Chapter 7 — Artane

Sexual abuse

A witness spoke about an unwelcome approach: I was working in the tinsmiths and this boy attacked me and threw me on the floor and lay on top of me. At the time it was a sex act. I didn’t know it was a sex act at the time. Like I said, I never even saw my aunty’s ankles. Of course I didn’t know that, that’s what it was. That’s what he was doing. It was reported. When Br Cretien asked me, “yes, I was attacked”. He still gave me six, right on the hand, not anywhere else, directly on the hand. He said he had to punish both of us. That boy never came near me again. I believe he was punished again for other acts which he did to other boys.

Another witness explained the reason for fearing becoming known as a sexually active boy: You know, there was two things that you never did in Artane. One was you never touched another boy in a sexual area. Me personally never did anyway. Another thing is that you never told of it if it ever happened to you because then you’re open, you’re open season then. If you are open season that means the boys get you. So you don’t tell anybody, you keep your mouth shut and that’s it ... Nobody, except a priest. I told nobody. I am sure it happened to other boys and they told nobody either because you didn’t tell. You know, I mean, you were a soft touch then.

A further witness was embarrassed about his sexual activity, even though it was by consent: Well, it is probably a bit embarrassing, but to be honest with you I was actually involved in that myself. It was just sort of playing around basically ... No, it wasn’t very frequent but it happened every now and then. But it was very common in Artane, it was very common that boys would be playing around with each other ... Most of the time, 99% of the time it would be a case of just two boys messing about.

He went on to comment on the Brothers’ awareness, and on the prevalence of one particular form of common sexual activity: ... you have got to appreciate in places like Artane, well it wasn’t very, very common but quite a lot of times boys would be masturbating each other. If another boy that wasn’t, you know, doing that would find out they would say it was badness.

Another witness recalled an admonitory talk by a Brother: ... and the Brother who was giving the speech, God knows who he was, turned around and says “right, we know what you boys are doing, you have got to stop it”. This Brother in particular said, “We found over 300 children playing with each other”. Now there was only about 450 in the school. We were all standing there listening and that and, I don’t know whether they ever stopped or not.

A witness spoke of the enormous interest of the Brothers in ‘badness’ and the sin of impurity: Badness was the sin of impurity. They had the sixth commandment. I remember Br Jules used to say there is more people in hell because of the sixth commandment, the sin of impurity. They were absolutely bonkers on this. When we were growing up, young lads, 14, 15, you are getting feelings, you are getting wet dreams and things like that ... As I say, they must have thought that must be one of the reasons of so called badness. It meant boys messing with one another, thought, word or deed or whatever. They regularly wanted to know if you spoke, swore, told bad jokes. They had a mania for this sort of thing.

The Congregation in its Opening Statement said that it was aware of the possibility of sexual abuse among the boys themselves. Precautionary measures were taken to ensure that such abuse did not occur, including careful supervision of the boys at all times but particularly in the dormitories. The Statement referred to a 1946 Visitation Report which expressed concern about the danger of a lack of proper control in the infirmary, on the grounds that failure to ‘exercise proper control over the boys who are confined there when convalescing ... may be a source of serious danger to their morals’. The Statement said that, although Brothers who worked in Artane confirmed that such abuse occurred, there was no documentary evidence available to the Congregation concerning individual cases of peer abuse. The only documented case of peer abuse appeared in records disclosed by the Department of Education and Science.

Brothers testified to their awareness of peer abuse, but their accounts differ as regards its prevalence, the Brothers’ obligation to look out for it, and the punishments meted out.

One Brother, Br Saber, who was in Artane for 10 years in the mid-1940s and 1950s, spoke about his awareness of sexual abuse both involving boys with boys and Brothers with boys. However, he stated that there was no sexual activity during his time in the School, which he attributed to Br Tyce,77 the Resident Manager, and to the sodality.

Br Boyce, who was in the Institution at around the same time, said that he was aware of the possibility of peer abuse, or ‘badness’ as it was known, but that he never came across it, and his knowledge of the subject came not from the Brothers but from overhearing boys’ conversations. He confirmed that he ordered the boys to sleep with their hands crossed, but said that it was nothing to do with masturbation, it was just the custom.

A Brother who was in Artane during the 1950s stated that he never heard of any type of untoward sexual activity, either amongst boys or staff, the possibility of boys masturbating was never mentioned and he never punished for it.

Br Laramie,78 who was also there in the 1950s, stated that he was aware of the term ‘badness’, which was code for sexual activity. He said that the boys and various religious magazines used the term. Although the Brothers were aware of the issue, he could not recall any specific incidents involving boys.

Another Brother who was there throughout the 1950s said that he remembered the term ‘badness’ as referring to peer abuse and that all staff would have been aware of the term. Despite this, he said that he never encountered any incident of badness nor had to punish a boy for it. However, he was contradicted by a colleague who remembered having to punish a boy who had been referred to him by this Brother who insisted that punishment was necessary: I was in charge and he reported to me that [the boy] was interfering with other boys and he kind of said to me you will have to do something about it. As I understood it then that when some boys were interfering with other boys, they would be punished and one of the punishments they would get would be on the backside with the leather. I wasn’t too keen on doing it, I had a certain reluctance about it. I didn’t do anything for a while. Then Br Gaspard came back to me again and told me that this was going on and that I had to do something about it. I just brought him to the boot room. My memory now, I am working from memory now and it is a long time ago, my memory is that he had his nightshirt on him, he bent down, I gave him three or four smacks of the leather on the – not on the bare backside and he ran out the door and I was glad to see him go.

Despite having to mete out this punishment, his recollection was that sexual activity between boys ‘wasn’t a major crime’, although Brothers were told to be vigilant.

A Brother who was in Artane in the 1950s stated: We were always being alerted to be on the look out, to be a presence in places where the boys would be, and I think we did that to the best of our ability. But we would be aware that things happened and there were normal healthy young fellas at that time so we tried to be as protective as we could be in that area by being a presence around the place. We would have been alerted to be on the lookout, to be there, to be careful and to make sure that people are not injured in a situation like that, or that damage is done to them. So, that we would be there as a protection. It would have been—we would be, I suppose, on the alert and keep moving around and wherever.