Chapter 2 — Upton

Physical abuse

The importance of the punishment book can be seen from this exchange. Not only does it provide a contemporaneous account of the administration of corporal punishment, but it also affords corroboration of the evidence of some of the former residents who were adamant that they had received punishment in excess of 10 strokes.

Punishment was administered in the Prefect’s office, and it could happen, albeit rarely, that a boy would have to wait outside the office for punishment. Br Alfonso disliked the term ‘punishment’, and described his position as follows: Punishment would be administered – well, I don’t want to call it “punishment”, but I have written in that book which I have there that when boys were chastised, I will use that word, they were advised. So there would be lots of advice going on instead of punishment.

This phrase ‘lots of advice’, to describe multiple blows with a strap on a boy’s hands or buttocks, minimises the whole nature of corporal punishment, which is exercising control by inflicting pain. He went on to say that punishment was not administered to boys of all ages, but he refused to be drawn on the age at which punishment started.

Counsel for three complainants referred to the entry for 19th September 1954, the day on which it was recorded that 18 boys were each given 20 strokes for ‘wretched immorality’. Br Alfonso was unable to recall the occasion when so many strokes had been administered, although it was simple arithmetic (but erroneous because counsel thought 17 and not 18 boys were involved).

On a number of occasions during his cross-examination, Br Alfonso appeared to find some of the suggestions made by counsel for the complainants derisory. One such instance arose when a witness gave evidence that he had felt children were being used ‘like lap dogs to collect your ball’. Br Alfonso was asked why he found this derisory: No, and the reason I laughed, excuse me, no, they were my children, I loved them. I had no approach to the children like that at all, they were wonderful and that is all and they are still my children and that so, just I could never treat any child like that as a lap dog, I could not do that.

He suggested, instead, that the boys played golf with him and they would all be having a good time.

He said that, during his time in Upton, he never beat anyone for bed-wetting and never saw anyone being beaten for that reason.

He said that, when boys were sent to his office for punishment, they did not always get a beating, as sometimes he gave them an orange or an apple. When asked if he thought he was strict or fairly strict, he preferred to describe himself as fair. In his evidence before the Committee in the Ferryhouse hearings, he was asked to comment on the following quotation from his submission to the Inquiry: During all those years I fought many battles for the boys, of which they know nothing. I am not ashamed to say that I often wept silently in empathy for the boys who were trapped within a system, which lumped together delinquents and orphans, an arrangement which compounded the problem.

He recalled someone saying to him once that it was a good thing for orphans to be exposed to delinquents, but this made no sense to him at all. In his view, orphans were coming from different places and needed entirely different treatment to delinquents: Not that the delinquents need have to get rigid treatment, or anything else like that, but they’re coming from a different background, a different experience and everything else, and the orphans are a different people altogether. And so to expose them to that type – that’s the orphans, to that type of criminality – I don’t ever use that word because I never treated them as criminals, they were all my own children, every one of them. But to expose them to children who had such deviousness in their lives in the form of theft and all these type of things, that they had agenda hidden up their sleeves all the time, to expose them to that was to encourage them to come in to that and to me there was something criminal about that.

He described Upton as ‘a place of great activity, seething with action, excitement’.

The complainant evidence in respect of this Brother is dealt with below.

Br Giovani joined the Institute of Charity in the early 1950s, a month after he was professed. He was appointed Prefect at Upton soon after, a position that he held for a period of 12 months. In a letter written in the late 1990s, he painted a picture of what it was like to be a Prefect in Upton during the 1950s.

He viewed his appointment as Prefect as an awesome responsibility for one so young. Br Giovani had just completed his religious instruction and had received no official training or instruction for his new job. The only advice he received came from his former Novice Master, Fr Cecilio,8 who told him, ‘Don’t be a police man’. These five words constituted his only introduction to a job which involved both him and his colleague, Br Alfonso, taking responsibility for the care and control of over 300 boys.

Br Giovani said that he was never furnished with a precise description of what it was he was supposed to do, but it did entail the coordination of the activities of nearly all of the 300 boys from morning till night. He said that there was very little in the way of recreational activities for the boys when he was appointed. Not surprisingly, in light of their youth, both he and Br Alfonso attempted to remedy this deficiency by instituting a range of games and activities for the boys. He described Br Alfonso as a talented organiser, who was considered totally devoted to the task of trying to improve the lot of the boys.

He said that the Prefects were responsible for the discipline of the boys. The Prefects had the authority to administer three slaps with a leather strap on the palm of the hand. The Prefect was obliged to record the incident in the punishment book. The Rector, Fr Fabiano,9 would periodically review this book. Further punishment could only be administered with the consent of the Rector. He said that this consent would only be given in severe cases, and he stated that he personally could not remember any incident where further and extra punishment was administered.