Chapter 8 — Letterfrack

Emotional abuse

A Garda report was sought, which stated that the family were in poor circumstances and the father and mother were not suitable persons to be entrusted with the custody of their son. The Department official reviewing the case stated: In the boy’s favour it must be said that he was committed for his first offence, he was only 10 years of age at committal, has spent 4½ years in the school and his conduct there has been satisfactory. He has completed the primary school programme. Even though his parents are not to be recommended I think it would be only fair to the boy to let him take his chance and release him.

A more senior official recommended to the Secretary of the Department that the mother be informed that, if she could get him a job other than working with his father, they would be prepared to discharge him, having stated that: this boy has undoubtedly been detained too long for a single offence. In addition he is evidently of good intelligence and well conducted.

It took his mother another eight months to get him a suitable job and, following another letter of representation, he was released in December 1967, three months before his due date in 1968.

A boy was sentenced to three years in Letterfrack in 1963. He was only five years old when his mother died, and he was taken to reside with his grandmother who was too old to care for him. As a result, he fell into bad company and was convicted of stealing from a local grocery shop. His father subsequently remarried and made representations to his local TD to secure his son’s release, as he had a promise of a job for the boy aboard an Irish Flag Ship. The School reported his conduct was good but he was frail and not suitable for a seafaring life. The Garda report was favourable, and the Department decided to release him, with the comment regarding his health that ‘such a life might improve his health’.

It is clear from the Department of Education files that parents initiated the efforts to secure release of their children. Once this process started, there was a system in place whereby reports were sought by the Department from the School and the Gardaí. No particular weight was attached to any report, and the Department occasionally overrode the views of both the School and the Gardaí. Children whose parents did not take steps to have them released do not appear to have been considered for discharge, as there is no evidence from the files that cases were reviewed by the Department other than in the manner outlined above. The fundamental unfairness of incarcerating a child for six years or more was never addressed by the Department of Education or by the Congregation. Applications by parents were dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and those children whose parents did not take this initiative were left to serve out their full sentence without remission. If this was a child-centred service, there would have been on-going assessment by the Resident Manager as to whether the child’s best interests were being served by continuing in the school. No such assessment took place.

The climate of fear has been described earlier in this chapter, in the context of punishment and bed-wetting, but it also had consequences for the emotional well-being of the children.

It was well illustrated by a number of the former residents. One resident present in the late 1950s and early 1960s said: From the time you went into that you lived in fear, you were just constantly terrified. You lived in fear all the time in that school, you didn’t know when you were going to get it, what Brother was going to give it to you, you just lived in fear in that school.

Another former resident described the sense of fear: What happened was when I went down there first I was a nervous wreck, as any child would be. You are going down here and I have never experienced a regime like it that was going on in the place. It was awful, it was very very cold, it was very very lonely, but the worst thing about it all, it was so scary.

This sense of fear was often heightened by the manner in which punishment could be deferred by the Brothers. One resident present in the late 1960s described it as follows: I think one of the worst things in a sense, in one way it would be as well if they were to give you a beating and get it over there and then, but you had the thing of various times, “I’ll see you after” ... Sometimes they would leave this for days and you think they were after forgetting and then they would pounce on you.

Another complainant present in the late 1950s remembered one particular Brother who often deferred punishment: Br Noreis was his own judge, jury and executioner. His favourite thing would be “I will see you later”. Sometimes you were lucky and he meant shortly later and it was over and done with, sometimes you were unlucky and it could be a week later and during that week you walked around terrified you never knew when that – well, for want of a better word, when the hand was going to come down and grab you, then you were brought into the library ... we were in a home where the children there were put in for various reasons, criminal or because they had no one to look after then. We got sent there to be educated and looked after, fed nourished, I won’t say loved, but looked after; we got none of that.

Violence was a feature of life and was reflected in bullying. This ranged from schoolyard bullying to bullying at meal times and, at the extreme end of the spectrum, peer sexual abuse. One resident from the late 1960s described the bullying: ... you had to fight for survival because there was a lot of bullying and a lot of stuff going on. You had to be on your guard all the time because there was bigger kids and stronger kids, different kids and different types. Rough kids and bad kids; there was all different types. Yes, it was dog eat dog. It was survival, you had to do everything to survive, you know. You had to fight, scratch, you had to do everything for survival. There was no love or affection or caring from anyone, you know. And there was no one to talk to, you just had to form your own way of survival.

Another resident from the early 1960s told the Investigation Committee: when I got down to Letterfrack, needless to say, I was very very scared. Now I am not going to ... I am no angel, never have been, I was a scamp, if you like on the streets at the time, so my father always called it to me anyway, black sheep of the family, but I know in my heart and soul this is not about what I had done. It was the way I was treated in there and I was treated awful, I was starved, I was in rags. I felt I was bullied from the moment I went down until a couple of months, or a couple of weeks before I went out.

There was a lot of bullying over food. For many years the system of food allocation was that a number of boys would be seated at each table. Food would be delivered to the table, and the boys themselves would divide it up. This had the unfortunate consequence that younger, smaller or more inexperienced boys received less than other boys. One former resident from the early 1960s described his experiences in this regard as follows: Well, you will always get a bully like, even to this day and age you will always have a bully in school. You will always have one boy that would be that bit more dominant over certain young fellows. You’d get a certain thing on your plate, a hard boiled egg might be on your plate or vice versa, that was a luxury to get a hard boiled egg and he would just take it off you, something like that.

Two Brothers, Brs Dondre and Karel, who were present in the early 1970s, told the Investigation Committee that there was a lot of bullying by bigger boys on the younger boys during their time in Letterfrack.

The remoteness of the School, the high pupil-staff ratio, the failure of Managers and staff to care for the individual needs of the children, the high levels of discipline and punishment as well as the consequent atmosphere of fear meant that Letterfrack was for many children a very lonely place. Despite all the hustle and bustle, many boys lived in fear, both of staff and each other. This meant that they were reluctant to form close friendships out of fear of being seen as weak or giving another boy a hold over them. A recurring theme in the evidence was this lack of friendships. A number of individuals told how they carried this fear of forming personal attachments with them into adult life.