Chapter 7 — Artane

Physical abuse

Several witnesses complained about Br Olivier’s excessive use of physical punishment. One witness said he used to punch boys on the jaw without warning. The Brother responded to this allegation by saying: Yes. That could be. I am not denying it. I cannot remember any specific case ... but I am not denying that such a thing could have happened.

Another witness told the Committee, ‘life with Br Olivier was one long beating ... for one reason or another’.

This witness described in detail an incident which he believed was a punishment for trying to get out of playing hurling, the sport in the charge of Br Olivier. The witness described how he developed a blister on his finger and tried to lance it with a needle, as he had seen his grandmother doing. He said that Br Olivier, however: ... accused me of deliberately trying to harm myself to avoid going training. He said he would cure it for me. That evening in the dormitory, him and Br Boyce19 called me into the boot room ... they had a kidney shaped utensil and boiling water. They got hold of me and I realised what they were going to do and I tried to make a run for it. The pair of them got hold of me and Br Olivier got my finger and shoved it in. I screamed and roared and tried to pull it back and they held it. After 10 or 15 seconds the pain went. It just went numb and it was bearable. They held it in for a while and out it come. That’s when he told me to walk the passageway, gangway which was linoleum in the centre of the dormitory. As time went on it swelled, it swelled. He obviously went to bed.

The night watchman found the boy, who had not gone to bed because of the instruction from the Brothers to ‘walk the passageway, gangway’, and told him to go to bed: The next morning I got up my finger was a white ball of flesh, waterlogged. I reported sick, I reported to Br Cretien20, which you had to do to get to see the nurse. I told the nurse what happened. I was treated at least a month or six weeks until eventually all the skin peeled off. Sometimes the nurse would cut it. After some weeks I was like a plucked chicken, bare skin. In time the skin grew back on the nail. To this day that finger, especially in cold weather, is numb, there is no feeling in it. I swear they must have burned the nerve ends.

Br Olivier gave his account of the incident: ... I was trying to help him, I was trying to cure him. That was a common thing long ago in the country, a bread poultice, you know, in water, like, before it comes to the boil. That’s what I tried to do with him. He looked upon it as a penance I think, but I didn’t mean it as a penance.

Physical abuse

The complainant told the Investigation Committee that there was no bread involved. The records show he was treated in the infirmary for a septic finger and that the Artane general practitioner saw him to treat the finger on two occasions, although the witness did not recall being seen by the doctor.

The Investigation Committee was faced with two conflicting versions of the motivation for this incident. On the one hand, Br Olivier claimed it was an attempt to treat a septic finger. On the other hand, the complainant firmly believed he was being punished for injuring himself to avoid games.

If the main motive was treatment, then the treatment should have been administered with due care, to ensure no further injury would result. There was an infirmary with a trained nurse available, and no explanation was offered as to why this facility was not used. The two Brothers opted to use instead a ‘hot poultice’ and clearly did not ensure the water was of a low enough temperature to prevent scalding.

There were, however, elements of punishment to the whole procedure. The boy was so terrified that he tried to make a run for it. Despite being in obvious pain, he was then made to walk the corridor. Normal resources for treating sick children were not used, suggesting the Brothers did not take the injury to the finger seriously. Given these facts, it is not surprising the boy believed he was being punished, rather than treated, for his affliction.

Moreover, the respondents’ defence was more cautious than a totally innocent explanation of the incident would suggest. In cross-examination, the complainant was initially told that Br Boyce had no recollection of the event, casting doubt on whether it had taken place. When he gave evidence, however, Br Boyce recalled the incident and said the water was not boiling. It turned out that both Brothers could recall the event, but insisted the motive was driven solely by concern to cure the finger.

The occurrence of the event was no longer in dispute. Nor was it in dispute that he was treated for some weeks for a septic finger. The boy’s feeling that it was more punishment than treatment does not seem surprising. Subsequent events proved he needed care and professional treatment.

A second, subsequent incident happened some considerable period later when the boy again failed to attend training. Br Olivier, he said: took me into the washroom. What we used to do if a Brother was going to beat you that night we tried to hang on as long as we could with our trousers on and our clothes. If you stripped off you only had a night-shirt. You didn’t have pyjamas. I thought he is not going to come, good. I stripped off. Sure enough he came in. He brought me into the washroom. He told me to kneel down on the floor and he stood over me with his arms folded. He was quite cool and calm and he said ‘I have told you now more than once to come out and I am going to give you the hiding of your life’ real calm. He was enjoying it. He said ‘hold your hand out. Hold your left hand out and don’t drop it until I tell you’. He took this leather strap out and he gave me four or five straps. I couldn’t hold it out any longer because the strap was starting to go up my arm. I had welts on it. I dropped it. He said ‘I have warned you not to drop your hand. Now, put your other hand out’ and I did. He started to beat me again. Again I dropped it. He said, ‘I did tell you’ and he went berserk. When you seen this man when he lost his temper he was like a wolf. His jaws literally went out and he bared his teeth and he just lashed at me. I was running trying to get away from him. He hit me, it didn’t matter where, legs, back, head, anywhere. During that I must have passed out because when I came around there was water running on my head and the taps from these baths were about that wide ... real old fashioned taps. I must have thought I was dreaming it. Then I thought I was drowning. I drew back and I cracked my head on the nozzle of the tap so I had blood coming down, I had tears, I was soaking wet. He wasn’t finished then. He threw me on the ground and he said ‘you’ll walk that floor for the rest of the night. Of all nights I thought the watchman would come but the watchman didn’t come that night. Nobody came and I walked that passage until 6.30 the next morning. I was so terrified of going to bed that he might come back and beat me again. I walked the whole night without sleep, I swear to God .... The injuries, you just put up with them. I was black and blue but I just had to put up with them ... I never missed a session after that, I can assure you.

In evidence, Br Olivier queried the complainant’s recollection in relation to this incident, as Br Olivier said that he would not have been training boys of the complainant’s age at this time.

Br Olivier did not recall the incident but, with honesty, again said ‘I am capable and I am ashamed to say I am capable of that’. His approach was clear and candid, because he refused to say that it did not happen simply because he could not remember the incident. He was willing to take responsibility for his general behaviour, even though the details of the complainant’s account did not make sense to him or trigger a memory. There was no dispute that such an incident could have happened, and the likely explanation was that the complainant was mistaken about the time lapse between the events he described.

Br Olivier was also involved in a shocking incident that began when a 12-year-old boy accidentally defecated on the floor in the sports dressing room. The Brother came on the scene and some of the excrement ended up on his shoes. The Garda statements made by the witnesses differ as to how this happened, and the precise sequence of events, but what is admitted in statements made by Br Olivier is that he told the boy to lick the excrement from his shoes and he did so. The Brother, in his statement to the Gardaí, said that he was shocked when the boy did this and told him to stop: ‘I only said it out of frustration. I didn’t mean him to do it’.