1,173 entries for Abuse Events

A Brother who served a total of nine years in Artane between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s explained: ... the new kids coming in who would be lost, you know, really some of them were lost really. 825 kids. Divide that by five and that’s 160. 160 kids in a dormitory was very formidable ... It was cruel ... That was the total responsibility of two really. It was really the two in the dormitory made the kids or developed a kind of relationship with them.

This Brother also saw children who were isolated and lost within the system. He told the Investigation Committee: I suppose you never knew a kid, like, to talk to him. You would pick out a lonely child ... If he hadn’t a friend it would be tough. Really tough. You could see a kid that is lonesome, you would take him in the hand or something. He was the only boy from Gorey. He was the only boy from Wexford ...

Again and again, complainants told the Investigation Committee that they felt there was nobody they could go to for help or for protection. As shown above, many Brothers spoke of wanting to help a child who looked lost or lonely, but few were able to do so. As a result, many children went through life in Artane feeling ignored, except when being chastised and punished, and feeling nobody cared about them in any way at all. This failure to acknowledge the child, to make the child feel important and loved, left many of them feeling marginalised and rejected.

As one Brother who served in Artane in the late 1950s put it: If we did not have a strict discipline at that stage the place would have gone to rack and ruin and those who would have suffered most would have been the boys ... it had to be strict because we had no back up services whatsoever ... some of them unfortunately who had problems and maybe who should not have been there at all ... the boys who could not understand that there was a certain way of doing a thing and that if they did not do that then it was going to lead to trouble for them, even if they were punished it didn’t register with them.

Visitation Reports from the 1950s did not identify any particular problems with the food or the kitchen facilities until November 1957, when the Visitor wrote: Everything in connection with the kitchen and the preparation and serving of food calls for complete re-organisation and re-conditioning ... Too many boys are at each table though half of the room is vacant almost. All the food for the meal is piled on the table before the meal begins. The boys proceed to make a most awful mess when the meal begins. There is not the slightest attempt to eat in a civilised fashion. The Brother and teacher in charge can do nothing with over 500 to look after. A great deal of the food is wasted and the waste is the main support of nearly forty pigs. I shall comment later on the condition in which many of the boys come to meals. To me the sight was just revolting. One can just imagine the comments of visitors but every care is taken on the conducted tours to prevent visitors from seeing the spectacle.

A respondent, who first went to Artane in the mid-1950s and spent almost 15 years there, accepted in his evidence to the Committee that ‘while the food was adequate that, at that particular time, the serving of the food and the way it was presented wasn’t the best’. He acknowledged that this was not satisfactory. In addition, the large number of boys being catered for in the refectory made things more difficult. Things changed dramatically for the better when a new Brother took charge of the kitchen. He changed the way in which food was prepared and presented.

Many of the complainants who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee from the 1940s era complained about food. One ex-resident described the diet: I would sum up my time in Artane as cold, brutal and hungry and the cold was because of the hunger. There was this enduring feeling of cold and this gnawing pangs of hunger. There was never any satisfaction, never any way to relieve the hunger. That was it, hungry, everybody was hungry all the time.

Another complainant, committed in the early 1940s at the age of nine, recalled that his mother often sent him food parcels, but that he only received a parcel once as they were stolen by the other boys. He did not blame them for this, as he stated that they were always hungry, ‘We ate the grass for God’s sake’. He stated that they had a small loaf dipped in fat for breakfast, and vegetables with gravy for dinner. He recounted how one Brother would conceal sticks of bread in his cassock and distribute them to the boys: ‘As soon as he appeared we went around him like a pack of dogs looking for food’.

A witness, committed in the mid-1940s, alleged that the food was diabolical. He stated that, during mealtimes, younger boys were sometimes moved to older boys’ tables on a temporary basis. When this occurred, the younger boys invariably went hungry because they could not get to the food fast enough. He also asserted that, whenever visitors came to the School, the boys got better food.

A further complainant from this era recalled how the boys divided the loaves between them. The first boy would cut himself a big slice, and the second boy would do the same, so that, by the time the last boy came to take his slice, there was little left. The younger boys were often left hungry as a result of the system of distributing food.

While complaints about food feature with decreasing frequency in the 1950s and 1960s, a complainant who was committed to Artane for five years in the early 1950s stated that there was never enough food, and that the boys had to resort to scavenging from the swill buckets to sate their hunger. He singled out one Brother who would slip him extra food. He also alleged that bullying took place during mealtimes, with the result that some boys got less food than others.

Mr Dunleavy made the following comment about mealtimes: Apart from assembly and religious services, mealtimes were the only occasions when the whole school was present together. It seems extraordinary then that only one Brother was assigned to supervise the large refectory where up to 800 boys could be eating at once. In the course of being interviewed Brothers who had formerly worked at Artane told of leaving the door behind them open at all times so that they could escape if the situation in the refectory got out of hand. Brothers spoke of the atmosphere being “like a powder keg” and related stories of how Brothers had occasionally been assaulted by boys with knives from the dining tables. At each table of boys a senior boy was placed in charge, and it was his job to distribute the bread and tea to the other boys at the table. It was also his function, should any boy be misbehaving at the table to tell him to leave the table and stand by the wall so that he could be punished by the Brother in charge in due course.

In conclusion: Food from the farm and bread from the bakery made it possible to provide for the needs of the School and the Community at reasonable cost. Mealtimes were not properly supervised, and young or timid boys were bullied and did not get enough to eat. This was a failure of management. Facilities for preparing food and for serving it were primitive. Meals were poorly prepared and monotonous. A Brother categorised as ‘slip-shod’ by his own colleagues was in sole charge of this department for up to 15 years until the early 1960s and complainants testified that food was poor until this Brother was replaced. This was evidence of inferior management in the fundamental task of providing three meals a day for hundreds of boys. The facilities available in the Brothers’ kitchen were in stark contrast to those provided for the boys. The problems identified by the Visitor in 1957 and confirmed by witnesses were not picked up by the Department Inspector. The food during an inspection was not typical of that served on a daily basis, indicating a serious flaw in the inspection procedure.

This humiliating and unnecessary practice was referred to by a number of complainants who described the weekly inspection of underpants. If the underwear was soiled, the boy would have to face the wall and await punishment, which generally meant slaps on the hand with the leather. One Brother said: I accept that I did examine the underpants. The reason for examining the underpants was that complaints had come from the woman and the staff in the laundry that soiled underwear was coming down to the laundry, and with the number of boys that was in Artane at the time she wasn’t too happy about it ... so word came up to us that we were to check the underpants and if an underpants was badly soiled, not the ordinary run of the mill thing like slide marks, that didn’t matter, it was a case where the underpants was badly soiled, it is then that I would take action ... I would take the action of getting the fellow to go to the washroom and so on and clean it, then we would throw it into the bag with the rest of it. I will admit that – not in connection with the underpants – if [the complainant] says I put him facing the wall I will admit that.

When asked whether the boys deserved to be slapped for something they had no control over, he replied: I do not think they deserved to be punished ... I accept that if I did slap them. I don’t think I slapped them for soiling their pants. I slapped them for other reasons but not for that ... normally I would not punish a boy for soiling his pants. I mean that could happen to anybody. But if [the complainant] says I did it on one particular occasion, fair enough I will accept that.