2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

One hundred and fifty two (152) witnesses reported attending hospital for treatment, a number of whom were admitted for reasons including childhood accidents and illness such as fevers, tonsillitis, ear infections and lacerations. As previously reported, 33 residents were admitted for injuries following physical abuse. I went to hospital ...(with a broken wrist following beating).... I had to walk to the hospital, it was 3 quarters of an hour to walk, another girl came with me.

A number of witnesses reported that improvements in health care provision depended on changes of staff and the attitude of the Resident Manager: ‘I was looked after in a kind, loving way if I was sick until I was 12 and then with a change ...(of Resident Manager)... it all changed’.

Preparation for puberty was specifically reported by 36 witnesses as an area of neglect through misinformation, lack of education and discussion of all sexual matters. The onset of menstruation was described as a particularly distressing experience for many female witnesses due both to their own lack of understanding about what was happening and the response of staff to their circumstances. Witnesses reported that adolescent development and menstruation were not discussed and that in many instances their attempts to seek advice and reassurance were harshly sanctioned. Witnesses reported feeling that normal bodily changes were faults of some kind. A witness reported that when she started to menstruate, she was sent for by the Resident Manager who gave her a lecture about being dirty, calling her a ‘filthy devil’. There was absolutely no sanitary facilities for a girl at a certain time of your life, you had to make do yourself. We got no advice at all, we learned from older girls.... We used talk among ourselves. When it ...(menstruation)... first happened to me I hadn’t the courage to go up and ask, we were very much afraid to ask ...(for sanitary protection).... • After I had my period the nuns kept telling me “you can now have a baby if a man touches your hair”. So when this foster father began touching my hair I thought I was pregnant.

In addition to the distress associated with menstruation in these circumstances witnesses reported being humiliated and abused in response to any appearance of physical development. They reported feeling embarrassed and ashamed of their breast development. Witnesses reported that an aspect of the neglect experienced in this regard was being forced to wear inappropriate garments for the purpose of concealing normal physical development. When we started to grow breasts, we couldn’t ask the nuns anything, you weren’t allowed grow breasts, I was told my breasts were ugly. ... I was friendly with an outside girl and she gave me a black bra, you know ... brassiere, we were not allowed wear them. Well she, Sr ...X... caught me and she threw me into a room and she beat me black and blue. We were not allowed wear them you know. • I was obviously growing up by now and I had quite big breasts. Sr ...X... would come up to me get hold of my breasts and squash them as hard as she could, she would then order me to “flatten them down and stop encouraging” it ... “flatten them down, flatten them”. She would scream at me. So I would just try and hold myself in ’til she left me alone. ... Then one day she got hold of me and told me she had got me a “roll on”, I thought I was going to get some nylons ...(stockings)... and felt very grown up. She said “this will help to keep you in”. ... When I put it ...(corset)... on she made me haul it up over my breasts to flatten them down, I could hardly breathe and I had to wear this over my breasts for months.

Witnesses reported having little or no knowledge of intimate relationships and being misinformed about basic details regarding sexual matters. Some witnesses, including three who stated they were unable to read, described being handed a book on the facts of life when they were discharged. Others reported receiving minimal education in relation to sexual matters during the 1970s and 1980s. Witnesses frequently stated that they received no sex education and that sexual matters were never discussed by the staff. The absence of open discussion and information and the culture of silence, fear and denial that witnesses described regarding sexual matters in the Schools were reported to have contributed to neglect and abuse on several levels. A witness who was discharged after 16 years in the School, without any preparation for outside life or relationships with men, reported being raped and abandoned on her first date. Other witnesses said: ‘the facts of life were never discussed, I knew it ... (sexual abuse)... was wrong but we had no language to tell’. We didn’t know anything about getting a period. There was nothing about a period only, “if you sit beside a man you get pregnant”. I remember getting a period, I thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid, I thought “I’ll get into trouble”. There was no one to tell. • We had no sex education, the only sex education we had was about 10 minutes, from the priest. He did a thing on the blackboard to the whole class.

