Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Sexual abuse

Br Bruno began his evidence to the Committee with some initial hesitation; he began to imply that he had pleaded guilty to offences he had not committed. He said: I fondled them in their bed ... It began when I was moved to the A unit, when I was checking beds at night time for wetting ... Just by touching it started ... The boys didn’t mind, they didn’t stop me ... I knew it was wrong but I continued ...

At that stage, he denied anal rape: I never penetrated ... I would be sexually excited, yes ... it just ended at that ...

The Chairperson then spoke to him about the need for him to give a full and honest account, without trying to recant or change evidence accepted in court. After a brief adjournment for legal consultation, the hearing resumed, and Br Bruno gave a very different account of events. He now said: [That boy] was one of the boys that I pleaded guilty to in my criminal trial ... I pleaded guilty to buggery. I did take him into my bed and penetrated but not in a full extent but I did bugger, I did penetrate him ... I told the Gardaí that I had abused [the other boy] ... I took him to my bed and I penetrated him ... [The third boy], I pleaded guilty to fondling, abusing him in that way.

He acknowledged that these acts of abuse happened on more than one occasion. He also accepted that these were not the only boys that he sexually abused: There was one or two other boys that I took there but the names are gone from me at the moment.

He was asked to give some estimate as to when the sexual abuse began, and he replied: The fondling and the feeling at bedtime went on a few months after I taking charge of the group. It went on at that time. The serious matters that were dealt with in the criminal trial went on in ... [1978/79] ... up to that moment that the Superior ... it was reported to the Superior and he called me in and I admitted to it ... Four, five boys, I think.

He took charge of the dormitory in the mid-1970s, and until Fr Stefano confronted him in December 1979 there were some four years of abuse. When asked to estimate the number of boys he had abused, he answered that, if he was being asked to estimate the numbers he had groped and interfered with, ‘It could be dozens, yes ... Yes it would be dozens’. When asked to try to put a more precise figure on it he replied, ‘over maybe 20, over a period of years’.

The fondling took place during the week. The acts of penetration tended to occur at weekends. He explained: I fondled them ... I carried them to my room ... left them in my bed and fondled them ... I attempted myself to penetrate them ... It was a weekend basis. Friday, Saturday night ... I was able to go over to the community room ... in the community room we would have a social evening and I would have a drink.

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.