Chapter 14 — Children’s Homes

Record of abuse

The Committee heard 65 reports of abuse from 61 witnesses, 38 male and 23 female, in relation to 19 Children’s Homes over the period 1919 to 1992.8 Four (4) male witnesses each reported abuse in two Children’s Homes. Reports of abuse by a witness may be either descriptions of a single incident of abuse or multiple experiences of abuse over a period of time. The Committee heard multiple abuse reports in relation to nine of the 19 homes reported: Six (6) Homes were each the subject of between four and 10 reports, totalling 63 reports (47 male and 16 female). Three (3) Homes were each the subject of either two or three reports, totalling 31 reports (18 male and 13 female). Ten (10) Homes were each the subject of single reports, five male and five female.

Witnesses reported all four types of abuse: physical and sexual abuse, neglect and emotional abuse alone and in combination, as follows: Fifty seven (57) witnesses reported physical abuse. Forty two (42) witnesses reported emotional abuse. Forty one (41) witnesses reported neglect. Twenty nine (29) witnesses reported sexual abuse.

Table 73 outlines the combinations and frequency of abuse types, as reported by witnesses:

Abuse types and combinations	Number of reports
Physical, emotional and neglect	16
Physical, sexual, emotional and neglect	15
Physical and emotional	7
Physical and neglect	6
Physical, sexual and emotional	5
Physical, sexual and neglect	5
Physical and sexual	4
Physical	3
Sexual and emotional	1
Sexual	1
Emotional	1
Neglect	1
Total	65

Fifty (50) witnesses reported that abuse was a regular occurrence either witnessed or experienced on a daily basis. As indicated above, the most frequently reported combination of abuse types by both male and female witnesses were physical and emotional abuse with neglect. The Committee heard 30 witness reports of sexual abuse in combination with other types of abuse.

Physical abuse

The wilful, reckless or negligent infliction of physical injury on, or failure to prevent such injury to, the child.9 This section describes witness reports of incidents of physical abuse, non-accidental injury, and lack of protection from harm. The reports included detailed and disturbing accounts of assaults experienced. The forms of physical abuse included beating, punching, kicking, assault with implements and being immersed in water.

Fifty seven (57) witnesses, 36 male and 21 female, who gave evidence to the Committee reported physical abuse in 19 Children’s Homes. Witnesses made 61 reports of physical abuse over a 70-year period. The number of witness reports of physical abuse in different Homes varied as follows: Two (2) Children’s Homes were collectively the subject of 24 reports. Seven (7) Children’s Homes were the subject of between two and five reports, totalling 27 reports. Ten (10) Children’s Homes were the subject of single reports.

Witnesses reported being physically abused for many reasons or for no reason that they could understand. Many gave accounts of being constantly fearful of physical punishment. Behaviours precipitating abuse included bed-wetting, disclosing abuse, underachieving in the classroom, failure to meet expected standards of personal care and care of their clothing, running away, breaking the rule of silence, taking food, and other perceived misconduct.

Witnesses from four Children’s Homes gave accounts of a harsh environment where explosive episodes of physical abuse were experienced or witnessed, with no understanding of why they were happening. Some witnesses reported being beaten in association with sexual abuse.

Nine (9) witnesses from a small number of Homes described being beaten in the presence of staff and co-residents, when they were either partially undressed or stripped naked.

Witness reports of physical abuse included being punched, kicked, hit with knuckles, hair pulled and cut, being force fed, and lifted by the ears and hair. The Committee also heard reports of witnesses being forced to kneel for long periods, being beaten on the feet, backs of the hands, fingertips and legs. They also described their heads being hit off radiators, wedged in a door or submerged under water. The witnesses reported being beaten with various implements including leathers, sticks, strips of rubber, brushes, hurleys, badminton racquets, rulers, whips and bunches of keys. A small number of witnesses reported being forced to eat quantities of mustard, having their mouths and other body parts, including genitalia, scrubbed with nailbrushes, and being held under a cold tap. On a Saturday morning we used to do work around the orphanage, clean up, sweep up floors, that sort of thing.... We had to clean up around old fashioned urinals, pick up papers out of the shore, that was my job. I was only 8, 9, or 10 at the time.... One day he .... (named religious staff)... was not happy with the result of what I had done, that resulted in another frenzied attack of kicking.... He punched me, straight in with the fist and when you’re down the boot came out then. You’re a kid, you’re in a ball trying to protect yourself the best possible way. • Sr ...X... beat me at night, before I would go to sleep, to stop me from wetting the bed. When that didn’t work she beat me before I would go to school, this continued over all the years in the orphanage, she made me an example. It went on ’til I was 13 ...(years old)... everyday. I learned not to cry, she would hit me more if I did cry. Before she beat me I would have to carry my sheets across through the house to the laundry, she would bend me over a bath or over the rocking horse and on bare skin she would beat me with whatever was handy, cane, strap or brush. The final straw was Sr ...X... came into the bathroom and said “by the time I have finished with you ...(witness’s surname)... the devil will be out of you”. She had the bath ready, she had this nailbrush, she scrubbed my private area with it so much I was so sore, then she decided to put my head underwater ...(saying)... “you will be clean after this”. I had to fight for breath I couldn’t breathe, it seemed like an endless time, as if she wasn’t going to stop, I was frozen. • He ... (named male religious staff )... would lift boys by forelocks and try to punch boys where bruising would not show.

