Chapter 15 — Daingean

Physical abuse

He later added: You just had a fear. You were going down to the office, you were called down, you knew what was going to happen to you. It was the whole ritual of it ... You were so scared before you even got a slap ...

Another witness, there in the early 1950s, described getting a ‘flogging’, or ‘stripes on your arse’. He told the Committee the Brother would get the boy to drop his pants and bend over the bed to be punished: The first time it happened to me he had to show you sometimes to put your hand over your penis, your private – just in case the strap did go around you it would hurt you, it would catch you there.

One complainant was able to distinguish between the ordinary corporal punishment he received at home from that administered in Daingean: My dad sometimes smacked us, gave us a clout of a belt, a whack across the arse. What I got [in Daingean] was I got a searing pain, I will never forget it in all my life, never. The first of it was the shock. It was shock first of all. Then the second one I got and it wasn’t across my buttocks, it wasn’t across my buttocks, it was right between my buttocks with this strap. I don’t know where they got these straps from but it was specially designed for this, it wasn’t a belt. When they say you got a strap, it wasn’t a like a trouser strap, it was a specially made strap. It was very thick and it was about that length (indicating) and it was shaped for gripping with the hand for hitting you with. The way they used to hit you was they used to hit you between the buttocks and pull it up (indicating). The reason he had the other Brother there was to stop you going forward. He used to put his foot on the back of your shoulder, on the back of your neck and your shoulders. He would put his foot there and hold you so that when you got hit with the strap you couldn’t jump forward with the belt. That strap sometimes, they were expert with it, if he wanted that could come around and hit you in the testicles. If ever you got hit in the testicles, that gives you cramp in your stomach, you double up, you couldn’t even move. I passed out.

He went on to say that it happened to him on a number of occasions and that he also recalled it happening to other boys.

Witnesses said that the traumatic effect of flogging stayed with them. One said: It was shame more than anything. Being a teenager, like you say, especially with Christian Brothers. When I was in Artane, I was younger, I didn’t understand. But in Daingean I was practically a teenager. I wasn’t very big or anything like that but I was streetwise. Put it this way, if someone had done that to me outside the thing I probably would have ended up killing them or they would have killed me, one or the other. Being in Daingean, I accepted it. That’s all I would say.

Floggings were mainly but not exclusively administered at night-time in the washroom. A witness described the impact of being beaten in the yard in front of the other boys: When you are being beaten and you are feeling pain your torment is excruciating. “I will get you, you F– ing so and so, I will come back for you”; that’s the train of thought. And then it stays with you for months at a time. It will haunt you.

The description given by these witnesses confirmed the account given by the documents and other testimony of the way a flogging was administered. It differed, however in two ways. First, a wider range of offences was punished by flogging. The Oblates had listed the following five offences as warranting the severe punishment: (a)insubordination; (b)deliberate destruction of property; (c)public immoral conduct; (d)inciting others to riotous conduct; and (e)absconding.

In the light of the evidence heard, it is clear that floggings were also administered for many other misbehaviours. It was also clear that the way in which staff interpreted what amounted to insubordination or deliberate destruction of property was so wide, that minor offences and even accidents could result in the most severe punishment.

Second, the degree of fear engendered by these floggings was not apparent from the unemotional official description. Several of the complainants described the screams they heard as horrifying and fear inducing. One witness conveyed the effect that such screams had on him: ‘I remember one chap that ran away’. He said, ‘I remember hearing him screaming ... I said it to him afterwards that it was terrible. He said to me, “Sure, I heard you screaming as well”’.

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.