1,173 entries for Abuse Events

He also talked about the difficulty they had in relation to contact with their mother: She used come to visit us but she weren’t let in. So I didn’t have difficulty contacting her, I wasn’t allowed ... She told us she was turned away. Even if we seen her there was nothing we could do about it, she was turned away. Br Arrio used say no, she’s not coming in because she used to bring us food parcels ... she was turned away. Sometimes we used get them.

Another witness, who was there in the 1950s, recounted how he found out, when he was about 13, that his mother was alive. He had been admitted into Greenmount from another institution where he had been since a baby. He told the Committee how he made this discovery: I never knew [my] father, no, or my mother ... I didn’t know anything about her at all ... It came about because people in the School used to write home, if they had parents they were allowed to write home once a month their parents and if you didn’t write home you went to the back of the class. I think it [was] Br. Allente, I think that’s his name, names are hard to come by now. He said, "Don’t you write to anybody?" I said, "No, I don’t." About three months later as I went into the classroom, on a blackboard on an easel which [a woman’s name and address] and I was told write to that person. That’s your mother ... I did write to her under duress at that time. [She wrote back] and she told me I had two stepsisters ... I never had contact with her other than writing ... I have tried various times to contact her but the advice given by the local police and by the local parish priest was that it is best left alone after all those years. On one visit to Ireland, my son was eight at the time, I actually drove up from Cork ... and parked outside the assumed address and just parked and then drove away again. Because one didn’t want to go and knock on a door and say, "I’m your son", because the mother has feelings as well, she has had her life since I have not been there so I didn’t want to interrupt. It has impacted very much so, because when I went to England you don’t have anybody to relate to, so you are always worrying – I don’t know, it is hard to explain but if your parents are missing, if you don’t know where they are – or who your parents are your peace of mind is even to go there at the end – if I come over this year or next year to Ireland, even if she has passed away, it would be to see the grave and say that’s laid to rest now and there is no further gain to be got. But it has impacted. It impacts throughout your whole life because when you have your own family you have no role models, you have nothing to bring up your family.

The importance of this regular contact with a family emerged when he disclosed to them that an older boy was bullying him. He explained the circumstances: I think what actually triggered it off, because I didn’t confide in them, you didn’t have a lot to say to people actually, you were just taken and if they said “Get in the car” you got in the car. If they said “dinner was ready” you ate your dinner. You didn’t confide in them in so much as what school was about, you actually didn’t. It came about when she made this awful red and white coat, or red and black coat for me that made me look like – it was a sort of girl’s outfit and I started to cry and it just happened from there on. So sort of one thing led to another and it was an emotion that was coming out. I didn’t specifically go and say, “I have been beaten up”. So it sort of came out from that particular incident. I wouldn’t wear the coat.

Without an adult as a protector and confidante, the orphans clung to each other and formed a bond. One witness told the Committee: ... we used to confide in each [other] quite a bit, and more so the people who didn’t have families outside were more vulnerable because we didn’t have anybody to complain to and we always sort of knitted together, if you didn’t have a mother and father you sort of knitted with people of that ilk, because you – the others were different. They were actually different from us, the boys from outside, they had a different way of doing things, different outlook because they always saw something on the outside, we never saw anything on the outside ...

Also at this time, a Garda from Union Quay Station wrote to the Department of Education requesting that, the next time an Inspector was in Cork, they call him regarding a matter which he did not wish to commit to paper. He wrote again some weeks later, after a telephone conversation with an official from the Department of Education, and this time the Garda set out his concerns: For some time past I have been receiving complaint from parents having children in Greenmount Ind Schools, these complaints are in respect of clothing and food. One mother complained that a child of hers is in School 12 months and he has the same pair of boots on him as he took in with him, that he has colds continually from neglect. I have got several complaints recently about footwear from parents having children in this School. A number of complaints have also been received about food which appears to be of poor quality. One complaint was that soup supplied to the children is a week old and sour when given to them. No tea and no sugar or coffee or cocoa, bread very scant supply with no butter only margarine. I am not relying on all the complaints received, to be genuine but I have the word of a lady Cook who worked there and has no reason for confirming the complaints I have received for some time. I have all called to the School myself and in my opinion they children are not near as healthy or as well fed looking ... They look cold and miserable looking. The lady who was cook there says some of the food given to the children [was] not fit for dogs and that she says was one of the reasons for leaving. Now I am a particular friend of the Bros’ in Greenmount and has no wish to do any injury to them and their good work; which is at times difficult but I consider I owe a duty towards these children owing to the position I hold and as a representative of the Dept. of Education. I do hope this matter will be treated in confidence as I do not wish it to be known that it was I brought this matter to notice.

Dr McCabe appears to have disregarded the eyewitness accounts of neglect at Greenmount. She seems to have taken a dislike to the lay person who made some of the allegations, and dismissed all of the complaints on that basis. Garda Bracken37 stated that he had received several complaints from parents regarding food and clothing. He himself had called to the School and was of the opinion that the children were not healthy. He went as far as to describe them as cold and miserable looking. The parent who complained to the local Councillor was so troubled by the condition in which she found her son that she refused to go to the sanatorium for vital treatment for TB until her son was removed from the Institution. The Councillor felt compelled to write to the Department, setting out his concerns regarding conditions in Greenmount, as his office had received numerous complaints of neglect. Dr McCabe made no mention of these complaints in her report. She also dismissed too easily the allegation that boys were stripped and beaten in the courtyard.

