79 entries for Commission Conclusions

• From its re-establishment as a Reformatory in 1940, Daingean was a poor solution to a problem that had been allowed to escalate to crisis proportions. The interests of the boys were not prioritised in the discussions leading up to the opening of Daingean. Daingean’s isolation, clearly identified as a problem by Government officials, was regarded as an advantage by the Congregation. Isolating boys from family and friends was part of the ethos of the Institution. The lack of clarity with regard to responsibility for maintenance of the buildings in Daingean, identified in the Department of Finance letter, proved to be an on-going problem which contributed to the appalling living conditions of the boys. The complainants who gave evidence mainly came from backgrounds of poverty and neglect. Although they all came through the court system, very few of them were hardened criminals. Daingean did not address the special needs and disadvantages of these boys.

1.Flogging was an inhumane and cruel form of corporal punishment. 2.There was no proper system for recording physical punishment administered in Daingean, and it was extensively used by staff members. 3.The staff resorted to corporal punishment and violence as the primary means of maintaining control. 4.There was no control of staff in the infliction of punishment. 5.Corporal punishment was often excessive and was administered by staff using a wide range of weapons. Relatively minor offences gave rise to severe punishment. 6.The severity of punishments, its widespread use, and its unpredictability led to a climate of fear. 7.Serious complaints were not properly investigated. 8.Despite its rules and regulations on corporal punishment the Department had an unambiguous policy of supporting the authorities there.

In conclusion, Fr Salvador emphasised the difficult work that they were doing in Daingean and the encouragement they gave to the boys to reform.

1.Daingean was a Reformatory and was run on penal lines, where repressive measures were the order of day. Many complainants who gave evidence to the Committee had been convicted of minor offences whose sentences seem disproportionate and would not have been given to adults for similar crimes. A basically unjust system was compounded by the way the Institution was run. Hardened criminals in prisons were not subjected to the violence or deprivation experienced by these boys. Prisons were regulated and subject to rules and to the law, but these constraints were not enforced in Daingean. 2.Management had a duty to ensure that all boys were protected but this was not done. Boys were isolated, frightened and bullied by both staff and inmates. 3.The boys had an alternative underground government which victimised those who engaged with Brothers. Management did nothing to break this system and appeared to have acquiesced in it. 4.The acknowledged failure of the staff to offer emotional support was not caused by the boys but by inadequate management.

The conditions of neglect and squalor described by Dr Lysaght and the Kennedy Committee were the responsibility of the management of the School. Inadequate buildings and the consequent overcrowding would undoubtedly have taxed the most efficient Manager, but dirt, hunger, shabbiness and lack of supervision were management issues, and these were all present at Daingean. Daingean represented a failure of the Department of Education to carry out its statutory function of supervision and inspection. The closure of Daingean and the move to Scoil Ard Mhuire, Lusk

