2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

The Investigation Committee heard the evidence of ‘the only boy from Gorey’. He had been sent to Artane for stealing a purse when he was ten and a half years old. He explained that his family were very poor and his sister had told him to take it. He was sent to the Industrial School for five and a half years in the 1950s. His mother had simply told him he was ‘going away for a few days’. He told the Investigation Committee about his early days in Artane: I think I was the only one from Gorey ... It was very difficult [to make friends] for a long time ... I was terrified ... there were so many boys ... I never saw the likes of it before in my life ... The first Brother that ever met me there was Br Bruce the day I went there. I don’t know what it was, from that day onwards we seemed to get on very well together. He was explaining the school to me that night and ever since that we were friends ... He was brilliant, yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant ... he was exceptionally good to me. For what reason I couldn’t tell you. But I liked him and he liked me ... I would be chopping sticks for him and he would bring [extra food] down under his habit.

Another Brother, who also served in Artane throughout the 1950s, was asked whether the boys craved affection. He replied: yes, affection and because of the lack of women around to put it baldly. That was kind of a gesture that was made later on towards the end of the 1950s or the beginning of the 1960s to get them foster parents to get them more and more in touch with the outside world and that kind of thing and maybe to improve the feeding or the grub ... they were a few extra women brought in in the nursing set up ... but still it was Artane.

Mr Dunleavy in his report for the Congregation also identified this problem, which he stated was exacerbated by a reluctance on the part of the Brothers to direct boys to other institutions which were better able to care for them, even when there were places available for that purpose. He quoted the Visitation Report for 1968 as follows: Some are very retarded ... Others are mentally deficient, and in recent years the proportion admitted in this latter class has been on the increase. As such children require very specialised attention it is not easy for an industrial school to adjust its programme to care for them in a satisfactory manner. The policy of the Department in directing these boys to Artane, without consultation, is quite unfortunate.

He acknowledged that there was something of a double standard in the attitude of the Brothers in Artane: However there does seem to have been a certain reluctance in the school, once children with mental problems had been accepted, to allow them to leave the school for Institutions which might have been better able to care for them.

Even as late as 1969, it could be seen that there was no systematic way of dealing with children who were misplaced in Artane. Mr Dunleavy remarked: Equally disturbing are a collection of applications from 1969 for boys to be admitted to St. Augustine’s Special School as being mildly mentally handicapped. It transpires that in some cases psychiatric evaluations of the boys determining their handicap had been made up to two years before an application was made on their behalf to St. Augustine’s Special School.

He concluded his review of this feature of the Institution: It is clear from the above that while a deplorable practice existed of “dumping” mentally and emotionally disturbed children in Artane Industrial School, a school which was certainly not equipped to deal with their special needs, the school itself took no steps to alleviate the situation, and indeed appears to have been slow to recognise that the situation existed in the first place.

As one Brother who served in Artane in the late 1950s put it: If we did not have a strict discipline at that stage the place would have gone to rack and ruin and those who would have suffered most would have been the boys ... it had to be strict because we had no back up services whatsoever ... some of them unfortunately who had problems and maybe who should not have been there at all ... the boys who could not understand that there was a certain way of doing a thing and that if they did not do that then it was going to lead to trouble for them, even if they were punished it didn’t register with them.

Later in his evidence, he was asked whether there were boys in Artane who were too emotionally fragile to be there in the first place: In all probability that would be a way to put it yes. They had come from backgrounds where they didn’t have the normal supports and so on as young people and they were coming in and they find themselves in a large group. Looking back now it must have been an impossible situation for them and knowing what we know now those young people should not have been there. There should have been a place for them but that wasn’t available at that particular time, as far as I know.

Many of the complainants who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee from the 1940s era complained about food. One ex-resident described the diet: I would sum up my time in Artane as cold, brutal and hungry and the cold was because of the hunger. There was this enduring feeling of cold and this gnawing pangs of hunger. There was never any satisfaction, never any way to relieve the hunger. That was it, hungry, everybody was hungry all the time.

Another complainant, committed in the early 1940s at the age of nine, recalled that his mother often sent him food parcels, but that he only received a parcel once as they were stolen by the other boys. He did not blame them for this, as he stated that they were always hungry, ‘We ate the grass for God’s sake’. He stated that they had a small loaf dipped in fat for breakfast, and vegetables with gravy for dinner. He recounted how one Brother would conceal sticks of bread in his cassock and distribute them to the boys: ‘As soon as he appeared we went around him like a pack of dogs looking for food’.

Mr Dunleavy made the following comment about mealtimes: Apart from assembly and religious services, mealtimes were the only occasions when the whole school was present together. It seems extraordinary then that only one Brother was assigned to supervise the large refectory where up to 800 boys could be eating at once. In the course of being interviewed Brothers who had formerly worked at Artane told of leaving the door behind them open at all times so that they could escape if the situation in the refectory got out of hand. Brothers spoke of the atmosphere being “like a powder keg” and related stories of how Brothers had occasionally been assaulted by boys with knives from the dining tables. At each table of boys a senior boy was placed in charge, and it was his job to distribute the bread and tea to the other boys at the table. It was also his function, should any boy be misbehaving at the table to tell him to leave the table and stand by the wall so that he could be punished by the Brother in charge in due course.

This humiliating and unnecessary practice was referred to by a number of complainants who described the weekly inspection of underpants. If the underwear was soiled, the boy would have to face the wall and await punishment, which generally meant slaps on the hand with the leather. One Brother said: I accept that I did examine the underpants. The reason for examining the underpants was that complaints had come from the woman and the staff in the laundry that soiled underwear was coming down to the laundry, and with the number of boys that was in Artane at the time she wasn’t too happy about it ... so word came up to us that we were to check the underpants and if an underpants was badly soiled, not the ordinary run of the mill thing like slide marks, that didn’t matter, it was a case where the underpants was badly soiled, it is then that I would take action ... I would take the action of getting the fellow to go to the washroom and so on and clean it, then we would throw it into the bag with the rest of it. I will admit that – not in connection with the underpants – if [the complainant] says I put him facing the wall I will admit that.

When asked whether the boys deserved to be slapped for something they had no control over, he replied: I do not think they deserved to be punished ... I accept that if I did slap them. I don’t think I slapped them for soiling their pants. I slapped them for other reasons but not for that ... normally I would not punish a boy for soiling his pants. I mean that could happen to anybody. But if [the complainant] says I did it on one particular occasion, fair enough I will accept that.

Fr Moore commented: This fundamental disregard for personal attention inevitably generates insecurity, instability and an amoral concern for the private property of others. This I consider to be a causative factor in the habits of stealing frequently encountered among ex-pupils.

A man who was a pupil in Artane in the 1940s described the state of the toilets and the occasional duties given to some of the boys: We had only buckets behind the handball alley ... I would say there was about 20 to 30 buckets ... it was newspaper we used instead of toilet rolls, there was no such thing ... They had to be emptied ... There was two men, [he thought they were siblings], ... at the time it was a horse and cart ... They were lay men ... I was one of the ones that had to help on that occasion because I was a hefty lump of a lad ... You had to put a bit of paper, them buckets could be over full ... You have a dirty job there ... we were just emptying the buckets ... into this barrel. We called it a barrel. It was a horse and cart ... it had to be done every day. Imagine there is 800 people were going through toilets ... the handball alley was your wee wee, the back of the handball alley. You put them back. They were lovely looking going back ... They went back with a kind of coat on them.