Chapter 7 — Goldenbridge

Emotional abuse

It was alleged that the children in Goldenbridge did not have access to water during the day, and had to resort to drinking water from either the toilet bowl or the cistern.

One witness described it as follows: We used to all drink out of the toilets. There was toilets at the end of the yard, we used to go down there. There was no taps, you just flushed the chain and drink the water.

When asked whether he recalled a drinking fountain in the yard, he said: No. There used to be a little push handle thing down, that hardly ever worked. I remember it did work, it didn’t always work. I am sure it was there ... We used to ... drink out of the toilets anyway. You followed what the other kids done.

Another witness said: In between meals there was no facility for a glass of water, there was nothing, nowhere you could, we didn’t have money to buy anything. There was no machines, no vending in those days. Nothing like that. You would go to the toilets where they had the loose top and you would scoop water up, you would scoop it up in your hand or you would get something like– I don’t know how to describe it. It was like a funnel from the big dryers, there was a little connection, you would get it and you would drink the water from the cistern. I mean, you wouldn’t think whether this is healthy or unhealthy.

One witness said: We used to drink water out of the toilets, out of the either the bowl or the cistern depending on how tall you were ... I mean, I see in a statement from Sr Alida she said that a tap was in the yard, I don’t know where it was because I was never allowed have a drink out of it.

When asked if she remembered a tap or drinking fountain in the yard, she said: I was there for twelve years and I don’t remember seeing a tap in the yard. I do remember drinking water out of the toilets, out of the cistern, out of the bowl.

Another witness said: Because they wouldn’t give you water. You asked for water and you weren’t given it. So obviously to try and survive, you would come out, you would be in the yard and you would go into the toilets in the yard and flush the toilets and drink water from the toilets. That wasn’t just a once-off, that was on a good number of occasions.

Another witness, when asked about the existence of a drinking fountain in the yard, said that if there had been a fountain in the yard it must have been broken ‘because we used to drink out literally of the toilet or lift up the cistern, the top of the toilet’.

Sr Alida stated there was a drinking fountain in the yard which came from Liverpool and was marked ‘hooligan proof’. It remained in working order until the time she left Goldenbridge. She also stated that children could get water from the kitchen and a small bathroom under the stairs.

One explanation for the lack of access to water is in relation to the problem of bed-wetting which, according to Sr Alida, was ’a huge problem’ that existed in Goldenbridge. Sr Alida said they had sought medical advice, and one of the recommendations was the deprivation of all fluids before bedtime.

However, Sr Venetia stated to Mr Crowley that children used to drink from the toilet cistern. In his report he stated: Sr Venetia confirmed the allegations in relation to the tumble dryer and drinking from the toilet cistern.

The Sisters of Mercy denied that children were deprived of water as there was a drinking fountain in the yard. They conceded, however, that on foot of medical advice they deprived children who were prone to wetting the bed of water from a certain time in the afternoon. These children may have resorted to covertly drinking from the toilet. They asserted that this is another example of how a practice became distorted and exaggerated by witnesses.

Children drank out of the toilet, which was confirmed by Sr Venetia when speaking to Mr Crowley in 1996. This happened irrespective of whether the fountain in the yard was working. Some children were deprived of water in an effort to cure bed-wetting, and they found water where they could.

The calling of children by number is another specific allegation made by complainants. They assert that staff referred to them not by name but by number. This is an allegation which appeared in the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme. It is also an allegation which was made by 11 complainants in their statements to the Commission and in oral evidence. One witness said: The numbers were used when they were giving out the clothes or anything like that that belonged to the children. Anything that you had marked you always had a number on it. You never had a name on it.

Another witness also stated that clothes were distributed according to the number of the child. However, under cross-examination, this witness went further and stated that the children were referred to by number.