Chapter 14 — Children’s Homes

Physical abuse

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.

Two (2) witnesses from two Homes reported being sent by care staff to stand waiting for punishment by lay staff in authority for ‘anything that was considered rebellious’ such as talking in the dormitory or ‘answering back’. In both instances the witnesses described that the perpetrators of the beatings had a reputation for severe physical abuse. One witness described anticipating the abuse and demonstrated efforts to protect himself from the assaults: Once you were standing in this big long corridor there would be 2 or 3 ... (co-residents) ... you are not thinking of them, you are just thinking of yourself, which way were you going to do ... demonstrating protecting face with arms ... so you protected yourself with your arm like that but then you got it round the edges .... The worst part was ... you were told at night time they would say “go in to the ... (room) ... wait for me” ... that was the worst part. You knew you were going to get a beating, waiting for the beating you knew what it was going to be like ...(a severe beating) ...

Five (5) witnesses from two Homes reported that there was an atmosphere of bullying and intimidation by older residents. They described being physically and verbally abused, and in some instances they believed this occurred with the knowledge and consent of staff in authority. Two (2) witnesses from one Home believed that older residents were encouraged by the lay resident manager to physically punish younger residents and that they were then rewarded with treats such as extra cigarettes and outings to the cinema: There was a lot of bullying there, not the kids of your own age, there would be the odd scuffle you’d understand that, you know. The boys older than us would beat us up a lot, they would give fearsome beatings. I often ended up with black eyes and face busted to the side, bruises all over me body from kickings.... ... If you complained about it the head people would turn around and say to you, “oh you got that for arguing with a young fellow your own age”, so where do you go from that? They never got disciplined. Actually the main man of the place, who used to run the place, used to use the older boys to do his punishment for him, that’s kinda how he run the place.... The orders were coming from him, we used to get 4 or 5 cigarettes, he’d give them 20 or 30, he was paying them for what they were doing, they would get extra pocket money.

Twenty one (21) witnesses, 15 male and six female, from 10 Children’s Homes reported that they sustained injuries from physical abuse. The types of injuries reported included four mouth and facial injuries, three broken bones, and three head injuries which rendered witnesses unconscious. Many witnesses described being left marked and bleeding. One male witness reported being unconscious following a severe beating by two female lay staff and woke up to find a splint on his arm. Another witness gave an account of bruising to his genitalia following a beating.

Six (6) witnesses, four male and two female, reported receiving medical attention following incidents of physical abuse, and three witnesses reporting attending hospital for treatment of injuries. Two (2) male witnesses who reported being severely physically assaulted in one Children’s Home described attending hospital on three different occasions with injuries to their head and stomach.

Two (2) witnesses from two different Homes reported that following severe beatings by male religious and lay care staff two co-residents were never seen again.