Most witnesses stated that they left the Schools without necessary life skills, including the ability to handle money, shop, budget, cook, pay bills, use public transport or to participate in the social world beyond the institution. They reported not being given any advice to assist them cope with living outside the institutional life to which they had been accustomed. After I left I used to sleep in the mart in ...local town... for about 2 weeks. I had nowhere to go and so I said I’d go to England. When I went over, you know, I couldn’t give the right change, I just didn’t know ...(how to handle money)....

A witness from one School reported that a bequest was made by an ex-resident to the institution to allow each resident to receive a small amount of pocket money each week to foster independence. The witness reported that residents lined up to get the money each week. It was immediately taken back and the residents were informed it was being saved for them. This witness reported that she asked for it when she was being discharged and was told it had been used to buy her clothes. I didn’t know anything about money. ... You don’t know how to go into the shop and ask, you never done daily things, you never done your own washing, so you had to find out ...by ... trial and error. I remember going into ...(department store)... and the girl there helped me, she was great. I had never bought clothes before. I had to learn all this, pay your rent, pay your light ...(electricity bill)... and all this, even when you were leaving they should have told us, or got us ready, given us some information but they gave us nothing, we had to apply for everything and then it was different to what you were told in the School.

Sixty one (61) witnesses reported being abused in work and holiday placements, many of whom emphasised that the lack of adequate assessment and supervision of aftercare left them vulnerable to abuse. Twenty eight (28) witnesses reported being abused in various ways by employers following their discharge, often under threat of being returned to the Schools if they resisted or disclosed their abuse. The types of abuse reported by witnesses in these circumstances included physical and sexual abuse, not being paid and working excessively long hours. We used to go on holidays and from the first day I hated it. He was all right, the father..... She ...(mother in the holiday family)... wanted me to look after the kids and do the work, she was cruel. She made me ...(work).... I was in secondary school for one year, and then I went to the holiday family and at the end of the summer, the School used to phone up and say to come back, this time they did not phone so ... the family phoned and the nuns said “will you not keep her, is there not a school there that she can go to?” So they kept me and did not send me to school, I was a skivvy. I was only about 14 and got no more school....

Fourteen (14) witnesses reported being transferred to laundries when they were discharged, with no recollection of any formal transfer procedure. One witness reported being transferred to a laundry as punishment for having a boyfriend; others reported being transferred as punishment for what might be described as assertive behaviour. I’m pushed up against the wall and they ...Sr X and 3 lay staff... had me in on the wall beating the head off me, beating me unconscious. I put me hand out to save myself.... I knocked Sr ...X’s...veil off, it was accidental I did not strike that nun. I’m put into this room, it was out in the yard, there was no light in it and I was there until next day. Then I’m taken out by a Miss ...Y... a lady she was, a real lady she was a lovely woman, and she told me I was being sent down the country, I was being transferred. She put her arms around me and said “I’m sorry”.... I went down ... early in the morning and never got a chance to say goodbye to my sisters.... (Sent at 13 years to work in laundry)

The lack of planning and involvement of witnesses in any discussions about discharge resulted in them having no time or opportunity to say goodbye to siblings and friends. This abrupt ending to their years in care was reported by witnesses to be traumatic. ‘No great goodbyes from what had been my home for 9 years’. Discharges in these circumstances were particularly distressing for witnesses who were leaving younger siblings behind whom they knew were being abused. Others reported that the loss of friendships was distressing, both at the time and in subsequent years, as they never regained contact. It was the day our ...witness’s sister... left, I were sitting on the swing. I were crying, my sister, she just said goodbye to me. I just heard that she was gone for good, she didn’t know herself where she was going. She ...(Sr X)... gave me a backhander because I was crying. I split my head. I told them ...(in the hospital)... I fell, the nun was there beside me you couldn’t say anything or you’d get worse.

