1,173 entries for Abuse Events

The letter stated: I can verify that he was sexually abused by me in Artane in the sixties. I also wish to state categorically that he is lying when he describes how he was abused. What he accuses me of never happened either in the classroom or in the attic nor anywhere else in the school. I never had a key to the attic and never attempted to bugger him.

The first incident happened in the 1960s and involved a man who was himself a former resident of Artane. He approached the complainant returning from Croke Park and offered him a cigarette. They were sitting on the grass chatting when the man put his hand up the boy’s shorts. The man said to him: ‘do you want me to tell the Brother you were smoking or are you going to let me play with you?’ The witness said that he was more frightened of the Brothers than this man, so he let him touch him. In the end, he remembers jumping up and running the rest of the way back to the School, crying. When asked why he was crying by the Brother on yard duty, he said that his team had lost the match.

At the Phase III hearing, the implications of this case were discussed with reference to the point that this lay person had been handed over to the Gardaí, whereas the same had not occurred with offending Brothers. It emerged then for the first time that there appeared to be some dispute as to the circumstances of the case, in that Br Reynolds, the Christian Brothers’ spokesman, suggested that the case was not reported as an instance of sexual abuse but rather as one of absconding, and that it involved two boys who failed to return from a trip to Croke Park and were seen going into the man’s house. He said that it subsequently emerged that they had been sexually abused. Such an alternative case does not appear to be based on any evidence available to the Committee, and so it is treated as an accepted instance of sexual abuse known to the Artane authorities. In those circumstances, the difference in the handling of this complaint against a layman as compared with offending Brothers is indeed striking.

This point was made even more clearly in the following case, which was raised at an oral hearing of the Investigation Committee. In this second case of abuse by a layman, another complainant described an incident with a man who was a friend of the Brothers, and he took the witness and two other boys on a weekend trip to Northern Ireland. They all slept in the same room, which had four beds. When they were in bed, the boys would not stop giggling and the man ordered the witness to get into his (the man’s) bed. The man ‘started to rub me and put his hand on my genitals. He got me to put my hand on his genitals and I was feeling really scared, I didn’t know what to do’. He did not know whether the other two boys could see what was going on but he presumed they could. He said that he masturbated the man and that he felt disgusted afterwards. The following morning he had a shower and recalled trying to ‘scrub the skin off my body’.

One witness recalled how he was warned to avoid certain Brothers when he first went to Artane: There was always talk amongst the boys who to keep away from. When I went in there first, being naïve you don’t know anybody and you have boys coming to you and telling you “you watch Brother so and so, and watch Brother so and so. Don’t let him come near you or don’t let him get you into a place on your own”, things like that, like. But it only happened to me by one particular Brother, where sexual abuse took place, the rest was physical and mental abuse.

Another witness described how abuse by Br Bruce73 became progressively more severe, culminating in an attempt to commit anal rape. The witness was detained in Artane during the 1940s: ... at first it was just, he used to just take me trousers down and just stand there and make me masturbate him and things like that. But then it got a bit deeper and deeper where he would ask me to do things, which I couldn’t understand at the time. But like, he would ask me to – oral sex and things like that. Then he started bringing me, just, it is only 50 yards down into the shower rooms and in there he would bring me down, usually down the left-hand side into one of the curtain rooms at the bottom there and then on a couple of occasion he actually tried to rape me, but he never did succeed. He used to be very upset himself even afterwards, you know, what he was doing.

A witness from the 1940s described how Br Armande progressed from talking about sex to physical contact and then to masturbation: He liked to talk dirty ... So over a period of time he used to ask me “have you ever popped or ejaculated”’ and things like that. No, “I can’t”. I knew other boys could. I forget how the conversation – but the subject of circumcising came up and he said “probably that’s your problem. I will show you some time”. Over a period of time – he would press into you, he invariably wore a cloak so anybody looking from the sides couldn’t see what was going on. One incident, as I say, in the theatre, when we used to file in the theatre, at the end of every, maybe, third row was left vacant so that a Brother would sit there presumably to keep an eye on us. I happened to be in this seat and Br Armande – the seat was vacant, so I didn’t know what Brother it was going to be. I think he was either a projectionist or assisting the projectionist. Once the film started he came and sat beside me. I always remember he gave me a sweet and he started touching and petting and one thing and the other. I got to admit I was aroused. He kind of got my hand and done the same, messing.

