1,173 entries for Abuse Events

One witness described the food as: ‘basic. It was just bread and water or bread and tea and that was it’. He also complained of not receiving enough food: ... because when the food was put on the table it was grabbed so you were either fortunate or you weren’t. A lot of the time I was unfortunate because I was very small anyway.

As she had younger siblings, she gave her portion of food to them: I used to often give my own food to the kids because they were forever hungry. I actually got a taste for eating wet muck because when I had a pain in my tummy I would eat that and it would take the pain away.

Another witness gave a similar account of the lack of food: Oh, the food. Today I have a serious eating disorder and I believe, in my opinion and in the medical opinion it has stemmed from Goldenbridge. The food was pure slop, to be honest. It was like lumpy porridge in the morning and cocoa that was like dishwater, very thin and bad looking. The evening was – it wasn’t porridge, it was bread and porridge. The meal at lunchtime was just like vegetables swimming in water. I don’t recall much meat and I don’t remember ever seeing a chicken.

She stated further: The food was very bad, but I noticed that no matter what slop they were giving me, and I use the word slop because to be honest we had no choice, we ate it, we were hungry. I was constantly hungry.

Another witness, who was in the School in the 1960s, painted a picture of the meals in the School: ... in the mornings we either had bread or porridge. Oh, the porridge. I know they had to make it for a lot of people but the lumps, we used to heave trying to eat it. You had to eat it, there was no way you would leave it on the plate. Dreadfully to say, sometimes you tried to flick it on to somebody else’s table, it’s a terrible thing to do but you did do that. I don’t know what we were given for dinner. I know the potatoes were sour, not always sour but sometimes they smelled sour like sour milk. We had cabbage. I don’t know what other vegetable we had because today I do love my food. I remember cabbage with these little tiny black flies that we used to pick out. You still had to eat it. The bread, I don’t know what they did to the bread when you had breakfast time, but it used to have these hard lumps. The food, you had to eat it. There was no way you were ever going to leave it.

Another complainant, who spent four years in Goldenbridge from the early 1960s, stated that food served to the staff was very different to that served to the children. The cake crumbs, which the children scavenged, were leftovers from staff: The crumbs – the crumbs and the bit of cakes would come from the teachers, there would be biscuits. It was a known fact that the teachers lived in the lap of luxury. They had proper food, they would have someone cooking, they would be called – they knew their time for tea. So when we would be doing the wash up in the dining room you would try and get into the kitchen into their room to see if you could grab anything off the table ... when they weren’t looking. If you were caught with it in your mouth you would get a clatter.

Evidence was also heard, at the suggestion of the Sisters of Mercy, from a number of witnesses who had positive memories of their time in Goldenbridge. One of these witnesses was committed to Goldenbridge in 1947 and remained there for 10 years. She recalled that the standard and quantity of food improved when Sr Alida took over as Sister in Charge. She stated: The food changed. We got extra food. We used to get afters, started giving us bread puddings and jelly and ice-cream and stuff. A little bit more food.

Another was asked whether she recalled being hungry, and she responded: Not really, not starving anyway. When I heard somebody said they were starved, if you are starved it means that you don’t get any food; if you are starving it just means that you are possibly hungry. But there were three meals, there was porridge in the morning time, there was your dinner with sweet, it could have been Carragheen moss. Maybe the day that somebody put the currants in the rice or put the cocoa in the rice and rice came out brown but if you were bloody well hungry you would eat it. Some of them stuck their nose up at it and said they couldn’t eat it but if you were hungry you would eat it.

Another positive witness, who spent eight years in Goldenbridge from 1948, stated that the food was very basic. She recalled receiving half a slice of bread for breakfast along with a cup of cocoa. Dinner consisted of stew, casserole or shepherd’s pie, and there was bread and cocoa again for tea. She accepted that she often felt hungry: I suppose I felt I was hungry. We didn’t do anything about it. I would have liked to have been able to have some more.

Another positive witness remained for three years as a carer after her discharge date and, although she had more positive memories of the food, she did not distinguish between the food she received as a pupil and the food she received as a carer.

