Chapter 16 — Marlborough House

Physical abuse

In April 1956, the Department of Education received a letter from the father of an eight and a half year-old boy who was detained in Marlborough House for one month for stealing ‘Sweets Lemonade & Cigarettes, from the [a local club], this is his first offence’.

The father wrote that he had visited his son on the previous Sunday and had noticed he was pale. He asked him what was the matter, and was told by another boy that he had been hit on the head by another detainee. His son then told him that he had also had his head stuck in a wash basin and the water turned on by the same boy. The father lodged a complaint with the Superintendent, and wrote to the Department noting in this letter that the ‘young man who Ill Treated my Child is No other than the one who stabbed his Brother to death with a knife’. He requested that his child should be returned to his custody.

The boy’s father also complained in person to the Minister for Agriculture on the same day as he wrote the letter. The Minister for Agriculture telephoned the Department of Education that afternoon. The Department official who took the call informed Mr Grange, the Superintendent in Marlborough House, immediately and he undertook to enquire fully into the alleged ill-treatment.

Mr Grange investigated the matter by taking statements from the attendant on duty on the day, and from the mother of another boy involved in the same incident, and from the boy accused of the ill-treatment. The attendant on duty, and the woman who witnessed the visit of the father with his son, both alleged that the father was intoxicated on the day and had become violent when he discovered that his son was in the same place as a boy who was accused of fatally stabbing his brother.

The boy who was alleged to have been responsible for the incident wrote a two-page statement, in which he did not deny that either incident took place, but instead gave an innocent explanation for the blow on the head and the washbasin incident.

The day after the letter of complaint was received, the boy at the centre of the allegation was examined by a medical officer, who found ‘no evidence ... of any injury to his head or any other part of his body’.

The Probation Officer was also contacted by the father at the request of the Minister for Agriculture. He, in turn, wrote to the Department of Education, informing them that, in his view, the father was ‘just using the incident to force the discharge of his son from the punishment the court has seen fit to administer’.

Mr Grange and his wife, the matron, both gave statements that they recalled the scene made by the father of the boy during the visit to his son. Mr Grange believed that the father came that day with a view to causing a scene, because he was aggrieved that all the boys involved in the club break-in and theft had not received similar punishment. He stated that, the following week, the rest of the boys received similar detention periods, and the parents of the boys had calmed down. He did not address the issue as to whether the allegations were true or not.

A few days later, the father wrote to the Department of Education and withdrew his complaint. On the same day, he called into Marlborough House and apologised to the Superintendent for the ‘trouble caused’.

The Department were happy that ‘no harm came to the boy. All that was involved was the usual argy bargy between young boys’. No further action was necessary, as the father ‘wishes to withdraw his complaint and to forget the matter’.

1.Complaints of physical abuse in Marlborough House were not independently investigated but were usually investigated by the Superintendent in charge of the detention centre. 2.Senior officials in the Department of Education either ignored complaints or delayed in responding to criticism which was coming from independent sources and not just from the boys themselves. 3.Witnesses spoke of multiple severe beatings in the course of relatively short periods of detention. One attendant was particularly brutal, and yet was promoted by the Department even after complaints were made. 4.The wide age differences between the boys and the lack of any segregation made bullying and peer abuse inevitable. There is no evidence that this was regarded as a problem by the authorities. 5.There were many complaints about assaults by staff and at least one was witnessed by another staff member who reported it.

Sexual abuse

On 31st January 1951, an attendant at Marlborough House was convicted of indecently assaulting two boys detained in the Institution. He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. The complaints of sexual abuse emerged in a separate hearing concerning the two juveniles. The two boys made their complaints to Mr Justice MacCarthy in the Children’s Court. He, in turn, must have passed the information on to the proper authorities, as a successful prosecution ensued. There is no record of this in the discovery from the Department of Justice or the Department of Education.

The only reference to the affair has been outlined above in the correspondence between District Judge MacCarthy and the Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education (see para 10.060 ), and when it was raised at a meeting between the Department of Education and members of the Resident Managers’ Association.

The conviction of an attendant for sexually abusing boys in Marlborough House in 1951 should have generated a record of some kind. There is no information available on the background to this incident, and this makes it impossible to estimate the extent of the abuse by this man or others in the Institution.

Two of the witnesses who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee complained of sexual abuse by staff.