Chapter 7 — Artane

Physical abuse

Later, he said that he was positive that the Disciplinarian was the man who showed the other Brothers how to beat him. The strap was also used on this occasion: At that time I don’t think I should have been beat. That’s why I am so much hard against that. I don’t think that them men should have hit me that day for nothing at all.

Physical abuse

He could not forgive them for it. He was visibly upset when talking about this incident, and said that this resentment about the injustice of it all had hurt him all his life. Recalling another incident when he was sent to town and went to a shop without permission, he drew the distinction between deserved and undeserved punishment: I don’t forgive them men because I really do not forgive them because I really think that they beat me unnecessarily. Doing a good turn and they come and bash you ... I don’t think I should have been bashed up. I could have been bashed up for taking children to the bus and I might have been accepting it because I didn’t go in a straight line, I didn’t go from Artane back, I went to Woolworth’s instead. I know I was wrong there. I should have been bashed up for that. But I don’t accept being bashed up for the bread and jam.

Another witness, at the School from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, said: You don’t seem to understand, the place was built on terror, regular beatings were just accepted. What you’re hearing about is the bad ones, but we accepted as normal run of the mill from the minute you got up, that some time in that day you would get beaten. The last two out of the washroom got beaten. The last two out of the boot room got beaten. The last two down to the piss pots got beaten. Everything was timed and everyone that was last got beaten. We accepted that. We didn’t even regard that as cruelty. That was the way the regime was run.

Another witness, at Artane from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, was punished for trying to stop a Brother hitting his younger brother. He described the incident: [My younger brother] knew nothing, he was only 7, as you know, and I cannot exactly remember what he chastised him for but he started hitting him anyways so I said “leave him off, he is only a boy”. I was only a boy myself. He just laid off and he laid into me then. I just remember vaguely, that was my first impression of that particular Brother, you know.

Another former resident described how he was hit for bed-wetting: I used to wet the bed and try and hide it, try and make my bed dead quick. Then after a few days they used to come around the dorm and pull it back, probably because of the smell of piss. Then when they caught you, you just got a whack around the head, you know. You were told ... to take your sheets and put them up in the corner and when you came back at night you would pick them up.

A witness who was there a decade earlier insisted that, in his day, the bed-wetters were given the strap: They were called out of their beds, yes, while everybody was in their beds doing the things they were doing, reading. The sound box wasn’t on every night but it seems on these nights it would be off and he would call out, the teacher would call out the bed-wetters and they would have to line up and they had a strap, I seemed to think that the strap was about 14 to 15 inches long. It was about two inches wide and it was about half an inch to three quarters of an inch ... They had to hold their hand out and they would have to pull their sleeve up so there is no chance of the sleeve taking some of the pressure, so you would have to pull your sleeve up and you would have to hold your hand out and the rule was you didn’t pull your hand across, you didn’t pull your hand away ... If you pulled your hand away and the Brother got it on the knee, he would just hit you anywhere, the strap would land and you would have to roll yourself up into a ball to try and minimise the areas where this bloke could hit you. You would have it on the head and you would have it on your hands because your hands would be on your head. And used to have it on – he would wallop you on the back. Many times they would go into a bit of a frenzy while doing that. So you had to find the courage of not pulling your hand back and it did take a lot of courage to leave your hand there. The second rule was that you weren’t allowed to cry. They did not like boys crying. So when the strap landed on your arm, just about halfway up your arm, it would leave a mark on your arm and your hand would go numb. It was only when you got into bed that you could feel the life going back into your arm. It was difficult to be brave on those occasions.

A man described the beatings he received in the 1940s for writing with his left hand: I was born left-handed, and I learned to write at school left-handed and I was told that the devil was in me that’s why I was left-handed and they decided to stop me. They would come from behind, I wouldn’t know and they would come down with the side of a ruler or a cane on my hand to stop me using my left hand. They beat the devil out of me, that was the saying. I had to use my right hand to write. To this day I couldn’t cut a piece of bread with my right hand, I still do it with my left hand. I butter my bread with my left hand I can’t do it with my right hand. But I write with my right hand.

A resident in Artane, from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, said one Brother punished for ‘minor things’: Not getting your different letters crossed right when you are writing and just general things that happened in class, like, you know. Not singing properly or not answering when you should answer or not knowing something that he thought you should have known. Things like that, just general sort of stuff.

