Chapter 13 — St. Patrick’s Kilkenny

Allegations of sexual abuse

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’.

From this witness’s account, it would appear that the abuse had been detected, and involved several boys, although until then the witness had believed ‘I was the only one’. When the investigation was taking place, he recalled, ‘I wasn’t the only one that went in, I think that quite a few of the young fellows went in’.

He could not, however, recall the name of the nun who questioned him He said, ‘I can’t remember, I have been trying to think of it. She was in charge of the classes’.

Another witness, who was in St Patrick’s from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, and who was under 10 years of age, also alleged he was abused while there. He told the Committee: there was a lay worker as they call ’em ... As far as I could see he was a handyman, he was working on all parts of the School. ... He was a kind of under handyman to a man called Mr. Fitzgerald5 and he used to give him his orders ... I only know his first name, Charles,6 I never knew his second name ... Well, he was always abusing boys, always. It was well known amongst the boys themselves. Mr Fitzgerald and him lived in an apartment, they both had a room each, he used to take us in there when there was nobody about and then let us out, you know, tell us to say nothing and let you out when no-one was looking. It was so frequent or so often that the boys, we used to be waiting for it to happen to see who was going to be picked next., that type of thing. You just happened to be nearest to the door or whatever, you know. Whatever opportunity he got you know it was going to happen, ’til one day Mr Fitzgerald caught him letting me out of the door, out of the bedroom. He came back to his bedroom for something and he actually took him out in the yard and he hit him two or three times in the face over it, and he had a black eye for weeks ... I heard Mr Fitzgerald saying, “don’t ever let me catch again, I told you about that” ... he caught him with my trousers down and telling me to pull them up, and pushing me towards the door ... Mr Fitzgerald knew exactly what he was doing and he gave him a good three or four smacks in the face ... It was the talk of the school for a week about what happened.

He was able to describe the man: At that time I would say he was about around thirtyish I suppose, thirtyish mark. I always remember his face, he was like a weather beaten fisherman, he had a wrinkly face. I could put him in his 30s, between 20 and 30, 25 and 30, something like that. Maybe more.

He did not report the abuse: there was no-one to tell because the people above you were too, you were frightened of them, you know. I mean you couldn’t treat them as a mother or a father, you just couldn’t run to them and say “someone done this to me” because you were all in the same boat. When nobody else is saying anything you don’t say anything.

Despite receiving a black eye, the man continued to make advances: We always thought, “has it stopped?” He tried it again several times. He tried it even after I left the School.

He said he was followed some time later, when he was in another industrial school, to his home town, and Charles had got him into a field, but he had hit Charles and escaped on his bicycle.

The third witness to complain of being sexually abused was in St Patrick’s a decade later, between the years of the late 1950s and mid-1960s. He also described sexual abuse by a layman employed by the School. He recalled: The refectory was to the left as you walked down this corridor, to the right hand side there was this door out on to the yard. When you went around the corner there was a boiler house or something and there was a bedroom in there where [he] stayed. He brought me there on many occasions and he sexually abused me. This small one bedroom, just basic, there was a boiler house, very warm building.

He described what happened: he used to take his trousers down and he would have me playing with his penis and he would play with his own penis and ejaculate over me and he would play with my penis and kiss the lower part of my body ... [I was] Approximately eight years of age or possibly from seven up to ten years of age. I am not exactly sure of the year.

When he was asked if he ever mentioned this to anybody in the School, he replied: No, because I was terrified. He threatened me that he would throw me in the furnace if I said anything. I think his reward to me he used to give me sweets. There was a three wheeled tricycle, a big one. I could have a spin on this, this was something I never had before so this was my reward ... I knew it was wrong but I was terrified.

In their written Submission after the Phase I and Phase III hearings, the Sisters of Charity wrote: In relation to St Patrick’s, due to passage of the time the Sisters of Charity were unable to source any information to assist the Commission in its inquiry into allegations made by a number of former residents ... These former residents were at St Patrick’s between 1943 and 1965. None of them ever told anyone in authority of what had happened to them and the allegations only emerged many decades later. Although one of these witnesses suspected the Sisters knew of abuse by one of the workers, there was nothing in the evidence to suggest that they in fact knew or somehow ought to have detected the activities described by these witnesses. No-one was convicted of abuse at St Patrick’s. There were no records or documents of any kind found anywhere that might have assisted in an evaluation of this evidence. There was no corroboration. For the Sisters of Charity, responding to these allegations was a practical impossibility.

• There was no culture of facilitating disclosure. Children felt afraid of telling the nuns what had happened, ‘When nobody else is saying anything you don’t say anything’.