1,173 entries for Abuse Events

These ‘spontaneous responses’ allowed some Brothers and priests to use physical chastisement as a first resort for correcting a child, and it was not always confined to one or two slaps. Depending on the mood of the Prefect, it could be a few slaps or a severe beating. A witness from the late 1960s told the Committee that even good boys would be beaten. He explained: I was very quiet. I kept myself to myself and stayed out of trouble ... we were beaten on regular occasions for talking in the refectory, or whatever. Stuff like that ... Every one of the boys got beaten on some occasion. No matter how good you were you were always beaten at least at some certain occasion.

He gave an example of such on-the-spot chastisement: [Fr Paolo] said, “Lights out” and we weren’t allowed to speak after lights out and one of the boys might say something and he would be called out in front of Fr Paolo and he would hit him with his back handed slap ... the boy would be looking up to him, he would be only tiny, he would be only seven or eight years old, and he would put a full slap on with the back of his hand and he would put him actually spinning.

The clatter was often the main means of correction, so boys lived in an environment where they expected to be hit regularly and often.

Perhaps the worst effect of gratuitous and capricious punishment was its unpredictability. No matter what the boys did, a punishment was still a possibility. The result was a climate of fear. A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s vividly described the kind of fear he experienced every day. He told the Investigation Committee: I cried most days in that school. I was so scared when the next beating was going to come, whether it would be me. I mean I cried for my friends, my friends cried for me. We didn’t deserve this stuff, we really didn’t deserve this ... It was the beatings that was given and dished out in there was savage, man, savage ... I was a child you know, a child. I’ve walked landings with hard men in the Joy [prison], in Cork, wherever. I was never afraid. I would stand eye to eye with people that killed people. I wasn’t afraid. But I was afraid when I was in that school, every day of my fecking life. That is what I want you to understand. Punishment for bed-wetting

It was put to Fr O’Reilly that bed-wetting seemed to have been treated as a problem of discipline, even though it was probably the least subject to discipline. He replied: I would have to agree with you. You know, if a child has a difficulty in that area and is upset, obviously you are going to increase the problem by drawing even more and more attention to it and certainly by punishing the child or by causing the child to be even more afraid than he was.

He added, ‘That is the way it was when I went in there. Boys [who wet the bed] were always slapped ... one in each hand ... before they went to bed the next night’.

He went on to advance the bizarre proposition that some boys deliberately wet their beds, ‘I knew some fellows didn’t mean it, just did it in their sleep ... but there could be others there who didn’t ... I couldn’t distinguish’. It was put to him that he was therefore punishing them all in case one boy deliberately wet the bed. He knew that some of the boys could not help wetting the bed and it was not their fault but, at the same time, he felt that some of them deliberately wet the bed and, as he could not distinguish between them, he punished all who wet the bed. He replied, ‘Exactly, yes and two slaps would not hurt anyone, never, you know’.

His counsel apologised on his behalf to a complainant who had been beaten for wetting the bed. He told him: Br Ignacio does not and will not in his evidence seek to justify the administration of corporal punishment to bed-wetters in an effort to deter bed-wetting. He accepts there is no justification ... for the administration of corporal punishment to people who wet the bed in the hope or expectation of deterring them from wetting the bed in the future ... Br Ignacio now accepts this was a stupid thing to be doing if he wanted kids to stop wetting the bed ... Br Ignacio will say in evidence that the Prefect that he replaced when he took over as Prefect ... and the Prefect who succeeded him ... administered corporal punishment to the bed-wetters ... he accepts now it was entirely wrong.

The Prefect himself apologised again, and the conflict between his own beliefs and feelings about how to treat the children and the requirements of his duty to follow the rules and tradition of the Institution fully emerged: There was one thing I do regret is having to punish the boys who wet the bed. That was all. That was the biggest, or should I say ... the worst and I couldn’t bear to do that and still it was the done thing, give a couple of slaps on the hand and it was against my nature to do that...I didn’t want to do that at all although it was done the whole time, years and years before I went there and that was done all the time and that was the, how shall I say, the order of the time....It was against my nature altogether to do that because I knew very well some of them couldn’t help it but it was the done thing like. I couldn’t very well be the one to stop that, because I would be the worst in the world. You might have the whole lot of them wetting it after a while.

He found it impossible to break with the School’s precedents and tradition. Beating boys to stop them wetting the bed was acknowledged to be ‘a stupid thing to be doing’ because it was ineffective and did not stop the wetting. Indeed, it may have made bed-wetting worse. The practice of beating them, however, ‘was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the years’, and the Prefect felt he was powerless to stop it, even though it was cruel and pointless. As in many institutions, tradition outweighed reason. Evidence on bed-wetting from former residents

The Prefect whose evidence has just been discussed expressed the belief that ‘two slaps would not hurt anyone’. Many of the former residents told the Investigation Committee about the effects of facing these beatings at the end of every day. A resident from the 1940s said: It was rampant throughout, not just the bed-wetters, everybody got beaten. If you were a bed-wetter my God it was a second helping, a third helping, but you got beat during the day as well, but you were guaranteed it every night. I wished they would give it to us in the morning, get it over with. No, you were all day sweating and you got a few handers during the day and you still had to take whatever. Once it was over thank God, but you got it the next night again because you knew you were going to wet.

He had earlier tried to express the pain of the experience: The wet-the-beds went into the toilet, in they would walk. You would have to hold your sleeve of your corduroy to get the full whack of the hand. When you are getting beat, you shake, you can’t help it, you couldn’t with them. “Keep your hand still” and there you are – we had a little thing at the beginning but they copped on to that very quick. When the slap came down we used to bring the hand with it. Anyway, if you didn’t they would keep beating you until you keep it still. You try to keep a still hand and the blue marks and the pain and the swelling with a leather strap. If you didn’t stop they would just put it across the sink and you couldn’t move it then so you got it.

A resident in the early 1960s told of how the beatings had shifted to the mornings, but the inevitability of being beaten for wetting the bed remained. He had not wet the bed in the previous institution, but on his way down to Ferryhouse he drank too much lemonade. That night he wet the bed, was beaten and consigned to the ‘sailor’s’ section. From then on, he lived in fear of doing it. He explained: I used to try and stay awake until I wanted to go to the toilet and then I would go to the toilet, but it didn’t work. I would fall asleep eventually.

He described the ritual the next morning: If you wet the bed you had to put your hand up the next morning. They would go around and ask, “Any sailors?” and you would put your hand up. So you took your mattress and your sheet and brought it downstairs to a drying room and you got a cold shower ... If you stepped out of line in the cold shower, if you didn’t stand directly underneath the cold shower, you were hit with a strap. If you stood underneath the shower you still got your punishment over in the office. Once you wet the bed you were due a punishment ... Some of them would hit you up there (indicating his arm) ... Some of them would barely get you up the wrist ... Some of them would hit you right up the arms.

He differentiated between one Brother, who ‘would take pleasure in hitting you for nothing’, and another Brother who ‘would kind of gave you your slaps and let you go ... he would just give you your dose of medicine and you would be gone’.