Report of The (Irish) Commission To Inquire Into Child Abuse: Vol. 2

Chapter 1
Institute of Charity: St Patrick’s,

Upton, and St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse
Introduction
A history of the Rosminians and their involvement in industrial schools
1.01 The Institute of Charity was founded by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in 1828 at Calvario in Italy. It
received the approbation of the Holy See on 20th December 1838 and was given the status of a
religious Order. It was a society that included religious members, who took the vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience, and also lay members who shared the special objectives of the Institute.
Rosmini believed in a ‘principle of passivity’, based on the consciousness of humanity’s
‘nothingness’, or its inability on its own to achieve lasting good. He had a conviction that God’s
Providence guides by means of his Church and the needs of people. By remaining open, or having
an attitude of ‘indifference’, as Rosmini put it, as to what work of charity was undertaken by them,
the Rosminians, as they came to be known, were being guided by Divine Providence to doing
lasting good for their neighbours.
1.02 In 1835, Luigi Gentili founded a Novitiate in England and set up further missions across England
and Wales in the two following decades. The Institute of Charity continued to grow and became
an international organisation with four major provinces: the Italian province, which included the
regions of India and Venezuela; the English province, which included New Zealand; the Irish
province, which included the vice province of Africa; and the province of the United States. Until
1931, the Institute of Charity in Ireland came under the jurisdiction of the English province.
1.03 In 1860, the Institute, which had experience of running a Reformatory School in North East
Yorkshire, was invited to run the proposed new Reformatory School at Upton, County Cork, which
became the first Rosminian Community established in Ireland. Upton Reformatory operated for
29 years and closed in 1889, to reopen five days later as Danesfort Industrial School, certified for
the reception of 300 boys.
1.04 In 1884, the Rosminian Institute took charge of a second establishment, the Clonmel Industrial
School for Roman Catholic Boys, which received a certificate to receive 150 boys the following
year. Count Arthur Moore, the MP for Clonmel, had approached them to manage and run the
school that he had built for orphaned and abandoned children at the cost of £10,000, a
considerable sum in those days. It was situated about four kilometres east of the town of Clonmel,
in the townland of Ferryhouse, on the northern bank of the River Suir. The 3.6 hectares of land it
was built on was soon expanded to 16 hectares, and ultimately to 32 or more hectares of farmland.
1.05 In 1901, the Institute of Charity acquired Ballyoonan House, Omeath, situated on 14 acres of land,
to serve as its Novitiate. It was given the name of St Michael’s, becoming a Scholasticate in 1935,
until 1945, when it again became a Juniorate for 28 students. In 1931, a new Novitiate was
established in Kilmurry House, Kilworth, County Cork. In 1954, St Michael’s applied to be
CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 1
recognised as a secondary school, taking in students who did not necessarily want to become
members of the Institute of Charity.
1.06 The Rosminians operated two industrial schools: St Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton, County
Cork; and St Joseph’s Industrial School, Ferryhouse, Clonmel, County Tipperary. In addition, the
Order had other establishments primarily concerned with the education and religious formation of
boys and young men intending to be ordained (as priests) or professed (as Brothers). Both the
priests and Brothers would be members of the Institute. Those institutions were at Omeath, County
Louth; Kilmurry, County Cork; and Glencomeragh, County Tipperary. The Rosminians were
principally a missionary Order, and most of the young men trained in their houses of formation
were destined for work in their missions.
Committee’s investigation into Upton and Ferryhouse

1.07 The Investigation Committee carried out a detailed examination into the industrial schools at Upton
and Ferryhouse. In June 2004, at the Emergence Hearings, the Institute began by outlining at a
public hearing how the issue of child abuse in their schools emerged. Then they gave evidence
at public introductory hearings (Phase I) into Ferryhouse, which took place from 6th to 9th
September 2004, and into Upton, which took place on 26th October 2004.
1.08 Between 14th September and 17th November 2004, witnesses from Ferryhouse were heard in
private, and between 18th November and 16th December 2004, witnesses who were in Upton gave
evidence. Finally, a public hearing in Phase III was held on 9th May 2006, at which Fr Joseph
O’Reilly, the Provincial Superior of the Rosminian Institute of Charity in Ireland, dealt with general
issues in both institutions that had arisen in the course of the Phase II hearings.
1.09 The Institute furnished written statements in advance of the hearings and also provided
Submissions following the private hearings.
1.10 The figures for Upton were as follows: 11 complainant witnesses gave evidence, out of a total of
13 who were invited. Three respondent witnesses testified.
1.11 The figures for Ferryhouse were as follows: 29 complainant witnesses gave evidence, out of a
total of 39 who were invited to do so. Nine respondent witnesses gave evidence.
1.12 The hearings into Ferryhouse and Upton differed from other hearings, because the Rosminians
adopted a markedly different position on the role of industrial schools generally, a position which
affected the way they responded to the complaints that were made. The attitude of the Order to
the complainants is dealt with in the sections relating to the individual schools, but something can
briefly be said here about the position that the Order.
1.13 Giving evidence on behalf of the Rosminian Institute on 9th May 2006, at the Phase III public
hearing, Fr O’Reilly said that he had ‘no doubt that there were many areas in which we failed and
I have no doubt that the entire system was a failure’. He said that they were given the task of
trying to manage an apparently unmanageable system, and that control was the first priority. He
acknowledged that there was pressure to keep up numbers, so as to maximise income from
the capitation payment system, and that the numbers themselves presented a problem in caring
for children:
... that’s why it was a trap, it was trap for us, if we didn’t have an adequate number of
children then we didn’t get a sufficient income. If we had children well in excess of any
number, or whatever number it was, then we were into the position of finding that it was
more difficult to manage the whole thing. It was a trap. How do you deal with that?
2 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II
1.14 Fr O’Reilly said that it was not even clear that children were better off in industrial schools than
they had been in their previous circumstances:
I think that children were often taken from fairly hopeless situations and they were handed
over to despair in a way. Because I am not too sure that we can say definitely that the
situation that they found themselves in was an awful lot better than the situation that they
had come from. They got some things and there are other things that they didn’t get.
Frying pan into the fire.
1.15 The industrial school system, he said, was fundamentally flawed and was not capable of fulfilling
the needs of children. He did not think that there was any clear objective, or that anybody had a
sense of what was going on, or that anybody was really giving direction to it. He was not sure that
such strategic thinking existed, even in more recent decades.
1.16 Unlike other Orders, the Rosminians did not seek solace in the contents of the Inspection Reports
of the Department of Education. These reports found the schools to be more or less satisfactory,
but identified continuously a need for improvement. Fr O’Reilly stated that the approach to
industrial schools ‘was just making do’. He added:
Unfortunately, some things can’t be done on a just enough basis, you have just enough
of this or you have just enough of that, some things need more than just enough. But I
think that we had just enough of this, that and the other and we made do.
1.17 The stance adopted by the Rosminians on the very nature of the industrial schools system was
unusual. They were also unusual, if not unique, in that they had begun looking back critically, as
long ago as 1990, on the operation of these schools. On 11th May 1990, at the opening of a new
development at Ferryhouse Industrial School, the then Provincial, Fr James Flynn, apologised for
the abuse that children had suffered in the past in the Institution and then said:
Like any human institution, old Ferryhouse had its bad points as well as its good points,
its weaknesses as well as its strengths. It damaged some boys and those have looked
back in bitterness and anger to their time here. For many of them, this was the only home
that they ever knew and sadly they did not find it a good one. Let me say that a lot of that
anger is justified ... The greatest guilt has to be borne by those of us who utilised or
condoned or ignored the extreme severity, even brutality which characterised at times the
regime at old Ferryhouse. An occasion like this is an opportunity for me on behalf of the
Rosminians to publicly acknowledge this fact and to ask forgiveness of those who were
ill-treated or hurt. We have sinned against justice and against the dignity of the person in
the past and we always need to be on our guard that we do not do the same today in
more subtle or equally hideous ways.
1.18 Fr O’Reilly at the public hearing referred to this apology:

