Chapter 15 — Daingean

Sexual abuse

In the late 1960s, another complainant described being in an animal shed with two other boys, one of whom was ‘the biggest bully down there’. The incident began when this boy held a pitchfork up to the complainant’s neck: He said to me, “I want to ride you” ... The other fella was with him was his sidekick ... He was pulling at my trousers and he said, “I want a gobble”. I didn’t even know what it meant ... I said, “Leave me”. The bullying was heavy and I was afraid of that pitchfork ... Eventually they let me alone for a few minutes and I burst through them ... I got over the gateway and I ran off.

When he was brought back to the School, he told Br Enrico why he had run away, and Br Enrico comforted him and believed him. This witness described seeing this boy abusing a younger boy: ‘He pulled him out of the small section in the middle of the day and brought him down to the toilets ... That’s what they were known for, sexually abusing anybody they could’.

The predatory behaviour of the bigger boys towards the smaller boys was a constant theme. A complainant from the 1940s said: In the evenings, especially in the dusty evenings – the way the yard was built, there was one entrance into it, the bigger fellows went up to one end and we remained at the entrance, the end that we went into. There was a wall ... The big fellows were on the far side. There used to be things happening that were new and strange to me. You see, there would be bigger fellows saying to you that they wanted to be all one with you. That was the expression.

The kinds of sexually abusive behaviour described to the Committee by complainant witnesses also emerged from the documentation. During a Garda investigation into the riots of 2nd May 1956, which has been dealt with earlier in this chapter, a resident of Daingean made a complaint to the Gardaí about two boys who had subjected him to sexually abusive acts. In the presence of the Prefect of the School, Br Jaime, he made the following statement: I remember one day in the month of March last. [two boys] asked me to put my hand on [one of the boy’s] private part and feel it. I refused them, and ran away, but they followed me and caught me, and brought me back to the wall in the yard. [One of them] forced my hand on to [the other’s] private part, and told me to feel it. I did it because I was afraid of them. [He] was helping [the other] to force my hand onto [his] private part. I felt [his] private part, and I kept it there for a few seconds. I took my hand out then. [the other boy] hit me on the arm because I refused to put my hand on his ... private part. I saw the front of [his] trousers opened, and when I had my hand on his private part. I saw he got a thrill from it. I saw fluid coming from [his] private part. I often saw [another boy] and [these two boys] feel each others private part in turn.

As a result of the above statement, additional charges were brought against the two boys, who were found guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years in Borstal.

As stated above, if boys were discovered by the staff to be indulging in ‘immoral conduct’, it was normally dealt with by the strap being administered by the Prefect, but in the absence of a punishment book, it is impossible to say how often this occurred. Had it not been for the riot, the incident described above would not have come to the notice of the Gardaí.

The kind of relationships that formed between older and younger boys was a characteristic of Daingean. The behaviour was so institutionalised that a vocabulary evolved that seemed to be current only among the boys in Daingean.

One complainant from the 1950s experienced the nature of the relationship, but denied that there was a sexual element: most of the older boys had a hag ... It was more or less a status thing. When you were there twelve months you knew all the ropes and it was kind of like a girlfriend more or less but there was nothing sexual about it. It was like you were kind of protected. You see it was in the small sections and when all the fellows in the small sections knew that he was your hag they wouldn’t go near him.

A ‘hag’, then, was a young boy who was befriended by an older boy, such that a protective relationship developed.

Another complainant also from the 1950s, who was frank about the sexual nature of such relationships, used the same term: ‘... the bigger fellows would come back on the smaller fellows what they used to call hags. Call them their girlfriend or whatever you like’. A lot of it was going on, but, he explained, ‘it would have to be done as quiet as possible but at the same time like it wasn’t something that any one of the Brothers had a blind eye for. They could see it happening’. He went on to describe what happened at the pictures on a Saturday night: All the smaller fellows would sit at one end and behind them the bigger fellows, the bigger fellows would be passing down the sweets and cigarettes and whatever else to give the smaller fellows down the other side’.

He added that, later on, in the exercise yard: you would have the smaller fellows one side and the bigger fellows the other side but you would only have one Brother supervising so there was no problem for a smaller fellow to mingle his way into the bigger crowd and there was no problem for the bigger crowd just to cover whatever act was going on ... I could give you three or four or five or six out of the smaller section that would have been mixing with the fellows from the bigger section.

Another complainant from the same era, the 1950s, used a different term to describe the same behaviours and relationships: it’s like having a girlfriend or something like that, we called them wan dolls, it’s like a pal ... I am not saying you wouldn’t have sexual abuse with them or something like that, I am sure you would ... you would masturbate them and they would masturbate you ...

He said that, if boys got caught, the ‘purity strap’ would be used on them. The ‘purity strap’ was the use of the strap to beat boys found engaged in sexual activity. He went on to explain that contact with the younger boys could be in the shop, which was common to both the bigger and younger boys. Once the older boy had found a ‘wan doll’, a relationship would develop during the periods the boys were in the Institution. Yet, he added, ‘When everybody leaves that place, Daingean, nobody says another word about it, blocked, nobody opens their mouth about it’.

When asked what proportion of boys were involved in this relationship culture, he answered: I think most of them was in it because it’s well known. We could ask, “Who is your wan doll”, that was the phrase ... All my mates in the big section, they all had wan dolls.

It came as a surprise to him when he left to discover the practice was not spoken of outside the walls of Daingean. When he met a former inmate, he casually asked, while reminiscing, ‘Who was your wan doll?’ The man ‘never said another word, he got up and walked away ... Nobody talks about it’.