2,143 entries for Witness Testimony
BackForty three (43) of the 61 witnesses who gave evidence about abuse in Children’s Homes reported that they were born in Dublin. Sixteen (16) witnesses were born in 11 other Irish counties, and two were born outside the State.
Thirty (30) witnesses reported that their parents were unskilled at the time of their admission, by contrast with 12 witnesses who reported their parents were professional, managerial or non-manual workers. Generally, witnesses admitted to the Children’s Homes from other institutional settings were unable to report any detailed information about their parents’ occupational status. Many of those witnesses had been in out-of-home care since infancy.
Many of the 61 witnesses who gave evidence about their experiences of abuse in Children’s Homes were residing outside Ireland at the time of their hearing, as shown in Table 69: <br><table><colgroup><col></col><col></col><col></col><col></col></colgroup><thead><tr><th><strong>Country of residence</strong></th>
 <th><strong>Males</strong></th>
 <th><strong>Females</strong></th>
 <th><strong>Total witnesses</strong></th>
 </tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Ireland</td>
 <td>28</td>
 <td>11</td>
 <td>39</td>
 </tr><tr><td>UK</td>
 <td>6</td>
 <td>11</td>
 <td>17</td>
 </tr><tr><td>USA/Canada</td>
 <td>3</td>
 <td>0</td>
 <td>3</td>
 </tr><tr><td>Australia/New Zealand</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>0</td>
 <td>1</td>
 </tr><tr><td>Mainland Europe</td>
 <td>0</td>
 <td>1</td>
 <td>1</td>
 </tr><tr><td><strong>Total</strong></td>
 <td><strong>38</strong></td>
 <td><strong>23</strong></td>
 <td><strong>61</strong></td>
 </tr></tbody></table>
As illustrated in the above table there was a notable difference between the numbers of male and female witnesses living in Ireland and in the UK. Female witnesses’ country of residence was equally divided between Ireland and the UK, with almost half of the witnesses living in each country at the time of their hearing, whereas the majority of male witnesses were resident in Ireland.
Witnesses gave accounts of out-of-home care being provided for their siblings in a range of settings including Industrial Schools, foster care, special needs services, and Children’s Homes.
Fifteen (15) witnesses, eight male and seven female, reported that the Children’s Homes were their second or third placements having previously been in other settings, including hostels, county homes, foster care, and mother and baby homes. Three (3) of these witnesses reported spending up to four years in mother and baby homes along with their mothers and a further four witnesses stated that they were placed in mother and baby homes without their mothers. Some witnesses believed their working mothers had contributed financially for the care provided in the mother and baby homes. Others commented that due to a lack of family or State support their mothers had no alternative but to place them in out-of-home care. Four (4) of the witnesses reported being transferred to Children’s Homes following a brief placement in Industrial Schools where they were initially admitted on court orders under the Children Act, 1908 or the School Attendance Acts, 1926 to 1967.
Witnesses commented that religion was an important aspect of everyday life and 44 witnesses reported religious practices that included attendance at daily Mass, reciting the Rosary, and attending Sunday Church. ...Named Children’s Home... was modelled on religious life, a very strict regime. The silence was constant except for very short periods, you could speak only if spoken to.
The Committee heard evidence of ongoing difficulties from those witnesses whose siblings had been placed in different institutions or for whom family contact had been restricted or not supported. Witnesses’ evidence of loss of contact with siblings during admission and the subsequent difficulties reconnecting with family members when they were discharged is described later in this chapter. One male witness discharged in the 1980s gave an account of his discharge experience: I was given a bus ticket and told to get the bus, my family lived in ...named town... many miles away. I did not return home as I was not wanted. There was no follow-up by the service. I spent many years drifting.