When we opened the new Ferryhouse we started off by drawing attention to the fact that
many of the children who went through the school over the previous hundred years or so
suffered, suffered greatly, suffered from fear and suffered ... he spoke about brutality.
He spoke about people who condoned or ignored extreme severity, even brutality that
characterised the old regime.
1.19 The Rosminians sought to understand abuse, in contrast to other Orders who sought to explain
it. They accepted that abuse had occurred in their institutions, and that the institutions in
themselves were abusive.
1.20 The biggest contrast between the Rosminians’ position and other Orders was in its acceptance of
responsibility for what happened in their industrial schools. Even when factors such as inadequate
resources were involved, they took responsibility for tolerating them and doing nothing about it.
Sources of information: the Rome archive
1.21 The Investigation Committee had at its disposal discovery documentation furnished by the
Department of Education and Science, the Department of Justice, Garda Discovery, Bishop’s
Discovery and the Rosminians.
1.22 The Rosminian Order originally believed that the only documentary material it was able to produce
on the use of physical punishment consisted of two punishment books for Upton, one dating from
the nineteenth century and the other dealing with part of the relevant period, from 1952 to 1963.
The latter is incomplete and deficient in some other respects, but is nevertheless a valuable source
of information about punishment in Upton.
1.23 There also appeared to be a dearth of written information on sexual abuse in their schools before
1979, when the issue first came to the notice of the management of the Institute at that time. This
belief, that no documentation existed, was reflected in a General Statement submitted by Fr
Matthew Gaffney to the Investigation Committee on 3rd May 2002.
1.24 The position changed with the discovery of an archive of correspondence in Rome, containing
letters between the Irish Province and the Superior General about members of the Irish Province.
The documents concerned Brothers who had been suspected of, or who had admitted to, or who
were found to have engaged in, the sexual abuse of children. The Institute discovered this material
to the Investigation Committee in May 2004.
1.25 The Rome archive consisted of 68 letters written between 20th October 1936 and 11th January
1980. They reveal how the Rosminians dealt with cases of sexual abuse and also reveal the
career details of those who had committed such abuse in Upton and Ferryhouse, and these are
dealt with in the appropriate sections of this chapter.
1.26 Sexual abuse was a recurring problem for the managers of Upton and Ferryhouse and for their
Provincial. On the basis of these records and the other confirmed cases, it is apparent that there
was a sexual abuser present in each of the institutions for much of the period being inquired into,
and there were multiple abusers present for significant periods of time.
1.27 These documents showed how the Rosminians handled cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by
staff, and they are also relevant in attempting to establish how much more sexual abuse took
place in Upton and Ferryhouse than has been alleged by complainants.
1.28 The Rome archive also revealed how other members of the Irish Province were dealt with when
it was discovered that they had perpetrated child sexual abuse. The Provincial, who for most of
the period of our inquiry resided at Upton, was the head of the Irish-American Province, with the
two countries operating as a unit. The English Province was separate, and reported separately to
Headquarters in Rome. The correspondence discloses that two members of the Institute who
served in the USA were found to have abused children in that branch of the Irish-American
Province. Neither of the offenders served in Upton or Ferryhouse, but their histories are relevant
in considering the attitude of the Institute and of the Irish Province to the matter of sexual abuse
and its management.
The management system and staffing

1.29 The Provincialate of the Irish Province of Rosminians was located at Upton, and the Provincial
had his residence there in St Patrick’s. Each of the schools, Ferryhouse and Upton, was under
the control of a Resident Manager, who was appointed by the Provincial.
1.30 The Religious Community in Ferryhouse comprised between 10 and 12 members, made up of
both priests and Brothers, each with a separate area of responsibility. The Rector of the
Community also held the post of Resident Manager and was responsible for the day-to-day
management of the School.
1.31 All of the Resident Managers appointed were ordained members of the Institute of Charity. Fr
O’Reilly told the Investigation Committee that the post was not one ‘regarded as a reward for long
service’. He stated most of the priests who were appointed managers ‘would have worked at some
stage on the ground as a Prefect in either St. Patrick’s Upton, or St. Joseph’s’.
1.32 Fr O’Reilly spoke about the calibre of the Resident Managers in Ferryhouse:
... certainly most of the Managers that I know about and have come to know about would
seem to have been people who were quite suited to it and who were keen for the position
and keen to do something with the work that was there and they were people, I would
say, who had a degree of vision at the time, for the most part.
1.33 A Spiritual Director assisted the Resident Manager in his management duties in Ferryhouse.
The Prefect
1.34 One of the most important staff positions to be held in Ferryhouse and Upton was that of the
Prefect. Fr Stefano,1 former Resident Manager in Ferryhouse stated, ‘there was a manager ... and
the next people ... on the care side were the Prefects’. While the Resident Manager had
responsibility for the running of the Industrial School itself, the Prefect was in charge of the day-
to-day care of the children. As one witness explained, ‘The Prefect was in charge right through
the day and right through the night, you know’.
1.35 Ferryhouse and Upton each had two Prefects, one for the senior group and one for the junior
group. Until the 1940s, the Prefect would have been a priest. However, this changed and, from
the 1940s, Brothers were appointed Prefects. Each Prefect had sole responsibility for his group,
which at times could consist of more than 100 boys. This responsibility was for 24 hours a day
throughout the whole year, with little respite or additional help from his fellow Brothers.
1.36 Fr O’Reilly told the Investigation Committee:

I would say that most of the responsibility fell on the Prefect. Only occasionally could he
call on others, who had their own duties to go on with. So if a Prefect was – for example,
it wouldn't have been uncommon that the Prefect, one of the Prefects who was on, would
have to leave to go and look for a child who had run away or go to a Garda station to
pick up a child who had been picked up by the Gardaı́, and so all the responsibility rested
on the shoulders of the Prefect who remained behind and, indeed, it wasn't uncommon
for a Prefect to have to leave a dormitory of children in the middle of the night to go to
pick up a child. They, obviously, relied on the other Prefect primarily, you know, to look
after the situation. He'd have been made aware of things, as would the Manager.
1.37 Fr O’Reilly explained that Prefects’ responsibilities covered everything to do with the children:
From the time that they got up in the morning, getting children up, sorting out what had
to be sorted out, making sure that they were all in place, getting them down to Mass,
getting them back up, to breakfast, making sure they got out to school – when they got
out to school, okay, the school had responsibility then, but almost inevitably, you know,
you have a child who is sick or a child who has cut himself or who has got in trouble in
1
This is a pseudonym.

school, and a Prefect who has to pick up the pieces. I mean, I have seen that in my own
time working in St. Joseph's, Ferryhouse.
1.38 During non-school hours the Prefect would also have to be constantly vigilant, especially at
mealtimes in the School. He would have to manage the dining area where over 150 boys would
be eating their meals. Bullying at mealtimes was common: older boys would take the food of
younger boys, and these younger boys had to be protected. As a result, the dining hall area was
‘a highly charged situation ... where any number of things could happen’.
1.39 The Prefects were mainly responsible for administering corporal punishment in the School. Boys
who badly misbehaved were generally sent to the Prefect’s office to receive their punishment.
1.40 The Prefect was answerable to the Resident Manager in all matters. Among the Resident
Manager’s numerous duties and responsibilities was overseeing the performance of duties by the
Prefects. Fr O’Reilly spoke of this requirement:
The Manager, although he had other responsibilities, would have obviously had to keep
an eye on what was happening. I think the Manager would know on a very regular basis
what was going on in the place because, although this might not be a term that everybody
would agree with, there would have developed a certain sort of family atmosphere insofar
as when you live in a place for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year
and there is not an awful lot of change in life, you know, you soon become quite
acquainted with everybody who is in the place.
Selection and training of the Prefect

1.41 Every September, the Rosminian Provincial would decree assignments to the priests and
Brothers. If a vacancy for a Prefect arose in either of the Rosminian Industrial Schools, it was the
Provincial who selected the person to fill this role. During the 1940s, the appointment was usually
a priest, but later it was normally a Brother who was appointed.
1.42 Prefects were the younger men of the Order, who were able to manage the task of being in charge
of a large group of young, active boys. They would have ordinarily worked as teachers or Prefects
in other schools. Fr O’Reilly stated that the new Prefects would have seen it as a very responsible
post, and would have been proud of being appointed, but he added, a few of them would not have
been very happy at being selected. He explained:
Now there were some men who didn't like being Prefects and I know that one or two
would have seen it as – I am not too sure what the word is now ... yeah, hell is a good
word all right ... A punishment posting. Well, I know, for example, one man has often
recounted to me how he was regarded as difficult by his superiors so they appointed him
as Prefect.
1.43 Training for a newly appointed Prefect was minimal. The previous holder of the position would
initially help the new trainee. However, the period of overlap of the experienced Brother Prefect
and his trainee replacement was short, with a week being the norm. Very often, the new Prefect
would initially be sent to Woodstown Summer camp to obtain some experience with a smaller
number of boys before returning to Ferryhouse or Upton.
1.44 The young men appointed Prefects had themselves only left school a small number of years
previously. A number of the Rosminian Prefects would have completed their secondary education
in the Rosminian secondary school, St Michael’s, Omeath. Priests who held the position would
have completed their third level education. The Rosminians accept that this education ‘wouldn’t
have been particularly useful for childcare’.
1.45 Fr O’Reilly explained:
You learnt by the tradition, you know. You were told as a Prefect that this is what you do
and you get in there and you sink or you swim. The tradition was useful for a period and
then it wasn't useful any longer.
1.46 It was an extraordinarily demanding job. Fr O’Reilly told the Investigation Committee:
It was unnatural what was asked of them, really, and utterly unfair. Quite obviously in
retrospect, you know, it was truly unfair what was asked of them. Like, where do you
begin with comparisons? I mean, the School that had two Prefects looking after 200
children now has, you know, 35 or 36 children in the school and there are probably in the
range of, maybe, 60 to 70 who were childcare workers, you know. In addition, probably
another 30 to 40 staff who have auxiliary roles.
The evidence of former Prefects to the Investigation Committee

