Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Sexual abuse

His next encounter with Br Bruno occurred when the latter was posted to Ferryhouse. Under the pretence of checking for bedwetting, Br Bruno would fondle him under the bed sheets and bring him to the toilet, where he ‘would start massaging, that’s your privates like, and it would start from there’. He also described how Br Bruno would take him to his bedroom and then he would sexually abuse him. He said there was no penetration involved.

The abuse happened regularly ‘every couple of weeks’, so regularly in fact that the witness thought it was normal: ‘I thought this is the way life is, this happens to everybody’. The complainant also witnessed others being abused. He described how, on occasion, he walked into Br Bruno’s room on the way to the toilet and saw that Br Bruno ‘had two guys there and they were playing with each other’. He also attested to the fear Br Bruno used to instil in him. He had an odd tactic of sticking drawing pins into his thigh whenever he saw Br Bruno approaching. He explained, ‘It just took away the fear. Me being in pain was better than the fear and the fear of him’. He described how Br Bruno would never leave him alone with any visitors, as he might have to prevent him from telling them about the abuse.

Br Bruno denied he had abused this witness, but the witness’s recollections mirrored the known events. As the witness claimed, Br Bruno did visit Woodstown before he became a Brother and he did reappear as a member of the Order. The events described in the dormitory and in the Brother’s room are not dissimilar to the account Br Bruno gave of his own activities.

Another complainant from the same period described a similar incident of nocturnal intrusion into his bed. He was in ‘A’ group which was supervised by [Br Bruno]. He said that one night, a couple of weeks after he had arrived at the school he woke up in pain. He was being sexually abused . He could not see who it was and he started to scream. This woke the boy next to him who turned on the light. The complainant blamed this boy but he denied it.

The next day, the mystery of the nocturnal intruder was solved. The complainant told another boy what had happened, and the boy said, ‘This is the start of it. He won’t stop ... It will go on and on’.

He said that other boys told him ‘It was Br Bruno himself, he does it to all of us’.’

The complainant ran away and, on his return to the School, said that he had reported the fact that Br Bruno was at his bed to two staff members, but nothing happened. Neither could recall this complainant reporting the matter to them.

The witness also gave a vivid account of seeing boys being carried to Br Bruno’s room: He would come out of his room, late at night, he would go to his bed, that bed, he would go into the back dormitories, he would come back out, sometimes carrying a boy. The boys would be asleep. Their limbs would be hanging down like so (indicating), their head to one side and he would be carrying them in his arms, he would be bringing them to his room. The next morning you would enquire as to where the boy was and you would be told that he was sick, he won’t be in school today.

He described how Br Bruno would give the boys tablets for bed-wetting. Sometimes, he would give them just one each, and on other occasions he would give them three. These had the effect of causing the boys to go to sleep. He recalled one occasion when he did not take the tablets and how he woke later that night to find Br Bruno sexually abusing him: I started crying and Br Bruno came up to me and he said to me “What’s wrong with you, child, you are dreaming, child, go to sleep”. That next morning when I was in the toilet and I came out and I was after getting dressed and everything, I went to get the tablets and they were gone. I don’t know where they had gone to, they were gone.

The number of complainants who gave evidence about Br Bruno’s activity was not indicative of the number whom he abused. He molested dozens of boys. He himself remarked that the only ones he was likely to have recalled were those whom he raped. None of the four boys who were named in the indictment as being victims of this crime gave evidence before the Investigation Committee. It would appear that the number of boys who he raped over the period of four years when he was in Ferryhouse was greater than he remembered.

In a trial that took place in the mid-1990s, a victim named in Br Bruno’s indictment himself faced trial on charges of sexual abuse of children. Mr Cumin22 pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old boy. He had previously been convicted of rape in Britain. In mitigation, his counsel submitted that he had been sexually abused while in care, and this abuse had had disastrous consequences on his own sexuality. The court jailed him for six years.

The lessons learned from this case can be applied to the question posed at the start of this section: was the abuse systemic, related to failures of the Institution or of management, or was it episodic, namely, acts perpetrated by an individual, unrelated to the nature of the Institution and its management?

Fr Stefano’s comment provides the best clue and may be repeated: The picture that comes to mind always to me is of a huge jigsaw puzzle that you are reasonably happy with but that there is a piece missing and while I had no suspicions of him, the minute those words were spoken, it was as if somebody had put the final piece in the jigsaw and all these activities that he was involved with started to make sense.

The fact that the Institution had a history of keeping the stories of known abusers secret must have contributed to Fr Stefano’s unawareness of the real possibility of abuse in a residential institution for young boys. Because the archives recording the discovery of previous abusers were not available, this meant the Institution could not learn from the past.

This case shows how easy it was for an abuser to gain access to the boys in Ferryhouse. Br Bruno’s activities went undiscovered for four years, despite the fact that many boys were raped and a much greater number were fondled and groomed in his selection process. Br Bruno’s activities happened at a time when other sexual abuse was happening in Ferryhouse and when improper access to the boys was a feature of the Institution. The extent of these activities suggests that boys felt unable to report abuse.