Chapter 4 — Greenmount

Physical abuse

Some of the Visitation Reports single out Br Arrio for mention, but always in a favourable light. After a visit in the late 1940s, the Visitor wrote: There is a full quota of boys. They appear to be happy and well looked after, and great credit is due to the devoted Superior and his staff for the successful management of this Institution.

In a Visitation Report two years later, Br Arrio received specific praise: The Superior ... has a long and very creditable experience at this kind of work, he is patient, kind and self sacrificing with the result that he seems to have secured the good will and best endeavours of all under his charge, nothing escapes his notice down to the fixing of a new bolt in a door ...

Somehow, the harsh and severe regime run by this Brother to control the boys through fear and physical punishment was not uncovered by the Visitor’s Inspections.

The corporal punishment administered by this Brother was contrary to the Rules and Regulations for Certified Industrial Schools and was severe by the standards of the time. There was no system in place to control his excesses. Neither the Visitor nor the Department of Education Inspector detected the violence or, if they did, neither commented on the matter. The misleading nature of the annual reports to the Department of Education indicated knowledge on the part of the authorities that what they were doing was wrong.

A witness who was in Greenmount in the 1940s and early 1950s told the Committee about unnecessary punishments administered during class by Br Garcia: If you can imagine that being a desk and out here is the seating, it comes out about six or seven inches from that, you knelt up on that and it is on the backs of the legs you got the stick. You might say did he hit you four times, did he hit you six times, I couldn’t honestly and on oath say exactly how many times he struck me at any one time, but that was his modus operandi of trying to teach. Now, he had a saying like when we would fall in from school, he knew his class by the way they walked, a horrible thing for a human being to say ... We were all limping, that’s what he meant.

A Visitation Report to the General Council in the mid-1950s recorded that: Br Garcia reported that he considered that discipline was somewhat relaxed since the present Superior took up office. The Superior assured me that all care is taken to have the boys superintended and supervised at all times.

His colleague, Mr Olivero, who gave evidence to the Committee, insisted Br Garcia had a great rapport with the boys and ‘... wasn’t severe or anything like that. He would be a disciplinarian, as I would have been myself, I presume’.

A former resident who was in Greenmount in the early 1950s described a beating he received from Br Allente. He was careful to state that he was not complaining about the use of corporal punishment as such. He explained: Well, the definition between punishment and brutality is this: in normal circumstances in a classroom two, three or six slaps on the hand ... When you have all the force of a grown man into punishing a child with severe strength that is brutality.

Br Allente, he said, picked on him because he was a slow learner, and used ‘the T-ruler’ on him several times: ... after a while one bit broke off, I think he was banging it across my back and then another time when he used the same ruler again the second part fell off. So he was left down to just a small bit and the T ... I do not remember him beating as cruel to other children in my classroom as he was with me.

Another witness described beatings he received from a number of Brothers whilst he was in Greenmount in the mid-1950s. He mentioned Br Allente as one of these Brothers: You never forget these beatings no matter how old you are, you never forget the beatings you get in them schools.

The testimony detailed above indicates that several individual Brothers did use excessive corporal punishment from time to time. However, many witnesses were anxious to point out that Greenmount had many good points and many good Brothers.

One witness, who was there in the mid-1950s, not merely compared Greenmount favourably with another institution, but made a point of praising some Brothers. He was moved with five other boys from Carriglea to Greenmount, and told the Committee of the difference: It was softer than Carriglea ... they weren’t as cruel as regards beating you ... A bit more freedom ... a bit more lax ... as regards the things you did, you weren’t restricted to doing anything. They were fairly lenient with you ... you could play soccer, which you couldn’t play in Carriglea ... Everything was played. But it wasn’t trained, you weren’t trained for it, that was just between ourselves.

He was asked specifically if he felt that, in Greenmount, the Brothers there were a bit less violent. He replied: Oh yeah, they weren’t as brutal as in Carriglea. They would have odd spasms of it, but they were a lot more lenient ... Well, they used the strap and all that, but not as much as it was done in Carriglea.

He described Br Allente as ‘a hard task master, but all right’, and said that Br Santiago23 was ‘a nice man’. He said it was better when Br Santiago took over because ‘there was more tolerance’.

One of the other boys who was transferred from Carriglea also gave evidence. He was in Greenmount from the mid-1950s until it closed in 1959. He told the Committee: The good things were playing hurling and football in the pitch when there was sports, when you were allowed to go out. The good thing was some of the Brothers were good and treated you like maybe you should be. The other thing was going to the Father Matthew Hall for the annual panto, which we went to and which we enjoyed going. Eventually we started going to the cinemas in Cork because we used to have – sometimes in the School they would show you the odd film here and there. But going out, it was actually going out, getting out of the Institution and going down through the streets of Cork in two by two.