1.47 One former Prefect recounted what he had been told prior to his starting as a Prefect at the age
of 22:
The advice I was given when I went over there first, make sure they know who is boss
and your job was to keep control. There was very little support, I might add.
1.48 He went on to explain why he and his colleagues used physical punishment on a regular basis:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I suppose the lack of support for ourselves. There was
the big numbers and a small amount of staff, there was only three staff at that time. [The
absence of training] was a disaster ... you were only going on instinct at that time.
1.49 Another former Prefect, who worked in Ferryhouse for periods during the 1960s and 1970s,
complained about the long hours required for the job. He was exclusively in charge of 100 boys,
for 24 hours a day, and had limited time on his own. He had just reached his twentieth birthday and
had been appointed straight into Ferryhouse in the 1960s as a Prefect. He found his experience of
being Prefect ‘difficult to cope with’. He agreed that trying to control 100 boys made him feel ‘like
a sheepdog’. He had no previous experience of any kind in relation to boys in care. When asked
how he was trained for the role of Prefect, he replied:
Well, you would have just learned from Br Benito.2 He was there before me and, you
know, you would have fed into a system in some sense. Albeit there was never any
written, any programme as such, you know, of what you should or shouldn't do, like ...
Yeah. It was learned on the job, really, I suppose, yeah.
1.50 One Prefect, Fr Antonio,3 spoke about the difficulty he encountered when he was appointed
Prefect when he was a young member of the Rosminian Order. A small number of Prefects were
required to look after a large number of boys for 24 hours a day. He stated that this system was
never questioned by any of them:
I don't think we had the courage to do it or the maturity to do it, personally speaking I
wouldn't have had the maturity to do it at the time to even question it. Your work was your
prayer and you did what you were told to do, you were told you would get religious if you
did all your work.
2
3

1.51 He explained that the pressure could lead to excesses of punishment:
[Was there] physical abuse and that kind of stuff? I'm sure there would be because the
frustration would have been there, if you are going to lose control, fear comes in. As time
went on things would have improved a lot, but things would have got out of hand, certainly.
The Rosminian approach to allegations of abuse in Ferryhouse and Upton

1.52 The Order, in its Submissions and in its evidence to the Commission, accepted that the abuse of
children in its various forms, including physical and sexual abuse, had occurred in both Ferryhouse
and Upton during the period under investigation.
1.53 In the course of a Submission to the Investigation Committee, dated 17th June 2004, Fr O’Reilly
referred to, and quoted from, the apology expressed in 1999, at a time when three former
members of the Rosminian Institute had been convicted of sexually abusing children in its care:
The members of the Rosminian Institute are saddened and shamed that young people in
our care were abused by members of our Order. We deeply regret not only the abuse,
but also the shadow cast on the lives of those abused. We abhor all mistreatment of
children and we wish to express our profound sorrow.
1.54 Fr O’Reilly again acknowledged on behalf of his Order that the use of corporal punishment had
led to physical abuse in its schools. He also accepted that children had been sexually abused,
although he submitted that, amongst those in authority in recent times, there was not any
knowledge of sexual abuse prior to the late 1970s. He added that, in the course of working for
the Commission, the Rosminian Institute had become aware that sexual abuse had in fact
occurred earlier than previously believed. He said that, while the Rosminians did not know by
what standard to criticise their predecessors, they did not disassociate themselves from them. In
giving evidence to the Commission, they intended to assume responsibility for the past, to account
for it, to bear criticism for it and to learn from it.
1.55 Fr O’Reilly, in his Submission to the Investigation Committee, outlined the approach taken by the
Order in its response to individual complaints made through the Commission:
In our individual responses to the Commission, we have apologised and we have intended
that our co-operation with the Commission should be seen as an act of apology.
In some instances, our apologies have been qualified. In this, we have been fearful of
betrayal of our members and shocked by allegations. But we do not challenge the
accounts of survivors where we have no good evidence to do so, and we have resolved,
where people have been injured in the past, to do no further harm by denial. We have
witnessed and read of the courage and trauma of survivors, and it has affected us. We
are determined that errors of the past should not be compounded by our conduct in the
present.
1.56 During a preliminary hearing held in public on 18th June 2004, counsel for the Order focused on
the approach to complaints being taken by the Order:
We have resolutely declined to deny a case in which we have no evidence for denial.
That is a reversal of all of the established legal procedures ... it has been a difficult task,
but it has been, I have to say, a most emphatic decision of the Rosminian Order.
1.57 According to Fr O’Reilly, this decision was implemented even in situations where the Order found
itself in a dilemma. There were instances where a complainant said that he was hurt or abused
whilst in the care of a member of the Institute, and the complaints related to a member of the
Institute against whom there was no objective evidence, and whose general reputation was that
of a hard-working and respected member of the community. The decision was implemented even
though it created a difficulty for the member concerned, or for his family.
1.58 Fr O’Reilly explained that the Rosminian Institute had decided to take this approach because of
the ethos of the Order. They also desired to avoid an adversarial approach to the resolution of
conflicts before the Commission. He said that in the past, the Order’s responsibility was to work
for those who were in their care and that part of their job was to advocate for them before other
bodies, before the Department and society in general. That was their ethos, and that was what
the Rosminian Institute was about. For that reason, he said:
We are not going to contradict that type of approach that we have had throughout our
lives unless there is extremely good reason to do so.
1.59 He added that the avoidance of an adversarial approach was also driven by a desire to do no
further harm. This was an objective promoted in the course of inquiries into abuse in other
countries, such as Canada.4 Nevertheless, he explained, the avoidance of an adversarial
approach presented its own difficulties and dangers when seeking to determine the extent to
which abuse occurred.
1.60 The Rosminian Institute had taken the view that a strictly adversarial approach was unnecessary
and inappropriate, and that it could create a distracting polarisation of views and obscure the truth.
It believed that many of the individual allegations and complaints were beyond proving or
disproving, and that such investigation was unnecessary, as the faults and limitations of the
schools being inquired into would become apparent without the need to pursue every conflict
of evidence.
1.61 This issue was revisited in the course of written Submissions furnished by the Rosminian Institute
at the conclusion of hearings. They wrote:
Many aspects are visible through time without confronting uncertainties of memory, or
raising the divisive issue of recollection distorted by feeling or shared experiences. These
points have some relevance, but can create a distracting polarisation of views and obscure
the truth.
For some allegations of serious or wilful abuse, this approach may seem like indifference
to the truth, or to the reputation of our members. But there is a greater danger in thinking
that any length of inquiry could prove or disprove many of the individual cases. We believe
we must live with the uncertainty, and deal with matters as a whole.
1.62 The Rosminian Institute asserted that the confrontation of evidence in an adversarial way was also
unnecessary because, in many instances, the complainants’ accounts of hardship, deprivation or
neglect were not necessarily contradictory to the evidence given by members of the Order, who
described trying to cope with conditions which were brought about by a shortage of staffing,
training, and of resources that ought have been in place to facilitate the provision of proper care
for the children in their charge. Both sides were describing essentially the same thing, viewed
from different perspectives: on the one hand, the former resident was describing a deprived and
neglected childhood, with real needs not being addressed; while, on the other hand, the
overworked and under-resourced priest or Brother was describing their very real struggle to
provide, despite inadequate resources, good care for the children in their schools.
1.63 At the first public hearing, counsel for the Rosminian Institute outlined their legal position. He
submitted that whether boys resident in Ferryhouse were sexually abused was not in dispute, as
it is accepted that such abuse did occur. What had to be addressed by the Investigation Committee
4
Law Commission of Canada: + Institutional Child Abuse – Restoring Dignity Pt II Responses ‘Guiding Principles’
at p 7.

