Chapter 4 — Greenmount

Peer abuse

There is further reference to sexual activity among boys contained in the reports of the Provincial to the General Council of the Presentation Brothers in the mid-1950s. Despite the Provincial being assured by the Resident Manager, Br Carlito, that the boys were at all times well supervised, he received a report shortly after visiting the School from a member of another Community that the boys in Greenmount were engaging in ‘immoral practices’. When this allegation was put to the Resident Manager, he accepted that he was aware of the problem and had taken steps to deal with the issue, which involved separating the culprits in the dormitories and requesting the night watchman to be particularly vigilant. No advice or direction given by the Provincial is recorded, and the issue does not arise in subsequent reports.

The difficulty of trying to control sexual behaviour among the boys emerged from the evidence of a former resident who was transferred to Daingean because he was twice caught engaging in sexual activity with his peers. He was admitted to Greenmount in the early 1950s when he was eight years old. He said he learnt about sex from the older boys, and added ‘it was going on with all the boys’. He would masturbate the older boys and sometimes had anal intercourse. He said: It is a very powerful thing, you may shy away from it to start. You see, I see the sexual business as a disease, but once you start getting the feel for it it is like wanting sugar.

As time went on, he began to engage in sexual activity with younger boys. He pondered the irony of it all: I became an abuser myself of a form, that is the way it goes. So because I was put in, locked up in the first place for committing no crime I ended up committing some kind of crime in the second place ...

When asked whether there was any awareness by the adults in charge in Greenmount of the sexual activity amongst the boys, he said ‘I can only assume that they must have had some idea’.

Sexual activity between boys and peer abuse were serious problems in Greenmount. Despite assurances that it would be dealt with the problem persisted.

Emotional abuse

In their Opening Statement on Greenmount, the Presentation Brothers expressed the view that industrial schools were ‘a flawed model’, doomed to failure. They wrote: Up until the 1960s there was a popularly held belief in Ireland that industrial schools were an institutional response to cope with the problem of petty crime and delinquency by young people. This was a misconception. Children convicted of minor criminal offences were often admitted to industrial schools, But that was usually because they had strayed into breaking the law due to the absence of parental supervision and neglect. Children were also admitted for non-attendance at school. That was, again, usually a consequence of difficult family circumstances. Where one parent had died or departed, an older child might be required to remain at home in order to rear the other children in the family. The consequences of social and economic deprivation were addressed by breaking up whole families, the boys being sent to the Brothers and girls to the nuns. It is clear that, in hindsight, the industrial school system was not, and could never be, a success. It was based on a flawed model. No one today would seriously argue that an institution operating on then approved lines, such as Greenmount, represented an adequate response to serious social problems suffered by some of the most vulnerable elements in society. No one would tolerate the Courts regularly making orders having the effect of separating so many children from their families for up to 8 years. No one would suggest that a child could be raised on the modern equivalent of 22 shillings a week: indeed it appears that that task was beyond the Presentation Brothers at that time. (the Presentation Brothers informed the then Minister for Education, Mr Jack Lynch T. D., that it was not possible to feed and clothe boys on 22/6 per week in the late 1950s). No one would suggest that neglected and abandoned children should be housed and cared for together with, and in the same fashion as, young offenders. No one would consider lodging such a large number of children of varying ages in single institution with so few carers.

They went on to point out that many of the flaws in the system were apparent in 1936, when the Cussen Commission reported but Cussen’s recommended reforms were not implemented, and ‘a further 34 years passed before Ireland was prepared to abandon the industrial school as a means of child care’.

The Presentation Brothers make several important observations: 1.Most of the children were not criminals but were disturbed because they had experienced death, or family upheaval, neglect and poverty. 2.The court orders removing them from their families for periods of up to eight years made matters worse. 3.Separating siblings further broke up the family and thereby caused more distress. 4.The prison-like containment of these children in large secure buildings was inappropriate and further isolated them from society. 5.It was detrimental to lodge neglected and abandoned children with hardened delinquents. 6.The number of carers was inadequate, and the funds needed to educate and rehabilitate the disadvantaged children were far short of what was needed.

