2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

Another witness, there in the early 1950s, described getting a ‘flogging’, or ‘stripes on your arse’. He told the Committee the Brother would get the boy to drop his pants and bend over the bed to be punished: The first time it happened to me he had to show you sometimes to put your hand over your penis, your private – just in case the strap did go around you it would hurt you, it would catch you there.

One complainant was able to distinguish between the ordinary corporal punishment he received at home from that administered in Daingean: My dad sometimes smacked us, gave us a clout of a belt, a whack across the arse. What I got [in Daingean] was I got a searing pain, I will never forget it in all my life, never. The first of it was the shock. It was shock first of all. Then the second one I got and it wasn’t across my buttocks, it wasn’t across my buttocks, it was right between my buttocks with this strap. I don’t know where they got these straps from but it was specially designed for this, it wasn’t a belt. When they say you got a strap, it wasn’t a like a trouser strap, it was a specially made strap. It was very thick and it was about that length (indicating) and it was shaped for gripping with the hand for hitting you with. The way they used to hit you was they used to hit you between the buttocks and pull it up (indicating). The reason he had the other Brother there was to stop you going forward. He used to put his foot on the back of your shoulder, on the back of your neck and your shoulders. He would put his foot there and hold you so that when you got hit with the strap you couldn’t jump forward with the belt. That strap sometimes, they were expert with it, if he wanted that could come around and hit you in the testicles. If ever you got hit in the testicles, that gives you cramp in your stomach, you double up, you couldn’t even move. I passed out.

Witnesses said that the traumatic effect of flogging stayed with them. One said: It was shame more than anything. Being a teenager, like you say, especially with Christian Brothers. When I was in Artane, I was younger, I didn’t understand. But in Daingean I was practically a teenager. I wasn’t very big or anything like that but I was streetwise. Put it this way, if someone had done that to me outside the thing I probably would have ended up killing them or they would have killed me, one or the other. Being in Daingean, I accepted it. That’s all I would say.

Floggings were mainly but not exclusively administered at night-time in the washroom. A witness described the impact of being beaten in the yard in front of the other boys: When you are being beaten and you are feeling pain your torment is excruciating. “I will get you, you F– ing so and so, I will come back for you”; that’s the train of thought. And then it stays with you for months at a time. It will haunt you.

Second, the degree of fear engendered by these floggings was not apparent from the unemotional official description. Several of the complainants described the screams they heard as horrifying and fear inducing. One witness conveyed the effect that such screams had on him: ‘I remember one chap that ran away’. He said, ‘I remember hearing him screaming ... I said it to him afterwards that it was terrible. He said to me, “Sure, I heard you screaming as well”’.

The evidence of the dreadful effect of these screams was most graphically brought home to the Committee by the evidence of Fr Luca himself. He was the penultimate Resident Manager of Daingean. He told the Committee: we had an oratory which was just on the other side of the square from – the square was a small one, maybe not much wider than this room, and I was there saying my office in the evening and I heard the leather being used on some boy at that time. I thought it was a most revolting thing and said here am I inside to praise God and Christ himself is being punished now right beside me. It sunk into me as a kind of a horror, that it was such a contradiction to all that we were working about.

He was asked if this had left a big impression on him and he said ‘To this day it still does. When I hear of anybody being beaten up, we say in the north it annoys me, but it is much deeper than annoyance’. He added: it shook me. It confirmed my determination as soon as possible and when possible I would try to get rid of it ... It seemed to me to be an awful contradiction to what my life was about and what our life as religious was about to have this thing happening within this house ... In my mind any punishment is brutal as far as the recipient is concerned. I would have a feeling for the recipient of the punishment. I certainly wouldn’t advocate it at all.

He also said: I was never in favour of it because I always had an abhorrence of that kind people using this kind of domination over another person by beating them ...

Fr Luca replied: That’s fair. When I went in there the School was in action, as it were, there was movement. I acquainted myself with what each person’s function was within the School. I didn’t change them from the different jobs or that, I took it that they knew what they were about ... I didn’t involve myself in it, I think only twice I asked the Brother to punish a boy.

He added: when I moved in there in 1964 the School had been going for over 100 years at that stage. There were things, there was a certain structure in place. What would need to be changed I gradually tried to change it. There were certain things I had to accept when I went in there because I had no previous experience of running the School.

One complainant gave an account of his first day in Daingean, when he got ‘clattered’ unfairly: The first day I got there we were saying the rosary ... when you are brought up to the dormitory, you put on your nightshirt, you stand at your bed, the whole dormitory stands by their beds and [Brother] would stay down in the middle. It was an L shaped dormitory ... he said the rosary and you answered the rosary to him. You kneel at your bed. I fell asleep, I dozed off. I was woke up with a clatter on the back of the head ... He made me stand for a long time after the lads went to bed for falling asleep at the rosary. That was the first day I was actually down there.

When asked why he fell asleep, he explained: I was just tired. I was anxious. I know that I was anxious because I was in Marlborough House, I was in court the first day. Then I got sentenced, then I was brought back to Marlborough House. Then I was waiting on the police to come to collect me to bring me down to Daingean. It is a fairly long journey in them days, it’s not far now. I was kind of tired and I was anxious. It was all kind of new, I remember it quite clear, the day that I went there. The two years, the sentence I got looked like a lifetime to me, that was all on top of me.

A witness described how his name was put down to play Gaelic football but, because he could not play it, he never went out: ‘About a half an hour later the Brother came into the playground and he had a hurling stick and he beat me with he hurling stick ... On my head’. He also indicated that he was hit on the lip with the hurling stick and he ‘... carried the scar for nearly 50 years’.

Another complainant made light of many of the blows he had received by saying, ‘I got smacks on the hand and things like that, nothing to cry about ... It was probably something I deserved ...’. He described one beating that he felt was very unfair. He explained: I was having a friendly argument with [Brother], we would always contradict him about football and various things. We were arguing one afternoon ... about soccer. We just contradicted one another. Before I knew it ... [another Brother] ... grabbed me by the shoulders, back of the hair and turned me round and gave me one or two unmerciful thumps in the stomach. I was doubled over. I was sick for a week afterwards or more. [Brother] explained to him about what happened, we were only arguing about football and said “apologise to the man” but he said something under his breath and walked out the same way he came in. That was it.

One complainant gave an account of being kneed in the groin by a Brother: It was just before we said the Angelus. We were in our ranks ready to go to the refectory ... It was about the beginning of the prayers and I was speaking to someone else next to me and then he come up and got me talking. He got so angry and just kneed me ... He just came up with his knee ... There was a couple of fellows held me up ... I was in pain ... I couldn’t eat or couldn’t drink or anything. Shortly after that I was taken away in a car.