Witness reports of physical abuse included being punched, kicked, hit with knuckles, hair pulled and cut, being force fed, and lifted by the ears and hair. The Committee also heard reports of witnesses being forced to kneel for long periods, being beaten on the feet, backs of the hands, fingertips and legs. They also described their heads being hit off radiators, wedged in a door or submerged under water. The witnesses reported being beaten with various implements including leathers, sticks, strips of rubber, brushes, hurleys, badminton racquets, rulers, whips and bunches of keys. A small number of witnesses reported being forced to eat quantities of mustard, having their mouths and other body parts, including genitalia, scrubbed with nailbrushes, and being held under a cold tap. On a Saturday morning we used to do work around the orphanage, clean up, sweep up floors, that sort of thing.... We had to clean up around old fashioned urinals, pick up papers out of the shore, that was my job. I was only 8, 9, or 10 at the time.... One day he .... (named religious staff)... was not happy with the result of what I had done, that resulted in another frenzied attack of kicking.... He punched me, straight in with the fist and when you’re down the boot came out then. You’re a kid, you’re in a ball trying to protect yourself the best possible way. • Sr ...X... beat me at night, before I would go to sleep, to stop me from wetting the bed. When that didn’t work she beat me before I would go to school, this continued over all the years in the orphanage, she made me an example. It went on ’til I was 13 ...(years old)... everyday. I learned not to cry, she would hit me more if I did cry. Before she beat me I would have to carry my sheets across through the house to the laundry, she would bend me over a bath or over the rocking horse and on bare skin she would beat me with whatever was handy, cane, strap or brush. The final straw was Sr ...X... came into the bathroom and said “by the time I have finished with you ...(witness’s surname)... the devil will be out of you”. She had the bath ready, she had this nailbrush, she scrubbed my private area with it so much I was so sore, then she decided to put my head underwater ...(saying)... “you will be clean after this”. I had to fight for breath I couldn’t breathe, it seemed like an endless time, as if she wasn’t going to stop, I was frozen. • He ... (named male religious staff )... would lift boys by forelocks and try to punch boys where bruising would not show.
The majority of the 24 witness reports from two Homes were of severe abuse including being hit on the bare buttocks, being submerged and held under water, and being instructed to hit other residents. Ten (10) male witnesses from one of these Children’s Homes commented that physical beatings were severe, unpredictable and unprovoked. Six (6) of the 10 witnesses reported sustaining injuries to their hands, feet and heads. Two (2) witnesses described their experiences in the following words: It just continued on and on a daily basis, just random attacks on different individuals. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for the attacks, unprovoked, if he ... (named male religious Resident Manager)... felt like laying into somebody he would just do it. It was constant. You might be queuing up for food and it would be a dig ... (punch)... put into some guy, a wigging ... (pulling by the ear)... pull somebody out. ... It was just random attacks, there was no control on it, for no apparent reason, a constant barrage of abuse, mentally abuse you and physically abuse you. • She ... (Sr X)... pulled my pants down and beat me around the kitchen, when she was finished she sent me out to face the other lads with my trousers down. Still she was not finished, I was sent to wax and polish the refectory, as I finished she opened the door and in came one of the older boys. He told me she sent him in to beat me. I kept moving around the tables pleading and in the end he didn’t hit me. I spent the night locked in there. Bed-wetting and soiling
Twenty one (21) witnesses, 13 male and eight female, reported being physically punished for bed-wetting or soiling. The Committee heard many reports of physical punishment combined with critical and humiliating comments in relation to bed-wetting. Witnesses stated they were beaten on the hands or on the bare buttocks, and in two Homes the residents were beaten partially naked. Witnesses also described having their faces pushed into wet and soiled sheets, locked outside in sheds or in dark cupboards, and having their heads immersed in water. Two (2) male witnesses stated that they were held under water by the genitalia in baths as a punishment for bed-wetting. Female witnesses reported being made to stand in cold baths. The following is a witness’s account of punishment for bed-wetting: From the word go I witnessed terrible, terrible physical abuse. On my first morning I woke up and I seen ... named male religious staff... and he had a young guy, probably about my own age, 6 or 7, this young guy had wet the bed and...named male religious staff... had him by one arm and one leg, he looked like a spider monkey. He had a sink filled with cold water and he was dumping him up and down in it, the kid was gone off his head screaming. I had never seen this before in my life, I could not give expression to it, frozen disbelief, I couldn’t react, I couldn’t speak .... • I was punished for bed-wetting. I had to sit with my hands on top of my head and... (be)... beaten on the toes with a stick or put across the bed in a nightshirt and beaten on the bare bottom.
