428 entries for Allegations

In mid January 1971, the Superintendent of Marlborough House sent a report entitled ‘Report Re-Dismissal Mr Jacob. (Attendant)’ to the Department of Education, in which he detailed a number of complaints against Mr Jacob. He alleged that Mr Jacob, on one occasion, had ‘very little interest’ in the ‘safe custody’ of the boys and, on another occasion, he ‘reported for duty as rostered, he did not appear to be inclined to exercise control or work’.

Mr Jacob was interviewed at the Department’s offices, at the end of January 1971, where the complaints about his performance contained in the Superintendent’s report to the Department were put to him. He denied each allegation and put his own version of events to the Department. He also asserted that ‘Since the incidents relating to the Press Mr Carnoy had subjected him to extreme pressure’. He offered to provide a number of witnesses to support his case, and asked that he be given the complaints in writing.

The dismissal of Mr Jacob sparked another round of newspaper articles, and it was even raised in the Dail. The Minister for Education stated that he ‘certainly was not dismissed because of the fact that he made allegations in relation to this home’, but was dismissed ‘because of unsatisfactory performance of his duties’.

The boy’s father also complained in person to the Minister for Agriculture on the same day as he wrote the letter. The Minister for Agriculture telephoned the Department of Education that afternoon. The Department official who took the call informed Mr Grange, the Superintendent in Marlborough House, immediately and he undertook to enquire fully into the alleged ill-treatment.

Mr Grange investigated the matter by taking statements from the attendant on duty on the day, and from the mother of another boy involved in the same incident, and from the boy accused of the ill-treatment. The attendant on duty, and the woman who witnessed the visit of the father with his son, both alleged that the father was intoxicated on the day and had become violent when he discovered that his son was in the same place as a boy who was accused of fatally stabbing his brother.

The boy who was alleged to have been responsible for the incident wrote a two-page statement, in which he did not deny that either incident took place, but instead gave an innocent explanation for the blow on the head and the washbasin incident.

The day after the letter of complaint was received, the boy at the centre of the allegation was examined by a medical officer, who found ‘no evidence ... of any injury to his head or any other part of his body’.

Mr Grange and his wife, the matron, both gave statements that they recalled the scene made by the father of the boy during the visit to his son. Mr Grange believed that the father came that day with a view to causing a scene, because he was aggrieved that all the boys involved in the club break-in and theft had not received similar punishment. He stated that, the following week, the rest of the boys received similar detention periods, and the parents of the boys had calmed down. He did not address the issue as to whether the allegations were true or not.

Two of the witnesses who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee complained of sexual abuse by staff.

One witness, who was in Marlborough House in the early 1970s, alleged that two members of staff (Mr Lombard and Mr Hugot)11 used a walking stick to beat him. The beatings were random and for no particular reason. He also complained of being fondled and, when asked to describe this, he said: What they would actually do, they would strip you and I remember, I can see him now ... he would come in and shove the stick between your buttocks or whatever else and stand in the doorway and watch him push you and feel you or whatever.

Each of the witnesses said they spent each day of their detention in this large room with nothing to do. One witness, who spent time there in 1970, described this room as ‘painted smoky kind of grey’ with a large stove at one end where ‘We would sit around the fire basically all day’. This room, as described by the witness, was divided into two sections by a partition: one section consisted of two tables for eating, and the other section was ‘where we would sit down at the fire all day’. They had nothing to do except sit by the fire in this room, which he described as similar to the room in the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with ‘strong wire on every window’. He recalled only being allowed out into the outside yard for one hour during the whole month of his detention.

These documents showed how the Rosminians handled cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by staff, and they are also relevant in attempting to establish how much more sexual abuse took place in Upton and Ferryhouse than has been alleged by complainants.

The Order, in its Submissions and in its evidence to the Commission, accepted that the abuse of children in its various forms, including physical and sexual abuse, had occurred in both Ferryhouse and Upton during the period under investigation.

The Rosminian Institute had taken the view that a strictly adversarial approach was unnecessary and inappropriate, and that it could create a distracting polarisation of views and obscure the truth. It believed that many of the individual allegations and complaints were beyond proving or disproving, and that such investigation was unnecessary, as the faults and limitations of the schools being inquired into would become apparent without the need to pursue every conflict of evidence.

In an inquiry into an institution, the Rosminians submitted, it was not necessary or appropriate to decide on the validity of each complaint on an individual basis, but it was necessary to determine how widespread abuse was during the history of the Institution. He pointed out that a reasonable insight might be gained by looking elsewhere, beyond the allegations and counter-allegations, to see what was known at the time.