The same witness described another occasion when sexual activity was aborted because of the arrival of another person in the dormitory: The other incident with Br Armande was the morning I was expelled from the band ... I was expelled from the band and I was told to report to the dormitory. He told me to go over to the far corner of the dormitory where the Brother’s sleeping room was. He said “lie on the bed there and take your trousers down”. He disappeared and went off down to the long hall, I suppose, to check. There I was in the bed waiting for him to come. I got to admit I was quite excited about it because I had never ejaculated and he was going to show me ... I was just coming up to 16, 15 and a half. I had heard other boys saying they had. Whatever happened, somebody must have came. The next thing I knew the door was open and he hollered “anybody in here, get out now”. I jumped up, put on my trousers, ran down and joined everybody else at the parade. That was the incident.

This witness described how a sympathetic approach by the Manager led to his divulging information about abuse: He put a friendly arm around me, drew me close to him and he said, “Tell me, what’s troubling you?” I started to cry and I blurted out all the things that happened to me and why I hated God, I hated my own parents for being weak and dying, I hated religion. “Tell me”.. So I told him about what Olivier had done and I told him about Br Armande . I told him the specific incident, general as well, but mainly what Br Olivier had done to me. I told him about the Br Armande. I would never have had the courage to go and complain to anybody because I would be terrified I would get another hiding, they wouldn’t believe me. On that occasion he was so kind that he got my confidence, he spoke to me like a father. I blurted out and told him everything.

Another described how Br Gaspard questioned him about where his hands were: He pulled the covers down slightly and got my hands like that (indicating). That is how they told us to fall asleep in bed. Then he got down on one knee, might have been two knees, and just slid his hand across my lower abdomen. Didn’t touch anything, just straight across. That was it ... There was something odd about it, obviously. It wasn’t the sort of thing you done. It’s always sort of remained with me.

A complainant resident in the 1950s alleged that, when supervising the showers, Br Verrill used to require the boys to bend over, to make sure that they were clean. He said that, on a few occasions while doing this, he used to put his hands on the boys’ testicles and say ‘did you like that?’. The complainant said that he got so used to being humiliated that he accepted it and did not regard it as unusual at the time.

Another complainant spoke about a lay teacher’s behaviour that he saw as coming into a different category from other sexual experiences in Artane: He used have his cloth over him and he kind of took my hand and placed it on top with the cloth covering it in case anybody came in. I touched him like that ... He carried on ... and then sent me back to my place. That’s all [he] ever done, he was a fondler more than anything. He didn’t ask you to undress or anything like that.

A number of witnesses, who did not themselves claim to have been sexually abused, stated that they believed that other boys were sexually abused in Artane. Almost all of these witnesses acknowledged that they had not actually seen sexual activity taking place, so their evidence and recollections were based on mixtures of surmise, hearsay and deduction. One witness explained: The way I reckoned it was that when I was being abused, I know other boys were going through the same doors, going through the same classroom doors, going the long hall ... I saw them. I saw boys going through the doors ... I mean down to classrooms. I saw them going into classrooms when they shouldn’t have been in the classrooms.

He added: The reason why I think it odd was because the classrooms, any time I ever went into one when I shouldn’t have been there, it was for that reason. That is the only places they could take you. So I reckoned that if it was happening to me in there and Brothers were taking them in there, that it was happening to them. I had seen many Brothers go in there with children, and then I would hear children crying when I was in the dormitories. I knew what they were crying for, because I had done a bit of it myself. I knew boys, that when I was keeping – watching Brothers on the Parade, and I was hiding from them and seeing them hiding from them, I knew what they were hiding from.

A witness spoke about an unwelcome approach: I was working in the tinsmiths and this boy attacked me and threw me on the floor and lay on top of me. At the time it was a sex act. I didn’t know it was a sex act at the time. Like I said, I never even saw my aunty’s ankles. Of course I didn’t know that, that’s what it was. That’s what he was doing. It was reported. When Br Cretien asked me, “yes, I was attacked”. He still gave me six, right on the hand, not anywhere else, directly on the hand. He said he had to punish both of us. That boy never came near me again. I believe he was punished again for other acts which he did to other boys.