Chapter 8 — Cappoquin

Neglect

In the late 1990s, the matron of another institution contacted the Sisters of Mercy to complain at the failure of the Congregation to inform her fully of Callida’s background. A senior member of the Congregation testified that the overall policy with regard to references was that of being honest and upright.

Sr Callida was an incompetent manager who exhibited a lack of basic management skills including rostering, proper record keeping, communicating with staff and children, consistency and avoiding favouritism. Each of these deficiencies would have represented a serious flaw in a Resident Manager but, taken together, they constituted a disastrous mixture. She consumed alcohol in front of the children to excess and she was drunk and incapable on occasion. Her behaviour was unpredictable and irrational; she bullied the staff and occasionally beat the children. Sr Callida exposed children to additional risk by going away unannounced leaving the children in the charge of junior staff who had no way of contacting her and also by permitting male outsiders to have access to the home and to stay overnight even when she was not there. It was wrong for the Resident Manager to have children sleeping in her bedroom and for her and the Sister with whom she was conducting a relationship to take children away for weekends to hotels to stay in ‘family rooms’. Congregation witnesses admitted to some knowledge of Sr Callida’s behaviour, but did not feel they could do anything about it, and the situation drifted on over 12 years until it developed into a crisis. There was no proper supervision of the Manager. The Community did not have the interests of the children as their priority. Any action taken by the Congregation focussed exclusively on the Resident Manager. The children were not considered. The Health Board neglected its supervisory function in respect of children for whom it was responsible. One of its senior Health Board officials permitted his friendship with the Resident Manager, to cloud his judgment, and he failed to recognise gross failures of management as a result. No proper reviews were carried out by the Board’s social workers. The children in Cappoquin were let down and endangered by each of the institutions and agencies in whose care they were placed, by the persons in positions of authority over them, and by persons in supervisory roles. They were fortunate to have care workers who were more dedicated to their tasks and more committed to the interest of the children than their superiors.

Physical abuse

In their Submission to the Investigation Committee, the Sisters of Mercy stated that the Committee was not in a position to reach firm conclusions on allegations of physical abuse ‘as distinct from the reasonable use of corporal punishment’ where the events alleged arose over 35 years ago. They accepted that corporal punishment was used in Cappoquin and ‘regret its use and its impact on the children’.

From the total of nine ex-residents who appeared before the Committee, the majority described one or more incidents of physical punishment.

A witness, who was admitted to Cappoquin as a baby in the early 1950s, described how a particularly severe beating by one of the Sisters destroyed his trust in the adults who were looking after him. He was in bed and was naked because he had been treated with ointment. One of the lay staff gave him a painting set, which he used to colour two religious statues in the room. He recalled a nun (Sr Adriana he thought) coming into the room and: ... she kind of lost reasoning and, I suppose, from her point of view I was desecrating something very religious but from my point of view I was just painting, you know. She just kept hitting and hitting and wouldn’t stop. So, I ran for the door ... I was running in the dark, I just wanted to get away, I was just running in panic. She just kept hitting, and coming after me down the stairs ... and I kept banging on the door and banging and banging until somebody actually came out and she just kept hitting and hitting until somebody came out and stopped her ... Up to then I would have to say while I got a clout every now and again for not doing something or you got a slap, but it wasn’t with viciousness, not in the same way with viciousness, this was just temper let loose. I don’t know if that person, to me, even if they said sorry, I wouldn’t have understood it, I really wouldn’t have.

The Sister beat him with an ordinary, classroom cane, but it was much worse than punishment in school: It was a cane. About two or three feet long, made of bamboo, with a kind of bend on it like that (indicating) ... they used to use them in the classroom for striking the boards or tables or hitting somebody. But when you have a naked child and you stand back at two or three feet and let fly as an adult the cane doesn’t stop when it hits the flesh, it cuts, you know.

Although this witness was only six or seven when this incident occurred, he was able to distinguish this beating from the ordinary corporal punishment he received from time to time in the School. He had been slapped with the cane before, although it had not been a common occurrence. The beating had a lasting effect: After that I would say that the trust had gone out, the trust had gone out of it. You never, ever would allow people get that close to you and you were always looking for a way out. If somebody raised their voice or anything you would instantly go into fear because I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand the power behind it. I am trying to explain that as a child when somebody does that to you it is the sheer power and the frightedness of it that kind of haunts you, it comes back to you and when any other adult raises their voice the next you expect is the assault coming behind it ...

His recollection of Cappoquin was that younger nuns could not challenge older nuns, even if they saw something wrong: It gave that person then the power ... There is no system, nobody said stop if an older person done something. That’s the way it was, they seemed to rule it, you know.

He described the nun who beat him as being ‘very domineering’, and said that the person who stopped the beating had not challenged her for what she was doing.

He said another nun who was there, Sr Mariella,20 ‘was a very standoffish person, very authoritarian ... She would be more than likely to hit you twice as fast as anybody else’.

Although the younger nuns or novices were able to relate to the children, the older members of the staff were more inclined to punish, ‘[They] believed in punishment for the sake of punishment and that if we punish you enough as a child it will make you a better person, you know’.

He went to Artane when he was 10 years old, and notwithstanding his experiences in Cappoquin still believed that the Sisters there did their best and, in contrast with Artane, genuinely tried to care for the children.

Another ex-resident who was in Cappoquin in the 1970s described the nuns there as ‘unreal’: As far as abuse was concerned. They had the bamboo sticks as long as the handle of a brush ... They would actually beat you wherever they would want to beat you. There is no such thing as put out your hands, they would hit you on the legs, they would hit you on the back. I actually seen one incident where there was actually a chap poked in the eye with it and they had the cheek to turn around and go down to the chapel after it. What they went to the chapel for, I don’t know.

He named two nuns, Sr Carina and Sr Lorenza,21 who he said were particularly severe. In the case of Sr Lorenza, he said that, although she could be nice: ... she could get very contrary. She could be a nice nun. I suppose she could be an understanding nun, we’ll say. But yet if she lost the cool she lost the cool, she wouldn’t spare you any more than Sr Carina would spare you.

A witness, who was admitted to Cappoquin at four years of age in the late 1950s, described a severe beating he received from the Resident Manager.22 He had been called into her office and handed a letter sent to him by his mother. Sr Carina asked him to read it, but he could not read: I remember then I got a beating over that. I remember she beat me so much I ended up down at the wall, at the end of the wall, she had beat me that much. Then at the end of it all she just got the letter and she said "seen as you can’t read the letter it is no good to you" and she tore it up.