2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

Fr Luca estimated that 50 percent of the boys were recidivists who would fall back into crime. The other 50 percent did not appear in court again, but according to him, amongst them would be the boys who were broken by the system. It was a harsh world, where identity became obliterated. Fr Luca explained: Every boy who came into the School in those days would get a nickname, straightaway. He might not even be asked what his first name was. If he was from the country he be called the name of wherever he was from, and they would not know his name.

This system of nomenclature was confirmed to the Committee by a witness who was in Daingean in the late 1950s. When asked, ‘What was this boy’s name?’ he replied: I haven’t a clue. You never knew people’s surnames. Sometimes there was that many and you wouldn’t even know their first names, it was either Dub, Corky or Jack. Unless you knew somebody personally they used to keep their ethnic groups.

This scenario was confirmed by testimony heard by the Committee. The more fragile children felt trapped, on one side being bullied by the tougher boys, and on the other living in fear of falling foul of the Brothers. For these boys, Daingean was not an experience that toughened them up and hardened them for more crime. For them, they felt like victims of the system. Having endured such a system, these boys felt different, alienated from their families and friends. One witness told the Committee of how he felt when he returned home from Daingean: My father was in 1916 and he spent a year in prison in England ... The one thing he said to me they were treated humanely, the jailors treated them humanely. I couldn’t say ... back to him that I wasn’t treated humanely because I didn’t want anybody else to suffer my agony. I didn’t want to talk or do anything ... Nobody would know what to do.

Another witness told the Committee: ... it’s like men at war who experience things cannot bring these things back to people in the street because people would not understand the situation that they were in. They dehumanised themselves. They dehumanise their enemy in order to be able to psychologically deal with killing them. The same is true when I came out of Daingean and I am looking at all of these people in the street and I am thinking they don’t know where I have been and they couldn’t understand me and you feel different to them and that’s why I went to England. I tried to escape.

In his evidence to the Committee, Fr Luca acknowledged one effect of institutional life on the children: ... that was one of the biggest punishments that you could give them, to take them from their own native place wherever it was and put them into a place where they didn’t want to be and to keep them there.

Fr Hughes gave evidence about staff ratios operating in Daingean: I give you two examples there, we have a staff list of 1944 which shows the presence of a population, a school population, of 236. They were 24 Oblates in the school ... That would indicate there was a staff ratio of one member of staff to 10 inmates.

He also stated: Similarly in 1968, the population, the school population, of 104 shows the presence of 18 Oblates ...

One witness stated: There was probably not enough individuals to look after the amount of boys that were there, which is why so much went on there.

Another witness, when asked about supervision in the small section at night, replied: You asked me about the supervision over boys by priests, there was no supervision over them as far as I could see ... looking at it now – there was some young men down there, some young priests in it that could handle the situations that were down there probably, but then there was a lot of older men down there, they really didn’t do any work; I am talking about supervising.

In relation to the post of Resident Manager, the Oblates stated: while they had no special training for reformatory work, it would be wrong to describe these men as unprepared for the task. They all had personal experience of living in communities with a pattern of education, manual work, including farm work, and pastoral activity.

A designated priest or Brother, who maintained an office in the School, assisted the Resident Manager in his duties. He would keep records, accounts and numerous records required for the individual files on the boys. There was also a Brother Prefect who was responsible for dealing with serious breaches of discipline. As Fr Luca stated: It was always a man who ... was healthy, strong and who could bear the brunt of that responsibility and the work that it entailed, because it meant that he would have to be on the line at anytime if there was trouble of any description.

The Brother Prefect also had numerous other time-consuming duties. He would organise supervision of the boys outside school and work hours, and he was responsible for the boys’ correspondence and any monies sent to them. In practice, the Resident Manager left matters of discipline entirely to the Brother Prefect. As Fr Luca stated: I would have to say I don’t know how many slaps they had. I never saw the boys being punished while I was there. I didn’t regard it as part of my duty to supervise that. I know that the boys were punished and I know it was left to the prefect to decide what the punishment would be for the particular, well I don’t like to call it crime, misdemeanour.

Boys were in Daingean usually for two years and would be available for only one full school year, and, as a result, Fr Hughes told the Committee: ‘The boys did not have a great success in getting certificates’. Moreover, he added: the equipment was rather poor. The equipment of course had to be supplied by the school, again out of the capitation grant, it was never funded by the State ... Another big reason ... was the difficult of attracting good teachers. The teachers for the technical school were provided by the Offaly Vocations Committee ... That was the only element of the educational programme that was paid for ...

Fr Hughes agreed with counsel for the Investigation Committee that it would be fair to suggest that the educational aspect of the boys’ time in Daingean was not particularly enlightening. He continued: Yes. Again you have to remember the capacity of the boys too, it would be naïve to think one could achieve a great deal in that context.

Fr Luca blamed the Departments of Education and Justice for the inability to introduce change. He wrote: The State was quite happy as long as we kept the lid on Daingean – took in all the boys who went through the courts, said nothing, and kept them there ... There was no public interest at that time ... There was nothing about the treatment of those boys and, in a way, whatever treatment they got was good enough for them, that was the attitude.