Chapter 8 — Letterfrack

Physical abuse

Difficulties manifested themselves in conduct such as fighting and bullying, which were constant and worrying features of life in Letterfrack. Sometimes, the children absconded and that was also a constant worry. The children would run away at night but they would usually be apprehended, sometimes by local people, and returned to the School soon after.

He said that the threat of punishment hung like a cloud over the boys. It was arbitrarily administered without any supervision either inside or outside the classroom. Br Anatole was given a leather strap on arrival but he got no instruction on its use. He did not confine himself to the use of the strap; he would punish boys with a slap of his open palm, his fist, a stick, or indeed a kick.

Although the Brothers were given no guidance regarding corporal punishment, Br Malleville,30 the Resident Manager, often complained about the excessive use of corporal punishment and was quite strict on such matters when boys complained to him about excessive beatings. Br Anatole recalled one incident in particular, when Br Malleville approached him and told him he had received a complaint that a boy had been punished for the wrong reasons and he wanted an explanation. Br Anatole described how the boy had been beaten about the legs with a leather strap and made to run around the yard. The boy complained to Br Malleville, who reprimanded him, Br Anatole.

Br Anatole described another particularly savage beating, when a boy was beaten on the bare buttocks with a leather. The boy was placed over a chair on the stage and beaten in front of other boys by Br Iven. Br Anatole did not himself administer the beating but he was present during it. A former resident who recalled the boy being stripped and beaten recollected that the handle of a sweeping brush had been used to administer the beating.

Br Anatole said that Br Malleville heard about the beating and, that evening, convened a meeting of the three junior Brothers who had been involved and reprimanded them for what had occurred.

The other two Brothers implicated, Br Iven and Br Dondre, denied to the Investigation Committee in evidence that this incident ever took place or that they were involved in it.

Br Anatole informed the Committee that he and his colleagues had inherited from some of the older Brothers the practice of making the boys run around the yard. It was a punishment generally administered by the senior dormitory Brother for absconding. The Brother would stand in the centre, and the boys would form a circle around him and they would be made to run around the yard and would be beaten if they started to tire or to lag behind. In a Garda statement, Br Anatole described it thus: I can recall the heavy silence punctuated by the rhythm of the boots pounding on the concrete yard as the boys ran around and around, eyes cast down as they ran ... Their faces were cold and emotionless, unsmiling and blank of any recognition. I carry this memory with me still, as I do all the other punishments meted out to boys in our care.

He described its operation as follows: Well, the dormitory leader was the man who dictated what was to be happening. I was not a dormitory leader I was an assistant to Br Dondre so a decision to run around the yard was never mine; but if it was done I might be called upon to stand in the corner of the yard and be there to give moral support to the other Brother who was in charge – the Brother stood in the centre of the circle rather like a ring master and the running was done in silence. It was supposed to calm everybody down, I think it did have that effect actually on recollection, there was a sort of a silent running. When it was over the boys usually went off upstairs to bed, it was done late in the evening time.

As a punishment, however, he stated that he regarded it as pointless and ineffective, ‘It was devoid of human dignity, it was humiliating, it was pointless and probably completely ineffective’.

Another way of punishing was for a boy to be seated in a chair near a football game and to be treated as if he did not exist: I don’t think the intention was to kick footballs directly at the boy it was more or less an act of isolation to humiliate him, it was a form of punishment other than corporal punishment. If somebody did kick a football at him, and that would happen, the ball would bounce off his head or off his chest or something, there would be a big cheer or a bit of a laugh. That again was part of the humiliation of the experience.

Another punishment was peculiar to the refectory. It involved making the offender kneel in silence during meal times. He would not receive any dinner: ... if they were kneeling on the floor the withdrawal of food would be part of the punishment as well. We learned these things from seeing them done, they were handed down like a code of practice so to speak, which was never questioned or supervised in any way by anybody else.

Br Anatole said that corporal punishment would be administered for a myriad of offences: If you were walking behind somebody and they were talking you could take out your leather strap and sort of give them a swipe on the back of the legs or a smack on the backside.

He would also hit them for failure at lessons: For example, you asked me for an example, maybe in the classroom I was under pressure to get my Department of Education accreditation so I would be short-tempered at times with pupils who didn’t spell words correctly or something. The traditional way at that time was you would give somebody a smack to make sure so they learned it properly.. There was a very crude connection between if you hit somebody they would learn better that way, that was the basic thinking at the time. That was the way I was taught at primary school and I repeated that myself later on as an adult in the Christian Brothers.

He also beat boys who attempted to jump out of the showers to avoid the sudden changes in temperature, which could go from scalding hot to freezing cold in a matter of seconds. He thought that beating boys for a natural reaction to extremes of temperature seemed particularly cruel.

He spoke of collective punishment and recalled one incident where a boy stole a Communion wafer. Nobody owned up and the whole School was punished. Collective punishment could take many forms, such as the deprivation of food or being made to run around the yard.