Chapter 2 — Upton

Physical abuse

Fr O’Reilly at the Phase III public hearing referred to the inherent difficulties in using corporal punishment in circumstances where there were no clear policies or guidelines. He described it as ‘a trap’: Corporal punishment is a trap, if you allow corporal punishment without having the most clear guidelines possible, it is a trap, it is a trap for everybody. It is a trap for the boys and a trap for the adults. Because what you are saying is it is okay to hit children. And there are times when they do things that are wrong and that are very, very wrong, and that cause an enormous problem for the entire Institution. So inside yourself you think, “well, it is okay”, and the only response is to punish even more. It is a trap.

He did concede that, at times, ‘the punishments that children received were brutal’.

The Order admitted that corporal punishment was used for absconding. Absconding was a serious problem, because of concerns for the safety of the boys, and the possibility that they could damage neighbours’ property. Fr O’Reilly conceded at the Phase III hearing that ‘boys who ran away were often severely punished because of the problem that it created in the School, the unease that it created among the rest of the boys’. The punishment administered was either slaps on the hand or on the buttocks with a leather strap. He conceded that, on occasions, boys had to remove their trousers for punishment. While each absconding was recorded, reasons for absconding were not. He agreed that many ran away because they were homesick, fearful or deeply unhappy in Upton. He also accepted the possibility that boys absconded because of physical or sexual abuse. He acknowledged that, from time to time, boys’ heads were shaved as part of the punishment for absconding. All children who absconded were punished, and ringleaders were likely to be punished more severely. One form of punishment was ‘benders’, the administration of the strap on the buttocks, but, he asserted rarely on the bare buttocks.

The Order also accepted that boys who wet their beds were given corporal punishment. They were known as ‘slashers’ and had their own section of the dormitory. Between 10 and 25% of the boys wet their beds, and for most of the period covered by the inquiry would have been ‘slapped’. Towards the later years there was ‘less slapping’ for bed-wetting. The Rosminians also accepted that boys had to take their wet sheets to the laundry in front of other boys and, while it may not have been the intent, the Order accepts it was deeply embarrassing for them.

The Institution was run on regimented lines and the daily routine was subject to a strict regime of order and discipline. The Prefects’ main purpose was to maintain discipline and control over a large number of boys, and this they did by using corporal punishment. The job was described by Br Marcello,3 who was in his early 20s when he arrived to take up the position of Assistant Prefect in Upton in the mid-1960s. He said, ‘our work, or job was to contain the thing so that everything else ran, to a certain extent, fairly smoothly’.

He was questioned about his use of the word ‘containment’ to describe the situation, and he reiterated that this term did describe how he felt. He felt he had to ‘contain’ situations in order to ensure that they did not blow out of proportion. The Prefects were constantly vigilant for potential trouble.

He explained that discipline was maintained through the use of the strap or giving the boys a ‘clatter’, the term used for a blow with the hand. Corporal punishment was used on a regular basis and, with 100 boys to control, ‘someone was getting it more or less all the time’. The range of offences that resulted in corporal punishment varied. Something small, like talking in the line for example, would warrant a ‘clatter’, but serious incidents were severely punished. He recalled giving a boy eight slaps of the leather on each hand for stabbing one of his companions in the tailor shop, and then being told by the Senior Prefect that he had not given the boy enough slaps. He was asked what, in his view, was the purpose of corporal punishment. He answered: Discipline, it was necessary. Because there were only two of us and any relaxation of discipline at that particular time could have caused havoc in the school. That was the position we had at that particular time. We thought that it was necessary ... I still think in the circumstances there it was necessary.

The boys were punished on the spot for minor offences by whoever was in charge. More serious offences that warranted ‘fairly severe punishment’ were dealt with by sending the boy to the Prefect’s office for punishment, usually administered with a leather strap.

He conceded that boys could be punished on the spot with ‘a clatter’ and then could be sent to the office for further punishment. The Prefect never inquired if a boy had already been punished, so it was possible that boys would be punished more than once for the same offence. Many of the witnesses felt aggrieved over this fact.

When asked whether corporal punishment was a first or last resort for the Prefect, he replied: I think it was always the first resort ... We didn’t have any other resorts ... A lot of the time I was frightened because at any time, if there was a concerted effort by the boys they could have flattened me.

He had no training for dealing with delinquent boys, nothing in his religious or scholastic training prepared him for it. There was no coherent scheme or policy for the boys in those years: It was piecemeal, it was different little things we did, but there wasn’t the concerted effort that we have made in the last 20 years.

Another Rosminian priest, Fr Christiano,4 who had also been a pupil in Upton, gave evidence to the Committee from two perspectives. He was in Upton as a pupil during the 1950s. He remembered an atmosphere dominated by punishment, which was meted out for misdemeanours such as talking in the dormitory, or causing difficulty for the supervisor in the workshop. The punishments were usually administered in the office by the Prefect. He recalled a particular incident of group punishment, when some boys, who had been confined to a small recreation room for the day while others attended a sports event, were punished for trashing the room and scattering the board games. His impression was that each boy got about 20 ‘benders’, and he recalled that it only stopped because an older boy challenged the Brother who had been beating the boys until he had exhausted himself.

Fr Christiano was a promising student and was sent to the Rosminian secondary school in Omeath. He remembered it felt like getting out of prison. He also recalled there was no corporal punishment in Omeath. The atmosphere there was not punitive.

He believed that, before Upton closed, it had deteriorated and had become a punishment regime. At some time during each day, there were boys being punished. When he returned to Upton from Omeath during the holidays, he and the other secondary students ate in a little refectory situated close to the Prefect’s office, and far too often they could hear the bang of the strap. By the time the witness was in university, and Upton was coming to a close, the School had changed from his early years, when it was relatively benign, into an excessively punitive place.

When Fr Christiano was asked how he reconciled the religious life, which involved love, charity and kindness, with a system that required men of the cloth to be brutal and severe, he replied that he did not believe that this was a requirement. The post of Prefect did involve the obligation to impose discipline, but he did not see the need to be brutal: I later became a Prefect in Ferryhouse and one of the things I did was throw the strap in the river, in the Suir in Ferryhouse, the one I had. There is a different way. We have the feast of St. Don Bosco every year, he was a man who loved children and I read – there is a reading in the book – his instruction to his Brothers about looking after children, and I say, ‘my God, why didn’t anyone show some of our lads this piece?’.