Chapter 16 — Marlborough House

Physical abuse

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.

One witness, who was in Marlborough House in the early 1970s, alleged that two members of staff (Mr Lombard and Mr Hugot)11 used a walking stick to beat him. The beatings were random and for no particular reason. He also complained of being fondled and, when asked to describe this, he said: What they would actually do, they would strip you and I remember, I can see him now ... he would come in and shove the stick between your buttocks or whatever else and stand in the doorway and watch him push you and feel you or whatever.

Neglect

From the documents furnished, the boys’ living quarters at the rear of the house consisted of one large room, where they ate and spent the day, and another separate room used as a dormitory. The boys lived in dreadful conditions. In 1951, Judge MacCarthy in a letter to the Department of Education referred to evidence that had come to light that ‘the blankets were not cleaned or disinfected in any way except every six years’.

However, a Working Party of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders visited Marlborough House on 4th January 1963, and their views were quite positive. They reported that the boys’ accommodation at the rear of the building was ‘in very good condition’ and that ‘Both the dormitory which is in use and the refectory cum recreation room were well heated, the beds appeared comfortable and there was a plentiful supply of bed clothes’. They also reported that the boys got a bath twice a week, and that ‘English school readers and history books are also provided and the Superintendent said that either he himself or an attendant is always available to help a boy with his reading’. The Committee recommended hiring a teacher part-time to teach elementary subjects and to introduce manual occupations or handicrafts, neither of which was implemented.

As stated earlier, staff in Marlborough House were recruited from the local Unemployment Exchange. In 1963, the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders recommended changing this recruitment policy. They recommended: increasing the salaries of the Superintendent and matron; and terminating the system of recruiting staff through the Unemployment Exchange and instead hiring Garda pensioners, ex-prison officers and ex-Army personnel. To recruit retired Gardaí required repealing the abatement of Garda Pensions, and an Order was made on 17th October 1966 and approved by the Dail at the end of the year. The Department reported that: ‘The recruitment of attendants is now satisfactory. Of the five existing attendants two are ex-Gardaí and the repeal of the pension abatement clause will facilitate the recruitment of Garda pensioners in the future’. Despite this, the Kennedy Report of 1970 referred to attendants recruited through the Unemployment Exchange, which made them unsuitable as ‘their function at present is purely custodial’.

In a series of newspaper articles which appeared in the Irish Press in 1970 one of the attendants was reported to have said: ‘They’re half starved – the food is designed to just barely keep body and soul together’. He described an ordinary day as: Rise 8 a.m., breakfast around 9–9.30 a.m., consisting of Tea, Bread and Marg or Bread and Jam. The boys then sit around in one room. At times they are supposed to sit facing each other across a wooden table. If “Jacob” or a more lenient warden is on duty they are allowed move around the room, play cards (there’s one pack), and if their parents bring them comics they may be allowed read. Dinner: 1.30 p.m., consisting of (every day) a coddle – sausages in soup with potatoes. No tea or beverages. They sit around again till 5.30 p.m. when they get – Tea, Bread and Butter. Nothing more is served till 9.30 a.m. next morning. If the warden on duty is in a good mood they may be allowed watch television till 9.30 p.m. when they line up for inspection before bed. They all sleep in one, locked dormitory.

Each of the witnesses said they spent each day of their detention in this large room with nothing to do. One witness, who spent time there in 1970, described this room as ‘painted smoky kind of grey’ with a large stove at one end where ‘We would sit around the fire basically all day’. This room, as described by the witness, was divided into two sections by a partition: one section consisted of two tables for eating, and the other section was ‘where we would sit down at the fire all day’. They had nothing to do except sit by the fire in this room, which he described as similar to the room in the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with ‘strong wire on every window’. He recalled only being allowed out into the outside yard for one hour during the whole month of his detention.

At that time, he said there were approximately 25 to 30 boys in the House. His daily routine consisted of getting up in the morning, going to the bathroom to ‘put some water on your face’ and going downstairs for breakfast and then sitting by the fire for the day. His description of breakfast was not particularly edifying. The boys would sit each side of the table, and one of the attendants would stand at the top of the table: Mr Lombard would stand at the top of the table, we would all have a mug of tea, it would be ready for you, and he would stand at the top of the table and we would all be sitting down. And he would say, “hey, you boy, catch”, and he would throw you the bread and you had to catch it before the other guy got it. Jam and bread. Then the next boy. “Hey, boy”, and he threw it to you and you had to catch it.

Another witness described the same routine in the same room as ‘... just one big room, when you got up in the morning you stayed there for the day until you went to bed at night’. The day was spent playing with the other children. He did recall board games: I know we played draughts, there would be cards, there mightn’t even be a full deck of cards, there would be a few cards missing here and there. They were basically the two. I think if I remember right, even the draught board it used to be beer tops that we used play on.