Chapter 9 — Tralee

Physical abuse

Br Aribert told the Committee that it was never addressed when a Brother acted in breach of the guidelines on corporal punishment that were set down in their Acts of Chapter. He acknowledged that some Brothers probably overstepped them at times.

Br Mahieu acknowledged that from time to time he would have used a strap on the boys in Tralee, in particular for bed-wetting: I had my six hours teaching day job to do. I was then put in charge of the dormitory ... I now discover that there is such a thing as bedwetting, persistent bedwetting. I was not able to cope with that. Partly the reason I wasn’t able to cope with that was that there wasn’t sufficient back-up facilities or persons to help me with that ... sheets are wet. How do you dry them? There was some kind of a laundry there, to me it was very old fashioned looking, just full of steam and things like that ... I found it very difficult ... The result with not coping with it would be that it was a headache. It was something which wore me down after a while. It would mean that I could hit somebody, beat somebody ... using the strap didn’t work either. But I would just physically at times get tired, get frustrated and would use the strap and I bitterly regret that. I have always said that and admitted that a way back. I regret it, that that’s the way I tried to cope. But it was putting me into almost an impossible situation.

He regretted using the leather, he regretted overusing it, but only recalled one occasion when he used it excessively, i.e. unduly severely.

Br Bevis told the Committee that he never discussed the carrying out of corporal punishment with other Brothers. He said: No, I never discussed it, because if I was I was in charge that particular time. If the other Brother was in charge that was their duty.

Bullying amongst the boys occurred in Tralee and, although this bullying involved physical beatings and sexual assaults, there was no procedure for reporting such behaviour to the Brothers in charge.

One complainant referred to boys who left at age 16 but returned ‘because things didn’t work out for them’. They beat and bullied the smaller boys. When asked whether he could go to the Brothers for protection, he said no, that there was no system for protecting boys from that kind of bullying.

Another complainant, reiterating this, said that the Brothers never asked him questions about bullying. He said that the Brothers: were always standoffish, you did what you’re told and that was it. They didn’t make you feel like you could come to them with a complaint because you were frightened to go near them in case you got a beating for making a complaint.

This complainant also said that, if an older boy beat a younger boy, a Brother would not ask what happened. Such beatings happened ‘on several occasions’.

Another man explained that a group of boys had told him that they would protect him if he would be their ‘boyfriend’. This meant that if he masturbated them they would stop the other boys bullying him. He said that his failure to co-operate led to him being beaten by ‘some of the school bullies’.

One complainant who was in the school in the 1940s said that he was bullied by other boys and had: many the thick lip and many the black eye for no reason whatsoever. But I wasn’t one to fight back, I never was. I was bullied by the boys I think because, you know, I was different. I wasn’t brought in from the country for some mischief or something or another.

Another complainant said that he was beaten up for being a ‘pet’. He described the situation as follows: When I say a pet, a pet would be the kind of person that would be hanging on to a Brother and, the other boys, especially the bigger boys, would perceive that you were telling them everything that was going on. Now, there was incidents where boys used to rebel and like – at one time they went downtown, a lot of boys from the school went downtown and raided Woolworths downtown and, took a lot of stuff out of Woolworths, a lot of boys now. Obviously, like, the Brothers wanted to know where the stuff was. So we were the pets like and, of course, we would tell them everything. Where the stuff was ... You were picked on then because you were small and you were trying to get protection from the Brother. But in actual fact, like, the Brother couldn’t protect you because you were out amongst all the boys and the boys would beat you up. If they said to you “if you tell a Brother, we’ll beat you, you are going to be killed the next time again”.

He went on to say that they would get you: Anywhere in the school. The school is only a small place that you can go in, it is one square little area like. You couldn’t go far unless you ran away ... you wouldn’t get a bad beating, like, in a sense you wouldn’t need hospitalisation or anything like that, no. You got a belt across the head, a kick that kind of a way. “If you say anything like, we will beat you up again”. It wasn’t that the Brothers could protect you it was that kind of an environment.

The majority of the Christian Brothers who gave evidence on this issue were unaware of its being a problem. Four Brothers who were in Tralee during the 1950s and 1960s said that they were aware that occasional bullying occurred. Br Bevis said that he would deal with it when he came across it.

Br Boyce conceded that, although he never experienced any bullying or preying on the younger boys by the older ones, the boys were very clever and he would not know that it was going on. No boy ever came to him and he said that, if you asked a boy, he would not tell because the others would retaliate.

Br Mahieu stated that he and three other Brothers whom he named were aware that there were complaints from younger boys about bullying and molesting. He also told the Committee that he spoke to the boys about homosexual behaviour but was not asked to do this by the Resident Manager. He did it because of the complaints by the boys about being bullied, physically and sexually. He said that Tralee was a ‘reasonably happy type of place’ before 1966. Then it ‘changed radically, dramatically’ when the schools in Glin and Upton closed, and boys from those schools came to Tralee. The boys who came to Tralee were very streetwise, aggressive and tough. There were more fights, bullying and running away, and stealing became a regular feature of life in the School.