The secrecy surrounding the closure of Greenmount meant that the rights of the parents, and the emotional needs of the boys, were both ignored. It was carried out in a way that suited ‘the best interests of the management and conduct of the school’ without any regard for the right of parents to know where their children were being taken, or concern for the boys, who were suddenly transferred without any time to prepare themselves for the move. Parents were clearly upset, because they asked their TD to raise the matter in the Dáil. The documents concerning the closure show no compassion or concern for the boys’ emotions. The boys were kept in ignorance of the fact they were going to be moved from an institution they had lived in for months and, in many cases, years. To many, it was their home. Only at the last moment were they told where they were going to be taken. To many, this news must have been a shock causing much distress.

Professor Keogh concluded his report for the Presentation Brothers as follows: This was the central point made in the report of the 1934–6 commission of inquiry – children in industrial schools were not ‘children apart’; however, they were still being criminalised in the public mind without any justification ... Industrial school children ought, accordingly, to have been treated and cherished as children and as citizens of the Irish state with rights under the constitution. But it seems that in Ireland in the 1930s, 40s and 50s the ‘old idea’ of treating such children as ‘a class apart’ had not yet ceased to be part of the mind-set of a society that was all-too-willing to seek an answer for complex social problems behind the closed doors of state-funded under-resourced institutions. It was tidier that way.

The legal representatives on behalf of the Brothers of Charity wrote the following: Most of the children at Lota suffered from a learning disability. Our client believes that Brother Dieter’s reference to some boys being normal was intended as a reference to the fact that a small number of the boys at Lota came from different circumstances. For example, whilst our client believes that it could not occur now, some boys were sent to Lota because there was no other institution better – suited to their needs available to them. Other boys were there because they were born outside of marriage, some boys were orphans, while others were placed for other social reasons – such as their family not being able to cope.

When asked if he felt that he was in any way educationally handicapped, he replied ‘No’. He was asked if he felt he was inappropriately placed in Lota, and he replied: Maybe it was my own imagination but I felt that I was not mentally handicapped. That if I was given an opportunity, I could learn properly ... I was able to pick things up a lot quicker. When something was told to me I could understand it much easier than some people you know. I do not know why I could do it but that is the way it was with me.

One respondent witness, Br Guthrie,5 who said he was known as a strict teacher, said that he did not need corporal punishment. He regretted the only time he did strike a boy. He told the Committee: during the 32 years I was there I struck one boy on the face with my open hand, once, and I have always regretted it. That was in 1983. I remember that. I felt like falling on my back when I had done it. I was cross about some remark he had made or something, and there were no beatings. I had no weapon for beating like has been described, whips or sticks or rulers or anything like that.

In addition, many of these boys, because of their disability, were fragile and easily frightened. One witness, Graham,6 described the fear he felt at just the threat of violence: Br Helmut7 he had a stick on the other side of him and he picked up the stick and he shaked it at me, so I sensed there was physical abuse and I was completely – I was dumbfounded because these guys had the upper hand ... they had the same aim and the same approach towards me in that their aim was to frighten you, terrify you, get you to be submissive to them, let them do what they want with you, which I wasn’t able to escape from their hands.

He also recounted a punishment he received because a Brother believed he had attacked a female teacher. In fact, he had become curious about a bun upon her head. He had never seen anyone with her hair tied back in a bun and had approached her to explore the nature of the object. When contact was made, the Brother maintained he was attacking the teacher, and subjected him to a cold shower ‘for a whole half hour’. He went on: I was in the shower for between 20 minutes and a half an hour and by the time he asked me to get out of it I was freezing cold. He asked me to get up to bed, up to my bed and I got up to my bed and I was there for the rest of the day and while I was up in bed I was freezing. I was very very cold and I was not really in any humour for anything or even food and I think the same Brother came up and asked did I want anything and I said, no. I just waited until the next morning to get some food in me while I was a good bit of the day without food.

Br Guthrie, the first Brother to sexually abuse him, was, he said, ‘nice to me at the beginning’. Then, he said, ‘It changed one day ... I cannot remember dates or anything so you will have to forgive me there’. He could not recall the first time, but incidents began to follow a predictable pattern. He described the scene: There was a room between – there was a place where you could wash yourself, shave, wash basins and there was a room – there was actually doors and a kind of a little small corridor between the two and he took me in there.

When this evidence was put to him, Br Guthrie agreed that the witness had described the types of activity he had perpetrated over his 32 years in Lota. It was always, he said, ‘To do with the hands’. He had various hiding places from which there was always an alternative means of escape. ‘There had to be a hiding place’, he said, ‘the danger of discovery was ever present’. He explained, ‘you cannot stay too long in the one place. Somebody could come in or pass by or open the door or whatever’.