2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

One witness, who did not herself allege abuse by the caretaker, said of him: It was common knowledge that Mr Hurley20 was at children in the laundry.

A witness alleged that he was abused by a lay person who slept in the dormitory with the children. He stated: I was made to play with her for what seemed to go on for some time and whilst doing this I was in fear of the nuns catching me and if I was caught being out of bed I would get the strap or I would get a slapping or a beating. This went on for some time.

A complainant who spent a few months in Goldenbridge in the late 1960s said that older girls had sexually abused him when he was aged eight. He recalled being brought into a room with a bed in it, and there were three women or older girls in the room. He was not certain whether they were older girls or women who worked in the School: I was put sitting on the edge of the bed and the covers were pulled down and one of the girls was exposed. I was told to feel her private parts, then I was told to feel another one of the women or girl’s private parts. My memory is this happened on more than one occasion.

One witness spoke of arriving at Goldenbridge as a six-year-old child in the late 1940s after her mother had died of TB. She described the experience as ’very very harrowing’: she said she was stripped of her clothes and that all her hair was cropped.

When asked whether she had understood at the time why her clothes were being taken from her, she replied: No. You weren’t told. You were just used and abused ... you were disposable ... They didn’t give a stuff about what you were, whether you were a child, whether you were breathing, whether you were living, what you were feeling. Nobody bothered about a child. You were just a disposable item. That’s the way it seemed to me. That’s the way I have carried all through my life. I don’t like what I have carried all through my life. It has left me vulnerable, raw and it has affected the whole of my life.

She said: I used to scurry around. I used to try to dodge and weave to get away from the beatings, the abuse. You didn’t. You were helpless. Wherever you were you were a helpless victim. You couldn’t get away from them. They used to clatter you, they used to batter you. The names you were called. The stuff you had to go through. The thing was you were always so alone. There was never anybody there for you. Nobody was there this is what I find so hard to tell you. You were lumped together and you were one of a many, many ...

Another complainant was eight years of age when she was put into Goldenbridge with her younger sister in the early 1950s. She said that her mother and father had separated and that her father had abandoned the family. She was living with her grandmother when, she believes, the NSPCC made an application to court to have both her and her younger sister committed to Goldenbridge. She said: We weren’t prepared in any way, we weren’t told – we thought it was an outing which was very rare anyway for us ... the next thing we knew my mother and my grandmother were leaving, they were leaving. We didn’t know what was going to happen to us. Of course we were screaming trying to get out through the door with them and the nun just pulled us back.

She said that she went to a remand home in England after she had left Goldenbridge and that the environment there was completely different. She said that the convent was run by a French Order, and their whole attitude towards the children was that they had some value. They were not sadistic in any way and, although the regime there was strict by today’s standard, you were punished for actually doing something wrong. She said that the children were also allowed to play, even though they had chores to do and laundry duties; nevertheless, there was no forced labour: ‘We actually liked the nuns there’.

One complainant was born to an unmarried mother and lived with her grandmother in Dublin. She said she recalls getting dressed up nicely one day and being brought to a big building from which she was put into a van or a car and taken away screaming to Goldenbridge. She said that her main contact when she went in to Goldenbridge was with her grandmother, who came up every second Sunday or every Sunday to visit her: ‘All I remember was crying, sometimes I was happy to see her and other times I wasn’t because it made me fret, want to go home. Why was I being left here?’.

Her dislike of the Institution and her sense of unease at her treatment there were clear from a letter she wrote in 1967 to Sr Venetia. In that letter she said, referring to the suggestion that she should return to Goldenbridge because she got into trouble in England: You know what kind of trouble I got into, I believe you wanted to have me back, but I refused to go because I know what I would have to face. I have faced enough with you all there, and you know that I did not like it there. Every time I went out you took a bad impression. Well, Sister, the mothers here try to do all they can to help me, especially the Mother in charge. She cannot help me anymore and I do appreciate all she did. Also, we call them mothers because they treat us as if they were our mothers.

One complainant, who was committed to Goldenbridge at one year old in the early 1950s and remained there for 15 years, said: None of us got loved, none of us. When I look back I wonder how I grew up at all. It was the most strangest place for a child to be reared. The nuns were cruel but they didn’t know half of it because they use to be up saying their prayers. The people they had looking after us was horrible people.

She said that the nuns were really not involved in the day-to-day activity in Goldenbridge. When she was there, it was run principally by the lay staff and older girls. She recalled Sr Venetia, who would have been the only nun who did have contact with the Institution, but the other nuns were only seen in church: They used to come down now and again around Christmas to watch a film ... which was the only time you ever saw Venetia laugh. They never acknowledged you. They were there at that side, here we were at this side. You might as well have put a bar – there was no way they were ever going to talk to you. Even in the church, there were all these so called holy people, they never acknowledged you.

A witness who was in Goldenbridge for nine years in the 1960s described her time there: I mean the first sentence that always comes to me is that it was a reign of terror, it was a terrifying place for any child to be. Speaking for myself I found it utterly terrifying, it was vicious, it was so full of fear, it was so full of tension. It was indescribably terrifying.

When she left, she described how she felt: If I start at the beginning, I was completely and utterly depressed, completely unfit to function in the world outside. Within months of leaving Goldenbridge I was in a psychiatric hospital ... I have lived through some of the darkest, darkest, blackest, blackest depressions imaginable. I have lived with shame, absolute abject shame. I felt like a nobody, worthless, a nuisance, a waste of space on the planet, utterly. I hated every adult who walked the planet ... I was bitter, I was angry. I was broken. I tried to be happy if that makes sense, I really did try. I tried to be normal, but you couldn’t be. People would say to you, “Where are you from? I would say, “did I ask you where you came from”. I would say, “No, Mind your own business, don’t ask me”.

She said that, although Sr Venetia wasn’t anything as bad as Sr Alida, she was very capable of battering children and, in particular, she was verbally very cruel to children: She was very good at calling you names, and Sr Venetia was capable of being very cruel to particular children ... She was very good at humiliation, Ill tell you that, she was very good at that.