Chapter 5 — Lota

Sexual abuse

He was in the Juniorate from the age of 11 until he was professed when he was 18. When he was a postulant, on an annual retreat, a priest had invited him to his room and had made sexual advances. He resisted them ‘and felt very angry about what had happened’.

Initially, he wanted to become a teacher, but his Irish language skills were poor, so he could not train as one. Instead, he began work as a carer in Belmont Park Psychiatric Hospital, a private hospital run by the Brothers of Charity. In 1945, when he was 20 years old, he was transferred to Lota to work as a nurse with severely disabled children. They were ‘confined to bed, and they needed spoon feeding and they needed to be individually sort of encouraged to use the toilet’. He did this arduous work for six years. He lost weight and became quite ill. During this time, the Superior made sexual advances to him, and he began to have thoughts that he might be homosexual. He recalled years later, to the psychologist at Stroud, that a relative (his sister) used to visit him on a Sunday. While she was there, the Superior invited her up to his room for a coffee. She accepted. He was approached by the Superior early in the morning and was told that she had stayed the night, and he asked him to take her home before any of the Brothers found out. Br Dieter was ‘very upset by this discovery’. Again, he was afraid to say anything about it.

Br Dieter was struggling with his sexual orientation, and trying to control his sexual urges, yet his early experience in the Brothers of Charity was that the vow of celibacy was being regularly broken by religious men of standing and authority.

In or around 1953/1954, he attended a training course in Belgium. When he returned to Lota in 1955, Our Lady of Good Counsel School had obtained official recognition as a Special School. Br Dieter described the new position he held within the School as a teacher ‘under inspection’. In 1957, the Department of Education recognised him as a teacher because of his experience. He was given the post of Assistant Teacher.

Following a period of teaching in Cork, he returned to Lota in 1961, and remained there until 1965.

In July 1965, Br Dieter was moved to Renmore, Galway, where the Brothers of Charity were managing a School. At his oral hearing before the Committee in March 2002, he explained: At that particular time then there was a very prominent, a very dominant association in Galway for mentally handicapped who were anxious to start a centre in Galway City, as a kind of residential day school for handicapped children and they approached the Brothers about the possibility of a Brother going there to start this. I was appointed to go there and I asked if I could be dispensed from it because of my – I felt totally inadequate for the position but they told me that they had confidence in me and they were totally unaware of my sexual abuse behaviour. They were totally ignorant of that and it was for that reason I was reluctant to be transferred to Galway. I was in Galway from 1965 to April 1969 when abusive behaviour was reported to the Superior ... and from there then I was transferred to our psychiatric hospital in Waterford.

In cross-examination, Br Dieter noted that the abuse was not reported by a pupil but by a member of staff, although he was unable to recall whether the member of staff involved was a fellow Brother or a lay member of staff. A full account of these events is given below.

As a result of this complaint, Br Dieter was removed from Renmore to Belmont Park, the Brothers’ psychiatric hospital in Waterford. He testified that he remained in the hospital until January 1970. However, he claimed he was not there to receive professional help and counselling, but rather to help out in the hospital. He held the post of Acting Secretary I.N.C.A. (Irish National Council on Alcoholism).

He was then transferred, in 1972, to a residential school in the UK for adults with learning disabilities. He became involved with a resident in the school and sexually abused him. This led to his conviction in 1998.

He attended two courses in the UK, the first was a course in special education in Preston, and then a course at a polytechnic attached to Leeds University where he obtained his certificate in education. With this qualification and recognition as a trained teacher, he began teaching in 1974 in a junior school for children aged 7 to 11 years, where he remained for 15 years. He claimed that he had not abused anyone since 1973. He retired in 1989 and lived with his Community in the UK until 1995, helping out in the working of the house, doing voluntary driving, and visiting the elderly in a home.

In a psychological report prepared for his trial in the UK, a clinical and counselling psychologist concluded that, following his treatment in Stroud and in view of his decision to withdraw from sexual relationships and recommit himself to celibate life, a decision he took in 1973, Br Dieter constituted a low risk in terms of re-offending.

The trial judge in the case in the UK took into account his plea of guilty, his age (73) and the fact the he was ‘a man of hitherto unblemished character’ and placed him on probation for three years on each count concurrently, on condition he attend a sexual offenders’ programme run by the Probation Office in England.

The judge appeared to have had no idea of the reason for Br Dieter’s transfer to the UK; it would appear that Br Dieter did not disclose his history of sexual abuse in Ireland to the psychologist.

The sentencing judge referred to Br Dieter’s upbringing and background: Yours is a very sad story indeed. It is a Dickensian story. I do not want to say more than is necessary to justify the sentence I am passing but you have a wretchedly sad childhood, characterized by the untimely death of devoted parents, then your recruitment and placement in the hands of an entirely different religious order where you yourself, as a young child, had a desperately sad time of it. Then, as a postulant and as a novice in this order, the abuse that you yourself suffered from those above you and in turn, of course, as is often the case, you abuse someone else. Yours is a very sad background, indeed. It is no excuse but it is an explanation for the wretched life you have had, particularly as a young man. Quite frankly the general public have, in recent years come to realize the lamentable criteria of recruitment that were applied 50 years ago or so by religious orders in recruiting very young men, children, to boost their numbers and the methods that were adopted. When I say, “the methods that were adopted” the encouragement, the enticement of people like you who were 11 years of age. That has all changed, and let it be said that it has all changed. It was asking for trouble, it was sowing the seeds for disaster and you have to then battle within that confined claustrophobic religious organization with your own puzzling sexuality and so you did and this is how this happened: opportunity, privacy and power in a small way.

When Br Dieter appeared before the Investigation Committee, his standard response to most questions asking for details of the abuse he had perpetrated in Lota was to say that he could not remember. He was precise and prompt in recalling other matters, such as the dates of his transfers between schools, and the names of his colleagues. He was asked, for example, to estimate how many boys he had abused in Lota, and he replied: I can’t remember really. I can’t remember ... I couldn’t possibly give you a figure ... It is an approximation. It is a long time ago ... I would say about 20 ...