2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

He then described what happened when he returned to the dormitory and took a boy to his room: ... I left them in the bed and I fondled them and penetrated them ... I felt they were asleep and they didn’t know ... On waking up they just remained limp, I am sure terrified of what was going on and preferred to remain in that state ... Those boys that I took to my room were boys that were sleeping ... I selected those ... I felt they were what I wanted. It was weekly ... those boys were terrified during that period when I took them to my room.

He went on to explain why the boys were so deeply asleep: Some of them were on medication for bed-wetting ... They took their tablet and it made them sleepy ... All the bed-wetters would be on them ... The nurse would allot the nightly take every day to me and I would distribute it to them ... I would have maybe two or three days supply of the tablet for all of the boys.

The abuse continued undetected for four years. When asked whether he was concerned that the boys would tell, he said: At the back of my mind you would think—you would know very well that it would come out and somebody would reveal it and they did.

A number of reasons as to how the abuse continued were explored with Br Bruno. He agreed that, in his early days as Prefect, he frequently used corporal punishment: Yes, I hit the boys, I struck the boys. I found certainly at the beginning I had no other way of keeping control, keeping order, keeping day to day things running.

He agreed that the job of Prefect with complete unsupervised control over 35 to 40 boys was a corrupting influence: It changed me to a different type of person ... a monster person that was the effect that it had.

Br Bruno claimed that he had no attraction to boys before he went into Ferryhouse: In all my years before I went into the Rosminians I had no attraction towards the younger boys ... I had my girlfriends up to going to the Rosminian Order ... the boys thing just started when I went into Ferryhouse.

Yet, within Ferryhouse, he was unable to control his attraction to pubescent boys and claimed that he tried to get help: I went for advice before with [a senior member of the Order] and we chatted. At the end ... at the breaking point that I went to him and discussed it with him. I discussed it with him after coming out of the Order too.

The Investigation Committee was unable to corroborate this assertion. He remained convinced, moreover, that other members of the Community knew what he was up to. He also asserted that ‘it was widespread’. He explained: Like when other boys were talking and were giving out about other members of the Community, I felt they were being abused by other members.

He later added: ‘They [the boys] were mentioning that other members of the community were abusing the boys’.

A complainant who was in Ferryhouse in the mid to late 1970s described Br Bruno as ‘just bad ... he was just evil out and out’. He told the Committee he first met Bruno in the mid-1970s in Woodstown, in Waterford. This was before Br Bruno had joined the Rosminians, and he was visiting Woodstown with his friend who was a priest. The complainant described how Br Bruno approached him when he was washing his shirt in the sink and, under the pretence of helping to wash the shirt, started rubbing his chest and: From that he went on to put his hands down towards my privates and, basically, that was the first time I met [Br Bruno].

The abuse happened regularly ‘every couple of weeks’, so regularly in fact that the witness thought it was normal: ‘I thought this is the way life is, this happens to everybody’. The complainant also witnessed others being abused. He described how, on occasion, he walked into Br Bruno’s room on the way to the toilet and saw that Br Bruno ‘had two guys there and they were playing with each other’. He also attested to the fear Br Bruno used to instil in him. He had an odd tactic of sticking drawing pins into his thigh whenever he saw Br Bruno approaching. He explained, ‘It just took away the fear. Me being in pain was better than the fear and the fear of him’. He described how Br Bruno would never leave him alone with any visitors, as he might have to prevent him from telling them about the abuse.

The witness also gave a vivid account of seeing boys being carried to Br Bruno’s room: He would come out of his room, late at night, he would go to his bed, that bed, he would go into the back dormitories, he would come back out, sometimes carrying a boy. The boys would be asleep. Their limbs would be hanging down like so (indicating), their head to one side and he would be carrying them in his arms, he would be bringing them to his room. The next morning you would enquire as to where the boy was and you would be told that he was sick, he won’t be in school today.

He described how Br Bruno would give the boys tablets for bed-wetting. Sometimes, he would give them just one each, and on other occasions he would give them three. These had the effect of causing the boys to go to sleep. He recalled one occasion when he did not take the tablets and how he woke later that night to find Br Bruno sexually abusing him: I started crying and Br Bruno came up to me and he said to me “What’s wrong with you, child, you are dreaming, child, go to sleep”. That next morning when I was in the toilet and I came out and I was after getting dressed and everything, I went to get the tablets and they were gone. I don’t know where they had gone to, they were gone.

Fr Stefano’s comment provides the best clue and may be repeated: The picture that comes to mind always to me is of a huge jigsaw puzzle that you are reasonably happy with but that there is a piece missing and while I had no suspicions of him, the minute those words were spoken, it was as if somebody had put the final piece in the jigsaw and all these activities that he was involved with started to make sense.

Mr Garnier told the Gardaí how his contact with Ferryhouse began: I know Br Leone for years. A lot of the boys went to the technical school. That is boys from Ferryhouse School. I saw Br Leone bringing them to school and I got chatting to them. That’s how it started roughly 28 years ago.