Chapter 4 — Greenmount

Physical abuse

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.

He was delighted with the fact that they were allowed to go out escorted into the town. He was asked if some of the Brothers treated the boys with respect and dignity, and treated them as children. He replied, ‘They did, some were very good’. He added later, ‘The older Brothers seemed to have more compassion with the children than the younger Brothers’.

Another resident from the late 1940s also stressed that there was both good and bad in Greenmount. He said ‘there was a lot of rotten apples, right, in the School ...’ but he said some of the Brothers were good to him: ‘The Brother that I used to work in the farm with, he was very good to me’. He then named two of the five working Brothers and said ‘it was like hell with them’, but he said the other Brothers were ‘grand’.

Mr Olivero, who had no qualms about denouncing Br Arrio as too harsh and severe, nonetheless felt that there was not a violent regime. He said: There was discipline there, there was strict discipline, but I mean it was no different to what it was in an ordinary primary school ... in the absence of parents we did the best we could. What more could we do?

The person most often mentioned in the complaints was Br Arrio, who was accused of being consistently brutal. Other Brothers were also remembered for administering excessive or arbitrary punishment, on a less frequent basis. As one complainant put it: They used to beat you hard. The degree of beating they gave you was more than some of the other Brothers, some were more lenient in their dishing out of punishment.