Chapter 14 — St. Joseph’s Kilkenny

Complainant account of sexual abuse by fostering family

Another complainant was five years old when she was committed to St Joseph’s with two of her sisters, and remained until she was 16. She was from a Traveller family and could remember many arguments between her mother and father as a young child. She did not remember the court experience, but her sister told her that she did not think the family understood that the committal would be for such a long period. Her brother was committed to another industrial school at the same time, and she never saw him during those years. Her father was killed in the late 1960s. She has since been told by relatives that he was disappointed and remorseful that he never managed to get his family out of St Joseph’s.

This witness’s main complaint was that she had been sexually abused by the father of a family to whom she was sent for holidays. She stated that children in St Joseph’s went out on holidays on a regular basis. They were sent to families for the month of August. A large group of them would go up to Dublin on the train to be met by their host families at Heuston Station. She was sent to a family who had no children of their own. Initially, she was sent with another girl from St Joseph’s and it was all very exciting. She was paraded around by the couple to their friends’ houses and shown off as the ‘child they had for the month of August’. The husband started to abuse her. It started with touching and eventually led to more serious abuse. She cannot understand how the family were not vetted. She was discharged to them, and the abuse continued when she lived with them full-time. When she started dating her boyfriend, she told him what was going on and he confronted the man’s wife and told her what her husband was doing.

She said she had been taken out of school because the couple permission to have her discharged to them. They suggested that she could work for them in their office in Dublin. She stayed with them for about a year.

She remembered an occasion when another pupil of St Joseph’s, who was staying with a befriending family, called to visit her. The father attempted to abuse the young girl, who had to lock herself into a bathroom. The girls discussed it afterwards, but the complainant was the only person the girl spoke to.

She had very few vivid memories of her initial period in St Joseph’s. She was committed with two of her sisters. The three of them were put into the green set in the charge of two nuns, one of whom she described as ‘evil’. The other would hit the children across the ears for no apparent reason.

She went to school in St Joseph’s primary school and then to the Presentation Convent in Kilkenny. She did well in school and was quite disappointed when she was taken out just before she was due to sit her Intermediate Certificate to stay with the foster family.

She believes that she was treated differently from other girls in St Joseph’s because of her travelling background. For example, she suffered verbal abuse, being called ‘tinker’ by other girls. Her sisters received similar treatment. The nuns knew it was going on, but there was no attempt to stop it by the Superiors or those in charge. She also felt her family were discriminated against when they visited her.

She has heard from other family members that her father often cycled from [another county] where he worked to see them but was turned away. She made inquiries about this from family members, and she found out recently that her father had tried on several occasions to get the children out of the School. For the past 30 years she had believed that her father did not care about his family. It was only when the documents were shown to her in the process of this inquiry that she learnt the true situation and it has angered and upset her greatly. She believed that, if he had succeeded in getting them out, they would at least have been loved. They never got any love in the School. As a result, she found it difficult to this day to hug her own children.

She maintained some contact with her friends from St Joseph’s, and has attended some reunions to see them. She does not regard it as her home nor does she go to see the nuns: she attends just to stay in touch with the girls, as they have a lot in common. Most of the girls in her set, the green set, have very bad memories but she believes that girls in other sets would have different memories. In particular she says that those in the blue set ‘were made’. The sets were segregated: every child in the green set felt they were nobodies, and she believed that was the reason why they were in that set. Most of the girls in it came from dysfunctional families. The red set was not too bad – they were ‘half right’. The blue set was a totally different scene, because they got all the extras. Sr Astrid had overall responsibility for all sets, but was specifically in charge of the blue set. Once assigned to a set, there was no possibility of moving to another.

She thought Sr Astrid would like to believe that she was close to all the children, but that was not the case. The children tried to keep in with her but Sr Astrid had her own cronies and pets, and she gave them extras.

It is difficult to see how the nuns in St Joseph’s could have known if a befriending family was abusive unless the child herself told them. However, they should have taught the girls to recognise inappropriate behaviour and to report it.

Differential treatment between the units is a major criticism of the institution.

Positive witnesses

The first positive witness proposed by the Sisters had no contact with her natural parents and was almost two and a half years old when she was placed in St Joseph’s. In her early period there, she was cared for in the nursery but she had very little recollection of that time.

During the rest of her period in St Joseph’s, she was part of a group known as the ‘blue set’, which had Sr Astrid in charge, assisted by a number of lay staff. There were 30 girls in the blue set, ranging from five to 16 years. Once a child was assigned to a set, it was usual for her to remain there. She cannot remember any occasion when a child was transferred from one set to another, nor does she think it would have been possible to ask for a change of set. The different sets would get together during recreation in the playground, and when they went to outside school after the age of 10 or 11. They also came together in the recreation hall for an hour or two of television, as there was only one television at that time. Each set had its own dormitories, subdivided into senior and junior, its own sitting room and refectory.

Daily life in St Joseph’s involved a routine of getting up in the morning before school and carrying out a number of chores. The older girls would have some duties in looking after the younger girls, to ensure they were getting their meals or that they were going to church in the mornings. Children did the washing up after meals. On reflection, she was very satisfied with the food. They had porridge for breakfast, and dinners varied with food such as stews, corned beef and smoked haddock. They had a drink of cocoa after school, and tea, bread and jam at teatime. The older girls sometimes helped out in the nursery, especially during the summer months. Before she left, she had also worked in the bread room.