Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Sexual abuse

There was a community room upstairs in the west wing, where the members of the Order could relax. It had ‘comfortable chairs, a cocktail cabinet and a big television screen’. Here, he would have a couple of pints of Guinness and perhaps a couple of shorts: ‘I may have been a bit unsteady, but not falling down ... they would know that I had some drink taken’. He would then return to his room where he would also ‘take a little tipple’ from bottles of spirits received as gifts that he kept there. He added: I should never have been left in the unit on my own, solely on my own and isolated from the rest of the community. There was no such thing as shift work, night staff, night staff even for a weekend, all of those things should have been in place in a group like the group that I was in.

He then described what happened when he returned to the dormitory and took a boy to his room: ... I left them in the bed and I fondled them and penetrated them ... I felt they were asleep and they didn’t know ... On waking up they just remained limp, I am sure terrified of what was going on and preferred to remain in that state ... Those boys that I took to my room were boys that were sleeping ... I selected those ... I felt they were what I wanted. It was weekly ... those boys were terrified during that period when I took them to my room.

He went on to explain why the boys were so deeply asleep: Some of them were on medication for bed-wetting ... They took their tablet and it made them sleepy ... All the bed-wetters would be on them ... The nurse would allot the nightly take every day to me and I would distribute it to them ... I would have maybe two or three days supply of the tablet for all of the boys.

As he knew which boys had taken a tablet, he knew which ones would be drowsy. These tablets allowed him to choose those boys who would be asleep and remain asleep. When he was finished with a boy, he took him back to his own bed in the dormitory. His activities show how planned and pre-meditated the abuse was.

The abuse continued undetected for four years. When asked whether he was concerned that the boys would tell, he said: At the back of my mind you would think—you would know very well that it would come out and somebody would reveal it and they did.

He told the Investigation Committee, ‘I am sure the other boys in the dormitory knew what was going on’. However, such was his control over them that they never told. In Fr Stefano’s words, ‘quite a lot of the boys who went through his unit ... have told me of the control that he was able to keep when he locked that door at night time ... he had them terrorised’.

A number of reasons as to how the abuse continued were explored with Br Bruno. He agreed that, in his early days as Prefect, he frequently used corporal punishment: Yes, I hit the boys, I struck the boys. I found certainly at the beginning I had no other way of keeping control, keeping order, keeping day to day things running.

He agreed that he had a reputation as a Prefect and the boys were afraid of him, and that this facilitated his ability to do these things without being reported.

He agreed that the job of Prefect with complete unsupervised control over 35 to 40 boys was a corrupting influence: It changed me to a different type of person ... a monster person that was the effect that it had.

Br Bruno claimed that he had no attraction to boys before he went into Ferryhouse: In all my years before I went into the Rosminians I had no attraction towards the younger boys ... I had my girlfriends up to going to the Rosminian Order ... the boys thing just started when I went into Ferryhouse.

Yet, within Ferryhouse, he was unable to control his attraction to pubescent boys and claimed that he tried to get help: I went for advice before with [a senior member of the Order] and we chatted. At the end ... at the breaking point that I went to him and discussed it with him. I discussed it with him after coming out of the Order too.

The Investigation Committee was unable to corroborate this assertion. He remained convinced, moreover, that other members of the Community knew what he was up to. He also asserted that ‘it was widespread’. He explained: Like when other boys were talking and were giving out about other members of the Community, I felt they were being abused by other members.

He was asked if he thought it was fairly safe to do it because it was almost permitted within the Institution, and he replied, ‘Yes ...’.

He later added: ‘They [the boys] were mentioning that other members of the community were abusing the boys’.

This assertion, that abuse was so widespread that it seemed to be permitted, does not accord with the way in which Fr Stefano took instant action when the abuse perpetrated by Br Bruno was disclosed to him. However, Br Bruno had been abusing for about four years before it was reported to Fr Stefano, who was completely unaware that he ‘was living with an abuser’.