2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

One complainant who was in the Institution during the 1940s, which was the period criticised by Dr McCabe, shared her views on the food there: Oh, it was terrible food ... You would get kind of watery soup. There might be bits of celery in it. It used to make me almost heave. Just, maybe, bits of meat and potatoes in it. The food, it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t something you looked forward to. You had to take it because there was nothing else. So the food was very bad there, I thought ... there was regular meals. You got breakfast, a bit of porridge in the morning. I was like a gruel, watery porridge. Then you got the dinner. Dinner was very poor. Then you got a bit of supper, a bit of bread and jam. That’s all I can remember ... Very little meat. I can’t remember ever getting eggs or bacon or anything like that. I’d never known food like that.

Another complainant was also in the School during that period. He was admitted in the mid-1940s after the break-up of his parents’ marriage: Well, food, we could have done with a bit more, you know. You didn’t get a lot for breakfast, there was only a bit of a slice of bread and a mug of tea. You had a bit of dinner then in the middle of the day and you had the same thing as you had for breakfast later on.

A witness who was there in the 1950s was critical of the food. He recalled: It was kind of a green mash, it was cabbage stalks and potatoes ... I remember getting that almost every day I was there: Green mash, bread and dripping, watery Cocoa. Egg flip, that was a kind of boiled milk with boiled eggs chopped up and put into it, you were given a ladle of it. There was other stuff they gave, castor oil with molasses in it in a big ceramic jug. The food wasn’t that good.

A witness who attended the School in the 1960s was quite clear that he had fared better in St Patrick’s than he would have at home: I know myself that you got food on a regular basis there; you got your breakfast, your dinner, your tea and you got cocoa going to bed. Food was not a problem there, I never felt hungry there. I might have felt frightened but I never felt hungry.

The children admitted to Kilkenny were very young. Between 1933 and 1966, 221 of the children admitted were under five years of age; 234 were aged between five and 10; and only 101 were over 10 on admission. The proportion of very young children increased between 1966 and 1999: 362 children under five years of age were admitted, and 261 were under 10; only 112 children were over 10 on admission.

Each group had its own sitting room and separate dining room which were newly painted and decorated. From 1953, the children from fourth class upwards attended outside schools, and the annals for that year remarked: This gives them the opportunity of mixing with children who have their own homes – in this way they hear something about home life.

Dr McCabe told the Resident Manager about the child [BB] who had reported the matter to Sr Stella: The Resident Manager told me that she was on holidays when that had happened but on her return she heard all about it but was inclined to disbelieve it “as these children are all so well informed before they come into the school and often tell a lot of lies that it is difficult to believe them”. When I mentioned XX and AA she was really shocked. I asked her why when she had heard about BB why she had not informed the Department and ask them to investigate the matter. She told me really she thought the child was imagining it.

Dr McCabe then discovered that the Resident Manager had already transferred the second girl to a reformatory in Limerick. This child had told one of the Sisters that her uncles had been interfering with her before she had come to St Joseph’s. In an account of this, the nun in question stated: Then I discovered that for two years prior to her coming here she had on countless occasions indulged in sexuality with her two uncles and with other boys. We got none of those details about her when she was being committed to the school. I reported the matter immediately to Mother Vera6 who took action.

Sharon said that St Anne’s, even though it was a reformatory for girls, was wonderful in comparison to St Joseph’s. There was more freedom, she did not feel she was under the microscope. She never felt safe in Kilkenny, but she did not have the same feeling in St Anne’s. The transfer papers had described her as ‘not of previous good character’, yet the Sisters in St Anne’s never made her feel like that. In St Anne’s, she was recognised as a person. As an example, she described the following: In a little way ... that I was walking on my first walk and Sister Ellen12, who was in charge, actually took my hand. I can never forget that moment because on the one hand what was so sinful in Kilkenny, well maybe that is going too far but I wasn’t allowed to do that and here I was in St Anne’s and Sister Ellen took my hand.

In their Submission, the Sisters of Charity disclosed that the current leadership of the Congregation first heard about the Jacobs case when they were shown documents discovered by the Department of Education in the course of investigating a complaint. Sr Úna O’Neill stated: There is no record of any kind in any of the files of the Sisters of Charity regarding this matter and they were not aware of what had happened until the Commission made the file available for inspection to the Congregation’s Solicitors in 2001.

The Sisters of Charity submitted their observations on the case. Their position was defensive. In relation to the discovery of abuse by Dr McCabe, they stated: Even Dr Anna McCabe with her medical training, expertise and the high reputation for professionalism which she appears to have earned within the Department (in the opinion of the current Secretary General), had to persist in her interviews and questioning before evidence of abuse emerged.

She maintained some contact with her friends from St Joseph’s, and has attended some reunions to see them. She does not regard it as her home nor does she go to see the nuns: she attends just to stay in touch with the girls, as they have a lot in common. Most of the girls in her set, the green set, have very bad memories but she believes that girls in other sets would have different memories. In particular she says that those in the blue set ‘were made’. The sets were segregated: every child in the green set felt they were nobodies, and she believed that was the reason why they were in that set. Most of the girls in it came from dysfunctional families. The red set was not too bad – they were ‘half right’. The blue set was a totally different scene, because they got all the extras. Sr Astrid had overall responsibility for all sets, but was specifically in charge of the blue set. Once assigned to a set, there was no possibility of moving to another.

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.

On 11th September 1969, Mr Wade from the Department travelled to Kilkenny with Mr Madden to inspect the ‘unauthorised works’ which were at that time being carried out, and about which Dr Birch and Sr Wilma19 had called to see the Secretary of the Department. Mr Wade set out the situation as far as he saw it: To fully understand how the nuns in charge of the Industrial School came to find themselves in their present plight the following comment may be of assistance. Since the appointment of Dr Birch as Bishop of Ossory there has been a convulsion in the social conscience of the laity and clergy in the Diocese of Ossory resulting in a welter of activity for the underprivileged from child adoption to geriatrics embracing also itinerants. Nuns, priest and students from St Kieran’s Seminary are involved to a greater extent than ever before among the poor and needy. A social centre has been erected on the grounds of the community, a nursery to facilitate adoption work has been approved by the Department of Health and will also be erected on the convent grounds and there are itinerants settlement schemes, meals on wheels, companions for the old etc etc. Add to this a favourable comment from a member of the Committee on the Reformatory and Industrial Schools on the standards of St Joseph’s, advance information from a member of the Committee that the group system of caring for children would be a recommendation and that grants would be available for building to assist in the changeover from the present methods and the stage was set for the nuns to run off in all directions without an Architect (except for on one item, play space and enclosed gymnasium) without authority, without money or the overdraft facilities to pay for the job.

He was sorry for the situation the nuns found themselves in, describing it as quite pathetic. He felt that: the Bishop abetted by a young radical member of the community played a large part in creating this situation and it seems the Department will have to come to the rescue by making a case to the Department of Finance for an ex gratia grant.