2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

Br Saber stated that: I would say the best instruction we ever got was before we left the training college. Before we left the training college, we got a talk from our Superior on sexual abuse, right. The attraction of a kid – of a Brother to a young fellow, right. He would be very clear and very specific minded, be careful of it, avoid it ... Some other Brothers would say to me that it didn’t mean much to them because they never encountered it. Right? It did, it meant something to me, I can honestly say that. To most people it did. There was an outbreak in Artane previously seemingly of some Brothers being accused.

Br Gaspard stated that there was a general rule that Brothers should not be alone with boys. One of the reasons for this rule was that it provided a defence for Brothers if accused of abuse. However, he stated that this rule was not rigidly enforced. He informed the Committee that he was always conscious of the rule: I mean that I went out of my way to make sure that I never gave any, never did anything that would be sexually incorrect in my dealings with the boys in Artane.

The four Brothers testified to having heard rumours of colleagues being asked to leave because of sexual abuse in the School. Br Michel described the rumours as follows: There was a rumour as regards sexual matters, that some years previous to our time, there were one or two men dismissed from the Congregation. Now I didn’t know them. I cannot even name them because it was so long ago, but that rumour was about, that a few men were in trouble with boys and they were actually dismissed.

A witness spoke about an unwelcome approach: I was working in the tinsmiths and this boy attacked me and threw me on the floor and lay on top of me. At the time it was a sex act. I didn’t know it was a sex act at the time. Like I said, I never even saw my aunty’s ankles. Of course I didn’t know that, that’s what it was. That’s what he was doing. It was reported. When Br Cretien asked me, “yes, I was attacked”. He still gave me six, right on the hand, not anywhere else, directly on the hand. He said he had to punish both of us. That boy never came near me again. I believe he was punished again for other acts which he did to other boys.

Another witness explained the reason for fearing becoming known as a sexually active boy: You know, there was two things that you never did in Artane. One was you never touched another boy in a sexual area. Me personally never did anyway. Another thing is that you never told of it if it ever happened to you because then you’re open, you’re open season then. If you are open season that means the boys get you. So you don’t tell anybody, you keep your mouth shut and that’s it ... Nobody, except a priest. I told nobody. I am sure it happened to other boys and they told nobody either because you didn’t tell. You know, I mean, you were a soft touch then.

A further witness was embarrassed about his sexual activity, even though it was by consent: Well, it is probably a bit embarrassing, but to be honest with you I was actually involved in that myself. It was just sort of playing around basically ... No, it wasn’t very frequent but it happened every now and then. But it was very common in Artane, it was very common that boys would be playing around with each other ... Most of the time, 99% of the time it would be a case of just two boys messing about.

He went on to comment on the Brothers’ awareness, and on the prevalence of one particular form of common sexual activity: ... you have got to appreciate in places like Artane, well it wasn’t very, very common but quite a lot of times boys would be masturbating each other. If another boy that wasn’t, you know, doing that would find out they would say it was badness.

Another witness recalled an admonitory talk by a Brother: ... and the Brother who was giving the speech, God knows who he was, turned around and says “right, we know what you boys are doing, you have got to stop it”. This Brother in particular said, “We found over 300 children playing with each other”. Now there was only about 450 in the school. We were all standing there listening and that and, I don’t know whether they ever stopped or not.

A witness spoke of the enormous interest of the Brothers in ‘badness’ and the sin of impurity: Badness was the sin of impurity. They had the sixth commandment. I remember Br Jules used to say there is more people in hell because of the sixth commandment, the sin of impurity. They were absolutely bonkers on this. When we were growing up, young lads, 14, 15, you are getting feelings, you are getting wet dreams and things like that ... As I say, they must have thought that must be one of the reasons of so called badness. It meant boys messing with one another, thought, word or deed or whatever. They regularly wanted to know if you spoke, swore, told bad jokes. They had a mania for this sort of thing.

Another Brother who was there throughout the 1950s said that he remembered the term ‘badness’ as referring to peer abuse and that all staff would have been aware of the term. Despite this, he said that he never encountered any incident of badness nor had to punish a boy for it. However, he was contradicted by a colleague who remembered having to punish a boy who had been referred to him by this Brother who insisted that punishment was necessary: I was in charge and he reported to me that [the boy] was interfering with other boys and he kind of said to me you will have to do something about it. As I understood it then that when some boys were interfering with other boys, they would be punished and one of the punishments they would get would be on the backside with the leather. I wasn’t too keen on doing it, I had a certain reluctance about it. I didn’t do anything for a while. Then Br Gaspard came back to me again and told me that this was going on and that I had to do something about it. I just brought him to the boot room. My memory now, I am working from memory now and it is a long time ago, my memory is that he had his nightshirt on him, he bent down, I gave him three or four smacks of the leather on the – not on the bare backside and he ran out the door and I was glad to see him go.

A Brother who was in Artane in the 1950s stated: We were always being alerted to be on the look out, to be a presence in places where the boys would be, and I think we did that to the best of our ability. But we would be aware that things happened and there were normal healthy young fellas at that time so we tried to be as protective as we could be in that area by being a presence around the place. We would have been alerted to be on the lookout, to be there, to be careful and to make sure that people are not injured in a situation like that, or that damage is done to them. So, that we would be there as a protection. It would have been—we would be, I suppose, on the alert and keep moving around and wherever.

He said, however, that although the Brothers were aware of it, they would rarely talk about it. He denied that he would have discussed the matter with the boys in order to find out who was abusing whom, on the grounds that it was ‘none of my business’. He stated that if he became aware of an incident ‘I would have to hand that over to somebody at a higher authority level ... I would probably go to the Disciplinarian’.

Although some Congregations conceded that institutional detention was not an appropriate way to care for children,79 the Submission of the Christian Brothers defended the kind of care they had given. They wrote: It is clear that the level of poverty in Ireland during the period under review was such that the basic physical needs of many people required for day to day living went unfulfilled ... In this context it cannot be surprising that there was a strong focus in Artane on the physical care of the boys ... The “philosophy of care” underlying the operation of Artane ... can be broadly described as a philosophy of physical care concentrating on the physical well-being of the boys.

The Congregation accepted that a focus on physical care alone was not sufficient to fully and properly care for a child, but contended that it was important to note the general economic and legal context in which the Congregation’s care of the boys was provided. A senior Brother described this approach in his evidence as follows: the philosophy of Artane when I was there was a physical care philosophy. Look after the health of the boys, look after their physical education, like by drill and so on ... it was a physical education philosophy. There was no understanding, and I had no understanding at the time, about any kind of emotional education, psychological education. I had no understanding of that at the time.

Some individual Brothers who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee displayed a greater awareness of the boys’ emotional needs than the Congregation. The Brother who was quoted by the Congregation in their Submission, and who had served a number of years in Artane and had held a senior position in the Institution, told the Investigation Committee: As a result of what I experienced in Letterfrack80 I came to the conclusion that a lot of these children were disturbed and a lot of these children hadn’t had their basic needs for love, affection ... fulfilled ... As regards the Industrial School Branch [of the Department of Education], it is my opinion that when Artane closed in 1969 we were still working out of a physical care philosophy. All the improvements that were done in Artane; central heating was brought in; we got new classrooms; we got new improvements to the cinema; we had the Godparent associations and so on; all these improvements, while they were very welcome ... they were still coming out of that physical care philosophy. I went into Artane as a teacher and I think I can honestly say I left it as a teacher.