was how pervasive sexual abuse was in the School, and the extent of that abuse during the time
under investigation. In their statements of complaint, former residents from every era had made
allegations of such abuse. While, in general, allegations of sexual abuse were not expressly
denied in the Rosminian Statements, such allegations were not admitted either. For this reason it
was submitted it would not be appropriate for the Investigation Committee to take the view that
the absence of a denial should be deemed to be an admission of the truth of allegations, as may
be the case in civil proceedings.
1.64 In an inquiry into an institution, the Rosminians submitted, it was not necessary or appropriate to
decide on the validity of each complaint on an individual basis, but it was necessary to determine
how widespread abuse was during the history of the Institution. He pointed out that a reasonable
insight might be gained by looking elsewhere, beyond the allegations and counter-allegations, to
see what was known at the time.
1.65 Part of the reason for taking this approach was to avoid causing further distress to the former
residents of Ferryhouse and Upton. During the hearings, counsel for the Order examined
witnesses sympathetically, and, even when evidence was being challenged, it was done with
courtesy and care. The Investigation Committee was impressed by the number of apologies that
were made. The following are examples:
• we have learned since your statement to the Commission came in that Br Lazarro5 did
sexually abuse boys, I hope you will accept the Rosminian’s apology if that happened
to you. We haven't ever suspected it of [the other Brother] and I am sorry to ask you
questions about it.
• I am ashamed to ask you questions about what you describe about Br Valerio6 (the
questioning that followed was solely to elucidate how contact was made after the boy
had left the school).
• I don't want to ask you much at all because the hardship you have described deserves
not to be investigated in any way or questioned.
• We accept what you have said, we trust the truth of it completely. There is one very big
thing, which you have done today. [Your evidence] is a testament to the pain you
suffered and others with you.
1.66 While many witnesses found it hard to accept the apologies made by the Rosminians for the pain
and hardship they had suffered, it may have helped them to find that their evidence was treated
by the Order in such a sympathetic way.
1.67 This approach facilitated investigation. Counsel for the Rosminians often brought out details that
might have been missed. He elicited facts about school routines, practices and conditions, in order
to gain as much information as possible from witnesses. Sometimes, they were asked to fill in
gaps in the knowledge available to the Order. The Rosminians were correct in their submission
following the Phase II hearings by stating that:
the faults and limitations of the Schools become apparent without pursuing every conflict
of evidence.
The leather straps

1.68 The official instrument used to administer corporal punishment was the leather strap. There were
two kinds: one was a single piece of leather a 14 of an inch thick (0.63cm). It was about 19 inches
long (48.2cm), and 212 inches wide (6.3cm), with one end shaped to form a handle. It was used to
slap the palm of the hand. It weighed 5oz (147grms).
5
6

1.69 The second kind was a ‘doubler’. It was made in the shoemaker’s shop from two layers of leather
approximately 212 inches wide (6.3cm) and 22 inches long (55.8cm). The two strips were sewn
together and, again, one end was shaped to form a handle. Br Antonio, who worked in Ferryhouse,
confirmed that coins were sometimes inserted between the two layers of leather when this strap
was being assembled. He told the Investigation Committee:
And they are right what they say, because I opened the leather myself and saw there
were coins in the leather strap, which were stitched in the shoe shop.
1.70 Without coins, the strap weighed 11oz (311grms).
1.71 It is likely that different straps were in use from time to time, and it is not certain that all of them
contained metal or coins within them. One witness described the effectiveness of these two kinds
of straps:
If you are out in the yard – they carry their own straps, some of them, and it is only a
small one. You wouldn’t even feel it.
1.72 The Brothers carried the leather straps on them. The heavier strap was kept in the Prefect’s office.
Finance
1.73 The Investigation Committee commissioned chartered accountants, Mazars, to examine the
accounts of Upton and Ferryhouse with a view to assessing the application of state funding to the
institutions, and the financial consequences for the relevant institutions as a result of caring for
the children over the period 1939 to 1969. The Mazars report is in Volume IV.
1.74 Limited financial information was available. No accounts had survived from the 1940s, in respect
of Upton or the Irish Province of the Institute of Charity, and only two years’ accounts, 1941 and
1947, were available for Ferryhouse. No accounts were available between 1954 and 1960 for
either of the schools or for the Irish Province. The 1960s had better records for all three bodies.
1.75 It is impossible, therefore, to assess the actual day-to-day costs of running the industrial schools.
Mazars’ analysis of the capitation grant, by reference to Household Income and Unemployment
Assistance, would indicate that funding was adequate for both schools in the 1940s and 1950s,
although Upton would have been more financially challenged because of the fall of numbers in the
early 1950s. In Ferryhouse, high numbers and a farm of good-quality land should have ensured a
reasonably good basic standard of living for the boys.
1.76 Once numbers of residents began to fall in the 1960s, financial problems would have arisen and,
indeed, this led to the closure of Upton in 1966. By the time the Kennedy Committee reported in
1970, the capitation grant as a system of funding, which depended on high rates of committals,
was clearly inadequate, and alternatives had to be found. In the case of Ferryhouse, these
alternatives were not finally put in place until the early 1980s, when an annual budget based on
submitted estimates was agreed with the Department of Finance. During the 1970s, however,
significant increases in the State grant alleviated the position for those institutions like Ferryhouse
that continued to operate.

Chapter 2
St. Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton

(‘Upton’), 1889–1966
Introduction
The original building

2.01 When a local judge in Cork requested the setting up of a reformatory school to serve the area,
the Cork Society of St Vincent de Paul set up the Cork Reformatory Committee in 1858, to plan
such a school to contain juveniles outside adult prisons. They bought a 112-acre farm at Upton,
14 miles from Cork city, and asked the Rosminians, who had experience of such work in England,
to take charge of the Reformatory. A building was designed by Richard Brask, architect, and was
completed at a cost of £5,000 in 1860. The lease was transferred to the Rosminians in 1872.
2.02 The buildings formed a square, surrounding a central courtyard. Fr Moses Furlong, the first
Superior of Upton Reformatory, launched a Patronage Fund to gather public support for the work
of the Reformatory. He pointed out in 1867, that the boys in the Reformatory came from all parts
of Ireland. He reiterated the founding ideal when he wrote:
An instant’s reflection will convince anyone that no matter how carefully a lad may be
trained for a few years, his safety is fearfully imperilled if he be returned to his old haunts
and old associations, with no money, no assured occupation, no friends but his former
criminal companions, and no character but that of one who had been a criminal.1
2.03 When the Industrial Schools Act was extended to Ireland in 1868, the Rosminians sought to have
the School reclassified as an industrial school. It was certified as one in 1889, and was called
Danesfort Industrial School. It continued as an industrial school until it closed in 1966.
2.04 It was an imposing building, two storeys high, with extensive farmlands around it. One witness
who was there in the late 1950s, told the Investigation Committee:
It was a beautiful place ... [it] was beautiful for a visitor going there. It was better than
Butlin’s, but for us inside the walls it was a completely different thing. It wasn’t just one
day, it was every single day of your young lives. It was beautiful sometimes.
2.05 A former resident from the late 1950s and early 1960s said:
On arrival, as far as I can recall, it was into a yard that looked like a prison. It was a kind
of castle yard, like an old military parade ground, which a lot of children of my own age,
younger, a few maybe older, had been walking around almost in circles. It was frightening.
Naturally, I was crying – lonely it was.
1
Quoted in Brı́d Fahey Bates, The Institute of Charity: Rosminians. Their Irish Story 1860–2003 (Dublin: Ashfield
Publishing Press, 2003), p 74.

