2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

When asked if the perpetrator was a teenager or an adult, he replied: A teenager I would say ... Small type of fellow, with ginger hair ... [It happened] at playtime. He would take me down to the hay barn. He would just “come along, come with me” and you knew something was going to happen and there was nothing you could do about it; you couldn’t go to anybody ... I wanted it to stop, but I didn’t know how to go around about it ... he was violent ... He worked on the farm and I think he used to look after the boiler house as well, He was an odd job man if you like ... He would take me up to the hay loft, make me take my clothes off and he take his off. He’d lie me on the hay and he’d started interfering to me and I had to do the same to him. He would lie on me and press up against me and all that type of thing.

In his statement, he said he had a clear impression the nuns had known what was going on. He explained: they brought a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and we had to go into the classroom. I can’t remember the nun’s name but she asked me about it, did he do anything to me, did he interfere with me. I had to look at the statue and I said no because I was frightened. All I know is that there was some of us standing outside and then we was called in. We went through one classroom and it was in the other classroom you had to go in ... I never seen him after that day.

The witness was very explicit about the abuser, the nature of the abuse, and the subsequent investigation. He said he did not know in advance why he was being brought into the classroom ‘until I got in there’. The statue of the Virgin Mary ‘wasn’t normally there, no, and I had to look at it’. He recalled the kinds of questions that the nun asked: I can remember asking about Bruce, did he ever do anything to me, and I must tell the truth and all this. I remember looking down and shaking my head and saying no.

Another witness, who was in St Patrick’s from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, and who was under 10 years of age, also alleged he was abused while there. He told the Committee: there was a lay worker as they call ’em ... As far as I could see he was a handyman, he was working on all parts of the School. ... He was a kind of under handyman to a man called Mr. Fitzgerald5 and he used to give him his orders ... I only know his first name, Charles,6 I never knew his second name ... Well, he was always abusing boys, always. It was well known amongst the boys themselves. Mr Fitzgerald and him lived in an apartment, they both had a room each, he used to take us in there when there was nobody about and then let us out, you know, tell us to say nothing and let you out when no-one was looking. It was so frequent or so often that the boys, we used to be waiting for it to happen to see who was going to be picked next., that type of thing. You just happened to be nearest to the door or whatever, you know. Whatever opportunity he got you know it was going to happen, ’til one day Mr Fitzgerald caught him letting me out of the door, out of the bedroom. He came back to his bedroom for something and he actually took him out in the yard and he hit him two or three times in the face over it, and he had a black eye for weeks ... I heard Mr Fitzgerald saying, “don’t ever let me catch again, I told you about that” ... he caught him with my trousers down and telling me to pull them up, and pushing me towards the door ... Mr Fitzgerald knew exactly what he was doing and he gave him a good three or four smacks in the face ... It was the talk of the school for a week about what happened.

He was able to describe the man: At that time I would say he was about around thirtyish I suppose, thirtyish mark. I always remember his face, he was like a weather beaten fisherman, he had a wrinkly face. I could put him in his 30s, between 20 and 30, 25 and 30, something like that. Maybe more.

He did not report the abuse: there was no-one to tell because the people above you were too, you were frightened of them, you know. I mean you couldn’t treat them as a mother or a father, you just couldn’t run to them and say “someone done this to me” because you were all in the same boat. When nobody else is saying anything you don’t say anything.

Despite receiving a black eye, the man continued to make advances: We always thought, “has it stopped?” He tried it again several times. He tried it even after I left the School.

The third witness to complain of being sexually abused was in St Patrick’s a decade later, between the years of the late 1950s and mid-1960s. He also described sexual abuse by a layman employed by the School. He recalled: The refectory was to the left as you walked down this corridor, to the right hand side there was this door out on to the yard. When you went around the corner there was a boiler house or something and there was a bedroom in there where [he] stayed. He brought me there on many occasions and he sexually abused me. This small one bedroom, just basic, there was a boiler house, very warm building.

He described what happened: he used to take his trousers down and he would have me playing with his penis and he would play with his own penis and ejaculate over me and he would play with my penis and kiss the lower part of my body ... [I was] Approximately eight years of age or possibly from seven up to ten years of age. I am not exactly sure of the year.

When he was asked if he ever mentioned this to anybody in the School, he replied: No, because I was terrified. He threatened me that he would throw me in the furnace if I said anything. I think his reward to me he used to give me sweets. There was a three wheeled tricycle, a big one. I could have a spin on this, this was something I never had before so this was my reward ... I knew it was wrong but I was terrified.

In their written Submission after the Phase I and Phase III hearings, the Sisters of Charity wrote: In relation to St Patrick’s, due to passage of the time the Sisters of Charity were unable to source any information to assist the Commission in its inquiry into allegations made by a number of former residents ... These former residents were at St Patrick’s between 1943 and 1965. None of them ever told anyone in authority of what had happened to them and the allegations only emerged many decades later. Although one of these witnesses suspected the Sisters knew of abuse by one of the workers, there was nothing in the evidence to suggest that they in fact knew or somehow ought to have detected the activities described by these witnesses. No-one was convicted of abuse at St Patrick’s. There were no records or documents of any kind found anywhere that might have assisted in an evaluation of this evidence. There was no corroboration. For the Sisters of Charity, responding to these allegations was a practical impossibility.

One complainant, who spent seven years in St Patrick’s in the late 1950s and 1960s, said: To this very day I still don’t have a relationship with my family ... As I was saying the nurturing wasn’t entered into our lives as children. I felt there should have been more attachment.

He found working with victims of institutional abuse of great benefit to him: It has, yes, because I suppose, in one way, [the organisation] makes me feel a bit – or maybe it’s the first time in my life I was doing something from here and helping others. I can see some people coming in and I can see myself within these people where I was stuck three to four years ago.

This complainant, who alleged that he was sexually abused in St Patrick’s, continued to feel isolated. He said there was no-one he could look up to in the School: It takes many years in your life to sort of pick up the courage to reach out and ask for help. The only help I ever received was when I entered the psychiatric hospital and that’s where, I suppose – most of my life I never trusted people in authority, I never trusted Gardaí, teachers, judges, anybody in authority, I would never have trusted them. I suppose when you trust somebody, this would have been because of the sexual abuse, when you trust somebody what do they need in return? That would have been a big part of my pain. Now, I have reached a stage where I am not afraid to reach out and ask for help if I need help, it’s okay. It’s a long journey and I am still on it ... There was no-one there – I suppose, I don’t know, I can only speak on behalf of myself, you can never trust anybody. I just couldn’t trust people. Anybody who was kind to you needed something in return and my experience within the industrial School it was sexual favours.

Another complainant, who was in the School in the 1960s, was asked if he developed an emotional bond with the woman who was in charge of his group: No, you were treated – you were all treated very much the same. You got into bed and got out of bed. You were told the various routines that were there. You were never given any instructions as regards privileges or anything like that. You were never told when you actually went there that you had privileges, if you were disobedient that these privileges would be taken away ... We never knew what the privileges were. We never got them to have them taken away.