2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

This lasted until his hair grew: ‘I don’t know how long but it felt like an awful long time’.

Another former resident explained: There was two things down there that you had to be aware of, was the bare and the baldier. The baldier was getting your hair cut off and getting it on the bare was getting it on the bare bum.

Punishments included beating with a leather on the bare buttocks. Brothers acknowledged that this happened, as is detailed in the section on respondent evidence. One respondent who gave evidence, however, did not recall beating boys on the bare buttocks, and conceded only that when he was beating a boy in a dormitory the latter’s nightshirt might have ridden up, but the beating ‘wasn’t on his bare buttocks to my knowledge’. He was referred to a statement he made to the Gardaí, in which he referred to his use of the leather: Yes, I did in class and in the yard. I used it mostly on the hand. I used it twice on the bare backside of a fella that I caught going into another fella’s bed at nights. I did not feel great about this beating it was part of the reason I left because I felt I was becoming brutalised.

Another witness expanded: Out to the wash hall that was a dreaded thing. There was a term there; you could get it on the bare. What it meant was you would have to pull your nightshirt up, bend over and it would be a cane or the leather strap and you would get it heftily on the bottom. You would suffer from it and it would be violent, there is no other way you could describe it. That’s what happened to me. I got it on the bare out there. You expected it once you got out there, lights out and into the wash hall. This is what you are going to get and this is what I got. I got it pretty violent out there.

Residents remembered head shaving and isolation as part of the punishment for absconding. One said: They didn’t get very far. One chap ... he got to Athlone. The police arrested him and brought him back. When you were brought back they cut all the hair off you and isolated you.

Another said: For instance, if the boys ran away they stood them up against the wall, cut all their hair off, shaved it and nobody could talk to them.

In its Submission, the Congregation accepted that boys’ heads were shaved as a punishment: It would appear that this was a punishment which was confined to absconders though the Congregation acknowledges that it was an unacceptable form of punishment and deeply regrets that any boy’s head was shaved in this way.

Another form of punishment that was not in dispute was hosing boys with cold water. A resident in the 1950s said that Br Sorel punished bed-wetters by hosing them down. A similar punishment was described in the late 1960s for boys who had tried to abscond. Respondents confirmed this evidence. Br Sorel said that he did so for hygiene reasons, but he accepted that other Brothers used it as a punishment and that it was totally wrong. Responding to the suggestion that people were brought down and hosed as a punishment, not for the purposes of hygiene but as a specific punishment, he said: I think that was true in other case with some other Brothers, I think that was done as a punishment. I think it was totally wrong ... Looking back, the whole thing was horrific for me and I am sure it was for the boys.

Br Anatole accepted that absconders were still being hosed down in his time, the late 1960s: If a boy ran away. It hasn’t come up so far in the question. It was one of the routine punishments; if a boy ran away he might be hosed down in the shower room. There was a fire hose rolled up against the wall.

Br Dondre saw it happen once and did not approve of its use: The fire hose, I only ever saw it being used once. There were a couple of boys absconded and they were brought back. That night Br Anatole came to the dormitory and he took the two boys from the dormitory and put them into their bathing togs, they were taken from the dormitory and I went with them. I didn’t know what he was going to do; I didn’t know where he was bringing them. I followed them down to the yard, down the side of the kitchen and he took the fire hose off the wall and he hosed the two boys down with the fire hose. Then he gave it to me to continue on and I turned it off.

In its Opening Statement, the Congregation stated: Unfortunately, the boys could have been the objects of ridicule by their peers being labelled “slashers” ... No living Brother who was in Letterfrack in the period under review recalls that there was ever any punishment meted out to a boy for bed-wetting.

However, during the private hearings, Br Sorel, who was present during the 1940s and 1950s, admitted to punishing boys for bed-wetting. He stated that: That was one of the worst and soiling the bed. This is the thing that used to break my heart in the morning when I came down to the dormitory, they had Macintosh sheets, large ones on the bed, and then they had the ordinary sheets over the Macintosh sheet, you would find three or four of the lads would not alone wet the bed but soil the bed. I was really tearing my hair out at that stage.

He continued: It was a problem every morning and I used to detest it. I felt like running away myself several times, having to face it coming down in the morning. It was terrible, the stench and the smell.

As a result of this evidence in its Final Submission the Congregation stated: It is accepted that boys were, on isolated occasions during this period, punished for this problem though it does not appear that such punishment was a regular or routine practice within Letterfrack.

Complainants testified that there was a practice of punishing boys who wet their beds. A former resident, who was in Letterfrack in the late 1960s, described how he was slapped for wetting the bed: And if you wet the bed, you got a smack. They would know the bed-wetters from the rest of them. They would check their beds all the time. They would just walk by and they would whip your blankets off, and if the bed was stained you would get a smack.