr Luca wrote: Well the ... case is ended as far as we are ... but not very satisfactorily from the Guards point of view. Mr Johnston is writing a letter now to the Department of Education to be placed in the Files beside the other Document and so I hope will be closed for good and all a rather nasty case. In the last stages of the case I had a call from the Dept. Inspector, Mr McDevitt about it and in passing he referred to the “Document of Accusation”. And then as a by the way he said he didn’t believe it. To which I replied “neither did I” but to make assurance doubly sure we had the allegation investigated by the Gardaí. And they were satisfied, without even a shadow of a doubt, that the whole thing was a malicious concoction. And furthermore, the Attorney General was even stronger in his condemnation of the affair. This took the Inspector a little by surprise for he never dreamt that we would have had it investigated. But he was very pleased to hear that we did take that course of action lest it should ever be brought up again. So when he gets the letter from Mr Johnston he will see that we meant to have every avenue checked & sealed.

Fr Luca was inaccurate in stating that ‘we had the allegation investigated by the Gardaí’. But, in fact, the Gardaí had brought the allegations to Fr Luca and they investigated them as part of the preparation for the criminal trial.

Similarly, when Fr Murphy, who represented the Oblates at the Emergence hearing, told the Commission, ‘... we only find in the records one complaint of sexual abuse. It was brought to the attention of the Gardaí’, he was not correct, as it was the Gardaí who approached the Resident Manager about the matter.

Some light was thrown on the matter by Fr Luca. He wrote in his Statement that the boy’s defence was that he had learned the sexual behaviour in Daingean: When that came to me from the Gardaí it was no longer a school matter, it was outside, the boy was outside and those who brought the story were outside, the Gardaí. So I immediately went to the Provincial and told him what had been said ... Then the Garda who was in charge of the investigation in Dublin got in touch with me to say that he wanted to see this Brother on a particular day, at a particular time.

Following further consultations with the Provincial, a meeting was arranged between Br Ramon and senior counsel, after which counsel told Fr Luca, ‘You needn’t be worried, it’s a false accusation and we have no doubt about that’. At the Garda Station, Fr Luca was shown the file on the case, which he described as ‘putrid’. He added: I would not have thought the Brother had a chance because when you read something and looked at the detail of it you would ask yourself how anyone could compose it ... the minute descriptions and the detail of the thing ... It was a different Brother to the accusation about the 14 year old.26 There had never been any accusations against the second Brother before that, at least I had never heard anything against him. The Gardaí were satisfied, anyway, that it wasn’t true.

Br Ramon’s departure from Daingean in the early 1970s was, it was claimed, in the context of staff changes in preparation for the transfer to Lusk. Older Brothers and those who did not want to continue in the work were gradually moved to new placements.

Br Ramon was neither an older Brother (he was 48 at the time) and, as evidenced by his memorandum to Fr Luca referred to above, he wanted to continue to work in Daingean with ‘the unfortunant boys that passed through St. Conleth’s’. In the light of what is now known about Br Ramon and his time in Daingean, the reason for his transfer to a Scholasticate must be questioned.