Chapter 9 — Clifden

Emotional abuse

The two national schools merged in 1969 and the children from the Industrial School joined the local children in Scoil Mhuire. Sr Carmella explained: they found it very hard to mix in the beginning, they felt very insecure the first year because they didn’t seem to belong anywhere. They were very secure down with us and how they were like thrown in with the town’s children and I felt they were lost the first year.

Prior to this, they did not mix at all with the people from the locality, as the Resident Manager did not allow it.

This respondent stated that many of the Sisters had good relationships with the children and there was a fair amount of interaction between the Sisters in the convent and the children. When asked to elaborate on this interaction, however, she stated that the children were often up in the convent cleaning.

Sr Elana, who taught in Scoil Mhuire from the late 1950s, confirmed that the convent, where she resided, was on the same grounds as the Industrial School, although the Sisters in the convent had little contact with the children. It was a relatively large community, with approximately 30 Sisters in the late 1960s. They were not encouraged to interact with the children from the Industrial School.

Two former residents of Clifden had positive memories of small acts of kindness to them by some nuns, even though they sometimes occurred in circumstances where other nuns had been particularly cruel.

A witness, who was sent to Clifden at the age of 10 in the late 1950s and remained there until the mid-1960s, recalled good memories of one respondent, Sr Carmella. She remembered being hit by her on only one occasion. This Sister was kind to the children and the witness felt that she could talk to her. She alleged that this Sister gave her white socks to wear in order to cover bruises on her legs that she had sustained at the hands of Sr Veronica. The Congregation’s Submission following the Phase III hearings rebuts the accusation that Sr Carmella was somehow complicit in physical abuse.

The witness described another Sister, who worked on the farm, as a lovely nun. She would allow the children to eat the left-over food from the convent, which had been destined for the pigs.

At Christmas time, the children would receive a handkerchief, comb or hair slide in a brown paper bag.

They were taught singing and dancing and performed at feiseanna.

Another complainant, who was committed to Clifden for just over a year in the early 1960s when she was 12 years old, recalled one particular Sister who was kind: ‘When Sister Veronica beat us up, or Sister Roberta, and we would be sore or crying she would always put her hand on your shoulder and tell you not to cry, that everything would be okay. But everything wasn’t okay down there. Everything was bad’.

The witness also named one Sister who was fine, because she did not beat the children.

Her abiding positive memory of Clifden is spending time with the animals on the farm.

The recollection of complainants, that Clifden was a cold, cheerless environment with little emotional contact from the Sisters who worked there, is borne out by the evidence of the Sisters themselves.

The Congregation proposed that evidence should be heard from a former resident, Mary,15 who had positive memories of the Institution.

In addition, in its written Submissions to the Commission, the Congregation asked the Investigation Committee to take account of the evidence of one of the complainants, who was committed to Clifden at the age of eight in 1966 and remained there for a year and a half, and who it asserts was a reliable witness and ‘showed balance and emotional closure or maturity in the way he described life in the school’.