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100 entries for Sr Callida

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She felt unable to express disagreement with Sr Callida, and none of the other care staff were able to do so either. She described Sr Callida as ‘a very strong person and when she said something that was it, you had nowhere else to go’.

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This ex-staff member was concerned about three specific issues in Group Home A: She did not think that it was appropriate for past pupils to stay in Group Home A with the children. She believed that some of them were a bad influence on the children. Past pupils were not allowed to stay in either of the other group homes – only Sr Callida allowed it. The Department had been concerned snce 1976 about the practice of past pupils being allowed to stay over. They had been assured that the practice would cease and that lodgings would be found for the ex-pupils elsewhere. However, in Group Home A the situation was allowed to continue. Sr Callida went absent for days at a time, without giving any prior notice, and without leaving any contact address or number. The witness, who was in her 20s, was left in charge of up to 16 small children without any support from the Resident Manager or any other Sister in Cappoquin. Sr Callida regularly drank alcohol – usually whiskey – in the group home. She said that this occurred in the evening and was often in the sitting room in front of the older children. She said that Sr Callida would not be so drunk as to be ‘falling all over the place or anything, but I felt at the time it was drunk when she would slur a word’.

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She did not believe that Sr Callida’s drinking affected the day-to-day running of the home, but it did affect her personality: I suppose not as the running of the everyday stuff, because the staff, I think, would do a lot more of that, of the running of the house and the caring of the kids. But I just felt sometimes that it probably affected her personality, maybe the day after or something that she would be a little bit hung over. Maybe that affected her work.

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Ms Tierney11 started work in Group Home A in the late 1980s when she was aged 20 years. She had no experience in childcare, having worked in an office previously: [Group Home A]. My first impressions were of all these dirty scruffy children. That is an awful thing to call them but that’s what it was. It was just a chaotic house and there were just children everywhere. The first day I went there Callida was on her own and there were just small children all around the house, all over the place, and the house was very shabby as well ... At the time I started there, there were 10 to 12 children living in the house ... 6 months to 16 years. It was just a very chaotic place to work. I didn’t really understand the workings of the place or anything like that. As a staff team everyone seemed to be afraid of Callida. Any time I would answer the phone it was like "is she there?" That was the first reaction, "Is she there?”

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Ms Tierney said that Sr Serena,12 the Superior of the convent often stayed overnight in Group Home A with Sr Callida. This Sister did not interact with the staff at all but, she said, had a particular child whom she singled out for attention and whom she would keep with her during her visits to Group Home A: She just was around all the time. She was around all the time ... Every day after work she would come and she would call into our place most days after work. It was a regular occurrence. She would stay and wander around and she would be down to Callida. She had a little pet that was her little pet, one of the kids that was there, and she would come in and she would make a big fuss over this child and hold her hand and wander around and really make the rest of the kids feel very inferior to this one particular child.

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Sr Serena and Sr Callida went up to the convent at about 6pm for prayers, and then they would return to the Home for the evening.

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They went away together quite often without giving notice. Sr Callida had a little girl who slept with her at night, and she would sometimes take that child or other children with her on her excursions: Also, the fact that the kids slept in the bedroom, and she nearly always had a young child sleeping in the bedroom with her. It just became a habit over the years. Some of the staff used to try and get the child not to go in there but the child just always went in and she always brought her in. When she would go down to bed at night she would bring her with her.

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When Sr Callida went away: She used bring her with her most of the time. Most of the time they would bring some of the younger kids away with them.

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Ms Tierney recalled one occasion when a man walked into the Home accompanied by two other men and took his children away. Sr Callida left within half an hour and did not return for two days. In the meantime, this young care-worker did not know where the children were or whether the Gardaí had been informed about their removal. She said she was very traumatised by the incident and was frightened that the father would come back in the night.

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She described Sr Callida’s drinking: She was well noted for it in the town ... Any time I met her out, if I was in an occasion to meet her in the pub, she would be very drunk.

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She recalled on one occasion that Sr Callida was so drunk that she fell into the playpen on top of one of the children.

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She said it was a regular occurrence for Sr Callida to be drunk in Group Home A: That was a regular occurrence, very regular occurrence. There was no big secret about it, everyone knew, everyone knew she drank. That’s what I found very hard to understand how everyone in the community knew what she was like and fellows knew that she was pissed going around the town and she would be out at nightclubs and different things.

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In addition to the drinking, Sr Callida also entertained past pupils in Group Home A at night and allowed them to stay there: The night that I remember Mr Owens13 being there, there were five men in the house that night stayed overnight that night. Two of them were ex-residents and two of them were total strangers. But she would leave the house then.

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From the time that Sr Callida became Resident Manager of the two group homes in the early 1980s, management problems arose almost immediately, as had been identified by Mr Granville in his General Inspection Report of this time.

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Ms Waters gave evidence of a system that was incapable of delivering a proper level of childcare. One of her main problems was the lack of respect shown to the care staff by Sr Callida that led to unhappiness amongst the staff. They were not consulted about anything and were not even given notice of their work schedule, which was often delivered a day in advance on the back of an envelope. There was no regular timetable for rostering of staff, which made family life for the care workers very difficult.

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