2.06 Another witness, from the late 1950s and early 1960s, said simply but evocatively:
When I arrived at Upton first, when I saw it, it looked like a mental home to me. That’s
what it actually looked like, a mental home.
2.07 Initially, Upton consisted of a big house, located on a farm of 112 acres. The size of the farm was
increased over the years and, at the time of its closure, it was approximately 220 acres. The main
building was in the form of a square around a central courtyard. In later years further buildings,
such as a chapel, a hall and various outhouses and workshops, were added.
2.08 The School was under the control of the Resident Manager, who was appointed by the Superior
or Provincial of the Irish Province. The School was run according to the principles laid down in
the Rules and Regulations for Danesfort Industrial School. The Resident Manager was responsible
for the staff. They may be grouped into four categories: the Members of the Institute of Charity;
the Dominican Sisters; the Teaching Staff; and the lay staff who worked in the various trade shops
or on the farm. In addition, members of the Institute of Charity sometimes lived in St Patrick’s
while studying elsewhere, in University College Cork, for example.
2.09 The Religious staff worked in various capacities: some were Prefects, with responsibility for the
control and supervision of the children; some were Secretaries, with responsibility for
administration; and some taught in the School, or worked in the various trade shops or on the
farm. The Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St Catherine of Siena worked in the School
in various capacities from 1946 to 1955. The School also employed a number of lay teachers,
who were paid by the Department of Education. The staff also included a number of farm hands
or lay staff that worked in the trade shops. The School was funded by the Department of Education
and the appropriate local authorities.
2.10 A large part of the building was destroyed when an accidental fire occurred in Upton on 21st July
1966, but it was not the reason for the closure of the School.
Closure of the School

2.11 Upton closed on 1st October 1966. There had been ongoing discussions within the Order for a
number of years previously regarding its closure. The falling numbers, lack of trained staff, and
the reorganisation and rationalisation of the schools run by the Order ultimately led to its closure
as an industrial school. The minutes of a Provincial Council meeting held on 19th November 1964
recorded that ‘the writing is on the wall as far as this particular work of charity in Upton is
concerned’.
2.12 On 1st March 1966, the decision was finally taken to close the School within six months from
April 1966.
2.13 The certificate of the School was resigned on 1st October 1966. At the time of its closure, there
were 83 boys in the School. These boys were either released or transferred to other industrial
schools. 16 boys were transferred to Letterfrack, 10 to Artane, 10 to Tralee, and 28 to Ferryhouse.
2.14 It reopened in 1972 as a centre for adults with mental handicap and learning disabilities. The
Institute of Charity handed over ownership of the School to the State in 2003, but it continues to
exercise a pastoral role.
Number of boys in Upton

2.15 In 1889, Upton was certified for the reception of 200 boys, with an accommodation limit of 300.
The number of boys in the School who were committed through the courts fluctuated during the
years 1937 to 1966. In 1937, there were 137 boys detained in the School, and this number
increased to 217 in 1943. As can be seen from the table below, the numbers declined between
1943 and 1958. In 1959, however, the numbers increased significantly to 216, owing to the closure
of Greenmount Industrial School and the transfer of boys from there to Upton. Thereafter, the
numbers declined steadily and, at the time of its closure in 1966, there were 83 boys in the School.
During its life as an Industrial School, approximately 3,000 boys were admitted.
Year Number of boys committed

1937 137
1939 105
1941 136
1943 217
1945 212
1947 189
1949 142
1951 139
1953 121
1955 128
1957 124
1959 216
1961 195
1963 189
1965 126
1966 83
2.16 The rise and fall in the numbers in the School can be seen from the graph below:
Number of Children Under Detention in Upton
250
200
150
Number
Line 1
100
50
0
37
39
41
43
45
47
49
51
53
55
57
59
61
63
65
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
Year
2.17 The number of admissions to Upton was a cause for concern to Fr Giuseppe,2 the Provincial, in
early 1939. In correspondence in February 1939 he mentioned that the falling numbers were
2

causing him some anxiety and that he had got a local TD ‘on the job now to bring pressure to
bear on the Minister to send extra transfers to Upton until our numbers have reached an economic
number’. A month later, in March 1939, he again wrote to say that he had spoken to the then
Minister for Education, Thomas Derrig, about the matter. However, according to him there was
little prospect of increasing numbers, as the Department was governed by a recommendation of
the Cussen Commission that children should be sent to the school that was nearest to their place
of origin, and Mr Derrig was disinclined to ‘override the regulations of his Dept’. He wrote that,
when he saw the Minister, he showed him a copy of their accounts and emphasised that they
were neither able nor prepared to continue to fund the School from their own finances. In a letter
sent later in the same year, he again mentioned that he was in talks with the Department about
the great inadequacy of the grants and the injustice to the religious orders in expecting them to
meet the costs out of their own funds or by heavy borrowing, when funding should be done by
the State.
2.18 By November 1939, it appears that Fr Giuseppe had enlisted the help and support of Mr Eamon
DeValera, the then Taoiseach and acting Minister for Education:
Dev. is taking up the matter of our school. I am informed that he has been convinced that
we have been unfairly discriminated against in the way of transfers and committals and
we are told to expect results soon.
2.19 In 1941, Fr Giuseppe was happy to note that the numbers had increased from 110 at the beginning
of the year to 144.
Physical abuse
Concessions made by the Rosminians

2.20 In 2002, Fr Matthew Gaffney, the Provincial of the Irish Province of the Institute of Charity,
submitted a general statement on behalf of the Order to the Committee. In this statement, he
accepted that corporal punishment was used as ‘a general disciplinary measure’, and was also
used as ‘a punishment or deterrent’ for bed-wetting, absconding and other infringements. The use
of corporal punishment, he said, had to be seen in two contexts: first, from the perspective of the
Institution, and second, in the light of the ‘social attitudes of the time’. From an institutional
perspective, he asserted that the ‘maintenance of control was an absolute necessity’, and was
achieved through the use of corporal punishment. He accepted that its use ‘produced a disciplinary
environment in which the distinction between punishment and abuse could become blurred’.
Indeed, he accepted that abuse had occurred in the administration of some corporal punishment,
and he apologised for this fact.
2.21 In their Opening Statement, dated 17th June 2004, the Rosminians reiterated their awareness ‘that
corporal punishment has led to abuse’ and ‘was known from time to time to have been excessive’.
But they asserted that the use of corporal punishment was regulated to some extent by ‘the
spoken instructions of the Manager of the School, recording, and by trust in the judgement of
those in charge’.
2.22 Having heard the evidence at the Phase II private hearings, the Order were willing to make more
concessions on this issue. In their written Submission in 2006 after the Phase III hearings, the
Order accepted that corporal punishment ‘was often used to excess’ and was ‘generally too readily
used as a solution to the problems of the Schools’. Departing from their earlier stance, they
conceded that ‘the standards of the time are not an adequate excuse or explanation’. They went
further, and conceded that the problems with corporal punishment were partly due to its
discretionary and unregulated use, particularly by the Prefects who were unsupervised.
2.23 They submitted that:
The susceptibility of corporal punishment to abuse seems inherent. If left to discretion, a
cause can always be found for its use, especially where authority is threatened or
insecure.
2.24 Fr O’Reilly at the Phase III public hearing referred to the inherent difficulties in using corporal
punishment in circumstances where there were no clear policies or guidelines. He described it as
‘a trap’:
Corporal punishment is a trap, if you allow corporal punishment without having the most
clear guidelines possible, it is a trap, it is a trap for everybody. It is a trap for the boys and
a trap for the adults. Because what you are saying is it is okay to hit children. And there
are times when they do things that are wrong and that are very, very wrong, and that
cause an enormous problem for the entire Institution. So inside yourself you think, “well,
it is okay”, and the only response is to punish even more. It is a trap.
2.25 He did concede that, at times, ‘the punishments that children received were brutal’.
2.26 The Order admitted that corporal punishment was used for absconding. Absconding was a serious
problem, because of concerns for the safety of the boys, and the possibility that they could
damage neighbours’ property. Fr O’Reilly conceded at the Phase III hearing that ‘boys who ran
away were often severely punished because of the problem that it created in the School, the
unease that it created among the rest of the boys’. The punishment administered was either slaps
on the hand or on the buttocks with a leather strap. He conceded that, on occasions, boys had to
remove their trousers for punishment. While each absconding was recorded, reasons for
absconding were not. He agreed that many ran away because they were homesick, fearful or
deeply unhappy in Upton. He also accepted the possibility that boys absconded because of
physical or sexual abuse. He acknowledged that, from time to time, boys’ heads were shaved as
part of the punishment for absconding. All children who absconded were punished, and
ringleaders were likely to be punished more severely. One form of punishment was ‘benders’, the
administration of the strap on the buttocks, but, he asserted rarely on the bare buttocks.
2.27 The Order also accepted that boys who wet their beds were given corporal punishment. They
were known as ‘slashers’ and had their own section of the dormitory. Between 10 and 25% of the
boys wet their beds, and for most of the period covered by the inquiry would have been ‘slapped’.
Towards the later years there was ‘less slapping’ for bed-wetting. The Rosminians also accepted
that boys had to take their wet sheets to the laundry in front of other boys and, while it may not
have been the intent, the Order accepts it was deeply embarrassing for them.
The role of Prefect

2.28 The Institution was run on regimented lines and the daily routine was subject to a strict regime of
order and discipline. The Prefects’ main purpose was to maintain discipline and control over a
large number of boys, and this they did by using corporal punishment. The job was described by
Br Marcello,3 who was in his early 20s when he arrived to take up the position of Assistant Prefect
in Upton in the mid-1960s. He said, ‘our work, or job was to contain the thing so that everything
else ran, to a certain extent, fairly smoothly’.
2.29 He was questioned about his use of the word ‘containment’ to describe the situation, and he
reiterated that this term did describe how he felt. He felt he had to ‘contain’ situations in order to
ensure that they did not blow out of proportion. The Prefects were constantly vigilant for
potential trouble.
3

