Chapter 13 — St. Patrick’s Kilkenny

Allegations of physical abuse

Bed-wetting was a problem: Indeed, yes, it was a problem. We are quite clear I think as to what happened. We were told that in the earlier days that any older child who wet his bed had to bring down the wet sheets to the laundry in the morning. He might be left standing beside his bed for five to ten minutes when it was discovered that the bed was wet ... Then in the play hall when they lined up to go to school they would have been called out and they would have been slapped for wetting the bed.

Children who continuously wet the bed were woken up twice at night and were given limited fluids after tea.

According to Sr Úna, the slapping would have stopped in the late 1950s and 1960s and, after that time, the staff brought down the wet sheets.

On the general regime she said: While we know the general organisation and routine of the school it is possible that events occurred of which the sisters and the staff were not aware, although there is no evidence of this in the documentation. I think I said earlier that no matter how much you tried to care for your child or your children even in a family you cannot preclude the possibility of bullying or exploitation or whatever, as we know, tragically. The children were closely supervised but this may not have precluded isolated incidents of rough play, bullying, etc. The harshness of punishment would probably have varied depending on the personality of the staff and the sisters. I’m sure that some of the punishment must have been experienced by the children as harsh and humiliating and unmerited. Undoubtedly each child and each Sister and each member of staff has their own interpretation of what life was like in St Patrick’s institution.

In their final submission after the Phase III hearings, the Sisters stated: The Committee heard evidence from nine former residents of St Patrick’s Industrial School. This school closed in 1966 and the Sisters of Charity were unable to respond to the evidence because, given the passage of time, there was no-one left who could evaluate or respond to these allegations by means of firsthand evidence or even by hearsay. It is undoubtedly the case that physical punishment took place in St Patrick’s but the Sisters of Charity are not in a position to comment on their own behalf as to what occurred. They are prejudiced in that regard due to the delay in these allegations coming to the fore.

The Sisters of Charity accept that some excessive punishments were inevitable over the years, but no record of them exists. There was no punishment book in St Patrick’s and no record was kept of any punishment, so no contemporary documentation is available. It is impossible, therefore, to judge the extent to which individual memories of St Patrick’s were typical of the Institution as a whole.

Allegations of sexual abuse

Three witnesses gave evidence of being sexually abused by three different lay workers in St Patrick’s, Kilkenny. All three against whom the allegations were made are dead. The Sisters submit that they have been unable, due to the passage of time, to source information to assist the Investigation Committee with its inquiry into these allegations of sexual abuse. The Sisters did provide a list of former male staff, which corroborated one of the allegations, to the extent that the men named by the complainant were identified as being in the Institution at the time. The names recalled by the complainant were close but not identical to the names of former staff members on the list.

There were no documented cases of children being sexually abused in St Patrick’s. The Community annals covering the period 1879 to 1966 contained no records of any incidents of that nature. Sister Úna O’Neill, in the Phase I public hearing, said the first time the issue of sexual abuse was mentioned was when: in the summer of 1999 a past resident called to St Patrick’s for a visit ... He was trying to trace a man whom he said had worked in the laundry in St Patrick’s while he himself was a resident. He alleged that the man had abused him sexually and the sister undertook to try and make inquiries which she did, but no-one in St Patrick’s remembers the man. That’s not to say he wasn’t there. Nobody remembered him.

Within a few months, the Sisters of Charity received a solicitor’s letter. She explained: We first became aware of allegations of abuse in St Patrick’s I suppose formally on 27th January 2000 when we received correspondence from a firm of solicitors regarding a past resident who had been in St Patrick’s and who was alleging abuse.

When the Sisters of Charity received these three complaints, they made a general review of the documents and files relating to St Patrick’s. Again, the results were the same: We found nothing in their files nor indeed in any of the documentation to substantiate the specific allegations that were made by the 11 men who are appearing before the Commission ... There is neither documentary evidence nor is there supplementary evidence from the sisters who would have lived there at the time.

One resident, who was in St Patrick’s from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, made allegations of sexual assault against a farmhand. He told the Committee: His name was Bruce4 and he used to look after us at playtime, you know. He always carried a stick with him. There was one occasion where I had 25 on each hand, well several of us had that, we don’t know the reason for it. He use to take me down to the hay barn and strip me off and he would strip himself off and, you know, I had to do things to him and he tried to do things to me of a sexual nature ... it happened – six, seven and eight years old, during the summer months mostly ... I knew what he was doing. I didn’t feel right, if you know what I mean, but I didn’t know what it was all about. I knew I was doing something wrong.

When asked if the perpetrator was a teenager or an adult, he replied: A teenager I would say ... Small type of fellow, with ginger hair ... [It happened] at playtime. He would take me down to the hay barn. He would just “come along, come with me” and you knew something was going to happen and there was nothing you could do about it; you couldn’t go to anybody ... I wanted it to stop, but I didn’t know how to go around about it ... he was violent ... He worked on the farm and I think he used to look after the boiler house as well, He was an odd job man if you like ... He would take me up to the hay loft, make me take my clothes off and he take his off. He’d lie me on the hay and he’d started interfering to me and I had to do the same to him. He would lie on me and press up against me and all that type of thing.

In his statement, he said he had a clear impression the nuns had known what was going on. He explained: they brought a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and we had to go into the classroom. I can’t remember the nun’s name but she asked me about it, did he do anything to me, did he interfere with me. I had to look at the statue and I said no because I was frightened. All I know is that there was some of us standing outside and then we was called in. We went through one classroom and it was in the other classroom you had to go in ... I never seen him after that day.

The witness was very explicit about the abuser, the nature of the abuse, and the subsequent investigation. He said he did not know in advance why he was being brought into the classroom ‘until I got in there’. The statue of the Virgin Mary ‘wasn’t normally there, no, and I had to look at it’. He recalled the kinds of questions that the nun asked: I can remember asking about Bruce, did he ever do anything to me, and I must tell the truth and all this. I remember looking down and shaking my head and saying no.

‘I was too frightened’, he added. ‘Of Bruce, of getting beaten up and that again’.