Chapter 9 — Tralee

Emotional abuse

It also emphasised that ‘the use of corporal punishment was accepted in both home and school and certain aspects of diet, clothing, heating and furnishing were different from our present standards’.

Throughout the relevant period, Tralee had Brothers who were unduly severe and harsh with the boys. Where physical punishment is perpetrated arbitrarily and excessively, a climate of fear builds up which can impact on every aspect of life in the institution. The boys lived in fear, and many complainants spoke of this undercurrent of fear in their everyday life in Tralee.

Added to this climate of fear was the bullying by older boys of younger boys. It was a feature in this Institution. It was not properly addressed, either because of a shortage of staff engaged in a supervisory capacity or because of a failure to understand the seriousness of the problem. This increased the sense of insecurity and fear for the majority of children growing up there.

Tralee also had one acknowledged sexual abuser on the staff for a period of 20 years. Fear of speaking out, and lack of confidence in the willingness of Brothers to listen to them and protect them, left the children particularly vulnerable to sexual predators. The fact that this Brother could operate a bizarre ritual of bathing boys and being bathed personally by them leaves no doubt that the boys in Tralee were not adequately protected by the system and complaints were not properly dealt with.

The physical care that was provided was at best a minimum standard. The children were not well fed and were not dressed properly for a significant part of the period under review. The buildings were cold and drab and badly maintained, and there appeared to be very little in the way of recreation for the children. Indeed, when writing closing comments about Tralee in the annals, the final Resident Manager, Br Roy, commented that ‘recreation facilities hardly existed’.34

Tralee did not present a particularly edifying picture, but even with all of these shortcomings, it could still have offered a measure of comfort and security to the children, as was shown when one Resident Manager took an interest in the needs and welfare of the boys. When the atmosphere was right, the Brothers and boys could interact in a positive and supportive way.

Both complainants and former members of staff gave evidence as to the nature of the relations between the boys and the Brothers. Complainants spoke of instances of gratuitous cruelty that indicated a generally negative attitude towards the boys on the part of the Brothers.

One complainant, who was in the school in the 1940s, described how he was treated by the Brothers: There was no such thing as being good to you, there was no such thing as being good to you. You were there, you were just there to be worked and looked after. I couldn’t say I ever had a kind word from a Brother.

Another complainant told the Committee that he wet the bed until he was almost 16 and he got ‘some atrocious abuse over that’. He spoke of how the Brothers, but mostly one particular Brother, Br Ansel, would hold up the sheet after he wet the bed and show it to the rest of the School, mocking him. This led to him being labelled a bed-wetter by the other boys. This was, at the time, ‘the lowest you could be’.

Another former resident said that you never went to a Brother and told him your problem. He was being severely abused by Br Marceau, who was well known to the Congregation for his excessive punishment of boys in his care, but he could not speak to the Brothers about it because he did not know if he would be believed. If he was not believed, he could get a ‘hiding’ from the Brother he told. Then Br Marceau would be told and he would get a ‘worse hiding’ from him for telling lies. ‘That’s the way it was, you didn’t go to a Christian Brother because you didn’t expect any help from him’.

He also said that, if two boys had an argument, the Brothers would put them into a boxing ring and ‘let them settle it that way’, regardless of whether one boy was older than the other. Br Bevis confirmed that boxing matches were organised, although he maintained that boys of unequal size were not pitted against each other.

A fourth complainant, who worked in the laundry, recounted what occurred when smaller boys were brought to the laundry with wet sheets from their beds. He said: Yes, I can remember it quite vividly. Any of the boys – it depended on who the Brother was. They would parade the boy with his sheets in his hands, his wet sheets, the sheets he wetted in, and this little boy would be woken up there. As I said, I was between 14 and 15, I was old enough to get a job there, and I was able to see who is able to come in the door. Quite often the boys would walk in and the Brother would follow to humiliate the boy with his wet sheets, all the other children would follow the Christian Brother laid on to humiliate this little boy there. They would all be giggling, like kind of kids would be doing, giggling there, not understanding what the nature of that was. Here is this little boy there, standing with his wet sheets and he’s terrified. The Brother would turn around and say “right, ... he has wet his sheets, you have now got to wash his sheets. Now there’s the belt, give it to him so he won’t do it again”. To look at that little boy’s eyes, to look at that little boy’s eyes ... I wouldn’t punish him, the boy was too frightened. I understood what he was going through because I was frightened that way so often. If I didn’t flog that little boy I got the flogging.

This complainant recalled that, on the day of his departure from Tralee, two Brothers stood at the gate and told him he was going to a job in Co Cork. When he asked them whether they knew where his mother was, they ‘kind of sniggered’ and told him that his mother did not want to know him, that he had been a failure in Tralee and that he would always be a failure.

Another complainant remembered that he was always crying and so was given a nickname by Br Bevis. The Brothers and the boys referred to him by that name throughout his entire time in Tralee until he was 16. He was beaten on a regular basis, mostly for crying. Older boys picked on him and it was humiliating. Br Bevis laughed at him while calling him this name. Br Bevis did not remember a boy with that nickname but admitted that it was possible he could have called him that name. Br Bevis apologised if it caused him any hurt, but he denied being complicit in the taunts.

The witness also explained how he had been put into the small dormitory and that the boys who were put into this small dormitory were perceived as ‘pets’, i.e. the Brothers’ favourites: Being the pets you were really the worst treated because the other boys used to hate you. They used to think that you were spoiled and you were telling them information and things like that. So both ways you were caught like, you know.