Another witness stated that, when she attended secretarial college while at Goldenbridge, she felt out of place due to her appearance and clothing: When you went to that place I was about 14 and a half and all these girls coming in, I am not vain, I don’t go by appearances but my clothes were raggy compared to the young women that were going there.

Some witnesses had positive comments to make about the clothes. One such witness remembered wearing nice jumpers and good clothes on Sundays: We had jumpers, we had Sunday jumpers, red jumpers. I am sure they were red. They were good jumpers for when you are going outside, going with a lady, you had your good clothes on.

Another witness pointed out that Sr Alida looked after the girls before they left, providing them with new clothes: Say when you were 16 and you left, you always left with new clothes. She made sure you had a new – everything was new and you had a case; but if you left before you were 16 you wouldn’t get as much but once you left at 16 you were rigged out from head to toe.

Another complainant said that every day in Goldenbridge she used to imagine walking through the gates and leaving it. When the day came that she was going home, she was petrified. She recalled being brought into a room in Goldenbridge and being told by Sr Alida that she was going: She gave me a pair of rosary beads and I left terrified, you would never believe ... I went back to my grandmother’s from Goldenbridge. I didn’t know how to speak properly. We spoke our own language, I know that you will find that strange. We were only children, we didn’t grow up. We spoke differently to each other. If you were brought up for nine years in a home you all speak the same, you all speak the same language, I spoke this language. I was terrified of people. I walked, I had a stoop, my shoulders were bent ... I would not look at nobody. I would not look in your eyes, I couldn’t. I was afraid ... I was afraid of everything and everybody ... I didn’t know how to survive out there, this was a new world this was something.

General conclusions 1. Life in Goldenbridge was full of drudgery. Children went from chores to the classroom to bead making without respite until bead making was discontinued in the mid-1960s. Staffing levels were poor, and children had to do a great deal of domestic chores. 2. Punishment in Goldenbridge was pervasive. Children were beaten for small infringements. It was unpredictable, arbitrary and led to a climate of fear, although after the 1960s it decreased significantly. 3. Goldenbridge was a closed institution with little or no contact with the outside world, and children became institutionalised as a result and suffered in many ways when they left. 4. Girls who were incapable of making their way in the outside world were kept on as carers, despite being wholly unsuitable. They treated children brutally and were able to do so without any control by the Sisters in charge. 5. Activities which need not have been abusive became so when excessive demands were placed on the children and fear of punishment was constant. 6. Some children were treated less harshly because they had relatives to look out for them. 7. There were no internal controls by the Congregation. Much of what was learned about the Christian Brothers’ industrial schools came from their own Visitation Reports but there was no such system in Goldenbridge. The Carysfort Mother House appeared to offer no guidance or supervision whatsoever and even the nuns in the Goldenbridge convent adopted a ‘hands off’ approach. 8. The regime in Goldenbridge, which was flawed from the outset, did not change for 30 years. The Congregation did not learn from its experience of childcare. Other Orders, such as the Sisters of Charity, identified the need to rethink the system of large institutions caring for large numbers of children. The Sisters of Mercy have lamented the lack of any childcare training in the State, but organisations entrusted with the care of children could have developed training programmes for their members. The Congregation had the experience of childcare but failed to develop expertise. 9. The regime became kinder and more child-centred in the late 1960s and the number of complainants was small, which suggests that even though Goldenbridge was still a large, crowded institution, better management could have an important bearing on the quality of life of the children. 10. The Sisters in charge during the relevant period were harsh and unfeeling towards the children. Humiliation and degradation were constant occurrences, both from the Sisters and from the lay staff. The children felt that no one cared for them and that they did not matter. Even the members of the Congregation who spoke to the Committee failed to appreciate that Goldenbridge was abusive because of the attitude of the Sisters who ran it. Hard work and dedication were no excuses for a regime that made children feel despised and worthless. 11. The Department of Education inspections observed some problems but missed others. The Inspector did address the issues of food and clothing in the 1940s but, once these obvious problems were solved, the inspector did not report other, real problems of Goldenbridge, including the excessive chores, the pressures of bead making and the emotional deprivation. These problems could have been discovered by speaking to the children.