Another witness, at Artane in the mid-1960s, described being hit after being accused wrongly of tearing a blanket: We heard [Br Lionel] saying “who tore this blanket?” ... I answered him and I says “we don’t know” you know. He didn’t seem to take the answer too well, you know, and he called me down ... he asked me again ... So I gave him the same answer I gave him the first time, we didn’t know who tore the blanket. He didn’t seem to take that so the next of all he gave me a blow across the head there ... with his fists. He had a bunch of keys in his hand. The mark is there on my head if you wish to feel it or if any of your friends. The mark is there, yes. My head bled. I fell to the floor that day and going down I walloped my head off one of the bed legs there. There was rows of beds like in the other dormitory. I hurt my head as well falling to the floor because I wasn’t a very strong boy in them days ... I got hearing trouble through the blow afterwards, as life went on.

An ex-resident from the 1960s described the punishments that ensued every Thursday, following the inspection of underpants for soiling: ... when they were to be collected every Thursday night, and you were issued with a clean pair, you would stand by your bed with the underpants in your hand and the Brother would instruct another boy to go around and see who had soiled their underpants. If you came across somebody whose underpants were soiled he would raise his hand and you would go up to top of the dormitory and get a hiding.

He said that it happened more in dormitory number one, because that is where the younger boys were. When asked how the boys were punished, he replied: The punishment always started with facing the wall, because you faced the wall at the top of dormitory. Then when it came to your turn you put out your hands and you would get slapped.

The number of slaps depended on whatever Brother was in charge. He said that the same Brother wouldn’t be in charge seven nights of the week and it wouldn’t necessarily be the same Brother every Thursday.

Two Brothers confirmed that this degrading underpants inspection and punishment of boys did take place. One of them conceded: ‘If [he] says I put him facing the wall I will admit that. If [he] says I slapped him on the hands I would also admit that’. Although the Brother claimed that the reason for these inspections was because of complaints from the laundry staff about soiled underwear, there was no evidence from complainants that they were required to wash out their underpants if they were soiled, which would have addressed the problem. The Brother also accepted that boys who soiled their underwear did not do so on purpose, and added, ‘I do not think they deserved to be punished’.

Many former residents complained of punishments that were excessively severe and violent. One witness, at Artane from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, described seeing a classmate being beaten. John51 was a very slow learner, but the Brother teaching Irish was not aware of this. He kept asking him questions, and persisted until he got the right answers, even though the boy had no idea what the questions meant: We started tittering laughing. I think Br Laurent52 thought we were laughing at him. He asked him again. Poor John kept guessing and always getting the wrong one. Eventually Br Laurent just blew his top. He hit that lad and got his head and smashed it ... on the bench. The ink wells went up, he was covered in ink, snots, blood, everything. He spent the entire half an hour, three quarters of an hour beating this lad until John eventually had a run of luck and picked this out three times in a row. With that when the bell went or the whistle, Br Laurent just slumped down exhausted from beating this lad. While we were, in the beginning, tittering, some of the lads were crying, we were frightened that he was going to kill him. We made way for him at the door. It was ghastly. The Brother at the other end, one class faced that way and the other faced that way, never intervened once to come down. That wasn’t like Br Laurent but he just lost it that day. He battered this poor lad, he was in bits. So don’t tell me there it was isolated cases, that Brother at the other end should have done something about it but he didn’t.

One witness, at Artane in the 1960s, had reported a Brother for sexual abuse, and he described the purging of ‘badness’, the Artane term for sexual activity, that ensued following his reporting the matter: After that happened, the next day I was brought out of class and I was questioned about who I was committing badness with ... Because I didn’t name names at that particular time, but because of the beating I was getting, I was giving names of other boys who I had committed badness with and those other boys were taken out of class and they were beaten until they gave names. It was just one vicious circle that kept going on for two – for three days. I had been taken out because other boys started giving my name back again. It was even said to me, but who said it I don’t know, “you should have kept your mouth shut and none of this would have happened”.. But for three days I was systematically abused, both outside the classroom, in the dormitory, anywhere where I went within those environments. I was taken to a music room just off the corridor to the right of where the classes are and I had been beaten so much that I went to the toilet in a bin and another boy seen me and told a Brother that I had done that and I was taken back out and flogged again because I had done that. We weren’t allowed to go to the toilet; we were being punished for something that I had started.