2.30 He explained that discipline was maintained through the use of the strap or giving the boys a
‘clatter’, the term used for a blow with the hand. Corporal punishment was used on a regular basis
and, with 100 boys to control, ‘someone was getting it more or less all the time’. The range of
offences that resulted in corporal punishment varied. Something small, like talking in the line for
example, would warrant a ‘clatter’, but serious incidents were severely punished. He recalled
giving a boy eight slaps of the leather on each hand for stabbing one of his companions in the
tailor shop, and then being told by the Senior Prefect that he had not given the boy enough slaps.
He was asked what, in his view, was the purpose of corporal punishment. He answered:
Discipline, it was necessary. Because there were only two of us and any relaxation of
discipline at that particular time could have caused havoc in the school. That was the
position we had at that particular time. We thought that it was necessary ... I still think in
the circumstances there it was necessary.
2.31 The boys were punished on the spot for minor offences by whoever was in charge. More serious
offences that warranted ‘fairly severe punishment’ were dealt with by sending the boy to the
Prefect’s office for punishment, usually administered with a leather strap.
2.32 He conceded that boys could be punished on the spot with ‘a clatter’ and then could be sent to
the office for further punishment. The Prefect never inquired if a boy had already been punished,
so it was possible that boys would be punished more than once for the same offence. Many of
the witnesses felt aggrieved over this fact.
2.33 When asked whether corporal punishment was a first or last resort for the Prefect, he replied:
I think it was always the first resort ... We didn’t have any other resorts ... A lot of the time
I was frightened because at any time, if there was a concerted effort by the boys they
could have flattened me.
2.34 He had no training for dealing with delinquent boys, nothing in his religious or scholastic training
prepared him for it. There was no coherent scheme or policy for the boys in those years:
It was piecemeal, it was different little things we did, but there wasn’t the concerted effort
that we have made in the last 20 years.
2.35 Another Rosminian priest, Fr Christiano,4 who had also been a pupil in Upton, gave evidence to
the Committee from two perspectives. He was in Upton as a pupil during the 1950s. He
remembered an atmosphere dominated by punishment, which was meted out for misdemeanours
such as talking in the dormitory, or causing difficulty for the supervisor in the workshop. The
punishments were usually administered in the office by the Prefect. He recalled a particular
incident of group punishment, when some boys, who had been confined to a small recreation
room for the day while others attended a sports event, were punished for trashing the room and
scattering the board games. His impression was that each boy got about 20 ‘benders’, and he
recalled that it only stopped because an older boy challenged the Brother who had been beating
the boys until he had exhausted himself.
2.36 Fr Christiano was a promising student and was sent to the Rosminian secondary school in
Omeath. He remembered it felt like getting out of prison. He also recalled there was no corporal
punishment in Omeath. The atmosphere there was not punitive.
2.37 He believed that, before Upton closed, it had deteriorated and had become a punishment regime.
At some time during each day, there were boys being punished. When he returned to Upton from
Omeath during the holidays, he and the other secondary students ate in a little refectory situated
4

close to the Prefect’s office, and far too often they could hear the bang of the strap. By the time
the witness was in university, and Upton was coming to a close, the School had changed from
his early years, when it was relatively benign, into an excessively punitive place.
2.38 When Fr Christiano was asked how he reconciled the religious life, which involved love, charity
and kindness, with a system that required men of the cloth to be brutal and severe, he replied
that he did not believe that this was a requirement. The post of Prefect did involve the obligation
to impose discipline, but he did not see the need to be brutal:
I later became a Prefect in Ferryhouse and one of the things I did was throw the strap in
the river, in the Suir in Ferryhouse, the one I had. There is a different way. We have the
feast of St. Don Bosco every year, he was a man who loved children and I read – there
is a reading in the book – his instruction to his Brothers about looking after children, and
I say, ‘my God, why didn’t anyone show some of our lads this piece?’.
2.39 When asked whether he found a ‘different way’, he replied:

No, I would say my judgement of Prefects was that those with better education or more
culture were much better than those who were not educated and didn’t really have much
of an idea what to do except keep order.
2.40 When it was suggested to him that he had found a better way through education, he replied:
Oh absolutely. My experience at Upton, it just made me never ever let that happen to
anybody if you can possibly do anything about it. When I was in charge, I was not going
to be a Prefect like I had seen.
2.41 The use of corporal punishment as a general disciplinary measure for absconding, bed-wetting,
and other infractions, many of which were of a very minor nature, produced an all-pervasive
climate of fear. One former pupil described it as follows:
I suppose first of all the place you were in, and obviously the people that were allegedly
looking after you. I think they probably controlled these places with this fear, I believe. It
was just a climate of fear that you were going to get hit, you were going to get beaten,
something evil was going to happen to you. There was no happiness; there was nothing
to be glad about. Maybe the only part of escaping out of that place was probably when you
went to sleep, that was probably the only escape you had from the reality of that place.
2.42 Many of the witnesses described the fear they felt when they had to wait outside the office for
punishment. One witness said the fear and the waiting remained a more vivid memory than being
struck with the leather.
Documentary evidence – the punishment books

2.43 The main documentary sources dealing with corporal punishment in Upton are two punishment
books, the first covering the years from 1889 to 1893, and the second relating to the period 1952
to 1963.
2.44 The obligation to maintain a record of punishments went back to the beginning of industrial schools
in the late 19th Century, and this was re-reiterated in Rule 12 of the 1933 Rules and Regulations.
This rule required all industrial schools to maintain a punishment book for serious misdemeanours,
and also stipulated that it was to be shown to the Inspector of the Department of Education when
he visited:
All serious misconduct, and the Punishments inflicted for it, shall be entered in a book to
be kept for that purpose, which shall be laid before the Inspector when he visits.5
5
1933 Rules and Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools in Saorstát Éireann, Rule 12.

2.45 However, out of all of the industrial schools examined by the Investigation Committee, only Upton
and St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Dundalk, were able to produce punishment books, and then
only for some of the period under investigation.
2.46 The Upton books are leather-bound volumes, with double pages of entries set out in tabular form
and divided into six columns, giving spaces for: the date of the offence, name of offender, nature
of offence, by whom reported, the punishment given and remarks on the case.
2.47 The first book for Upton spans the period 1889 to 1893, and has 87 pages of details of
punishments. The later book, for the period 1952 to 1963, consists of only 18 double pages of
entries. While the earlier book is of interest by way of comparison and is a valuable historical
source, the later volume, covering years relevant to this inquiry, is of real importance. There are,
unfortunately, serious deficiencies in the record keeping in this later book, but the contents are
highly significant.
The 1952 to 1963 book
2.48 The first problem with this punishment book is that it is nothing like a complete record for the
period between the first entry and the last. There are long gaps in time between dates and entries
appear out of chronological sequence. It is obvious that the book was not kept up to date and that
it was not filled in carefully or systematically.
2.49 Another problem is inconsistency in the breaches of rules that are recorded in the punishment
book. Between 1952 and 1954, there was almost no entry for punishment of immorality, yet from
September 1954 onwards it was almost the sole reason for punishment. Given the frequency of
punishments for immorality, it would be expected that there would have been some record of
punishment for it in the first period, and, in the second period, there must have been some
occasions when boys were punished for reasons other than immorality.
2.50 There is a gap at the front of the book where pages appear to be missing. There is nothing to
indicate the reason for removing them.
Contents of the punishment books
2.51 The offences listed between 1952 and 1954 include stealing, disobedience, giving cheek,
absconding, lying, laziness, smoking, talking at Mass, wasting food, horseplay, rough play, missing
from yard, and being out of bounds. Also listed on a very small number of occasions was
‘immorality’ with other boys.
2.52 The recorded punishments varied according to the offence committed, and consisted of being hit
with the leather strap on the hand or the buttocks. They were usually noted as being ‘over pants’,
but on three dates in 1953 the book records that boys were punished by slaps ‘without pants’.
Their offences were ‘run away, stole school property’, ‘run away’, ‘give cheek to a Brother’ and
‘destroying clothes’. The number of slaps with the leather strap on the bare bottom ranged from
6 to 15. These three dates in January and February 1953 are the only occasions when punishment
was recorded as being given on the bare buttocks.

