Chapter 15 — Daingean

Emotional abuse

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’.

The result of this ‘them and us’ divide was an extremely serious one. The boys were treated as frangible objects, one being as good or as bad as the other, and the boys who came from hardened families, many of whom had a couple of generations going through the reformatory school system, set the tone for staff relations. One witness, who had also been in Artane and knew the system, described how he coped with Daingean: At the end of the day you went in there, you sussed the situation out. I wasn’t ... a walking angel but I knew what to do. I didn’t want to be knocked about. When I was in Artane I was a monitor in charge of other boys. I was, as I say, street wise, I taught myself. If I go down the wrong road I paid the penalty. I was already being punished by being sent to these places. Why should I add to it?

Those boys, who could look after themselves, could cope with the two alternative governments within the School. They quickly moved up from being a ‘fish’ (a new boy) to being a bully. In the world of Daingean, one witness explained, ‘... it’s an unfortunate fact that if you don’t bully you are bullied’. As another witness put it, ‘... if you were a loner you got picked on, if you are on your own you are going to get slaughtered’.

Fr Luca estimated that 50 percent of the boys were recidivists who would fall back into crime. The other 50 percent did not appear in court again, but according to him, amongst them would be the boys who were broken by the system. It was a harsh world, where identity became obliterated. Fr Luca explained: Every boy who came into the School in those days would get a nickname, straightaway. He might not even be asked what his first name was. If he was from the country he be called the name of wherever he was from, and they would not know his name.

This system of nomenclature was confirmed to the Committee by a witness who was in Daingean in the late 1950s. When asked, ‘What was this boy’s name?’ he replied: I haven’t a clue. You never knew people’s surnames. Sometimes there was that many and you wouldn’t even know their first names, it was either Dub, Corky or Jack. Unless you knew somebody personally they used to keep their ethnic groups.

Fr Luca recognised the depersonalising effect of this loss of individual identity, and set about trying to change it. He wrote: So when I went to the School the first thing I did was to interview each boy and record his own name, but also the name of his father, mother, brother, sisters, set him into a family and talked to him about the importance of family, and the importance of his name. There is no name in the language as beautiful to you as your own name, so let us respect it.

Fr Luca went to Daingean in the mid-1960s. From 1940 to that time, it seems that these basic details were not automatically recorded and nurtured. It is not surprising so many witnesses before the Committee complained about being depersonalised and lonely.

This scenario was confirmed by testimony heard by the Committee. The more fragile children felt trapped, on one side being bullied by the tougher boys, and on the other living in fear of falling foul of the Brothers. For these boys, Daingean was not an experience that toughened them up and hardened them for more crime. For them, they felt like victims of the system. Having endured such a system, these boys felt different, alienated from their families and friends. One witness told the Committee of how he felt when he returned home from Daingean: My father was in 1916 and he spent a year in prison in England ... The one thing he said to me they were treated humanely, the jailors treated them humanely. I couldn’t say ... back to him that I wasn’t treated humanely because I didn’t want anybody else to suffer my agony. I didn’t want to talk or do anything ... Nobody would know what to do.

Another witness told the Committee: ... it’s like men at war who experience things cannot bring these things back to people in the street because people would not understand the situation that they were in. They dehumanised themselves. They dehumanise their enemy in order to be able to psychologically deal with killing them. The same is true when I came out of Daingean and I am looking at all of these people in the street and I am thinking they don’t know where I have been and they couldn’t understand me and you feel different to them and that’s why I went to England. I tried to escape.

Fr Murphy in his evidence told the Committee that, in the early 1960s, Fr Pablo,34 who was a trained psychologist, ‘... was suggesting changes ... trying to bring forward a better method of assessment and of treatment of these boys rather than the punitive, repressive thing’. It does not need training in psychology to recognise that a boy whose mother has recently died needs protection and guidance, while a boy from a criminal background needs containment. The system, as it evolved in Daingean, treated them both the same, offering only what Fr Murphy called ‘the punitive, repressive thing’.

In his evidence to the Committee, Fr Luca acknowledged one effect of institutional life on the children: ... that was one of the biggest punishments that you could give them, to take them from their own native place wherever it was and put them into a place where they didn’t want to be and to keep them there.