1,173 entries for Abuse Events

In 1962, a County Waterford mother wrote a letter of complaint to the Department of Education about the way in which her son was punished for wetting the bed while in St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse. She wrote: Dear Sir I am writing this to ask you about my boys ... whom Justice Skinner released three weeks ago, well I want to tell you what happened their brother ... who was only sent also [earlier in the year] for three months, he was suffering from kidney trouble and the punishment they were giving him for wetting the bed was stand under a cold shower and one night he was put out of the bed by the Brother and given four showers at 9:30 p.m. Then into the office in the morning and nine whips of the leather on each hand, and they told him they would increase it, well he had to run and I said it to the Priest, you would run too and so would I. Well he ran home in a terrible state chilled to the bone so I thought he would have a nervous breakdown so I wired for his father to come for him.

Fr Alanzo15 twice wrote to the Reformatory and the Industrial Schools Branch of the Department of Education about the mother’s complaint. In his first letter in 1962, he spoke despairingly of her: ‘I have had more trouble from their mother than I have had from the rest of the boys’, but he does not deal with the complaints raised. His second letter to the Department, sent a month later, is revealing insofar as it conceded that cold showers were given, and suggested that bed-wetting was 99% a bad habit and the result of bad upbringing and laziness on the part of the boys, and it goes on to describe the mother as a neurotic person. Fr Alanzo failed, however, to deal with the question of whether corporal punishment was administered for bed-wetting, and, if so, whether it was the Institution’s policy. The Commission does not have any documentation suggesting that the Department followed up this issue.

The disclosure occurred when two boys who had absconded from the Institution were hitching a lift. The Resident Manager, Fr Stefano, saw them on the road, picked them up and brought them back to Ferryhouse. As they travelled back to the School, one of the boys broke down, and told Fr Stefano that Br Bruno ‘was at him’. This had an immediate impact on Fr Stefano and, when they got back to the School, he brought the boy to his office, cautioned him about the seriousness of what he had said, and sought details from him. The boy stuck by his story and said that another boy would confirm what he was saying. He said that Br Bruno had started to abuse him when he was in his unit, but that the abuse had continued when he was transferred to the senior group.

Br Bruno began his evidence to the Committee with some initial hesitation; he began to imply that he had pleaded guilty to offences he had not committed. He said: I fondled them in their bed ... It began when I was moved to the A unit, when I was checking beds at night time for wetting ... Just by touching it started ... The boys didn’t mind, they didn’t stop me ... I knew it was wrong but I continued ...

At that stage, he denied anal rape: I never penetrated ... I would be sexually excited, yes ... it just ended at that ...

The Chairperson then spoke to him about the need for him to give a full and honest account, without trying to recant or change evidence accepted in court. After a brief adjournment for legal consultation, the hearing resumed, and Br Bruno gave a very different account of events. He now said: [That boy] was one of the boys that I pleaded guilty to in my criminal trial ... I pleaded guilty to buggery. I did take him into my bed and penetrated but not in a full extent but I did bugger, I did penetrate him ... I told the Gardaí that I had abused [the other boy] ... I took him to my bed and I penetrated him ... [The third boy], I pleaded guilty to fondling, abusing him in that way.

The fondling took place during the week. The acts of penetration tended to occur at weekends. He explained: I fondled them ... I carried them to my room ... left them in my bed and fondled them ... I attempted myself to penetrate them ... It was a weekend basis. Friday, Saturday night ... I was able to go over to the community room ... in the community room we would have a social evening and I would have a drink.

He then described what happened when he returned to the dormitory and took a boy to his room: ... I left them in the bed and I fondled them and penetrated them ... I felt they were asleep and they didn’t know ... On waking up they just remained limp, I am sure terrified of what was going on and preferred to remain in that state ... Those boys that I took to my room were boys that were sleeping ... I selected those ... I felt they were what I wanted. It was weekly ... those boys were terrified during that period when I took them to my room.

A complainant who was in Ferryhouse in the mid to late 1970s described Br Bruno as ‘just bad ... he was just evil out and out’. He told the Committee he first met Bruno in the mid-1970s in Woodstown, in Waterford. This was before Br Bruno had joined the Rosminians, and he was visiting Woodstown with his friend who was a priest. The complainant described how Br Bruno approached him when he was washing his shirt in the sink and, under the pretence of helping to wash the shirt, started rubbing his chest and: From that he went on to put his hands down towards my privates and, basically, that was the first time I met [Br Bruno].

His next encounter with Br Bruno occurred when the latter was posted to Ferryhouse. Under the pretence of checking for bedwetting, Br Bruno would fondle him under the bed sheets and bring him to the toilet, where he ‘would start massaging, that’s your privates like, and it would start from there’. He also described how Br Bruno would take him to his bedroom and then he would sexually abuse him. He said there was no penetration involved.

The abuse happened regularly ‘every couple of weeks’, so regularly in fact that the witness thought it was normal: ‘I thought this is the way life is, this happens to everybody’. The complainant also witnessed others being abused. He described how, on occasion, he walked into Br Bruno’s room on the way to the toilet and saw that Br Bruno ‘had two guys there and they were playing with each other’. He also attested to the fear Br Bruno used to instil in him. He had an odd tactic of sticking drawing pins into his thigh whenever he saw Br Bruno approaching. He explained, ‘It just took away the fear. Me being in pain was better than the fear and the fear of him’. He described how Br Bruno would never leave him alone with any visitors, as he might have to prevent him from telling them about the abuse.

Another complainant from the same period described a similar incident of nocturnal intrusion into his bed. He was in ‘A’ group which was supervised by [Br Bruno]. He said that one night, a couple of weeks after he had arrived at the school he woke up in pain. He was being sexually abused . He could not see who it was and he started to scream. This woke the boy next to him who turned on the light. The complainant blamed this boy but he denied it.

The witness also gave a vivid account of seeing boys being carried to Br Bruno’s room: He would come out of his room, late at night, he would go to his bed, that bed, he would go into the back dormitories, he would come back out, sometimes carrying a boy. The boys would be asleep. Their limbs would be hanging down like so (indicating), their head to one side and he would be carrying them in his arms, he would be bringing them to his room. The next morning you would enquire as to where the boy was and you would be told that he was sick, he won’t be in school today.

He described how Br Bruno would give the boys tablets for bed-wetting. Sometimes, he would give them just one each, and on other occasions he would give them three. These had the effect of causing the boys to go to sleep. He recalled one occasion when he did not take the tablets and how he woke later that night to find Br Bruno sexually abusing him: I started crying and Br Bruno came up to me and he said to me “What’s wrong with you, child, you are dreaming, child, go to sleep”. That next morning when I was in the toilet and I came out and I was after getting dressed and everything, I went to get the tablets and they were gone. I don’t know where they had gone to, they were gone.

In a trial that took place in the mid-1990s, a victim named in Br Bruno’s indictment himself faced trial on charges of sexual abuse of children. Mr Cumin22 pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old boy. He had previously been convicted of rape in Britain. In mitigation, his counsel submitted that he had been sexually abused while in care, and this abuse had had disastrous consequences on his own sexuality. The court jailed him for six years.