25 entries for Mr Restin

Sr Vita worked in Mount St Joseph’s Industrial School in Passage West from the early 1940s to the early 1980s, and was Resident Manager from the early 1970s until she left. She was a qualified nurse. She is now deceased. Her evidence was taken on commission at a nursing home in Cork. Sr Vita’s recollection was that the first complainant above told her about Mr Restin, who had threatened to do something to him and to a number of younger boys. She said that she asked him whether Mr Restin had threatened to beat him, to which he replied that he had not. She did not pursue the matter further ‘in my innocence and ignorance I suppose’ and said she did not know what the boy could have meant, although she did believe that he had been threatened by Mr Restin. She sent for Mr Restin, but he had left the Institution by then. She never saw him again. She said that she phoned Cappoquin looking for him but he was not there. In a statement made to the Gardaí she said: After [the complainant] had told me about [Mr Restin] I tried to contact him in Cappoquin. I wanted to talk with him to find out if it was true or false what [the complainant] had said. I did not get to speak with him, I left a message for him to contact me, but he did not.

In the Garda statement she added: I sent word to Cappoquin Orphanage through a nun here that I felt that [Mr Restin] was not a suitable person to be with children.

The job he got in Cappoquin involved general childcare duties, and teaching a remedial class of boys who had reading difficulties. He said that he assumed he would have sought a reference from Sr Vita for the course and for his move to Cappoquin, but there was no record of any such request or reference on file in either Cappoquin or Passage West. The records show that, while Mr Restin was in Passage West, he was also spending time in Cappoquin Industrial School. In the early 1970s, an official from the Department of Education carried out a general inspection of Cappoquin Industrial School and reported that: A ... nurse ... visits the school every few weeks to lend assistance in placements (he helps out similarly in the Passage West School in Cork).

Mr Restin thought that he abused three boys in Cappoquin. He described the method he used to get to know the child. He said he never used threats and just became friendly with them and then ‘they would literally do what you want’. He gave rewards such as sweets but rarely gave money. He said he would stop if the boys wanted him to and denied that he ever forced them.

A former resident said that Mr Restin began to abuse him when he was aged 10. The abuse started when Mr Restin came into his dormitory one night, woke him and brought him to his bedroom. Mr Restin fondled his genitals and made the boy do the same to him. On another occasion, when Mr Restin was giving injections, he again molested the boy. He told the boy that, if he did not tell anyone, he would get a pair of roller skates. Mr Restin continued to abuse the boy in this way until his sudden departure from the School.

Another witness said he was sexually abused by Mr Restin in the same way on one occasion. He remembered being called into Mr Restin’s office and told to take down his trousers, whereupon Mr Restin fondled his genitals. He was under the impression that Mr Restin was a doctor in Cappoquin. He thought he was aged around six or seven when this occurred.

A further witness recalled that the children were told one Saturday they were going to receive an injection. They were told to go to the old school (St Ita’s) and line up in the hallway. Mr Restin had a small room off one of the classrooms. The boy was brought in and told to drop his underwear. Mr Restin and Sr Lorenza were present, and Sr Lorenza began to feel his testicles and she told him they were normal. He then remembered getting an injection in the buttocks.

She went straight to the convent and told the Superior; together, they went to see the Resident Manager, who listened attentively. The manager said that Mr Restin was due to bring the children for an outing the following day and she would put a stop to that. She got rid of him soon after that. The scout leader explained that, while sexual abuse was not spelled out to her by the local man, she sensed the meaning and urgency of the message he was conveying. She said in evidence that she never discussed Mr Restin’s previous work history with anybody. She did become aware afterwards that he had worked in Passage West in the industrial school, because there was a Sister in Cappoquin who had a sibling, also a Sister, in Passage West: and I think she wrote to her, but it was only just – I never read the letter and I never knew anything, but it was really on the urgency of [the local man], that’s how I went to the Superior and that’s how we went to (the Resident Manager).

Mr Restin left Cappoquin suddenly. He did not now remember the circumstances and he thought someone may have said something to the nuns about him abusing boys.

There is very little information about where Mr Restin was between the time he left Cappoquin in the mid-1970s and his departure for England in the late 1970s. He said that after Cappoquin he went to work in Cork before he left for England. Initially, he worked in a bar and then returned to nursing.