Chapter 15 — Daingean

Physical abuse

Several complainants, in the evidence they gave to the Committee, were careful to make it clear that not all of the staff were brutal or excessively violent.

Witnesses drew the distinction between a Brother who punished fairly and another who did not: He was more humane about it ... He didn’t beat you until you submitted ... you got six of the best on the hand or backside ... And that was it. He didn’t lose it and start kicking you from one end of the office to the other.

Some witnesses singled out particular men as ‘nice’, but stressed that there were also a few people who did terrible things: ‘There was a ring of them, there was a handful of them and they done what they liked’. The consistent complaint was that these ‘nice’ men on the staff did nothing to curb the activities of the men who were harsh and excessive. These men could not protect them from the others.

As one witness said: There was no recourse. There was no safe haven. There was no hole you could climb into. There was nobody you could talk to. You were on your own.

The Brothers who were more violent created the pervasive atmosphere of threat: ‘Inside the institution I had to keep my head down because I didn’t want to be beaten,’ said one witness.

In his report of July 1945, Mr Ó Siochfhradha, the Department of Education Inspector, wrote: I looked at the corporal punishment book. There was no entry from the beginning of this year because for the past half-year the stick has been dispensed with as a means of punishment and in its place is a system of allocating marks for good behaviour and marks for bad behaviour and the bestowing or withdrawing of little priviledges as a result. The Resident Manager is very happy that this method is much more efficient in getting across to the boys that they should practice the good and avoid the evil.

This paragraph confirms there was a punishment book that has since been lost. It asserts that corporal punishment was no longer in use, when it is now known it was still in use over 20 years later. It also shows an awareness of techniques to control behaviour that did not become widespread until decades later. In fact, corporal punishment remained in use as the main system of discipline until 1970, when the Resident Manager was told to stop using it.

Fr Hughes said in the Phase I hearing that he was sure a punishment book would have been used but that, when he asked ex-staff members, there were ‘always very vague responses’.

In a regime that was admittedly heavily dependent on corporal punishment, the need for a proper system of administering it was fundamental, and keeping the record was part of a proper regime, as well as being required by law. The information given to the Department Inspector in 1945 about the punishment regime in Daingean was entirely misleading.

Contemporary complaints about excessive use of corporal punishment revealed how complaints were dealt with by both the Department of Education and the management of Daingean, and the kinds of investigation carried out once a complaint was made.

The standard procedure followed was that, once the Department of Education received a complaint, the Resident Manager was contacted for his comments and observations on the substance of the complaint. If the allegation was of physical abuse or neglect, the Department would often send in its Medical Inspector, who would then report back on the matter.

In 1953, a father wrote a letter of complaint to the Department of Education, in which he complained that his son was flogged several times in the School.

The Resident Manager responded to the query raised by the Department. The issue of ’flogging’ was dealt with by describing the procedure. He said that ‘flogging’ meant that a boy was ‘put on his knees receiving a few (5 or 6) light strokes of a light strap on the back’. This was not done ‘except for serious offences such as (a) insubordination (b) deliberate destruction of property (c) public immoral conduct (d) inciting others to riotous conduct (e) absconding’.

The Medical Inspector, Dr McCabe, was sent in to investigate. She described the ‘flogging’ process as stated earlier in this chapter: “Flogging” ... consists in taking the offender into a small room, removing his pants and administering 5 or 6 strokes on the bare posterior with a leather strap which is quite flexible, about 1” wide and 1 yard long (It resembles a strap used to put around a suitcase) The punishment is administered by the disciplinarian who is a very understanding patient man and always offers an excuse in defence of the boy if at all possible.

She then described her examination of the boys. ‘At the Medical Examination’, she wrote: I failed to find a single mark on any boy’s body that indicated he had been punished. When I questioned the boys about the so-called “flogging” each and every one admitted that if they had been punished they had deserved it. I cannot see how discipline can be kept in this Reformatory unless the Manager has some deterrent.