General conclusions 1. Daingean was not a suitable location or building for a reformatory. The refusal by management to accept any responsibility for even day-to-day maintenance led to its complete disintegration over the years. 2. Daingean did not provide a safe environment. Management failed in its duty to ensure that all boys were protected. They lived in a climate of fear in which they were isolated, frightened and bullied by both staff and inmates. 3. Gangs of boys operated as a form of alternative government, victimising those who did not obey them, while the Brothers did nothing to break the system but acquiesced in it. 4. Flogging was an inhumane and cruel form of punishment. A senior management respondent described it as ‘a most revolting thing’ and ‘a kind of a horror’, and another respondent said that he was ‘horrified’ when he witnessed it, but the management did nothing to stop it and discussed the practice freely with the Department of Education and the Kennedy Committee. 5. Corporal punishment was a means of maintaining control and discipline, and it was the first response by many of the staff in Daingean for even minor transgressions. Black eyes, split lips, and bruising were reported by complainants. There was no control of staff in the infliction of punishment. 6. A punishment book was part of a proper regime, as well as being required by law. 7. The Department of Education knew that its rules were being breached in a fundamental way and management in Daingean operated the system of punishment in the knowledge that the Department would not interfere. 8. Sexual abuse of boys by staff took place in Daingean, as complainant witnesses testified. 9. The full extent of this abuse is impossible to quantify because of the absence of a proper system of receiving, handling and recording complaints and investigations. 10. The system that was put in place tended to suppress complaints rather than to reveal abuse or even to bring about investigations. 11. The Congregation in their Submission and Statements have not admitted that sexual abuse took place or even considered the possibility, but instead have directed their efforts to contending that it is impossible to find that such abuse actually occurred. 12. Having regard to the extent of the abuse of which Br Ramon was found guilty in Wales, the reservations expressed about his time in London, the known recidivist nature of sexual abuse and the complainant evidence received by the Investigation Committee, there must be serious misgivings about this Brother’s behaviour in Daingean during his long service there. 13. The Oblates acknowledged that they were aware of peer abuse and accepted that such incidents did take place. 14. Sexual behaviour between boys, which was often abusive, was a major issue that developed to such a degree because of the lack of effective supervision throughout the Institution and particularly during recreation. 15. The unsafe environment caused some boys to seek protection through sexual relationships with other boys in order to survive. 16. The conditions of neglect and squalor described by Dr Lysaght and the Kennedy Committee were primarily the responsibility of the management of the School. Inadequate buildings and the consequent overcrowding would undoubtedly have taxed the most efficient Manager, but dirt, hunger, shabbiness and lack of supervision were management issues and these were all present at Daingean. 17. The staff in Daingean was inadequate, ill-equipped and untrained. 18. The failure to offer emotional support was acknowledged by Fr Luca in 1972 when he wrote: The large numbers in such custodial situations with declining staff numbers not only rendered meaningful relationships between staff and boys unattainable but repressive measures for the purpose of containment were the order of the day. 19. The Department of Education neglected its regulatory and supervisory roles in Daingean and failed to condemn serious abuses, including the practice of flogging. 20. Daingean did not in practice have a remedial function, as a reformatory was intended to have, but operated as a custodial institution whose purpose was punishment by deprivation of liberty. Periods of detention were longer because of the supposed therapeutic value of a reformatory, a feature that was emphasised by the statutory minimum of two years. Because it was not officially a prison, there was an absence of legal and administrative protections for detainees.

There seems to have been no educational purpose to Marlborough House as a detention centre. Neither was there any attempt made to give the children any education while they were there. Although it seems obvious that a child who was sentenced to detention for one month would still need to have some education, that evidently did not happen in Marlborough House. The discovered documents even in the latter stages of the existence of Marlborough House disclose an enormous problem that there was nothing for the children to do. There were no recreational facilities, although there was apparently a television. The children moped around in compete boredom and frustration during the period of their detention in the institution. The Department of Justice certified Marlborough House originally but did not have any function in inspecting it. The Department of Education was in charge of it but did not want it because its functions were related to the courts and the administration of Justice. The age range of boys in Marlborough House was 7 years to 17 years; even in the 1960s there was a boy there aged 8 and a half years. The inmates all lived as one group, unseparated by age or circumstance. The numbers varied, and could go up as high as 38 according to the discovered documents. There was a lot of bullying and assaults by boys on other boys. According to contemporary documents, the staff were untrained and often completely unsuitable for work with children : they were in fact recruited as needed from the local labour exchange. Over 21,000 boys passed through this Institution, and it should have been used as a means of assessment and early intervention to prevent boys entering a lifetime of crime. The Department had neither the vision nor the willingness to effect the necessary changes to make Marlborough House functional. Marlborough House was a chaotic facility, housed in an inappropriate and delapidated building with poor management and inadequate staff. The dispute between the Department of Education and the Department of Justice allowed this situation to go on for years. There is no evidence that the personnel in the Department who had charge of this section had any regard or concern for the boys who were incarcerated in Marlborough House. Changes were recommended in order to avoid scandal and criticism of the Minister and the Department, and not because of the needs of the boys in care. It was logical that Marlborough House should have been the responsibility of the Department of Justice. To insist that because Marlborough House dealt with children only the Department of Education should run it was irrational because in every respect it operated to serve the courts and the administration of Justice. The Department of Justice refused to take it over and denied responsibility, but never the less became a critical commentator on the failures on the Department of Education. The Department of Education’s behaviour in respect of Marlborough House was indefensible. Even accepting all the arguments about administrative jurisdiction, the fact remained that it was a facility that needed to be run well to help the young boys sent there. That meant installing proper management and staff, and carrying out supervision to ensure that whatever plan was put in place was implemented. None of that happened, and the institution was allowed to drift further into neglect, with the Department of Education, and indeed the Department of Justice, doing nothing, not even observing its appalling decline.

