Chapter 15 — Daingean

Physical abuse

Br Abran,8 who was himself identified as harsh and cruel by complainants and who gave evidence before the Committee, described a flogging that he had been asked to witness in the 1960s. He recalled standing 15 feet away from the boy on the stairs on the ground floor. The boy had his hands on the steps and his nightshirt was lifted up.

He described how the boy, who received around six strokes, was screaming and shouting: ‘... he was only a small chap. I was horrified myself’. He recalled that there was another Brother present with the Prefect. He was asked by the Superior to witness the beating. He said ‘... I don’t know the circumstances, possibly rumours of a type of cruelty was in vogue and I was there to – acting as a witness or just to be there ...’.

When questioned further, he added: I said that the boy in question was a small boy who should not have been punished in that certain way anywhere, firstly ... I had never seen such an incident like that before. It was the first and last time.

He later explained that normally such a punishment took place in the office but, on that occasion, the Superior had requested that he be present as a witness: I think there was some kind of trouble, you had boys up in the roof and some trying to abscond. It was a weak era during that period apparently and because of that I was asked to attend this particular one, to ensure that things were sort of semi-okay ...

This Brother was a valuable independent witness, because he gave an account of a flogging separate from the version given by the boys and by the records. His account was not in conflict with the written descriptions in the discovered documents as outlined above. Both agreed on the following: (1)Blows were with a leather strap on the bare back or buttocks. (2)The boy would be kneeling. (3)The disciplinarian would administer the blows. (4)On some occasions, at least two Brothers were present. (5)The office, or a small room, or the stairs by the dormitory were used. (6)The procedure engendered fear. Although this Brother had been in Daingean ‘a few years’, he found the sight of the boy being flogged an experience that ‘horrified’ him.

Fr Luca, who was Resident Manager from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, added to this picture. He wrote in his Statement to the Committee: I know you have heard it said at times that they were stripped, well there weren’t stripped but they might have to let down their pants and get it on the backside ... ... I would have to say I don’t know how many slaps they had. I never saw the boys being punished while I was there. I didn’t regard it as part of my duty to supervise that. I know that the boys were punished and I know it was left to the prefect to decide what the punishment would be for the particular, well I don’t like to call it crime, misdemeanour. It was generally at the end of the day, there would always have to be two there, never one. I suppose, there would have to be a person available. It seemed to be the tradition which was never questioned. It was never done during the day as far as I know. Nobody ever punished any boy except the prefect ... The place wasn’t in view. As far as I know, the punishment was always performed in the washroom. The stairs went from the washroom up to the dormitory. Now, I am sure they could hear the boys, they would know anyway, they knew what the score was.

He added: I was never present, but my understanding was that they had to let down their pants, lean over the form they sat on in the wash-up room and it was administered there.

He further stated: On the corporal punishment, I don’t think it was excessive. But any corporal punishment, I think, I would regard it as an excess. It was something which I don’t think it was achieving the purpose for which it was intended, to be a control and an aid to discipline. Because it was degrading ... you were attacking a boy’s human dignity.

In effect, Fr Luca confirmed all the other testimony: the Prefect with another Brother present administered corporal punishment, and it was administered at the end of the day in the washroom, near the dormitory, and could be heard by the other boys.

The Investigation Committee was shown the strap used by the Prefect in Daingean. It was about three feet long, with a narrower section at one end for use as a handle. It was half an inch thick and about two inches wide. It was not as flexible as a belt described by Dr McCabe, or ‘light’ as described by Fr Pedro, but heavy and stiff and bendable and, when administered with force by an adult on a child, it caused extreme pain.

The Investigation Committee heard testimony from several complainant witnesses about their experience of floggings.

One witness, who was there in the early 1940s, gave the following graphic account: this Br [Jaime9] was the man that did the flogging. He had a title of a prefect or something ... What flogged meant was that you got down – you took off your trousers and you got down on your knees and you went forward on the front and he flogged you on the bare buttocks.

He remembered that this happened to him on four occasions ‘in a room near the toilet and near the dormitory’. He also said that ‘... on two occasions I was taken from the dormitory and on two occasions I was taken from the yard to be flogged in this same room ...’.

He went on: I was flogged four times and the first time was when I was three or four months there and a chap ... tried to bully me. I hit back, it was only about two punches. I was reported and got flogged.

This witness recalled another occasion when he received a flogging because he removed his trousers before getting into bed, which he was not supposed to do as it was associated with ‘being immodest’. He took his trousers off before getting into bed as they ‘were always dirty with either cement and the blankets weren’t changed only every two or three months anyway or the sheets’. He added that ‘there wasn’t any kind of display’, and for that he got four lashes of the strap.