1,173 entries for Abuse Events

Another witness explained the reason for fearing becoming known as a sexually active boy: You know, there was two things that you never did in Artane. One was you never touched another boy in a sexual area. Me personally never did anyway. Another thing is that you never told of it if it ever happened to you because then you’re open, you’re open season then. If you are open season that means the boys get you. So you don’t tell anybody, you keep your mouth shut and that’s it ... Nobody, except a priest. I told nobody. I am sure it happened to other boys and they told nobody either because you didn’t tell. You know, I mean, you were a soft touch then.

A further witness was embarrassed about his sexual activity, even though it was by consent: Well, it is probably a bit embarrassing, but to be honest with you I was actually involved in that myself. It was just sort of playing around basically ... No, it wasn’t very frequent but it happened every now and then. But it was very common in Artane, it was very common that boys would be playing around with each other ... Most of the time, 99% of the time it would be a case of just two boys messing about.

He went on to comment on the Brothers’ awareness, and on the prevalence of one particular form of common sexual activity: ... you have got to appreciate in places like Artane, well it wasn’t very, very common but quite a lot of times boys would be masturbating each other. If another boy that wasn’t, you know, doing that would find out they would say it was badness.

Another witness recalled an admonitory talk by a Brother: ... and the Brother who was giving the speech, God knows who he was, turned around and says “right, we know what you boys are doing, you have got to stop it”. This Brother in particular said, “We found over 300 children playing with each other”. Now there was only about 450 in the school. We were all standing there listening and that and, I don’t know whether they ever stopped or not.

A witness spoke of the enormous interest of the Brothers in ‘badness’ and the sin of impurity: Badness was the sin of impurity. They had the sixth commandment. I remember Br Jules used to say there is more people in hell because of the sixth commandment, the sin of impurity. They were absolutely bonkers on this. When we were growing up, young lads, 14, 15, you are getting feelings, you are getting wet dreams and things like that ... As I say, they must have thought that must be one of the reasons of so called badness. It meant boys messing with one another, thought, word or deed or whatever. They regularly wanted to know if you spoke, swore, told bad jokes. They had a mania for this sort of thing.

Another Brother who was there throughout the 1950s said that he remembered the term ‘badness’ as referring to peer abuse and that all staff would have been aware of the term. Despite this, he said that he never encountered any incident of badness nor had to punish a boy for it. However, he was contradicted by a colleague who remembered having to punish a boy who had been referred to him by this Brother who insisted that punishment was necessary: I was in charge and he reported to me that [the boy] was interfering with other boys and he kind of said to me you will have to do something about it. As I understood it then that when some boys were interfering with other boys, they would be punished and one of the punishments they would get would be on the backside with the leather. I wasn’t too keen on doing it, I had a certain reluctance about it. I didn’t do anything for a while. Then Br Gaspard came back to me again and told me that this was going on and that I had to do something about it. I just brought him to the boot room. My memory now, I am working from memory now and it is a long time ago, my memory is that he had his nightshirt on him, he bent down, I gave him three or four smacks of the leather on the – not on the bare backside and he ran out the door and I was glad to see him go.

1.Sexual abuse by Brothers was a chronic problem in Artane. Brothers who served in Artane included firstly those who had previously been guilty of sexual abuse of boys, secondly those whose abuse was discovered while they worked in Artane and, thirdly some who were subsequently revealed to have abused boys. A timeline of the documented and admitted cases of sexual abuse shows that: (a)For more than half of the 33 years under consideration, there was at least one such abuser working there; (b)For more than one third of the years there were at least two abusers present; (c)During one year in the 1940s there were seven such Brothers in Artane at the same time. 2.More abuse occurred than is recorded in documents because of inadequate recording and reporting procedures. In particular: (a)There was little or no communication on an informal, friendly basis between boys and Brothers including the Superior. (b)The sodality was a means of informal communication between boys and the Resident Manager that uncovered four sexual abusers in Artane in 1944, but it was discontinued. (c)Because boys could be punished for complaining about abuse, there was inevitably under-reporting. (d)In the 1960s, the Resident Manager gave instructions that complaints were to be made directly to him and not to the chaplain, thereby cutting off a channel of information. (e)One offender, Br Dennis, admitted sexually abusing many boys in Artane, but only one of his victims gave evidence at the Phase II oral hearings. (f)In other cases of documented abuse, there were no complaints to the Committee. 3.Other causes of under-reporting also operated, including the fact that sexual abuse is difficult for victims to corroborate or verify, the fear of being disbelieved, lack of faith in the investigation process, and feelings of shame and embarrassment. 4.Sexual activity between boys was common, and there was a significant amount of predatory sexual behaviour by bigger boys on smaller, vulnerable ones, but complainants and respondents were guarded in dealing with it. 5.Evidence and inferences in this and other boys’ institutions suggested that some Brothers sought victims among boys they believed were engaged in sexual activity with other boys. Response 6.Cases and allegations of sexual abuse were not properly investigated; information was not shared in the Congregation; cases were not reported to the Department; and the Gardaí were not informed. 7.The Congregation was aware of the criminal nature of sexual abuse perpetrated by Brothers. 8.The Congregation was also aware of the risk of recidivism in such cases. 9.Sexual abuse by Brothers posed a serious risk of damaging the reputations of the Institution and the Congregation if it became public, and cases were managed primarily with a view to protecting them against that danger. The offender was an incidental beneficiary of this policy. 10.The most common reaction was to move the offending Brother to another Christian Brothers’ institution, without regard to the hazard to boys in the new location and with no evidence that the Superior was alerted. Some Brothers were moved to industrial schools after abusing in day schools. 11.The Christian Brothers have submitted that repeat offenders were dismissed from the Congregation, but this does not appear to have occurred. Even when the Council voted for expulsion, this was often done by inviting the Brother to seek dispensation from his vows, which allowed him to leave the Congregation with no taint or suspicion on his character. The Brother could continue teaching in a lay capacity. 12.Only Brothers of temporary profession were dismissed by being refused permanent status by the Congregation, but these Brothers were also able to move on with their reputations intact. 13.Some Brothers and former Brothers found to have committed sexual abuse were able to continue damaging children for many years because of the policy of concealment of the disclosure of abuse, failure to investigate properly and failure to report. 14.The Congregation claimed in its Opening Statement that the impact of abuse on young boys was not properly understood at the time and that the response to the child was therefore inadequate. The reality is that the needs of abused children were not considered at all. It was not a case of insufficient understanding, but rather of giving priority to other concerns. For a Community of religious in loco parentis, this was a fundamental breach of their duty of care.