1.Complaints of physical abuse in Marlborough House were not independently investigated but were usually investigated by the Superintendent in charge of the detention centre. 2.Senior officials in the Department of Education either ignored complaints or delayed in responding to criticism which was coming from independent sources and not just from the boys themselves. 3.Witnesses spoke of multiple severe beatings in the course of relatively short periods of detention. One attendant was particularly brutal, and yet was promoted by the Department even after complaints were made. 4.The wide age differences between the boys and the lack of any segregation made bullying and peer abuse inevitable. There is no evidence that this was regarded as a problem by the authorities. 5.There were many complaints about assaults by staff and at least one was witnessed by another staff member who reported it.

General conclusions 1. The Department of Education was negligent in the management and administration of Marlborough House. Its unwillingness to accept responsibility for the Institution caused neglect and suffering to the children there and resulted in a dangerous, dilapidated environment for the children. 2. The employment of unsuitable, inadequate and unqualified staff resulted in a brutal, harsh regime with punishment at its core. 3. There was no outside authority interested in the welfare of the children in Marlborough House. No concern was expressed by Department officials at the appalling treatment and care they knew the boys were receiving. The concern at all times was to protect the Department from criticism.

1.It was not in dispute that physical abuse took place, and the only issues were how widespread it was and how brutal. 2.Physical abuse was widespread and systemic. Excessive punishment was an everyday occurrence and was brutal and severe. 3.Like many other institutions, Upton kept control over the boys by maintaining a climate of fear. 4.Corporal punishment was used by religious and lay staff as an instrument of control as well as for the purpose of chastisement. 5.The punishment book of the early 1950s documents brutal corporal punishment. 6.Punishment was not supervised or controlled and the severity of punishment was a matter for the individual who administered it. 7.The abusive nature of the regime as recalled by complainants is corroborated by the entries in the punishment book, and by some of the religious.

The contents of the Rome files illustrates the importance of good archives. Not merely did the files help to establish, through contemporary documents, the extent of sexual abuse, they also afforded corroboration of many of the allegations made by complainants. From the Rome files, the Committee also learned about attitudes to the sexual abuse of children at that time, and how known abusers were dealt with by the Order. They proved invaluable sources of information. An institution without good records is one without a memory. It cannot learn from the past, so the management has to deal with each case of abuse as a new problem. Failure to keep records increases the risk of more children being abused, and of the discovery of abuse being mismanaged.

1.it is impossible to quantify the full extent of sexual abuse by religious and lay staff in Upton. The documented cases disclose that it was widespread and it is very likely that more abuse happened than was recorded. 2.Sexual abuse by religious was a chronic problem: a timeline of documented and admitted cases of sexual abuse shows that— a.For more than half the relevant period, there was at least one abuser working there; b.For more than one third of the period, there were at least two abusers present; c.For periods of years in the 1950s, there were at least three abusers present; d.In the course of two separate years, there were at least four abusers present in Upton at the same time. 3.The succession of cases that confronted the authorities must have alerted them to the scale of the problem, and to the need for a thorough ongoing investigation as to how deep the problem went among the Brothers and staff in Upton. Such an investigation did not happen. Instead, each case was dealt with individually, as if no other case had occurred. 4.Br Alfonso brought about the exposure of a large number of sexual abusers, and gave rise to the question whether any of them would have been discovered if he had not been there. 5.The question in this Institution arises, as it does in many others, as to whether the discovery of a large number of abusers represented a period that was a bad time for abuse or a good time for the discovery of abuse. 6.Transferring abusers to other institutions where they would be in contact with children put those children at risk. 7.The Order was aware of the criminal nature of the conduct, but did not report it as a crime. 8.Sexual abuse was dealt with in a manner that put the interests of the Order, the Institution and even the abuser ahead of the protection of the children. 9.The Order did not expel members for sexual abuse. 10.The extent and prevalence of the problem were not addressed. Sexual activity amongst the boys: documented cases

