Chapter 5 — Interviews

Girls’ Industrial Schools and Reformatories

Twenty-two girls’ Industrial Schools and Reformatories were mentioned by complainants in the course of interviews with the Commission. Of these, one school was also the subject of a full Investigation Committee report. The other 21 schools were each the subject of a small number of complaints. They were small schools run by religious orders of nuns and were generally in rural locations throughout Ireland.

Twenty of the 22 girls’ Industrial Schools were cited by interviews for administering physical punishment that in their view amounted to abuse. Although most of the complaints were in respect of pervasive, arbitrary and unpredictable punishments, a significant number of complainants described incidents of extreme abuse and cruelty. The accounts given at interview disclosed a wide divergence between different schools and there was less evidence of a policy of abuse across the system.

There was variation from school to school and the level and severity of physical punishment appeared to depend to a very large extent on the Resident Manager. In all schools in which physical punishment was alleged, the complainants spoke about the pervasiveness of such punishments and said that even minor misdemeanours would be punished by a slap or a ‘clatter’.

In some schools, the Resident Manager was described as being extremely abusive. Girls were punished by being beaten with leather straps, canes, and other implements. They said they were beaten on all parts of their bodies, with or without clothing on.

Complaints of physical punishment in girls’ Industrial Schools mentioned as a particular feature lay workers who were alleged by a large number of interviewees to have perpetrated severe punishment and abuse without any accountability to the nuns who managed the schools. In addition, older girls were often left in charge of younger children and were permitted to use such physical punishment as they deemed appropriate without any supervision or control.

Other punishments were cited, such as being locked into a dark room for a long period of time, being deprived of food and privileges, and in one or two cases girls having their hair shaved or cut tightly.

Even in schools in which corporal punishment was described as fairly mild, there was still an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty amongst the children because of the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the punishment. Children who were engaged in ordinary day-to-day activities could be smacked, slapped or beaten for little or no reason. This made children distrustful of adults and they felt isolated and undermined throughout their childhood.

Complainants spoke of beatings that were so severe that they ended up in the infirmary for a number of days and even weeks. Some said that the doctor or a nurse would have been aware of their condition but would not have been told how it had happened. In one case an interviewee said that she had marks all over her body from a beating with a whip and the doctor was told that it had been caused by an older girl. Another interviewee recalled Dr Anna McCabe, the Department of Education Inspector, seeing her. She believed Dr McCabe did not accept the explanation by the Resident Manager and insisted on speaking to the Resident Manager about the condition she found the child in. The interviewee believed that the particular nun who administered the beating did not beat the children as much after that event.

Interviewees reported beatings mainly for misbehaviour consisting of answering back or being careless or inadvertent in their chores or daily activities. They also reported physical punishment in school and many reported being fearful whilst in the classroom. Most of the children in these smaller Industrial Schools were educated in external schools and many reported feeling singled out and ‘picked on’ by nuns and teachers in the external school.

Sexual abuse did not feature regularly in the complaints of interviewees who were pupils of girls’ Industrial Schools. No school was described of having an endemic or systemic problem of sexual abuse. However, individual serious incidents of sexual abuse were reported by interviewees against priests, lay workers, godparents, and men in families to whom the children had been sent on work placements. The sexual abuse alleged ranged from inappropriate touching to rape, and in all cases where children were sexually abused by men there was a fear and reluctance in reporting the abuse to the management of the schools.

Where a priest was alleged to have abused girls, a number of interviewees said that they believed his activities were known to the management of the school but were not addressed by them. Even if girls stated that they were uncomfortable about being with the priest in many cases no notice was taken. This was not universally the case: one or two examples were cited where girls complained about the behaviour of a priest and they were never again placed in the position of being alone with that priest.

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.