Another Brother, who was in Artane in the 1960s, told the Investigation Committee of an occasion when the degree of deprivation of some of his pupils was brought home to him in a disquieting way. He recounted the following incident: ... I remember teaching a lesson, it was English reading and it was about a family, and I discovered a boy in the class who didn’t understand what the word “mother” meant. “Brother” or “sister”, it meant nothing to him. I was taken aback by that.

Another Brother told the Investigation Committee of one boy in Artane who had taught him a great deal about human nature. He said: I did learn before I left Artane, if I could tell you a small little story. There was the chap, I can remember his name ... he feared neither God nor man. He didn’t give a hoot about anybody. He was a desperado ... constantly in trouble ... he was the toughest fellow I have ever came across anywhere. Who arrived to see him but his mother. The fella didn’t even know he had a mother. So he was in to meet her ... she was all over him ... he was due out in three months and he was welcome to come to her and she would look after him ... that guy ... went back, I couldn’t believe it, he was a model, because for the first time in his life he realised he had a mother, there was somebody. He didn’t care what she was like. And he was complete – a model boy.

One Brother explained: sometimes a fellow, you would be nice and a fella would come up to you trying to play up to you and say, “Can I be your chafer?” God love them.

A Brother, who was in Artane from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, spoke of what he called ‘that softening down ... in the whole system’ that occurred during his time in Artane. It became ‘a kinder place to be than the first day I entered it’. He told the Investigation Committee: But I have to say now, in all sincerity, that in the latter years that I was there, there was a hell of an improvement, both in food, dress, entertainment, mixing with the outside world. Getting parents or getting Godparents for these kids and trying to get them out and breaking the system.

Some senior Brothers questioned the regimented lives in Artane. In 1952, the Visitation Report contained the following observations: The presence of over 700 boys in one establishment with all kinds of social background necessitates a great amount of regimentation and vigilance, and these have been developed in Artane to the n-th degree so that it would be almost impossible to find a loophole in the system. From Rising Bell till “lights out” the boys are regimented under the watchful eyes of Brothers who are experts in their various duties – so that it becomes almost true to say that the boys are never called on to make decisions for themselves even in small details except at one moment in the day – the moment when they must decide to go or not to go to the altar for Communion. And then one begins to wonder if it can be possible that this system, so perfect in itself, is fundamentally all wrong from top to bottom. Is it achieving the end for which it was evolved, to train the will, memory and understanding of the boys so that when they go out into the world they may be able to take their parts as good citizens and good Catholics? Will young people who know nothing about freedom, since their birth or since their early boyhood, be able to use sensibly the freedom which is theirs when they pass through Artane gates into the wide world? These questions cannot be answered after a period of five days’ residence in Artane. However, more than one experienced Brother in the Community has asked himself similar questions and has not been too happy about the answers.

The Investigation Committee heard evidence from many former pupils and staff from Artane with regard to the size of the Institution. A former pupil, in Artane from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, described: The first night, I was put in the ward, I couldn’t believe it. It looked to me huge. All the beds in a line and I was put into this bed and I was crying. I was told to stop crying and I couldn’t. I was smacked [by the Brother who was on at nights] to say if you don’t stop crying you will get another one ... I couldn’t sleep ... I was woken up and I had wet the bed.

Another former Brother who served in Artane in the early 1960s said: the numbers were very large and you had to have your wits about you to keep an eye on everything, you know, to make sure nobody was in danger. You would want to keep the smaller children away from bigger so they wouldn’t be run down or hurt or anything.

A Brother who was there in the late 1950s was angry about the situation: You had in Artane at that time 600, or whatever, pupils. You had, effectively, 16 or 17 Brothers, the teaching Brothers on the staff, who had to teach them full time ... So I would be asking today, ‘Why was it that I was expected to do the impossible in Artane by my country from 1955 to 1959?’ ... the system survived because of the dedication of the few. And I suppose we are paying for that today.