2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

They submitted that: The susceptibility of corporal punishment to abuse seems inherent. If left to discretion, a cause can always be found for its use, especially where authority is threatened or insecure.

Fr O’Reilly at the Phase III public hearing referred to the inherent difficulties in using corporal punishment in circumstances where there were no clear policies or guidelines. He described it as ‘a trap’: Corporal punishment is a trap, if you allow corporal punishment without having the most clear guidelines possible, it is a trap, it is a trap for everybody. It is a trap for the boys and a trap for the adults. Because what you are saying is it is okay to hit children. And there are times when they do things that are wrong and that are very, very wrong, and that cause an enormous problem for the entire Institution. So inside yourself you think, “well, it is okay”, and the only response is to punish even more. It is a trap.

He explained that discipline was maintained through the use of the strap or giving the boys a ‘clatter’, the term used for a blow with the hand. Corporal punishment was used on a regular basis and, with 100 boys to control, ‘someone was getting it more or less all the time’. The range of offences that resulted in corporal punishment varied. Something small, like talking in the line for example, would warrant a ‘clatter’, but serious incidents were severely punished. He recalled giving a boy eight slaps of the leather on each hand for stabbing one of his companions in the tailor shop, and then being told by the Senior Prefect that he had not given the boy enough slaps. He was asked what, in his view, was the purpose of corporal punishment. He answered: Discipline, it was necessary. Because there were only two of us and any relaxation of discipline at that particular time could have caused havoc in the school. That was the position we had at that particular time. We thought that it was necessary ... I still think in the circumstances there it was necessary.

When asked whether corporal punishment was a first or last resort for the Prefect, he replied: I think it was always the first resort ... We didn’t have any other resorts ... A lot of the time I was frightened because at any time, if there was a concerted effort by the boys they could have flattened me.

He had no training for dealing with delinquent boys, nothing in his religious or scholastic training prepared him for it. There was no coherent scheme or policy for the boys in those years: It was piecemeal, it was different little things we did, but there wasn’t the concerted effort that we have made in the last 20 years.

When Fr Christiano was asked how he reconciled the religious life, which involved love, charity and kindness, with a system that required men of the cloth to be brutal and severe, he replied that he did not believe that this was a requirement. The post of Prefect did involve the obligation to impose discipline, but he did not see the need to be brutal: I later became a Prefect in Ferryhouse and one of the things I did was throw the strap in the river, in the Suir in Ferryhouse, the one I had. There is a different way. We have the feast of St. Don Bosco every year, he was a man who loved children and I read – there is a reading in the book – his instruction to his Brothers about looking after children, and I say, ‘my God, why didn’t anyone show some of our lads this piece?’.

When asked whether he found a ‘different way’, he replied: No, I would say my judgement of Prefects was that those with better education or more culture were much better than those who were not educated and didn’t really have much of an idea what to do except keep order.

When it was suggested to him that he had found a better way through education, he replied: Oh absolutely. My experience at Upton, it just made me never ever let that happen to anybody if you can possibly do anything about it. When I was in charge, I was not going to be a Prefect like I had seen.

The use of corporal punishment as a general disciplinary measure for absconding, bed-wetting, and other infractions, many of which were of a very minor nature, produced an all-pervasive climate of fear. One former pupil described it as follows: I suppose first of all the place you were in, and obviously the people that were allegedly looking after you. I think they probably controlled these places with this fear, I believe. It was just a climate of fear that you were going to get hit, you were going to get beaten, something evil was going to happen to you. There was no happiness; there was nothing to be glad about. Maybe the only part of escaping out of that place was probably when you went to sleep, that was probably the only escape you had from the reality of that place.

One former resident was asked to describe Br Alfonso. He said: He had a bubbly personality, he had a wonderful structure. He was a brilliant golfer and a brilliant hurler ... To me, I was his lap dog. If he hit a sliotar and it went into the woods or into the nettles, me in my short little pants had to go and look for it and bring it back to him. Likewise, with a golf ball. And if you couldn’t find it you stayed until you did.

Another witness described the strength of Br Alfonso when he administered the strap: He really physically forced (indicating). It was like a golf driver and he was a golfer. That’s what he used to spend his time, playing golf. He used use the straps like a golfer. I never got so much pain in my life.

Br Alfonso said that corporal punishment in Upton was an essential tool in the maintenance of order in the School. He was given no training or advice regarding its use, which was a matter solely for his discretion. Other members of staff would send boys to him for punishment, and he always knew the reason for the punishment. He said that he always recorded his punishments in the punishment book and that the Resident Manager inspected his book regularly. When the entries in the punishment book were first raised with Br Alfonso during the investigation into Ferryhouse, in questioning about absconders, he said: The most strokes on the seat of the pants they would get for anything like that, if it were that, would be 10 strokes, that was a lot but that was what it was, that would be the maximum.

He went on to assert that 10 would be the maximum number of strokes for any offence. He confirmed that the Prefect made the entries in the book after the punishment was given. When the information in the punishment book showing 20 strokes given on the bare buttocks on a boy for immorality was put to him, he was incredulous: That couldn’t possibly have happened during my time ... That never ever happened. I put my hand on that Bible there, that never happened.

Punishment was administered in the Prefect’s office, and it could happen, albeit rarely, that a boy would have to wait outside the office for punishment. Br Alfonso disliked the term ‘punishment’, and described his position as follows: Punishment would be administered – well, I don’t want to call it “punishment”, but I have written in that book which I have there that when boys were chastised, I will use that word, they were advised. So there would be lots of advice going on instead of punishment.

On a number of occasions during his cross-examination, Br Alfonso appeared to find some of the suggestions made by counsel for the complainants derisory. One such instance arose when a witness gave evidence that he had felt children were being used ‘like lap dogs to collect your ball’. Br Alfonso was asked why he found this derisory: No, and the reason I laughed, excuse me, no, they were my children, I loved them. I had no approach to the children like that at all, they were wonderful and that is all and they are still my children and that so, just I could never treat any child like that as a lap dog, I could not do that.