Many witnesses reported that there remained a consistent lack of preparation for independent living and little aftercare provided by Schools in the 1970s and 1980s. Others reported that there were some improvements and changes in practice and procedures since the 1970s, with planned discharges and some preparation for independent living. Sr ...X... said “it’s time for ye to leave”. I said “what?” She said “I’m going to give ye a few days now, you can finish your Junior Cert and then you have to go”. We ...(witness and co-resident)... thought, “what on earth are we going to do, where are we going to go?” We had nothing. Within a couple of days we had found a flat, the 2 of us, we found it ourselves and we left out the door with a couple of suitcases. I had to leave school, I would have liked to have stayed on. I did alright in my Junior Cert, but I had to leave. A teacher in the school phoned up and explained the situation and got me a job. • When I left I wanted to do ...training... she ...(Sr X)... was giving out about the funds ...(cost).......named lay care staff... persuaded her to let me go. I remember I was brought up to a big city, a place I hadn’t a clue of where we were, I was put into a B&B by Sr ...X... and Sr ...Y... and she ...(Sr X)... gave me a cheque for £200 and I had to find a flat for myself, I had no pots, no pans, nothing, I was on my own. There were times when I was there when I was hungry, a friend from School would give me soup and bread.

Most witnesses who had been in institutional care for an extended period of time reported that when they were discharged they were given little information about the terms of their admission or discharge, their medical history or any of their formal documentation such as educational or birth certificates. The Committee heard 15 reports of witnesses being provided with incorrect information regarding family circumstances, for example being told that their parents were deceased or that they had no siblings. For many of these witnesses such misinformation has continued to be a cause of great distress and unresolved anger: I applied for my birth cert after I left the School and discovered that my mother wasn’t married. I had been told all my life ... (in named School)... that she was dead and that my father died when I was 2. It was a shock, I went looking ...(for information)...when I was getting married and the priest put me off.... Since then ...(in recent years)... I got the details off the social worker, she arranged for me to meet her ... (witness’s birth mother).... When I met the poor lady, she was a lovely woman, she didn’t want me given up, she was supposed to be paying for me. They ...(Sisters)... had her name and details all the time and she lived near, and none of this was told you before you left. They should have talked to us, you had to deal with it all yourself, it ...(the information)... was coming through the post, in a flat, on your own, finding out she was alive all the time.

The main forms of emotional abuse identified by witnesses included: humiliation and ridicule, deprivation of contact with siblings and family, rejection, loss of identity, lack of affection, threat of harm and deliberate exposure to frightening situations. Other forms of emotional abuse included a punitive emphasis on religion, public humiliation and personal ridicule, denigration of family of origin, isolation, criticism and verbal abuse, and the unreasonable imposition of responsibility. There is some unavoidable overlap between the different forms of emotional abuse and between emotional abuse and other types of abuse, particularly physical and sexual abuse.

Witnesses also reported being humiliated regarding their dress and general appearance. For example, a witness reported being punished by being forced to wear a dress made from a flour sack, which was removed in advance of an inspector’s visit. Others described having to wear ragged clothes to school in the company of children from the town and being teased about their poor attire. Another witness who needed glasses and had been recommended by the doctor to sit in front of the class reported that the Sister ridiculed her in front of the class saying ‘we would not like to look at this ugly girl all day, would we girls?’ Witnesses reported being mocked by staff about their personal appearance and humiliated by having attention drawn to adolescent changes: One time my sister brought me a bra. Sr ...X... made me stand up in the hall in front of the whole school and made me take it off and said “who do you think you are?”

Twenty three (23) witnesses reported enforced public nakedness as a cause of distress and humiliation. They described being beaten naked in front of others, being made to stand in line without any clothes and being bathed with others. Witnesses described the humiliation of being beaten on their bare buttocks and being forced to remove their skirts and pants, or pull up their nightdresses, having to bend over a chair or a desk or being held down on a bed or across a table to be beaten. The humiliation and shame of being observed while being physically abused in this manner was commented on by witnesses: You got blamed even if you didn’t do it. She ...(Sr X)... took my knickers down once ...(in front of co-residents)... “let this be a lesson to you all” she said, she put me across her knee. I would have been about 8, and she beat me and beat me with a whip, a whip type stick until I cried. • I’ll never forget that beating, all the girls watching. The worst thing was not the beating but your naked bottom being seen by all the girls, it was so embarrassing.