1.Corporal punishment was the option of first resort for problems. Its use was pervasive, excessive, unpredictable and without regulation or supervision and for these reasons became physically abusive. 2.Frequent corporal punishment was the main method of maintaining control over the boys and it created a climate of fear that was emotionally harmful. 3.The system of discipline was the same as in Upton and the Rosminians accept that there was excessive corporal punishment in Ferryhouse. 4.Young and inexperienced staff used fear and violence to assert authority. Severe punishments were inflicted for a wide range of acts and omissions. 5.Rules and regulations governing corporal punishment were not observed and a punishment book was not maintained. The rules were regarded as merely guidelines, with no provision made by the Department of Education for sanctions and reprimands being issued to schools that ignored them. They were therefore ignored with impunity. 6.Excessive, unfair and even capricious violence did lasting damage to many of the boys in Ferryhouse. 7.For most of the period under review, boys were punished for bed-wetting and were subjected to nightly humiliation, degradation and fear.

1.Sexual abuse by religious was a chronic problem in Ferryhouse throughout the relevant period but the full extent cannot be quantified. Some of the abuse is verifiable by contemporary documents or admissions. 2.During most of the years between 1952 and 1988, there lived and worked in Ferryhouse a member or members of the Rosminian Order who at some time were found to have engaged in sexual abuse of boys. In more than ten of those years, there were at least two abusers present and in at least two different years there were three abusers there. 3.Complainant witnesses from every era, from the early 1940s onwards, testified about the sexual abuse of children in Ferryhouse. The Rosminian Institute acknowledged that not all of those who were sexually abused have come forward as complainants, whether to the Commission, to the Redress Board, or to An Garda Síochana. In their Final Submission to the Investigation Committee they wrote, ‘We know that some boys were sexually abused who have made no complaint to the Commission or otherwise, but have spoken to us about it’. 4.The Rosminian authorities discovered that some members of their Order had been abusing children, but their response was wholly inadequate. When sexual abuse was detected, the Order sought to cover up the situation by removing known abusers and transferring them to other institutions. 5.It was only when the Gardaí had already become aware of allegations that the Rosminians reported abuse to the Gardaí in 1995. 6.At no stage did the Rosminians query whether other boys had been abused when a known abuser was discovered. 7.The impact of sexual abuse on the boys themselves was not a consideration on the part of the Rosminians. 8.The Department of Education did not act responsibly when an allegation of sexual abuse was made to it in 1980 and distanced itself from the allegations, seeking to minimise the publicity and scandal which might arise for the Department and the Order. 9.The approach taken by the Department was an ad hoc one. There was no clear policy on the management of sexual abuse.

1.Ferryhouse was a large institution and would have received adequate funding to provide a reasonable level of care for the children for most of the relevant period. In addition, it operated a farm and had trades such as tailoring and boot-making that provided for the needs of the boys. 2.The boys were poorly fed. For much of the period, the food was of insufficient quantity and quality. 3.Poor hygiene and overcrowding were serious problems in the School, and these conditions placed the health and well-being of the boys in danger. 4.The boys were poorly clothed and looked different from children outside the Institution. 5.The accommodation was unsuitable, unhygienic and badly maintained. 6.Family contact was not encouraged or maintained. Boys became cut off from their families and friends. 7.The aftercare was minimal and often non-existent. Young teenagers unprepared for the outside world were thrown into it and had to fend for themselves. Some historical milestones The Submission by the Rosminians to the Cussen Commission, 1936