2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

Six witnesses reported being sexually abused when they were serving breakfast to visiting priests in the parlour. One priest was reported to have his breakfast in the parlour and ‘sent for girls every morning’. A witness described the priest as sitting her on his lap, where he fondled her, kissed her on the lips and gave her money saying ‘you’re a good girl’. This witness reported that the priest was attended at mealtimes by residents ‘who he fondled constantly’, kissing, and touching them. Other witnesses provided the following accounts of being sexually abused by local and visiting priests: The parish priest used to be always around at the time, around the convent. He used to pick me up in the grounds or if you went in to him with his breakfast, he would put you sitting on his knee and give you a kiss on the mouth. He would put me sitting on his ...(genitalia).... • There was a visiting priest, Fr ...X... he used to come in holiday time and say Mass. I had the job of polishing the sacristy, I had to peep in to see if he was gone. He called me in. He was a tall man, he called me over, I had to kneel next to him, the next thing I could feel his hand up under my underwear. I nearly died, I thought “Jesus what will I do?” I couldn’t tell anyone. They were Gods, the priests were God, no one would believe you. I was about 11.

The most commonly reported form of sexual abuse described in relation to this group of lay care staff was masturbation and fondling. Witnesses reported at times being taken out of their beds to warm a staff member’s bed, where they were then sexually abused. Others reported being inappropriately fondled on the pretext of checking if they had wet their beds. One witness reported that she was sexually abused on a regular basis by a childcare worker as he drove her to school. The abuse involved fondling and forcing her to masturbate him. The following account refers to one witness’s abuse experience during the 1980s: Every night he ...(lay care staff)... used to come up to the room, there were 3 girls in it, and he used to come up to the room every night and absolutely insist that he would put Sudocreme on us. There was absolutely no reason for it, down with the knickers and all, he insisted on doing it to every one of us.

Witnesses reported 15 ancillary workers as sexually abusive, 12 of whom were identified by their occupations and three others were identified by name. Witnesses reported the ancillary workers as farm workers, gardeners, tradesmen and caretakers employed by the religious staff on the grounds of the Schools. The forms of abuse described were vaginal rape, oral/genital contact, masturbation and inappropriate fondling. As described, the abuse generally occurred in sheds and work areas used by the abuser and most often under threat not to tell anyone. Three (3) witnesses from different Schools reported being sexually abused by ancillary workers who lived on the Schools grounds. I ... used to go out to the garden, there was this man in the fields there ... (lay ancillary worker).... He’d say “howya”. ... I said “hello” but I didn’t have anything to do with him. He brought me into a room, it was kinda like a little house and locked the door and ... he raped me, he just took every thing off me and he kept saying, “you tell them and I’ll kill you”, I was only about 14. I felt dirty and to this day I feel dirty. • There was a man there, he worked as the...lay ancillary worker... there. He had a shed, he would get you in there and feel your breasts and your privates, feel you all over, he was just ...ugh... he used to do it to all the girls. You’d know because all the girls would be talking about it. You daren’t tell the nuns they wouldn’t believe you, they all liked him.

Reports of sexual abuse by co-residents were concentrated in particular Schools at particular periods of time. There were 46 witness accounts of sexual abuse by male and female co-residents, 38 of those reports related to abuse by older girls and eight reports were of abuse by older boys. Two (2) male co-residents who were identified as abusers were described as having learning difficulties. The most frequently reported circumstance of co-resident or peer sexual abuse was of witnesses being abused over a period of time by residents who were understood to have been given some authority over them and who threatened to beat or otherwise physically abuse them if they did not comply. A small number of witnesses reported extreme threats including of being killed, or that their siblings would be beaten, abused or sent away. Accounts of abuse included being taken into an older girl’s bed and fondled, forced to participate in mutual masturbation, and fondled in the process of bathing or providing personal care. She ...(older co-resident)... used take me to the boiler house and make me fondle her. She used not do it to me but make me do it to her. She was cruel, I told ...named lay care staff... she told me not to be bothering her. The nuns did nothing about her, they weren’t blind, they saw what was happening.

The professionals identified by witnesses as sexually abusive were three doctors and one external professional with responsibility for child welfare associated with the Schools. The doctors were reported to have fondled and masturbated witnesses in the course of physical examinations. The professional person was reported by three witnesses to have sexually assaulted and raped them. The ...external professional... he was worse than the nuns, Mr ...X ... even the thought of him makes me cringe. We would go in one at a time in the parlour. ... I hated him. ... Oh, he was horrible, horrible, ugh, the thought of him ...distressed.... Nobody liked seeing him, being sent to him. He’d have papers, I suppose you’d call them files ... he seemed to be there a lot, nobody liked him. The nuns were never there, they would knock on the door and put their hand on your back and push you in. Nobody liked him, nobody liked going to him ...distressed.... I remember the door opening and that was it.