The Statement suggests these flaws became apparent only ‘with hindsight’. Moreover, the Presentation Brothers blame the failures of the industrial school system on the acceptance of such a model by society. The report prepared by Professor Keogh ends with the conclusion: In the public debate in the 1990s on the running of Irish industrial schools attention has correctly focussed on the manner in which the religious performed their duties. It is necessary, however, to subject the role of the state to scrutiny. After all, it had the ultimate responsibility for the running of those institutions ... It is a harsh but nevertheless valid verdict on the performance of the Irish state in such a central and sensitive social policy area it arrived with unjustifiable, glacial-like slowness at the conclusion only in 1970 that the industrial school system was outdated, outmoded and obsolete.

The question arises as to why so many of the conclusions that were obvious after 1970 were not evident much earlier.

One witness, who was in Greenmount for a year in the mid-1940s, was the second eldest of seven children. His father worked in England during the war, and the family were regularly summonsed for non-attendance at school. He told the Committee: When we were sentenced we went with a guard ... There was me, [my two brothers, the Garda], and my Mam we were taken to the industrial school. We were taken in. My Mam was crying and we were crying. Then my Mam came out, the guard came out and we were there, that was our sentence, we were there then for four years, whatever we were sentenced to.

While he was in Greenmount, his older brother died from tubercular meningitis. He recalled this event: when we went to the infirmary, me and [my younger brother], like I said, we were so close, we asked to see him but we were not allowed to see him ... He went into the infirmary and then they moved him out through – we used call it the union, which was the hospital in Cork, and the next time I saw my brother ... was when he was in the death house, when he was laid out. That’s the only time I seen him ... when I found out how he was dead, we came from school and we were in the playground, or the yard, or whatever you call it, and we were going into the dinner and we went into dinner and the boy next to me said " [your brother] is dead". That’s how I found out. It just came like that ... I went spare. There was such a shock, even when he was in hospital we didn’t know what he was there for. When we were in the infirmary we asked to see him but we weren’t allowed to see him.

He also talked about the difficulty they had in relation to contact with their mother: She used come to visit us but she weren’t let in. So I didn’t have difficulty contacting her, I wasn’t allowed ... She told us she was turned away. Even if we seen her there was nothing we could do about it, she was turned away. Br Arrio used say no, she’s not coming in because she used to bring us food parcels ... she was turned away. Sometimes we used get them.

Another witness, who was there in the 1950s, recounted how he found out, when he was about 13, that his mother was alive. He had been admitted into Greenmount from another institution where he had been since a baby. He told the Committee how he made this discovery: I never knew [my] father, no, or my mother ... I didn’t know anything about her at all ... It came about because people in the School used to write home, if they had parents they were allowed to write home once a month their parents and if you didn’t write home you went to the back of the class. I think it [was] Br. Allente, I think that’s his name, names are hard to come by now. He said, "Don’t you write to anybody?" I said, "No, I don’t." About three months later as I went into the classroom, on a blackboard on an easel which [a woman’s name and address] and I was told write to that person. That’s your mother ... I did write to her under duress at that time. [She wrote back] and she told me I had two stepsisters ... I never had contact with her other than writing ... I have tried various times to contact her but the advice given by the local police and by the local parish priest was that it is best left alone after all those years. On one visit to Ireland, my son was eight at the time, I actually drove up from Cork ... and parked outside the assumed address and just parked and then drove away again. Because one didn’t want to go and knock on a door and say, "I’m your son", because the mother has feelings as well, she has had her life since I have not been there so I didn’t want to interrupt. It has impacted very much so, because when I went to England you don’t have anybody to relate to, so you are always worrying – I don’t know, it is hard to explain but if your parents are missing, if you don’t know where they are – or who your parents are your peace of mind is even to go there at the end – if I come over this year or next year to Ireland, even if she has passed away, it would be to see the grave and say that’s laid to rest now and there is no further gain to be got. But it has impacted. It impacts throughout your whole life because when you have your own family you have no role models, you have nothing to bring up your family.

The Brother in this case noticed the loneliness of this boy who knew nothing of his parents. He did his best to help the son contact his mother. This witness remembered him as the Brother who found his mother for him.