Chapter 5 — Interviews

Girls’ Industrial Schools and Reformatories

A number of interviewees spoke of being sexually abused by older girls in the Industrial School. This abuse, which was often in the context of physical bullying as well as sexual bullying, occurred in two or three schools that were mentioned by interviewees.

The majority of interviewees spoke about being completely ignorant about the facts of life and of not being properly prepared for, or provided for, when menstruation occurred. Many girls reported being terrified when they got their first period and having to depend on older girls to tell them how to deal with it.

In general, the attitude to sexuality was repressive and humiliating. Many interviewees reported feeling ashamed of their own bodies and embarrassed and overly modest even in the company of other girls.

Some interviewees recalled that food was generally fair and they had no recollection of being hungry in the institution. Others said that the food was very bad. All of the accounts of the food would indicate that it was meagre or basic in most institutions although one interviewee stated that she never felt any hunger while she was in the convent, that there was lots of food served there and that the only time they were hungry was if they were deprived of food as a punishment.

In general interviewees did not complain about clothing, although some did say that they felt marked out by their clothes when they attended external national schools. Accommodation and standards of cleanliness varied from school to school and depended on the Resident Manager who was in charge. In general, however, the school was kept to a very high standard and girls were required to polish and scrub and clean the premises on a daily basis. There was a very big emphasis on chores and work and many interviewees described drudgery and hard physical labour as being their predominant memory of life during their childhoods.

Very many of the interviewees from girls’ Industrial Schools had been in care all of their lives. Those who came later into the institutions tended to come as a result of family breakdown or illness or death. The children in girls’ Industrial Schools tended to be there for a longer period of time and their memories of their childhood were compressed over a 10- or even 14-year period. However, the predominant and most commonly cited memory of girls who had been placed in Industrial Schools was the humiliation and degradation that they were subjected to by the religious and lay staff. Girls, particularly those born out of wedlock, reported being denigrated because of their birth. One interviewee stated that a feature of the school was the fact that no-one ever felt that you were part of any family or had any real identity. She said there were no birthday celebrations, no toys and no real recreation.

Many of the interviewees reported very low self-esteem. One interviewee said that she felt the biggest complaint that she had was that there was no emotional support for the children whatsoever. She said birthdays were not celebrated and that children had very little to look forward to in their day-to-day lives.

Many interviewees reported that their education was affected by having to work in the institution. They said that they were taken out of classes early in order to care for children or to wash and clean or to do work in the farms or gardens. They also claimed that their education stopped before the Primary Certificate because they were moved full time into working in the institution. Very few interviewees proceeded beyond national school level and this was a source of great disappointment and frustration to many of them who felt that had they been given a chance in their childhood they could have had better careers and better standards of living in their adult lives.

Most interviewees said they had very little contact with the Industrial School once they had left at 16 years of age even though they had lived most, if not all, of their childhood in the care of the school. Very few reported any emotional attachment to the people who had cared for them or to the school itself. When asked whether they had positive memories interviewees would sometimes identify a particular nun or a particular care worker as having been kind. Some interviewees said that their most positive memory of their time in their school were the friendships they made. They said that although there was a degree of bullying from older girls, by and large the girls looked out for each other and this created strong bonds between some of them that they had to this day.

Many of the interviewees were concerned at the impact their experiences in Industrial Schools had had on their own parenting skills. Some of them felt that they had to struggle very hard to be good parents to their own children and many of them felt they had failed in this regard.

In general, the interviewees stated that they were not prepared properly for life after the institution and were not properly supported by the institution once they left. Many of these women suffered life-long problems with addictions and depression and they stated that the damage done in these early years stayed with them throughout their lives.

The Committee’s legal team heard complaints about a total of 12 orphanages that operated in the state during the relevant period. Nine of these institutions had fewer than four complainants, one had six complainants, and two others had 13 and 14 complainants respectively. Unlike Industrial Schools, orphanages did not take children that were committed by the courts but instead children were sent to orphanages by families who had either broken down irretrievably or who were going through a temporary traumatic event or had suffered bereavement. Children usually stayed in the orphanage until they were 12 and then they either went back to their family or extended family or they were placed in an Industrial School if there was no family available to care for them. Orphanages were run by Religious Orders of nuns, Brothers and by lay people. They did not have internal national schools and children from orphanages attended outside national schools. Orphanages did not provide industrial training of any sort although children were required to do quite an extensive round of chores and maintenance in the school.

Where a parent was still alive at the time of a child’s committal to an orphanage, there tended to be more contact between the child and the parent and in many cases the stay in the orphanage was terminated by the child’s return to the family.

The 12 orphanages whose residents were interviewed by the Commission varied greatly in terms of physical punishment and abuse reported by interviewees. In cases where the interviewee was also attending to discuss an Industrial School, the orphanage was sometimes contrasted very favourably with the school that the child subsequently attended. For example, one complainant said that he had been placed in the orphanage because of abuse by his father. He stated that he and his brother were sexually and physically abused whilst he was at home and that he was removed to a children’s home in Dublin. He said that he had great memories of the home that they ‘looked after the children 100 percent’. He said that a lot of love was felt and shown to the children in that home. He was subsequently sent to another institution that he experienced as extremely abusive and about which he had come specifically to the Commission to complain.

There was a wide range of different experiences across different institutions and whilst some orphanages were described as well equipped with good food and clothing, others were described as grim, frightening places. In these institutions physical punishment was the first response to any misdemeanour or wrong doing. Institutions varied as to the level of physical punishment administered. In orphanages that catered exclusively for boys, the level of physical punishment was quite high and children were beaten with canes, leathers and other implements by religious and lay staff.