19 entries for Br Ansel

Br Octave, who responded to an internal Christian Brothers questionnaire relating to various issues regarding the management of Tralee, said that Br Ansel: was the best Principal and disciplinarian. He didn’t tolerate disobedience in word or act. Returned runaways had to “walk the line” for longish periods until they were broken.

Br Ansel left Tralee in 1945 and went to Carriglea at a time when it was known to the Congregation authorities that there were considerable disciplinary problems there, and his time there is discussed in the chapter on Carriglea. Br Ansel received a Canonical Warning in the mid-1950s because of an involvement with a woman, and he was granted a dispensation some 10 years later.

The Investigation Committee heard complaints about Br Maslin, who served in Tralee at the same time as Br Ansel. A witness said that Br Maslin ‘just enjoyed beating me and beating a lot of the boys’. He was only beaten by him for ‘lessons in school’. The beatings were ‘severe ... regularly the cane, regularly the strap’ and he was ‘walloped across the backside’.

Another complainant told the Committee that he wet the bed until he was almost 16 and he got ‘some atrocious abuse over that’. He spoke of how the Brothers, but mostly one particular Brother, Br Ansel, would hold up the sheet after he wet the bed and show it to the rest of the School, mocking him. This led to him being labelled a bed-wetter by the other boys. This was, at the time, ‘the lowest you could be’.