Chapter 7 — Artane

Emotional abuse

He was still angry at the enormity of it all. He railed against the system that allowed such numbers: 825 kids were imposed on us. No. 1 by the Superior, No.2 by the authorities, by the Archbishop of Dublin, who wanted the kids sent to Artane, not Letterfrack or to Galway because they were too far from home ... 825 where the maximum was supposed to be 800 and you had kids on the floor and it was really cruel and unnatural and wrong.

This Brother also saw children who were isolated and lost within the system. He told the Investigation Committee: I suppose you never knew a kid, like, to talk to him. You would pick out a lonely child ... If he hadn’t a friend it would be tough. Really tough. You could see a kid that is lonesome, you would take him in the hand or something. He was the only boy from Gorey. He was the only boy from Wexford ...

The Investigation Committee heard the evidence of ‘the only boy from Gorey’. He had been sent to Artane for stealing a purse when he was ten and a half years old. He explained that his family were very poor and his sister had told him to take it. He was sent to the Industrial School for five and a half years in the 1950s. His mother had simply told him he was ‘going away for a few days’. He told the Investigation Committee about his early days in Artane: I think I was the only one from Gorey ... It was very difficult [to make friends] for a long time ... I was terrified ... there were so many boys ... I never saw the likes of it before in my life ... The first Brother that ever met me there was Br Bruce the day I went there. I don’t know what it was, from that day onwards we seemed to get on very well together. He was explaining the school to me that night and ever since that we were friends ... He was brilliant, yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant ... he was exceptionally good to me. For what reason I couldn’t tell you. But I liked him and he liked me ... I would be chopping sticks for him and he would bring [extra food] down under his habit.

Apart from this friendly Brother, he lived in ‘a constant state of fear’. Yet this friendship, so valued by the terrified young boy, was in itself problematic for the Christian Brothers.

As well as being an enormous institution, Artane was totally male dominated, and the Investigation Committee heard evidence from a number of Brothers who served in Artane about the lack of women in the Institution.

A Brother who served in Artane in the late 1960s described how the lack of females there at the time left a lot to be desired, ‘The gentle touch of a woman ... was missing’.

One Brother who served in Artane from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s recalled that Artane was a totally male dominated place. He particularly remembered a group of boys coming from a convent in Mount Merrion in the 1950s. He described how they arrived in Artane in brand new clothes and were dressed like dolls. He remarked, ‘we could see the female hand all over the place. They never met boys, they never met men. They were thrown into Artane’.

He also felt that the dormitory for the young children should have had a nurse working there full-time to care for the boys. It was not within the power of the younger Brothers to make suggestions such as the need for women in the place. Visitors could be spoken to about some deficiencies, but they were not ‘on the ground’ and could be a bit removed.

Another Brother, who also served in Artane throughout the 1950s, was asked whether the boys craved affection. He replied: yes, affection and because of the lack of women around to put it baldly. That was kind of a gesture that was made later on towards the end of the 1950s or the beginning of the 1960s to get them foster parents to get them more and more in touch with the outside world and that kind of thing and maybe to improve the feeding or the grub ... they were a few extra women brought in in the nursing set up ... but still it was Artane.

The arrival of four nuns to work in Artane in 1963 is noted in the Visitation Report for that year: There are four Sisters in residence in a Convent in conjunction with the Infirmary. They supervise the Infirmary and spend time in the dormitories every day, checking the beds, the boys’ clothes, the wash rooms and so forth. Because of time schedules it is unfortunate that they cannot have much contact with the boys and hence their influence on them cannot be great. The two in the dormitories feel the lack of this opportunity and are hoping that as time goes on they will be able to have more contact with the boys, especially the little ones. The Superior has this matter under observation and consideration and he hopes to be able to provide more contact with the boys for them in time.

The Cussen Report had recommended that boys be medically and psychologically examined and assessed for suitability to be sent to an industrial school. That recommendation was not implemented, and the result was that children were ordered to be detained in Artane and other institutions when they were unsuitable and where there were no facilities for dealing with their disabilities. This put extra pressure on the Institution and made life more difficult for the children themselves. Respondent witnesses gave evidence of their awareness of these problems, and the authorities in later years complained to the Department about its failure to identify and differentiate between children who had different needs, and particularly those who suffered from mental or psychological disability.

Mr Dunleavy in his report for the Congregation also identified this problem, which he stated was exacerbated by a reluctance on the part of the Brothers to direct boys to other institutions which were better able to care for them, even when there were places available for that purpose. He quoted the Visitation Report for 1968 as follows: Some are very retarded ... Others are mentally deficient, and in recent years the proportion admitted in this latter class has been on the increase. As such children require very specialised attention it is not easy for an industrial school to adjust its programme to care for them in a satisfactory manner. The policy of the Department in directing these boys to Artane, without consultation, is quite unfortunate.

He acknowledged that there was something of a double standard in the attitude of the Brothers in Artane: However there does seem to have been a certain reluctance in the school, once children with mental problems had been accepted, to allow them to leave the school for Institutions which might have been better able to care for them.

Even as late as 1969, it could be seen that there was no systematic way of dealing with children who were misplaced in Artane. Mr Dunleavy remarked: Equally disturbing are a collection of applications from 1969 for boys to be admitted to St. Augustine’s Special School as being mildly mentally handicapped. It transpires that in some cases psychiatric evaluations of the boys determining their handicap had been made up to two years before an application was made on their behalf to St. Augustine’s Special School.

He concluded his review of this feature of the Institution: It is clear from the above that while a deplorable practice existed of “dumping” mentally and emotionally disturbed children in Artane Industrial School, a school which was certainly not equipped to deal with their special needs, the school itself took no steps to alleviate the situation, and indeed appears to have been slow to recognise that the situation existed in the first place.