Chapter 15 — Daingean

Physical abuse

Another witness, there in the late 1960s, gave the following account: [The Brothers], they had me on the steps, I got into a fight or something, they had this belt which was about a metre long ... You would go to bed and then you were called out of bed, you wore of flimsy sort of nighty which was down to your ankles. You weren’t allowed to wear anything else underneath that. You were brought to the bottom of the stairs where the dormitory was, marble stairs. You would kneel on the stairs. There was me and another fellow ... I remember him wetting on the floor because he was – there were three of us actually ... While they were doing this other guy, you would stand and watch them doing the guy in front of you. He would be on all fours. [One Brother] would stand on your hands and you would be kneeling down and as flimsy as the cotton night thing was that was lifted ... Up to your waist ... Then you would get – I think I had about six on that occasion ... I am almost sure after you had been done, you came back, (to bed) it was like a rota, like a line. I remember [ ... ] wetting himself on the floor next to me, I can remember it, it was steamy and smelly, I was concentrating more on that, I don’t know why. These things stick in your mind when you are a kid.

He described how the punishment was administered: [One Brother] would stand on your hands and [the other Brother] – it was peculiar the way he used to bring the strap in that he would bring it this way (indicating), under his left arm ... he would bring it underneath (indicating) and it would come right around like a golf club and he would bring it that way ... It was peculiar how he would always get at least one into your balls.

He also described the physical effects on him: Difficulty walking for a while and the marks would stay for months ... It was a thing like you would get guys, “Give us a look. Let’s have a look at your strap marks”. It was like a badge of honour ...

He said that the boys in the dormitory ‘could hear what was going on’ but they ‘couldn’t see it’.

Another witness said: They used to slap at the end of the stairs in the evening, you would be in the dormitory, if you were to be punished that’s where they punished you, they bring you down to the stairs and the echo of the screams would be for the benefit of everybody in the dormitories.

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.