Chapter 8 — Cappoquin

Physical abuse

Sr Callida was asked whether she had ever beaten any of the children, and she said that there were three episodes that stood out in her mind. She was Resident Manager during the 1980s, when there was almost universal opposition to physical punishment of children.

One complainant described an incident that occurred in the evening when all the boys were in one room watching television. He alleged that he was being sexually abused by two older boys, and this aspect of the story is told below. These older boys had been transferred from Artane and they were put in charge of all the boys in the evening, when the lay staff and the nuns were off duty. They had canes and used them on the boys: my brother was being belted with this bamboo stick by the other man ... he was crying and I heard my brother crying and I was sitting down looking at the television ... I just turned around and as he had it over his shoulder like that I caught it and I said to him, "if you don’t stop now I am going tell what you are doing to me."

The sexual abuse stopped after that incident.

He said that boys could receive beatings from these older boys for minor things: He could have told him “pick up that piece of paper on the ground there” and we would keep looking at the television and that would rise him, so he would just go to him and pull him out of the chair.

He said the beatings could be ‘Across the legs, across the backside and the hands’.

A number of older boys exercised this kind of unsupervised authority over the children during the evening. They instilled fear into the younger boys by beating them with canes.

He thought that the management of the School must have known about this: They must have known it. Yeah, they must have known. I believe they did know it ... Them boys didn’t take it upon themselves to say, "come on ... we will get the sticks and we’ll look after these boys." They obviously got authority from someone to do it and they didn’t get it from us.

The Sisters have submitted that, as only one witness gave evidence that older boys were given power over the younger boys and none of the staff or Sisters involved at the time are in a position to give evidence to the contrary, the evidence is so tenuous that no conclusions adverse to the Sisters could reasonably be supported. However, the abuser in this case gave a statement to the Gardaí, admitting the sexual abuse and acknowledging that he was left in charge of the younger boys in the evening.

Although all of the complainants from Cappoquin described physical punishment or abuse, many recalled particular nuns who were good or kind to them.

One nun who came in for special praise was Sr Isabella. When asked what it was about Sr Isabella that singled her out, one witness said: ... What was it that made Sr [Isabella] the best of them? I never actually seen her being violent with anyone. I never seen her being violent with myself. To me, she was a good caring kind of a woman. But done her job. If someone needed chastising – if someone needed chastising she would shout, point her finger. I never actually seen her hitting anyone, or she never hit me.

Another witness said of Sr Isabella: ... there is one nun that I still write to ... Sr Isabella, who was outstanding, and I would have to say that of all the nuns there, she was the one that – she ran the infirmary, I think, if my memory serves me right. But she would have been one that probably exhibited what should have been rather than what was ...

Another complainant, who made allegations against a man he was fostered out to from Cappoquin, went even further: You know, if you wanted to find good people Sr Isabella, Sr Carina and Sr Serafina24 were three walking saints. It is just the staff I didn’t like.

1.The incidents of physical punishment described by complainants went beyond what was permitted. The children were very young, and such severe punishment was uncalled for. 2.Caning very young children was unnecessary and abusive by the standards of the time. 3.Untrained lay staff were unsupervised and given too much control over the children, and this resulted in cruelty. 4.Allowing older boys to discipline smaller children using corporal punishment was reckless and dangerous.

Sexual abuse

Mr Restin was a childcare worker in Cappoquin in the late 1970s. He had previously been employed by the Sisters of Mercy in another of their industrial schools in Passage West, County Cork, during the mid-1970s.

In the mid-1990s, Mr Restin was arrested in England and charged with three offences of indecent assault on a boy under 16 and with possession of indecent photographs of children. He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, of which he served nine months. Following his prison sentence, he spent a period of four months in a psychiatric hospital because of depression and then lived in a probation hostel for a further six months. He returned to Dublin in the late 1990s.