2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

The lack of formal training for Sisters working in industrial schools was a significant feature of the evidence of Sisters and former Sisters. In Goldenbridge, when asked whether she had received any training in childcare, Sr Alida4 said ‘None whatsoever. I think you had to use your own head’. She added: Well I suppose doing my teacher training I did my share of child psychology. I wouldn’t say that would have qualified me for the work I undertook in Goldenbridge. I had no idea that such a place as Goldenbridge existed when I was training up or when I was coming out to it either.

Other Sisters who worked in the School expressed similar sentiments. Sr Gianna5 said that she had received no training whatsoever, although she thought that her previous work with children in the Girl Guides might have been a factor in her being sent to Goldenbridge. In her evidence at the Phase I hearing in the Newtownforbes investigation, Sr Margaret Casey stated: The Sisters themselves would not, as I said earlier, have had any kind of formal training in childcare, actually such training didn’t exist until the 70s. So most of the Sisters there would have had a background in secondary education before they entered. Subsequently they would have received some training, some of them, obviously the primary school teachers would have qualified as primary school teachers. Some of the Sisters working in the Industrial School did diplomas and certificates to Ceidi and Lough Gill and home economics and housewifery, that area. I know that one of the Sisters in 1953 attended an institutional management course that was run in Carysfort. She subsequently was full-time working in the Industrial School. One Sister also trained as a children’s nurse.

In the Phase I hearing into Goldenbridge, Sr Helena O’Donoghue, Provincial Leader of the South Central Province, said: Each of the five Sisters who acted as Sisters in charge and involved in the Industrial School were professionally trained teachers at Carysfort Training College, which was a significant feature in the Dublin Mercy Community. Sr Bianca also had qualifications and certifications in domestic economy, cookery, needlework and household management. These Sisters also were supported by other Sisters as I have said, but who might not necessarily have any had particular training. Those who worked in the kitchen were qualified cooks and others would have taken short courses in household management.

The Congregation stated: The negative aspect was, perhaps, that leisure activities were circumscribed and everyone was caught up in a system where rest, unstructured relaxation and variety were seen as luxuries rather than necessities.

Many Sisters spoke in evidence about the expectation that they would not show affection to the children in care. The Congregation said: The question of the reluctance to show any physical affection for the children found its roots in a positive understanding of caring for all children equally and of not favouring one child over the other.

This desire to treat all equally might have led to children seeing the Sisters as aloof or uncaring, but it would be: ... a grave distortion to see the absence of the overt expression of physical affection for the children as some kind of innate personal failing on the part of each Sister, related in some obscure way, to her choice of a life of celibacy rather than a choice of marriage and motherhood.

Sr Margaret Casey discussed the operation of the vow of Obedience during the Phase III hearing into Newtownforbes: I suppose back in those years the Sister would have been assigned to a job under obedience and that obviously would have impacted on the Institution and her role in it, because sometimes then it meant, and this would have been borne out in the Industrial School, that they could have ended up in a particular Ministry as, say, some of the Resident Managers, that they were there for quite a long time, 30 years and more. But it would have been true, as well, that out of the obedience that it wouldn’t have been the accepted or the norm for somebody to complain to the person in authority about how the place was being run, because to do so would have been seen not merely as a kind of personal failing but it would also have shown that in some way that their inability to cope with the challenges of religious life.

Dr McCabe made some severe criticisms of individual schools. For example, in relation to Dundalk in 1946, she stated: ... if these people are going to have a school they must look after the children – otherwise I will have to recommend that they are not fit to look after children and have them transferred elsewhere.

Similarly, in respect of Newtownforbes, she was highly critical of the management of the School. In 1940, she had noticed that there was bruising on many of the bodies of the girls in the infirmary. In her letter of 12th February 1940, to the Reverend Mother of the School, she stated: ... I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the Infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies. I wish particularly to draw attention to the latter as under no circumstances can the Department tolerate treatment of this nature and you being responsible for the care of these children will have some difficulty in avoiding censure.

The Congregation’s Submission dealt with their overall role in residential childcare. They stated: In conjunction with major changes in Religious Life heralded by Vatican II, in the later 1960’s the Kennedy Report ushered in a new era of child-care. The new model of child-care was the group home. It is, we submit, important to recognise that the Sisters of Mercy were also at the heart of this transition from institutional care to group home. It would be an unfair caricature to depict the Sisters as only being involved in the deposed regime of institutional child-care, and absent from the regime of group homes. On the contrary, the Sisters of Mercy were at the heart of this process of change.

The Congregation went on to say: It is unlikely that the problems posed by extreme poverty and family dysfunction can ever be addressed in a manner that avoids any pain to the child involved. But there is no doubt that the institutional form of child-care caused a great deal of pain to the children involved. The Sisters of Mercy were at the heart of that system and fully recognise their responsibility. However, it is also fair to say that the Sisters of Mercy were among the first to embrace the transition to the new system of group homes.

Had the Sisters of Mercy seen the fundamental flaws in the system of childcare operated by them in the late 1940s, and introduced change accordingly, much of the abuse recounted to the Investigation Committee might not have taken place. As the Sisters have stated: It is significant that there have been few complaints about the group homes run by the Sisters of Mercy.

The emergence of widespread allegations of abuse in the early 1990s coincided with the centralisation or amalgamation of the Congregation. The Congregation had just formed at national level in 1994, and the intermediate provincial structures had not yet been established. This made it difficult, she said, for the Congregation to determine precisely what had happened. Sr O’Neill stated: I suppose one of the reasons I outlined our structure in the beginning was because when the allegations that concerned our congregation became known to us in the mid 90s we did not have central archives. We had just amalgamated at national level in 1994 and our intermediate structures, which were the provincial structures, were not in place. So one of the difficulties for us in responding to the allegations at the beginning was that the information we needed to get the picture ourselves of just what happened in the institutions and what was known of life there, that information was spread around the country.

The records of institutions that had closed in the 1960s had been transferred to local convents, some of which were autonomous and others were branch houses of larger convents. Some records had been transferred to the mother house of the newly formed Diocesan Congregations. In 1996, the Sisters decided to collect what records there were and assemble them in a central archive. To that end, they employed a professional archivist and established the archive at the Congregation’s premises in Baggot Street. The records which had survived the closure of some of the schools and convents, and the process of amalgamation, were in some areas quite sparse. This made it difficult for the Leadership to develop an awareness of what had happened or to respond to the increasing number of requests for information from former residents of institutions run by the Congregation. Sr O’Neill stated that the records were: as complete as we have been able to find of record of any institution for which we were responsible as far as back as we have been able to find records for. So everything from attics to whatever little pieces of paper were available, we have done an immense trawl of every house to ensure that in some way the whole picture is contained in one place.

The records consist of: Any records that were kept in any industrial school and I think they cover things like admission registers – I have to make a note of these so I will remember them - discharge books, books of incidental returns, manager’s diaries, medical officer reports, punishment books, maintenance books. Any correspondence that has survived from the institutions. Medical history forms, general case notes, birth certificates, detention orders. They vary. I am not saying that we have all of that information for any one institution, but the archives comprise all of that information in relation to at least some of the institutions and in varying degrees in relation to them all ... Depending on when the industrial school in a particular locality closed and what happened to the building, or even what happened to the convent building in the subsequent years to the 90s also determined what information has survived.