3 entries for Br Vic

This complainant also alleged that Br Vic18 inflicted severe punishment on the boys while he supervised them in the washroom. This Brother was one of seven Brothers transferred to Carriglea in 1946, in an attempt to restore law and order. The witness stated: When we used go up to the wash house at night-time in the young dormitory, we used go up to the washroom and he used to have a whistle thing. It was like a military thing. “Everybody go to the sinks, wash their hair”. When he blew the thing he said stop. And if you were last to come back into line again he gave you a good walloping. He was physical with anybody who was there, he would get you back in line again. Between the two dormitories there was an alcove there and if he was giving a young lad a good slapping, the young lad would be screaming and we would be all standing in the wash house saying, “we hope he doesn’t come back in for us”.

A complainant, who was resident in the School in the early 1950s, alleged that he was sexually abused on two occasions by Br Vic, one of the Brothers who had been sent into the School in 1946 to restore order and discipline. The alleged abuse took place at night, when the Brother would take the boy out of his bed and bring him to a room downstairs. He made the complainant perform oral sex. When asked by counsel whether he was in a position to resist, he stated, ‘No, you were never in a position to resist, they owned you body and soul once you were inside them walls’.

The complainant confided in a priest and, somehow, the allegation made its way back to Br Vic, who punished the boy for telling the priest. While the sexual abuse never occurred again, the boy lived in permanent fear of it recurring: ‘It wasn’t the fact that it didn’t happen again, it was the fear that it might. And when you live with that fear it is worse really than the act itself’.