Chapter 9 — Clifden

Emotional abuse

She was often chosen to run errands in the village. She stated that Sr Roberta tried to take this job away from her several times, but she had struck up a good relationship with the town’s people and, at her request, they would write to the Resident Manager asking her to make sure that she would be the one coming for the messages. She believed that the Resident Manager had to keep in with the town’s people and so would do what they said. She added: she kind of resented me for that, she would say, “you old pet, get out of my sight, you old pet”.

The witness described the education she received as standard. Everyone could read and write by the time they left the Institution. Those with learning difficulties went to one particular nun for extra tuition. She taught everything by rote. They did not receive any formal sex education and learned about the changes during puberty from each other.

Birthdays were always celebrated and the children received gifts of sweets, fruit and a comb and ribbons for their hair. They also had toast the morning of their birthday. Christmas was also celebrated.

She recalled regular visits from the local doctor and the Department Inspectors. When the inspector was en route from Lenaboy, the School would receive a message alerting them to the fact that she was on the way. She did not accept that bed linen and clothes were changed for the purpose of these visits. The children had to make sure that they were clean but, otherwise, very little had to be done in preparation for the visit, as the School was always in good order.

She did not have any contact with her family while in the Institution. She stated that the nuns did not know anything about the children’s background. Before allowing children home to their families on holidays, Sr Roberta would conduct inquiries to ensure that the home environment was in no way irregular. If children wished to trace their relatives after leaving the Institution, Sr Roberta supplied the address at which a copy of your birth certificate could be obtained.

This witness was kept on in the Institution for a year and a half after her 16th birthday. It was not her choice and she had wanted to leave, but it was Sr Roberta who decided when each child could go. She was on night duty for three years before she was permitted to leave. She never received any payment for the work done in the Institution after her official discharge date.

Her first job after leaving the Institution was as a cleaning lady in a Dublin hospital. Sr Roberta organised this job. She said the Resident Manager would try to assist any former resident who ran into difficulty after they left Clifden. In the late 1960s, the witness moved abroad to where her mother lived.

She has always kept in contact with the nuns and feels more of a familial bond with them than with the family she discovered outside the country. She is married with children and has never gone into detail with her children about her upbringing.

The witness has kept in contact with a number of former residents, some of whom have made efforts to induce her to submit a claim to the Redress Board alleging abuse. She did not believe, however, that her experience of Clifden was abusive. She made contact with her mother after she left Clifden and felt that her mother considered her an intrusion into her life. That was, for her, a much greater hurt and betrayal than anything that had happened to her in Clifden.

The Sisters of Mercy described this witness, who was in Clifden for just over a year in the 1960s, as ‘essentially a reliable witness’. The complainant was born in the late 1950s in the Midlands.

He had previously been in a residential institution in Lenaboy, County Galway and had very happy memories of his time there. He recalled spending some time at home after being discharged from Lenaboy. He had always had enough to eat but recalled his mother crying a lot. When she told her children that she had to go away for a while because she was ill, he stated, ‘we took it we were going back to Lenaboy because we liked Lenaboy, Lenaboy was very good. We were actually looking forward to it, believe it or not, it was going to be a bit of a holiday but it wasn’t you know’. Instead, he found himself in Clifden. He found Clifden a very different environment: ‘I was cold, I was hungry, I was lonely, you know, miserable ... I thought it was a cruel regime, that’s the way I would have looked at it now, very cruel’.

He recalled being barefoot for what felt like a year. They were given footwear but it would go missing. He remembered his feet being cold and having a boil on his foot. It was generally the boys who were barefoot.

He recalled another boy who was stronger and faster than the rest: ‘It was the law of the jungle’, and he would rush down in the morning and steal food from the other children’s plates. He blamed the system which allowed this type of bullying to take place rather than the culprit who, he accepted, was also hungry. The food was not bad; there was just never enough of it. He was always hungry. They had bread with jam and a cup of tea in the morning, if another child did not get to it first. There was a bakery in the School and he remembered the smell of freshly baked bread coming from it. The children used to sneak in and steal bread from the bakery.

He said that they did not receive any toys at Christmas, although the Christmas dinner was very good and in particular the plum pudding. The School put on a play each Christmas which was regarded as a big event. If you misbehaved, you were excluded from participating in the play.

Amongst his chores was mopping up urine in the dormitories after children had wet the bed at night-time. His brother would clean any faeces from the beds.