2.53 The following table provides some examples of offences and punishments for 1952 and 1953:
Date Offence Punishment

26 Nov 1952 Giving cheek and being 6 over pants
disobedient
20 Dec 1952 Disobedience in continually 6 over pants
playing soccer
20 Jan 1953 Run away, stole school property 10 without pants [for one boy]
[3 boys committed this offence] and
15 without pants [for two boys]
22 Feb 1953 Give cheek to a Brother 12 without pants
23 Feb 1953 Destroying clothes [2 boys] 6 without pants [each]
22 April 1953 Disobedience, sulking, 6 on pants
slothfulness
22 June 1953 Disobedience to Prefect 6 on hands
24 June 1953 Disrespect for teacher 6 on hands
25 June 1953 Lying and helping himself to Six on hands
bread and butter in the pantry
5 July 1953 Fooling and talking at Mass 8 on hands
6 July 1953 In boiler house having a rest 5 over pants
9 July 1953 Destroying his coat 4 on hands
2 Sept 1953 Throwing good food away 5 on hands
5 Sept 1953 Neglect of religious duties 12 over pants
21 Sept 1953 Stealing and running away 6 over pants
28 Sept 1953 Smoking in W.C. 6 over pants
13 Oct 1953 Plotting against the Prefects – an 10 over pants
enemy in the camp
2.54 The entry for 19th September 1954 marked the beginning of the period of intense concentration
on immorality. The last entry recorded that 18 boys were punished for immorality. The first 10 of
them were guilty of ‘wretched’ immorality, and each of them received 20 slaps over pants. The
remaining eight boys were also found guilty of ‘wretched’ immorality but ‘yet not so frequently’.
Despite this mitigating circumstance, these eight boys nevertheless received the same
punishment of ‘20 over pants’. A simple calculation shows that, on this day, one Brother
administered 360 strokes of the leather strap on the buttocks of 18 boys.
2.55 An entry in the book dated 17th November 1955 recorded punishment, for immorality with other
boys, of ‘20 over pants’, and concluded with the comment:
A coward when faced with the music. But when Arturo Toscanini took the baton in his
hand, there was more music in Beethoven’s “Fifth” than one expected to find.
2.56 This was not explained in the book but it seems to be a self-congratulatory and pejorative
reference to the cries that the beating produced. The Prefect, Br Alfonso,6 who made the entry
gave evidence to the Investigation Committee, and denied that the reference to Beethoven in the
context of being conducted by Toscanini had anything to do with striking the boys, but was to do
with making them sing.
6

2.57 A further entry dated 20th November 1955 recorded sexual offences by nine boys, including the
same boy referred to in the above quotation. This time, the entry reads:
Observe that these boys have repeated the same offence – they were up to their eyes in
it any time they got a chance: their activities were confined to their own happy circle and
no one else could enter – where angels fear to tread.
2.58 A comment about one of the boys displayed an awareness of peer sexual abuse, as distinct from
immorality among consenting boys:
A new offender interfered with many small boys.
2.59 Other examples of punishment in the latter part of the book, from 1954 to 1963, are set out in the
following table:
Date Offence Punishment
19 Sept 1954 Immorality – wretched 20 over pants [each]

[18 boys]
19 Sept 1955 Immorality – wretched, yet not 20 over pants

too frequently [one boy]
19 Sept 1955 Immorality – not so extensive 15 over pants

[one boy]
19 Sept 1955 Bad conduct – immorality 10 over pants [each]

[4 boys]
19 Sept 1955 Immoral talk 3 over pants [each]

[2 boys]
28 Sept 1956 Immorality [2 boys] 4 over pants and

6 over pants
31 Jan 1959 Immorality under the eyes of 10 over pants [each]

others in the billiard room [2
boys]
26 Feb 1960 Immorality with others [6 boys] 10 over pants [for 5 boys] and
8 over pants [for one boy]
04 Mar 1960 Immorality with others 10 over pants

05 Mar 1960 Immorality with others [2 boys] 10 over pants each
08 Mar 1960 Immorality with others [2 boys] 10 over pants each
04 April 1960 Immorality with others 10 over pants

5 Jan 1962 Immorality in school giving bad 20 over pants
example to small boys also going
on with filthy talk
9 Jan 1962 Immorality with others while 20 over pants

supposed to be working in
sacristy
2.60 The first punishment book for Upton spanned the period 1889 to 1893. For most misdemeanours,
the punishment ranged from three to eight slaps of the leather and, for the more serious offences
such as immoral conduct, cursing, immodest language and absconding, the number of strokes
ranged from 10 to 15. The highest number recorded in the book was 15, and this occurred only
twice. The next highest number of slaps was 14, which also occurred twice.

2.61 Sexual acts amongst the boys did not seem to be a major problem at that time. A few instances
were recorded in 1890 of immodest conduct and immodest language. A boy received 15 slaps on
5th April 1890 for immodest conduct. On 9th June 1890, nine boys were found guilty of immorality
in the fields, and six were given 12 slaps, two received nine slaps of the leather, and one boy
received no punishment. The only other example of immorality amongst boys is recorded on 11th
December 1893, when five boys were found guilty and were stripped, and four received eight
slaps and one received seven slaps of the leather.
2.62 The most striking difference between the two books is that the earlier book is systematic, with a
chronological method of recording the information. These entries make it probable that it is a full
account of punishments for serious misconduct during the period covered, as required by the
rules. The later book compares unfavourably with it: it is not comprehensive, it is unmethodical,
and is often not chronological. In addition, the severity of punishment in the later book is greater
than the earlier one.
Impact of 1952–1963 book

2.63 The information in the 1952–1963 book tended to undermine and contradict the recollection of
former staff of the School as to the punishment regime.
2.64 The severity of punishment, as recorded in the book, is greatly in excess of what some respondent
witnesses remembered. Br Alfonso was insistent that the amount of punishment was not
excessive, and he was quite vigorous in defending his position. The numbers of blows recorded
in the book, however, were wholly in conflict with his recollection, and counsel for the complainants
suggested to him that the evidence of this book was more reliable because it was a
contemporaneous record, and the Prefect or other person recording the punishment in the book
had no reason to exaggerate the amount. The intention must have been to give an accurate
description of what was inflicted.
2.65 Apart from Br Alfonso, the Investigation Committee had evidence in the form of correspondence
from Br Giovani,7 who served in Upton for one year in the 1950s, a period covered by the entries
in the book, which gave a different impression of the level of punishment from that indicated in
the punishment book.
2.66 The entries in the punishment book demonstrate that the severity and frequency of beatings were
greater than what were recollected by the staff. This discrepancy explains why accounts given by
complainants, whose credibility was not in doubt, differed so markedly from the accounts given
by respondents. This conflict appears in other institutions investigated.
2.67 • The 1952-1963 punishment book provides evidence of the severity of punishments that
were inflicted in Upton in the 1950s and early 1960s. It contradicts the recollections of
Br Alfonso and Br Giovani, who recalled that punishments were not excessive, and
supports the accounts given by the complainants.
• The later book contrasts unfavourably with the one kept in the late 19th century. It is not
comprehensive, it is not methodical and is often not chronological, and the severity of
punishment is greater.
• Some of the comments in the book suggest that they were not written in anticipation
of an official inspection of the book, and there is no record of any such inspection.
• The punishment book is not a complete record, but it is accurate in respect of the
punishment that it records.
7

• The book does not demonstrate an ordered system of punishment that was properly
supervised and recorded on all occasions.
• The punishment books are not a complete record of punishments administered during
the periods they cover. It is highly likely that other beatings were also administered.
Evidence of respondents
Br Alfonso
2.68 Br Alfonso was a dominant figure during his time in Upton. He held the position of Prefect for a
number of years from the mid-1950s. He was physically strong, and evidence from former
residents confirms this.
2.69 One former resident was asked to describe Br Alfonso. He said:

