428 entries for Allegations

He was then questioned about his allegations. He insisted, ‘Br. Ramon tried to abuse me. I took the beatings rather than let them abuse me ... He got a hold of you and he groped you. I never let him go all the way with me, if you know what I mean’. Under cross-examination he added: You would be in a room and he grab you by the private parts and pull you into it and he tried to grope you ... I would knock him away and take a slap.

On 20th June 1967, a firm of solicitors acting on behalf of a former pupil of Daingean wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Justice about a matter that had caused them deep concern. A 15-year-old boy had recently been discharged from Daingean after being in the Institution for over two years. They were writing, they explained, ‘as Officers of the Court and indeed as responsible citizens to bring immediately to the notice of the Department’ a serious allegation of sexual misconduct. They wrote: We are instructed and we have no reason to doubt our instructions that this boy, who was mentally retarded when sent to Daingean, was sexually assaulted and perverted while an in-mate of the Reformatory and his unfortunate lapse into criminality immediately on his release is due solely to what occurred while he was there. We feel that the best course for us to adopt in this case is to have the boy medically examined by a competent psychiatrist who can elicit from him the full circumstances of his perversion and we feel that the Department might like to have him examined by their own medical advisor in view of the circumstances.

The alleged abuser was not named in the letter, although it is now known that it was Br Ramon. It seems that this letter was forwarded to the Department of Education, because the next letter on file is a letter of 14th December 1967, written by the solicitors acting for the Resident Manager of Daingean, Fr Luca. It was addressed to the Secretary of the Department of Education. It stated: We understand that a firm of Solicitors, acting on behalf of ... a former detainee at Daingean, wrote to you making serious allegations concerning occurrences in the School involving a member of the staff ... We are writing to advise you that following the allegations our client, The Reverend Superior, investigated the allegation and it was also investigated, with the full co-operation of our client, by the Garda Authorities. Following their enquiries the Garda Authorities were satisfied that there was no evidence of any improper conduct by any member of the Staff ... In view of the serious allegation made in the letter to your Department based on the story of this unfortunate boy our client wishes this unequivocable denial of the allegations placed on your file.

Again, the name of the member of staff against whom the allegations were made was not disclosed and no record was kept of any action taken.

The boy who made the allegations appeared in court and pleaded guilty. The Central Criminal Court imposed a suspended sentence of 12 months, expressing its dismay that there was no in-patient unit available for the treatment of disturbed psychiatric adolescents.

Fr Luca was inaccurate in stating that ‘we had the allegation investigated by the Gardaí’. But, in fact, the Gardaí had brought the allegations to Fr Luca and they investigated them as part of the preparation for the criminal trial.

Following further consultations with the Provincial, a meeting was arranged between Br Ramon and senior counsel, after which counsel told Fr Luca, ‘You needn’t be worried, it’s a false accusation and we have no doubt about that’. At the Garda Station, Fr Luca was shown the file on the case, which he described as ‘putrid’. He added: I would not have thought the Brother had a chance because when you read something and looked at the detail of it you would ask yourself how anyone could compose it ... the minute descriptions and the detail of the thing ... It was a different Brother to the accusation about the 14 year old.26 There had never been any accusations against the second Brother before that, at least I had never heard anything against him. The Gardaí were satisfied, anyway, that it wasn’t true.

When statements of complaint about this Brother were received by the Committee and forwarded to the Oblates, they should have considered these complaints in the light of the information they had about Br Ramon. There was a chance to investigate the behaviour of this Brother as soon as his activities became known in Britain. The allegations surfaced in the mid-1990s, and the Brother is now deceased.

There is no information about this report, and so it is not known if it covered his time in Daingean, although it would seem extraordinary that a man charged with indecent assault on boys in a residential institution would not have been questioned about the 17 years he spent in a reformatory in Ireland. This is particularly the case when it is now known that an investigation was carried out in Daingean in the late 1960s, by Fr Luca and the Gardaí, into allegations of sexual abuse against Br Ramon.

It was also strange that Fr Luca did not appear to have taken any action against the boys who initiated the alleged malicious report. If the boy in this case had not retracted his allegation early on, ‘... the next thing would have been that the Brother would have to have been brought into it’.

There remain some puzzling aspects of this case that were not explained by the investigation. If the bigger boys asked this boy to make the allegation for malicious reasons, it was odd that he went to the Chaplain, who could not pass the information on unless the boy allowed him to do so. It was an extraordinarily indirect way to make a malicious allegation.

There was no written record of the allegation that came from the chaplain and the boy. The absence of documentary evidence of abuse was a result of the system. The exact nature of the allegations and the names of the people involved were only recorded in the memory of the Resident Manager, not the Institution or the Congregation. The way this incident was dealt with shows how failure to record complaints led to evidence about possible repetition of allegations being lost.

Another witness described being sexually assaulted on two occasions by a member of staff while he was in Daingean. He alleged that he complained to a Brother and the matron about the abuse, and they just fobbed him off. He also alleged that he was physically abused by the Brother to whom he reported the assault. He stated that his mother became aware of this physical abuse, and she complained to the school authorities. The correspondence between his mother and the school authorities was available to the Committee, and it supported the witness’s contention that his mother did in fact complain that she had been told by a couple of boys who had recently absconded from Daingean that her son had received 16 lashes. This complaint was dealt with by Fr Luca personally, who assured her that her son was in perfect health.

His letter concentrated on calming the parent rather than investigating the allegations: As regards the other matters you mention; namely that [your son] has been ill treated here. That is not true and I know before Easter [he] had asked a member of the staff to call and see you about this and to assure you that what you had been told was not true. Naturally you could expect an exaggerated story from your source of information. In fact, such a boy would not ask better than to upset you and cause as much trouble as possible. If you come down next visiting Sunday you may talk it over with Br. [Mateo]30 and I hope the matron will also be available that day too. In fact it was the matron whom [your son] asked to contact you.

Another witness alleged that he was forced to perform oral sex with one of the Brothers on a number of occasions: About three different times ... You just accepted it. There was no one you could report it to. There was no one whatsoever. There was no telephones. I think it was every fortnight you were allowed to write to your mother. There was no one. You don’t see anyone from outside. I never seen anyone from outside for two years.