Twenty one (21) witnesses, 14 male and seven female, described being physically abused in the classroom. Many of the witnesses described the classroom as a place of fear, particularly associated with a small number of named abusers. Witnesses reported being punished for reasons such as left-handedness, resisting sexual fondling, lack of fluency in Irish, and speech or writing difficulties. One witness who was left handed described his hand being tied to the side of the desk at study time and then being beaten for any mistakes he made. Another witness who was left- handed described her abuse: Sr ...X... beat me regularly for being left-handed, saying “no convent girl is going to be left-handed, left-handed people are for the devil”. Sr ...Y... stuck sewing needles in the back of my hand for sewing with my left hand. I was beaten on the palms, back of hands, with the leather strap, ruler, bamboo stick, my hands were beaten so badly they bled. When my hands were bleeding I was isolated in the infirmary until they healed. She ... (Sr X)... got me to wet my hands before she hit me sometimes. In school I was made stand on the desk, if my hands were bleeding I was slapped on the backs of my legs. I was so bad one day all the class cried with me, I used to blank out the pain.
Two (2) witnesses from two Homes reported being sent by care staff to stand waiting for punishment by lay staff in authority for ‘anything that was considered rebellious’ such as talking in the dormitory or ‘answering back’. In both instances the witnesses described that the perpetrators of the beatings had a reputation for severe physical abuse. One witness described anticipating the abuse and demonstrated efforts to protect himself from the assaults: Once you were standing in this big long corridor there would be 2 or 3 ... (co-residents) ... you are not thinking of them, you are just thinking of yourself, which way were you going to do ... demonstrating protecting face with arms ... so you protected yourself with your arm like that but then you got it round the edges .... The worst part was ... you were told at night time they would say “go in to the ... (room) ... wait for me” ... that was the worst part. You knew you were going to get a beating, waiting for the beating you knew what it was going to be like ...(a severe beating) ...
The forms of sexual abuse reported by witnesses included inappropriate fondling, masturbation, oral/genital contact and rape. Witnesses reported the chronic and coercive nature of the sexual abuse they experienced, giving accounts of being forced to comply with sexual molestation in return for money, alcohol, shelter or affection. Witnesses reported that sexual abuse was perpetrated in both public and private areas of the Homes and outside the institutions. Many witnesses reported that sexual abuse occurred in circumstances of restricted access and in isolated situations including the homes of volunteers, basements, boiler rooms, recreation rooms, bathrooms, sacristies, confessionals, garden sheds, and the sleeping quarters of staff members. A small number of witnesses described how people who abused them forced their compliance by means of threats and actual violence. Male witnesses consistently reported that when abused by a person in a position of authority they felt defenceless and powerless to either physically resist or disclose the abuse because of the threat of physical retaliation. The following is the account of one witness: ... I don’t want to go into any great detail ... if you went into ... (recreation room) ... there was a lock on the door and there was nothing you could do. Using a very mild word I would have to say, the very first time he ... (lay care staff) ... raped me ... distressed and crying ....He did threaten me but ... crying ... you just feel like at that age anyway, with the experience ... of not being believed, it was just dismissed ... even if you went to the guards, who would believe you? ... People were very ignorant at that stage....
Of the 29 witnesses who reported sexual abuse in Homes, 19 gave accounts of molestation including masturbation, fondling and oral/genital contact: I have memories of her ...(named female religious staff) ... being on top of me and touching me, I think I was about 3 or 4, she used to say I was her special. She used bring me off with her friend ... a woman friend in the car for a treat. They would stop for a picnic, and they would be touching me, mostly just touching with my clothes half on and half off. She told me when I was about 10 I was no longer special because I ... had 2 figures in my age. I don’t know whether she moved on to someone younger.... • At the age of 9 or 10 years when delivering the priest’s breakfast I was made to stand beside him while he rubbed his hand up and down my leg, later he put his hand inside my pants, I had to stand while he did this waiting for him to tell me to take the covers off the food dishes and dismiss me. I would cry afterwards, a nun saw me cry one day and asked me what was wrong, I told her I didn’t like the priest and was not going into the parlour again and if made to do so I would run away. The nun gave me tea and toast in the kitchen. I do not remember seeing the priest again.