1,173 entries for Abuse Events

The nuns investigated the sexual behaviour among the girls and identified those involved, but did not take the next step of asking why this behaviour had happened. They blamed the children for immorality but did not follow up the inquiry as Dr McCabe did. This abuser had been employed in St Joseph’s for 30 years before his activities were revealed, but the 1954 episode was treated as a single episode, and the full extent of the sexual abuse of the children was not established and no attempt was made to do so. Notwithstanding the more progressive attitude the Sisters had towards childcare, they were still unable or unwilling to believe the child who complained about Mr Jacobs. Dr McCabe uncovered the serious sexual abuse going on in St Joseph’s by listening to the children. The attitude of the Sisters appeared to be to blame the children for having been abused by Jacobs, and they sought to have them transferred away from the Institution. No lessons were learned from this incident. The risk that unsupervised access posed to the children, particularly by male employees, was never acknowledged or addressed. No procedures were put in place and no warnings given to staff about listening to children who complained of sexual abuse. This was to have serious consequences less than 20 years later, when two dangerous sexual abusers were employed in the School.

She described growing up in St Joseph’s as a sad and lonely existence. She was never treated with kindness or respect. The nuns told them they were the children of prostitutes. The staff were cruel. She was often locked up in a cubby hole as a punishment for talking in the dormitory at night, so she learned not to speak. It was a frightening experience, and she was afraid to do anything other than pray to get out. She was often hit with a leather strap.

She was in the ‘red set’, a less favoured group in St Joseph’s. She thought the food was horrendous: she described getting cocoa, and lumpy porridge for breakfast. She never felt full and was always aware of being hungry. She liked school, however, and was a good student.

The couple travelled all over the country and spent time in Kildare, Wicklow, England, Wales etc. When she was 11, they were living in Northern Ireland, and she managed to run away at that stage, but was caught and returned to them. After this incident, she was sent by them to England to live in Mr Lacey’s brother’s house, and the couple later followed over. During the 13½ weeks that she spent there, she recalls regularly being given a drink and falling asleep; she would wake up next morning, partially clothed and very sore. She complained to Mrs Lacey, and was punished by being hit with a leather and locked in a cellar, or she was deprived of food. She was forced to work for the couple in all of their various enterprises, including an ice cream parlour and a restaurant.

This letter was sent to the Resident Manager for her observations on the matters raised in it. Sr Hanna called the Department and spoke to Mr Wade, who noted her views in a handwritten note dated 18th September 1962: Sister Hanna called on 12/9/62 to discuss this case. She is very worried about Annette and would like her to be anywhere but with the Lacey’s, whom she considers unsuitable to rear the child. Her offer of a second girl to the Lacey’s was made in the hope of getting Annette back and she had no intention of fulfilment.

This witness’s main complaint was that she had been sexually abused by the father of a family to whom she was sent for holidays. She stated that children in St Joseph’s went out on holidays on a regular basis. They were sent to families for the month of August. A large group of them would go up to Dublin on the train to be met by their host families at Heuston Station. She was sent to a family who had no children of their own. Initially, she was sent with another girl from St Joseph’s and it was all very exciting. She was paraded around by the couple to their friends’ houses and shown off as the ‘child they had for the month of August’. The husband started to abuse her. It started with touching and eventually led to more serious abuse. She cannot understand how the family were not vetted. She was discharged to them, and the abuse continued when she lived with them full-time. When she started dating her boyfriend, she told him what was going on and he confronted the man’s wife and told her what her husband was doing.

She remembered an occasion when another pupil of St Joseph’s, who was staying with a befriending family, called to visit her. The father attempted to abuse the young girl, who had to lock herself into a bathroom. The girls discussed it afterwards, but the complainant was the only person the girl spoke to.

She believes that she was treated differently from other girls in St Joseph’s because of her travelling background. For example, she suffered verbal abuse, being called ‘tinker’ by other girls. Her sisters received similar treatment. The nuns knew it was going on, but there was no attempt to stop it by the Superiors or those in charge. She also felt her family were discriminated against when they visited her.

She has heard from other family members that her father often cycled from [another county] where he worked to see them but was turned away. She made inquiries about this from family members, and she found out recently that her father had tried on several occasions to get the children out of the School. For the past 30 years she had believed that her father did not care about his family. It was only when the documents were shown to her in the process of this inquiry that she learnt the true situation and it has angered and upset her greatly. She believed that, if he had succeeded in getting them out, they would at least have been loved. They never got any love in the School. As a result, she found it difficult to this day to hug her own children.

That was the situation in the blue set. From what she has heard, the experience in other sets was a little different: control was achieved more by voices raised in temper, and the atmosphere may have been different, as some of the nuns and staff were more strict. She has not heard any complaints about physical punishment, but she knew that bed-wetters probably had to wash their own sheets.

Richard Evans did part-time work at St Joseph’s five nights per week. He helped the children with sport and homework, and did leisure supervision. He recalled the boys coming to him with allegations that they were being interfered with by Thomas Pleece: It was in the spring of ‘74 ... After a lot of conversation with the boys, a lot of cajoling, they came to me and they were saying that Mr Pleece was abusing them. The way they put it was he was interfering with them when they were in bed at night ... Joe,23 Simon24 and Justin,25 and there was a few more of them. They didn’t want to go to tell anybody because they knew they were going to be punished if they did. They were going to suffer repercussions. Because there was an awful lot of abuse going on that I knew nothing about, physical and sexual, and I knew nothing about it. I wouldn’t have known anything about it at the time.

The boys complained again: After about two, three weeks they came back to me again and they were afraid to go at the start and said they wouldn’t go to report it to anybody, there was no one going to listen to them. I said, ’What’s the harm in going over and telling the Reverend Mother anyway? ... They were complaining about Thomas Pleece interfering with them in bed, their private parts, interfering with them, taking them out of bed and bringing them to his room and that sort of stuff ... I listened to what they were saying and I said, “We’ll have to do something about it. We need to tell somebody this is going on, that it needs to stop”. Even at that stage they still weren’t prepared to, you know, to make it public that they were going to go to somebody in authority ... I think a lot of it was the fact that if Thomas Pleece found out about it they would get more abuse, they would get physical abuse.

Mr Evans recalled saying something to Thomas Pleece after he had spoken with Sr Astrid: ... But after the occasion of going seeing the Reverend Mother with Joe I remember saying something – Now, I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I think I said it to Thomas Pleece that if you are interfering with them boys, “You shouldn’t be interfering with them boys”, or “You should leave them alone” or “What the hell is going on” or something of that nature I said to him. His reaction was “What business is it of yours?” or “You are only such and such, what the hell are you going to do about it?” or something like that.

Although Thomas Pleece disputed the extent of the abuse he perpetrated on Joe, he acknowledged that abuse had occurred: You see because I went into Joe’s room and I fondled him, and I committed abuse on him, when I was confronted by Sr Astrid by a complaint I immediately thought that’s what it was, that Joe had said to her that I had gone into his room. So he was right, like, that part of it was right.

He did not link his sexual abuse at work with fostering children: You see those kind of things didn’t enter into one’s head at the time. Abuse wasn’t – I didn’t see it as abuse ... Well, the only thing I was to reassure myself was that it wouldn’t happen again, ever. That’s the assurance I had to give myself, in any other job, because I wasn’t going to let this happen again because I knew I wouldn’t survive a second one ... Yes, in a job situation. That I would never, ever cross the line again, you know, which I didn’t.