Both male and female witnesses reported being physically abused in various locations including classrooms, dormitories, refectories, bathrooms, recreation halls, work and play areas, grounds of the Homes, and in the homes of ‘holiday’ families. A small number of witnesses from one Children’s Home reported being abused by being isolated, physically punished, and threatened not to disclose that they were abused in the infirmary. One witnesses commented ‘because of the general fear you were afraid to go to the ...infirmary...’

The majority of the 24 witness reports from two Homes were of severe abuse including being hit on the bare buttocks, being submerged and held under water, and being instructed to hit other residents. Ten (10) male witnesses from one of these Children’s Homes commented that physical beatings were severe, unpredictable and unprovoked. Six (6) of the 10 witnesses reported sustaining injuries to their hands, feet and heads. Two (2) witnesses described their experiences in the following words: It just continued on and on a daily basis, just random attacks on different individuals. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for the attacks, unprovoked, if he ... (named male religious Resident Manager)... felt like laying into somebody he would just do it. It was constant. You might be queuing up for food and it would be a dig ... (punch)... put into some guy, a wigging ... (pulling by the ear)... pull somebody out. ... It was just random attacks, there was no control on it, for no apparent reason, a constant barrage of abuse, mentally abuse you and physically abuse you. • She ... (Sr X)... pulled my pants down and beat me around the kitchen, when she was finished she sent me out to face the other lads with my trousers down. Still she was not finished, I was sent to wax and polish the refectory, as I finished she opened the door and in came one of the older boys. He told me she sent him in to beat me. I kept moving around the tables pleading and in the end he didn’t hit me. I spent the night locked in there. Bed-wetting and soiling

Twenty one (21) witnesses, 13 male and eight female, reported being physically punished for bed-wetting or soiling. The Committee heard many reports of physical punishment combined with critical and humiliating comments in relation to bed-wetting. Witnesses stated they were beaten on the hands or on the bare buttocks, and in two Homes the residents were beaten partially naked. Witnesses also described having their faces pushed into wet and soiled sheets, locked outside in sheds or in dark cupboards, and having their heads immersed in water. Two (2) male witnesses stated that they were held under water by the genitalia in baths as a punishment for bed-wetting. Female witnesses reported being made to stand in cold baths. The following is a witness’s account of punishment for bed-wetting: From the word go I witnessed terrible, terrible physical abuse. On my first morning I woke up and I seen ... named male religious staff... and he had a young guy, probably about my own age, 6 or 7, this young guy had wet the bed and...named male religious staff... had him by one arm and one leg, he looked like a spider monkey. He had a sink filled with cold water and he was dumping him up and down in it, the kid was gone off his head screaming. I had never seen this before in my life, I could not give expression to it, frozen disbelief, I couldn’t react, I couldn’t speak .... • I was punished for bed-wetting. I had to sit with my hands on top of my head and... (be)... beaten on the toes with a stick or put across the bed in a nightshirt and beaten on the bare bottom.

Twenty one (21) witnesses, 14 male and seven female, described being physically abused in the classroom. Many of the witnesses described the classroom as a place of fear, particularly associated with a small number of named abusers. Witnesses reported being punished for reasons such as left-handedness, resisting sexual fondling, lack of fluency in Irish, and speech or writing difficulties. One witness who was left handed described his hand being tied to the side of the desk at study time and then being beaten for any mistakes he made. Another witness who was left- handed described her abuse: Sr ...X... beat me regularly for being left-handed, saying “no convent girl is going to be left-handed, left-handed people are for the devil”. Sr ...Y... stuck sewing needles in the back of my hand for sewing with my left hand. I was beaten on the palms, back of hands, with the leather strap, ruler, bamboo stick, my hands were beaten so badly they bled. When my hands were bleeding I was isolated in the infirmary until they healed. She ... (Sr X)... got me to wet my hands before she hit me sometimes. In school I was made stand on the desk, if my hands were bleeding I was slapped on the backs of my legs. I was so bad one day all the class cried with me, I used to blank out the pain.

Twenty nine (29) witnesses from 10 Children’s Homes reported harsh and often unpredictable physical punishment for various other reasons. The circumstances precipitating abuse included neglect of one’s personal care and clothing, not eating the food provided, answering back, the disclosure of sexual abuse and ‘breaking the silence rule’. In one Home witnesses reported that following inspection of their shoes and clothing residents were beaten if the items were soiled, damaged or lost and that losing a stud from one’s boots led to being beaten on the soles of the feet. Others reported that breaking the rule of sleeping with their arms crossed, fainting or falling asleep in the chapel or not responding promptly while praying led to being hit with a cane by staff.