Chapter 15 — Daingean

Emotional abuse

He recounted how he had tried to abscond because, ‘... the general situation ... really depressed me to a point of being suicidal ... In this feeling of depression I could never imagine this sort of torture ending’.

He then went on to make an impassioned plea to the Committee: I am here today because I feel duty bound to be here and to make my best endeavours to see that history does not repeat itself ... I have no feeling of anger ... I do not seek revenge, I think that would be self-defeating ... the people that made me and the others suffer, I think were suffering more themselves. I had two years behind those walls, those misfortunate individuals are spending their lives behind walls, and life for life means life for them.

This particular witness had a deep resentment that his confinement in Daingean was unjust in the first place. He was in Daingean in the early 1950s. He had been sent there originally after he had helped a friend to spend some money that had in fact been stolen. His friend was charged and he was charged with him, and he was ‘found guilty by association’. He came from a good home. His father, disabled from active service in the war, was very sick, and his mother was not coping, so he faced the court on his own. He was sent to Daingean for two years. Within three weeks he ran home, but was picked up after spending approximately six weeks at home over the Christmas period. He recounted what was done to him on his return to Daingean: I had my hair shaved, my head shaved, right down (indicating) and I received a beating ... This was the removal of my shirt, my upper clothes to a bare back. I was beaten across my back with a leather strap to the effect that my back was bleeding. It took me a number of weeks to recuperate ... my back had blistered and the marks on my back were quite clear (indicating).

The unfairness of being sent unjustly to endure such a harsh regime emerged in the story of another witness. His troubles began with the death of his mother. He told the Committee: It was a terrible time. There was a terrible sadness in the house. I had five sisters and that we were showing it more than we were supposed to be able to, not maybe cry as much or things like that.

Shortly after that, he got involved in catching pigeons which annoyed his father, as there were too many pigeons in the house and so he ran away. He explained that he had taken 40 pennies from the gas meter at home before running away, and had fed himself on chips until the pennies ran out after about 10 days. He explained: I was found sleeping in an air raid shelter by a Garda ... I, like the young fellow I was, told him all my troubles. That I was after running away from home, I was in trouble with me father and it was after me catching pigeons. He said to me “don’t worry about that, sure I will see your father, sure that’s nothing.” Well, what he did is not alone not see my father but he added another, gave me another record of an offence, and had me up in court, and within two or three weeks I was down in Daingean.

He protested that ‘the whole total of what I did wouldn’t have come to a pound’. He was sent to Daingean for two years in the early 1940s. He felt isolated and alone. He said, ‘You could feel that there was no kind of friendliness ... you could feel that you were being looked at as if you were another heap of dirt that had arrived ...’. Of the Brothers he said, ‘A lot of them were harsh, but none of them ever got close for the right reasons. They never spoke to you like a human being’.

In Daingean, he was raped by three boys and was flogged four times and endured a desolate isolation. He told the Committee: for a year and eight months when I was in Daingean I used to pray that I would die in the night-time. It wasn’t until the last two months that I decided I am going to survive this.

He summed up the dreadful isolation he felt by saying, ‘... they didn’t talk to us, they didn’t have conversations, it was a terrible slip-up that they didn’t have conversations’.

The isolation he felt due to this lack of communication was perhaps best illustrated when he recalled a good time in Daingean: That’s one thing that I would like to say that there was one retreat down in Daingean ... I remember it, I think it was three or five days, it was a few days. There was some strange priest came down and he gave it. He gave some very good sermons, it frightened the life out of most of us ... One thing about him, I will always remember him, he had a stutter and he used ‘A.’ If a certain word was getting him, he would just say, ‘Three a days.’ ... I enjoyed those few days ... The fellows in the church, they were enjoying the sermon, it was in out of the cold.

This simple recollection of a preacher whose sermons and stammer brought the boys in out of the cold illustrates the desperate need the boys felt for human interaction. As this witness put it, ‘it was a terrible slip-up they didn’t have conversations’.

Fr Luca attempted to explain the disruption of relationships between the Brothers and the boys. Fr Luca wrote in his Statement to the Committee: Now I was coming to a place where there was nothing but opposition ... By opposition I mean there was always a danger of the boys regarding “them” and “us”.

He was aware, in other words, of a hostility, an alienation, that created a ‘them and us’ divide with the boys. In a document written in March 1972, he wrote: In this frustrating situation brothers were merely warders without the physical supports of a prison which led on a conflict of roles in the brother and a reluctant confusion in the mind of the boys, is he a brother or is he a screw. The large numbers in such custodial situations with declining staff numbers not only rendered meaningful relationships between staff and boys unattainable but repressive measures for the purpose of containment were the order of the day.

In his evidence to the Committee, he elaborated on this observation: When they would be at play a Brother would be on duty in the playground and looking after 120 boys. There was no opportunity to have any kind of personal relationship or personal contact with individuals ... it was a containment kind of situation ... it was kind of too much like a prison situation.

Br Abran, who gave evidence to the Committee, explained the relationship in more detail. He said: I think that was forced upon us by the boys themselves ... the boys would not allow us to use their first names. If we called boys by their first names they were beaten up by other boys because they were treated as being too familiar with the staff. In fact in the square boys would not talk to you for more than two or three minutes. They would walk up and down with you but they would have to leave after a definite period of time, otherwise they would be accused of snitching, to use their description, telling tales about somebody else and they would be beaten up when that particular person left the square.

At this point, he was asked if he was saying there was an alternative underground government in Daingean run by the boys. Br Abran replied, ‘I would say there would be to a certain extent, yes’.