2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

She described Sr Callida’s drinking: She was well noted for it in the town ... Any time I met her out, if I was in an occasion to meet her in the pub, she would be very drunk.

She said it was a regular occurrence for Sr Callida to be drunk in Group Home A: That was a regular occurrence, very regular occurrence. There was no big secret about it, everyone knew, everyone knew she drank. That’s what I found very hard to understand how everyone in the community knew what she was like and fellows knew that she was pissed going around the town and she would be out at nightclubs and different things.

In addition to the drinking, Sr Callida also entertained past pupils in Group Home A at night and allowed them to stay there: The night that I remember Mr Owens13 being there, there were five men in the house that night stayed overnight that night. Two of them were ex-residents and two of them were total strangers. But she would leave the house then.

Ms Tierney was uneasy caring for the children in the house on her own: You would have them coming and going during the days. At the weekend, you wouldn’t know who – you just never knew who was going to turn up at the place or what was going to happen. It was just chaos.

She described how she and the children were frightened by one of these visitors: They were scared that night that Mr Owens was going around the house ... we went down to the bedroom and I had a couple of teenagers in the room with me and we all stayed there that night because we were all frightened of him. I am sure there was times when they were frightened.

She spoke of her earliest recollections of Cappoquin: My recollection was, you know, to bring up kids – being a mother myself and to bring up kids in a home I found it always very sad for kids, you know, and I could identify with them, the sadness they were going through ... I came from a loving home myself.

She commented on the lack of love shown to the children: I found the set-up, there was a lot of children ... there was plenty of food, but giving them a hot meal and giving it to them with love, you know, and things like that, I found that was a bit lacking, you know ... and kids coming from different background and sadness, you know, it was – I felt kind of shocked because I hadn’t experienced that kind of thing.

Ms Waters gave an example of one incident where three children from the home – two boys and a girl – were alone in the fields adjoining the home: I remember ringing Sr Callida and, you know, my worries about the girl being down with the boys and she just kind of – it came up in the conversation I said, "what about if the girl gets pregnant?" And she kind of laughed at me and said, "it wouldn’t be you that made her pregnant." I wasn’t getting anywhere ... I went down through to the fields ... it was a very wet evening, and I had difficulty in walking through the wet – the grass was very high, it was all wet. I went down and I brought her up and the two lads went off, you know. But it was with great difficulty, she was rude and nasty to me now, but she did come up with me.

She said she was aware that there was a lot of drinking going on in Group Home A. Parties were held in the home, and former residents and student priests came and stayed overnight. This practice was not allowed in the home in which she was in charge, as she simply did not allow it to happen. In her opinion, the children in Group Home A were not being adequately supervised and the staff were very young: Well there was a lot of, there was a lot of drink going on, you know ... You know, I was never in the parties, but the gossip went on that they would be drinking in the house and there would be people coming visiting and there was drinking. Not in Group Home B but in Group Home A. I witnessed Sr Callida coming ... into Group Home B at one stage and she had drink ... Her voice was slurred, you know, and things like that.

She described an occasion soon after the appointment of Sr Serena as Reverend Mother to Cappoquin: I remember that day, Sr Serena had just started, she was just made Reverend Mother and she had visited Group Home B that evening, we arranged that she come and have tea with the kids and staff and Sr Callida came in that evening. The kids had just left the table and she came in and she was clearly under the influence of drink when she came in.

She did not discuss Sr Callida’s obvious intoxication with Sr Serena at the time. It was not an isolated incident, because she had witnessed Sr Callida’s intoxication on other occasions. She said that the staff and children discussed Sr Callida’s drinking with her and amongst themselves, and that it was a problem throughout Sr Callida’s time there, ‘No, I don’t ever remember a time when it wasn’t a problem’.

The problems continued, and both staff and children were unhappy. She described how it had an impact on the children at the time: Kids, they could get high and you know, you felt you had no control. Because everybody was kind of – everybody was upset and there wasn’t consistency from management down, you hadn’t the consistency. The staff were young and they were going to college and doing exams ... and things like that.

Eventually, in the late 1980s, Ms Waters wrote a long and detailed letter to Sr Callida, raising a number of points regarding the care of the children, staff communications, timetables and rostering, and general management issues: I had to do something and I knew the right way to go through it first, I couldn’t do anything, without sending a letter to Sr Callida, she wasn’t willing to listen to me. The next thing was to send her a letter. I put an awful lot – I thought about maybe there was 12 months thinking about that, you know. I put an awful lot of thought into it.

She then contacted the Reverend Mother, Sr Serena, in the convent, and again raised the issues she had highlighted in her letter to Sr Callida. She told the Committee: eventually I got a meeting. I went to Sr Serena and we met, Sr Serena, Sr Callida and I, we met in the office in Group Home B. But it wasn’t a successful meeting, because Sr Callida, she did a lot of crying and she was going to open the door and a few times Sr Serena said to her, "Callida, come back and sit down". It came to nothing, we got nowhere.

Mr Lloyd brought a new perspective to childcare in Cappoquin. He was concerned at the number of children who remained in care all their lives and for whom no alternative was looked for or provided: Fostering or looking at the extended family or what would have been done. Even for long periods of time, you know, okay, children have to come into care but they don’t have to stay in care. Young people and young children came into Cappoquin to care and spent their lives there until they were sixteen.