Ten (10) members of the general public, all male, were identified by seven witnesses as having sexually abused them by vaginal and anal rape, molestation and inappropriate contact. The witnesses remarked that these men were aware they came from an Industrial School. Those reported as abusive included public service workers, visitors and others whom the witnesses encountered in the course of some everyday activity in association with the School. The consistent theme with these reports of sexual abuse was the lack of due care and protection provided to the witnesses by those responsible for them. On the way to ...named city... for an eye appointment in the ambulance, there was nobody with me there or back. The driver, he made me masturbate him, he put his fingers in me, on the way there and again on the way back. I told another girl, she told the nuns, 4 of them ... (Sisters)... beat me. • He... (visitor)...asked us to cane him on the bare bottom with the cane. He wanted to take girls out of...named School...to be nice, I got a packet of Aeros...(sweets)...You never came back saying that...(sexual abuse) ...happened. Ex-residents

The Committee heard reports of sexual abuse by ex-residents who witnesses stated were allowed to return on a casual basis to two Schools following their discharge. Three (3) witnesses described the ex-residents as being friends or having special relationships with staff members; they were said to have unsupervised access to the School and its residents. In one instance the reported abuse occurred over a period of years and continued until the late 1980s: I was abused ...(from)... the age of 6 ’til I was 14. He was kind of a past pupil. ... He was friends with the staff. There was a room where past pupils used to sleep, he would come into the room at night, he used to tell me, “you tell anyone and your ...family members... will be moved and you will be on your own”. I didn’t eat for a year, I went silent for a year, I went from minding myself to nothing. He was always there. I seen school as my escape.... I’d fall asleep in the class because of all the abuse I was going through at night time. I was afraid to sleep at night but I felt safe in school, one teacher was my first good memory. Someone should have asked what was happening....

Among the 27 witnesses who reported being raped, four reported pregnancies while still in the care of the School. The witnesses reported that three of those pregnancies proceeded to full term and one miscarried. One witness reported she was sexually abused by a labourer on the farm attached to the School and she became pregnant at 15 years of age. Another witness reported that she was discharged by the School to the care of a male relative when she was 15 years old. She became pregnant as a result of rape by this man and the child was placed for adoption. This adoption was reported to be facilitated by the Resident Manager of the School where she had been a resident. I had a child then ... I will never get over that, that will never go away from me. ... You can ask the hospital ...named hospital.... I had a little child. I went and told them ...(Sisters)... about rape, and they killed me. I told 2 nuns, they put me into ...named psychiatric hospital.... I told them, 2 nuns, they said, “no, no, he would never do that”. They killed me, they said, “you are filth, you are filth”. I will never forgive them. I often thought of going out and telling the guards ...(Gardaí)... but I was afraid, I was terrified. They said I broke a window, they said I was mental. ... After that even the doctor said “I don’t know what you are doing in hospital”.... The doctor said I didn’t need to be there, I went to ...named mother and baby home....

This Report categorises neglect of care under the headings of food, clothing, heat, hygiene, bedding, healthcare, education, supervision and preparation for discharge, all categories that were referred to by witnesses with varying levels of detail. As throughout the Report, there was inevitable overlap between the different categories of neglect and other types of abuse. Witnesses described the impact of the reported neglect on their social and emotional welfare, and many reported the particularly vulnerable position of orphans and those who had little family contact. The girls from the workhouse ...(orphans)... they were treated worse, they suffered worse. ... When we were out for a walk we would bring them back bits of chewing gum and haws that we found on the hedges and on the ground, we were all so hungry and they didn’t get out. ... (Orphans)... clothes were different, big patched knickers, boots with no soles in them.

Hunger, together with the inadequate provision and poor quality of food, was the area of neglect most consistently reported by witnesses. There were 335 witness reports of the food provided to residents being of poor quality and/or inadequate quantity. These reports referred to 37 Schools across all the decades from which there were neglect reports. One hundred and sixty eight (168) witnesses (46%) described being constantly hungry, and at times ‘starving’, while resident in the Schools. The constant state of hunger led to witnesses attempting to supplement their diet in whatever way they could. ‘If you saw anybody eating anything you just went up and grabbed it, we were always hungry.’ A cup of cocoa and one slice of bread for breakfast. Lunch was cold soupy type thing, lumpy potato, you were so hungry you’d eat it. Then in the afternoon it was scraps, bits of stale bread ... we’d be killing each other to get as much as we could, trample each other. We were all like vultures, like dogs eating off the ground to get as much as we could. We were so hungry. ... You were always looking out for a bit of food, the teacher’s dining room, you’d run in and grab what was left.... Or you’d get the key of the pantry and go in you were so hungry.

