Chapter 9 — Clifden

Emotional abuse

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.

He recalled sleeping on rubber sheets, and bed linen only being provided when the Departmental inspections were due to take place. In general, there were no sheets or pillows on any of the boys’ beds, only a rubber mattress. The boys slept two to a bed.

The witness said that one of the ISPCC inspectors forewarned the nuns of the fact that a Departmental Inspection was imminent. The witness described the change in regime when the inspector visited: The thing about it is what I used to remark was that when the inspectors would come, and the inspectors did come, that everything would improve for that time that they would be there. Dinners would be good, sheets on the beds, pillows, you know.

He went on to say, ‘You would be kind of bulling that the inspectors had left because the good times were over’.

He was never permitted to go home on holidays. His mother sometimes came to visit, if she could get a lift, but she was never allowed in. She had to sneak in the back entrance to visit her children and, when the nuns discovered the fact that she was there, she would run away.

He stated that he learnt little at school because he was taught through Irish. He could not keep up with the class because he had a poor aptitude for languages. He received extra tuition from one particular Sister, Sr Magda,21 who showed him great kindness. She also gave him treats of bread with butter and sugar.

Regarding nuns who lived in the convent, he said, ‘The nuns lived in a different area of the School and there was a lot of nuns that you wouldn’t get to meet’.

He described the Resident Manager’s deputy, Sr Veronica, as ‘... a tyrant. Very very cruel, very tough. Very very tough...She would be the one – if there was any corporal punishment she would be the one to dish it out and Sr Roberta as well’. He could not remember being beaten by any other nuns other than this particular Sister and the Resident Manager. He remarked that, in hindsight, the corporal punishment administered in Clifden was probably no more severe than that administered in other schools at the time. He said: Well, when you are being punished, it is like everything else, you will always take it that no one has ever been punished as hard as you, it is human nature... . The corporal punishment, when you look back on it now, probably was no different than other schools. It was just the hunger and the cold.

He was transferred to the Christian Brothers’ Industrial School in Salthill in the late 1960s. He was fed and treated better in Salthill. He recalled: as tough and all as Salthill was we got well fed and treated that good bit better really in Salthill ... There was a difference, believe it or not, between Clifden and Salthill. A good difference, a major difference.

Of the three institutions he spent time in, Clifden was the toughest, mainly because of the cold and hunger. In particular, he recalled being treated with kindness in Lenaboy: But all I can remember from [there] was the kindness. They were very, very kind to us ... The kindness, they were very, very kind [there]. When we were being taken out of [there] to go home I actually missed it.

He did not accept that his experience in Clifden had impacted adversely upon his life in any great way: ‘Things like that you just try to bury it, bury it in the back of your mind and go forward you know’. He is now a tradesman and is married with children.

Among the points emerging from these witnesses are: Both spoke of the inadequacy of the diet in terms of quality and quantity and both spoke of being hungry. Although one witness said that there was no bullying at meal times, the other was quite clear that this did occur and it meant that smaller, weaker children went without. Both described a different member of the religious staff as being cruel, as well as a lay worker, and one of these witnesses identified the regime as harsh and cruel. In particular, the positive witness’s description of the Resident Manager was indicative of a person unsuited to caring for children. One of the witnesses said that the Sisters were prohibited from any display of physical affection, which she identified as a hardship for the nuns themselves. Moreover, she learnt from the nuns to keep a distance and not cuddle the younger children placed in her care. There can be no doubt that the constant rejection of very vulnerable children instinctively seeking this kind of reassurance and affection would have had an extremely damaging effect on them. It seems extraordinary that a Congregation of nuns who had been engaged in childcare for over 100 years would have continued this attitude towards the children in their care when they must have seen the damage it was doing. It would seem that the observance of the discipline of the Congregation was given priority over the interests of the children. The banishment of the expression of affection may have made the Sisters appear to be acting fairly, by making them treat all children in the same way, but it also made them detached and distant, and at worst cold and cruel. Both witnesses confirmed what a number of complainants have said about this and other institutions, that the authorities were warned when an Inspector from the Department of Education was coming, and clothes, bedding and food were improved for the occasion. These two witnesses differed as to the amount of preparation that was made, but it is clear that the preparations ensured that the inspectors did not get an accurate picture of the Institution during these inspections. The positive witness, Mary in particular spoke of there being ‘elite’ groups, as well as marginalised children such as Travellers. She recalled that the Resident Manager had pets. Religious and lay staff members denigrated the children’s background. These facts indicate that, whilst, for some, Clifden may not have been a bad place to be, for others it was harsh and abusive. The positive witness was detained for 18 months after her discharge date, to go on working in the Institution. She said that she did not want to stay and asked to be let out, but she was clearly a reliable and responsible young person and was detained at the will of the Resident Manager. Although this witness does not make a complaint about being kept on, it was clear exploitation and a failure to consider the best interests of the child. One of these witnesses was introduced by the Congregation as a positive witness. She balanced her criticisms of the regime by testifying that the good the Sisters did outweighed their shortcomings, but her evidence nevertheless contained quite severe criticisms and acquires increased importance because she was advanced by the Congregation as a positive witness.