Prior to the 1960s many Schools had bakeries associated with the kitchens. Working in the bakeries and kitchens allowed access to the pantry, extra bread and leftover food. Seventy (70) witnesses described taking food, if and when they had the opportunity, as a means of survival. Witnesses reported taking food from the kitchens and pantries and also reported taking fruit and vegetables from the nun’s kitchens, orchards, glasshouses and vegetable gardens. They recalled ‘stealing’ apples and sweets from shops in the town, ‘stealing’ lunches from day pupils and fruit from local orchards. In addition to food taken in this manner 53 witnesses said that they foraged for leftover scraps and took animal food and slops intended for the farm animals or from ash pits in the gardens where kitchen refuse was dumped. Witnesses described fighting with co-residents for the contents of the scrap bucket from the nun’s kitchen. One witness remembered with gratitude a staff member who worked in the School’s staff kitchen: I never had enough, I used to eat from the bins. There was a nun in the kitchen, she was an angel, Sr ...X.... I can honestly say she was an angel, she used to throw food away in such a way that it didn’t get ...pause... contaminated you’d say now. She threw it away in such a way that we’d get it, she put it in a place she knew you would get it. She was very good, she’d leave apple skins and something that was nice.... A boiled egg, I used to love, but we got them very rare. I was always hungry. If you were punished you were put starving anyway. I used to be caught picking food out of the bins and you would be put starving, for 2 or 3 days, you wouldn’t be given anything, all meals ...(were stopped)... for a couple of days.

Twenty seven (27) witnesses provided reports of seeing and preparing more plentiful and appetising food in the Sisters’ kitchens and dining rooms. Serving food to clergy, staff and visitors in the parlours allowed illicit access to some of this food. A small number of witnesses recalled being sent to post food parcels to nun’s relatives at Christmas time and of potatoes and other food being given to visiting professionals to take away with them. I was hungry all the time. I was caught robbin’ bread and they were all told not to talk to me. ... I was working in the kitchen and you’d see the carved roast for the convent but you never got it. You might get the leftovers if you worked in the kitchen.

Twenty two (22) witnesses provided accounts of eating grass, leaves and berries. They reported that they ate field crops including oats, ‘crows’ bread’, ‘bread and cheese leaves’, ‘sally grass’ and juice from rose stems, hawthorn berries and apple cores, orange peels and chewing gum from the pavement. Others reported eating flowers, eggshells, candles, glue and, in the reports of two witnesses, the pink ointment used to treat boils. I was always going around looking for food. If I was down the town and someone threw away an apple core I would pick it up off the ground and eat it.

Twenty six (26) witnesses reported on the lack of access to drinking water, and stated that drinking from the toilet bowl was their only means of obtaining water. They described being given nothing to drink except what was provided during their mealtimes. This practice was reported in relation to 10 Schools and to have continued in some Schools until the 1970s. You’d be more thirsty than anything else, we’d drink water out of the toilets, there would be little worms in the water, the older girls would show us how to spit them out like that ...demonstrated.... But you weren’t afeared ...(afraid).... It was the nuns you feared.

The use of communal and shared baths was reported to be a common practice. A small number of Schools were reported to have large communal baths where many residents were bathed together. Others had regular bathtubs that were shared by more than one resident at a time and consecutive groups used the same water. ‘You would line up naked, you would be with your own age group but your dignity was taken, the same bath, same water for everyone.’ Bathing was reported to take place at the end of the week, usually on a fortnightly or monthly basis, and coincided with the distribution of clean underclothes. There were several reports from witnesses discharged before 1960 where baths were provided infrequently in tubs with water carried from the kitchens. Cold-water baths were reported as routine in one School in the pre-1960s period unless the laundry was in operation. In other Schools, cold-water baths were reported as punishment for bed-wetting: ‘Cold bath if you wet the bed, otherwise you had to put on this frock going into the bath in front of others’. Witnesses said that the furnace was lit to provide hot water for the laundry and residents were then bathed in laundry tubs. Witnesses had to dry themselves with large sheets and towels shared by many co-residents. In one School residents were bathed in tubs in an outside building and waited in line without clothes in the open air. By contrast, in other Schools modesty was closely monitored when bathing, residents in those Schools had to wear a chemise when they were in the bath. Older residents were reported to wash younger co-residents under this garment and great care was taken to keep one’s body covered at all times. You got in to the bath with the chemise and there were 2 nuns holding a big sheet so you got out and went into the toilet to dress, still in the chemise.