He had a bubbly personality, he had a wonderful structure. He was a brilliant golfer and
a brilliant hurler ... To me, I was his lap dog. If he hit a sliotar and it went into the woods
or into the nettles, me in my short little pants had to go and look for it and bring it back to
him. Likewise, with a golf ball. And if you couldn’t find it you stayed until you did.
2.70 Another witness described the strength of Br Alfonso when he administered the strap:
He really physically forced (indicating). It was like a golf driver and he was a golfer. That’s
what he used to spend his time, playing golf. He used use the straps like a golfer. I never
got so much pain in my life.
2.71 Br Alfonso said that corporal punishment in Upton was an essential tool in the maintenance of
order in the School. He was given no training or advice regarding its use, which was a matter
solely for his discretion. Other members of staff would send boys to him for punishment, and he
always knew the reason for the punishment. He said that he always recorded his punishments in
the punishment book and that the Resident Manager inspected his book regularly. When the
entries in the punishment book were first raised with Br Alfonso during the investigation into
Ferryhouse, in questioning about absconders, he said:
The most strokes on the seat of the pants they would get for anything like that, if it
were that, would be 10 strokes, that was a lot but that was what it was, that would be
the maximum.
2.72 He went on to assert that 10 would be the maximum number of strokes for any offence. He
confirmed that the Prefect made the entries in the book after the punishment was given. When
the information in the punishment book showing 20 strokes given on the bare buttocks on a boy
for immorality was put to him, he was incredulous:
That couldn’t possibly have happened during my time ... That never ever happened. I put
my hand on that Bible there, that never happened.
2.73 He was adamant that he himself had never exceeded 10 slaps when hitting a boy. However, when
he was shown the punishment book, he had to admit that when he was Prefect he had himself
meted out punishment of 20 strokes on the buttocks for sexual offences committed by the boys,
for ‘immorality’ and ‘wretched immorality’. He went on to justify the bigger punishment because it
was for ‘wretched immorality’.
2.74 The importance of the punishment book can be seen from this exchange. Not only does it provide
a contemporaneous account of the administration of corporal punishment, but it also affords
corroboration of the evidence of some of the former residents who were adamant that they had
received punishment in excess of 10 strokes.
2.75 Punishment was administered in the Prefect’s office, and it could happen, albeit rarely, that a boy
would have to wait outside the office for punishment. Br Alfonso disliked the term ‘punishment’,
and described his position as follows:
Punishment would be administered – well, I don’t want to call it “punishment”, but I have
written in that book which I have there that when boys were chastised, I will use that word,
they were advised. So there would be lots of advice going on instead of punishment.
2.76 This phrase ‘lots of advice’, to describe multiple blows with a strap on a boy’s hands or buttocks,
minimises the whole nature of corporal punishment, which is exercising control by inflicting pain.
He went on to say that punishment was not administered to boys of all ages, but he refused to
be drawn on the age at which punishment started.
2.77 Counsel for three complainants referred to the entry for 19th September 1954, the day on which it
was recorded that 18 boys were each given 20 strokes for ‘wretched immorality’. Br Alfonso was
unable to recall the occasion when so many strokes had been administered, although it was
simple arithmetic (but erroneous because counsel thought 17 and not 18 boys were involved).
2.78 On a number of occasions during his cross-examination, Br Alfonso appeared to find some of the
suggestions made by counsel for the complainants derisory. One such instance arose when a
witness gave evidence that he had felt children were being used ‘like lap dogs to collect your ball’.
Br Alfonso was asked why he found this derisory:
No, and the reason I laughed, excuse me, no, they were my children, I loved them. I had
no approach to the children like that at all, they were wonderful and that is all and they
are still my children and that so, just I could never treat any child like that as a lap dog, I
could not do that.
2.79 He suggested, instead, that the boys played golf with him and they would all be having a good
time.
2.80 He said that, during his time in Upton, he never beat anyone for bed-wetting and never saw
anyone being beaten for that reason.
2.81 He said that, when boys were sent to his office for punishment, they did not always get a beating,
as sometimes he gave them an orange or an apple. When asked if he thought he was strict or
fairly strict, he preferred to describe himself as fair. In his evidence before the Committee in the
Ferryhouse hearings, he was asked to comment on the following quotation from his submission
to the Inquiry:
During all those years I fought many battles for the boys, of which they know nothing. I
am not ashamed to say that I often wept silently in empathy for the boys who were trapped
within a system, which lumped together delinquents and orphans, an arrangement which
compounded the problem.
2.82 He recalled someone saying to him once that it was a good thing for orphans to be exposed to
delinquents, but this made no sense to him at all. In his view, orphans were coming from different
places and needed entirely different treatment to delinquents:
Not that the delinquents need have to get rigid treatment, or anything else like that, but
they’re coming from a different background, a different experience and everything else,
and the orphans are a different people altogether. And so to expose them to that type –
that’s the orphans, to that type of criminality – I don’t ever use that word because I never
treated them as criminals, they were all my own children, every one of them. But to expose
them to children who had such deviousness in their lives in the form of theft and all these
type of things, that they had agenda hidden up their sleeves all the time, to expose them
to that was to encourage them to come in to that and to me there was something criminal
about that.
2.83 He described Upton as ‘a place of great activity, seething with action, excitement’.
2.84 The complainant evidence in respect of this Brother is dealt with below.
The letter of Br Giovani

2.85 Br Giovani joined the Institute of Charity in the early 1950s, a month after he was professed. He
was appointed Prefect at Upton soon after, a position that he held for a period of 12 months. In a
letter written in the late 1990s, he painted a picture of what it was like to be a Prefect in Upton
during the 1950s.
2.86 He viewed his appointment as Prefect as an awesome responsibility for one so young. Br Giovani
had just completed his religious instruction and had received no official training or instruction for
his new job. The only advice he received came from his former Novice Master, Fr Cecilio,8 who
told him, ‘Don’t be a police man’. These five words constituted his only introduction to a job which
involved both him and his colleague, Br Alfonso, taking responsibility for the care and control of
over 300 boys.
2.87 Br Giovani said that he was never furnished with a precise description of what it was he was
supposed to do, but it did entail the coordination of the activities of nearly all of the 300 boys from
morning till night. He said that there was very little in the way of recreational activities for the boys
when he was appointed. Not surprisingly, in light of their youth, both he and Br Alfonso attempted
to remedy this deficiency by instituting a range of games and activities for the boys. He described
Br Alfonso as a talented organiser, who was considered totally devoted to the task of trying to
improve the lot of the boys.
2.88 He said that the Prefects were responsible for the discipline of the boys. The Prefects had the
authority to administer three slaps with a leather strap on the palm of the hand. The Prefect was
obliged to record the incident in the punishment book. The Rector, Fr Fabiano,9 would periodically
review this book. Further punishment could only be administered with the consent of the Rector.
He said that this consent would only be given in severe cases, and he stated that he personally
could not remember any incident where further and extra punishment was administered.
2.89 Br Giovani stated that there was no brutality, cruelty or physical abuse in Upton during the 12
months he was there. He stated that, while the regime in the School was ‘austere’ and harsh, the
level of corporal punishment would have been commensurate with the levels pertaining in every
other school at the time. Indeed, he stated that, during the period which he spent in Upton, great
strides were made to reduce the levels of corporal punishment. However, in a later letter, he
compared the regime to that of a ‘concentration camp’, accepting that Upton was not a pleasant
place to be as a pupil, and stated that he felt guilty for not having done more to help the boys. He
stated that all he ever did was complain while others tried to help in a more practical way.
Evidence of complainant witnesses

2.90 The earliest witness account came from a boy who was admitted in the late 1940s. He recalled
being physically punished for bed-wetting. He was also punished in the classroom by the lay
headmaster, Mr Maher.10 He described a number of incidents involving two of the Prefects,
including one beating given to a boy who absconded because his father was dying and he was
8
9
10

not allowed to go to his funeral. He described the Prefects as being ‘over the top’ in inflicting
punishment. He explained:
This particular man was always over the top, the two of them were definitely over the top.
Any time I was hit or beaten or attacked, or hit by anyone, it was always in a rage ...
2.91 He disputed entries in the punishment book of two and three slaps, as he said the boys were
always given more and remembered the Brothers making the entries in the punishment book.
2.92 Another witness resident in Upton in the mid-1950s described the regime as brutal from the first
day. He particularly recalled Saturday, which was shower day. No matter how hard the boys tried
to clean themselves, it was never good enough for the Brother in charge. The boys would be
clattered back into the shower with an open fist or with the leather if their nails were still dirty.
Punishment with the leather was almost a daily feature for things like talking in the dormitory,
talking in the ranks, etc. The most vicious Brother was Br Donato.11 The witness recalled being
punished in the washroom one day, because he could not explain how he came to have a spoon
in his pocket; he had actually dug it up in the garden earlier in the day. His legs were so bruised
from the beating, it was noticed by Br Nico12 the following day in the garden. He assumed Br Nico
admonished Br Donato for the beating because, a few days later, he received a further beating
from Br Donato for telling tales.
2.93 There were two Brothers who were siblings in Upton, Br Orlando13 and Br Donato, and the witness
claimed they were both vicious. Prior to Br Nico arriving in Upton, this witness recalled that the
person in charge of the garden was very tough.
2.94 This witness recalled that all punishments, except for minor offences, such as having holes in
one’s socks, were administered in the washroom. The leather was administered on the buttocks.
He was only ever hit on the hand in class. The typical number of strokes of the leather
administered was between 6 and 12, with the exception of Br Donato who kept slapping with the
leather until the boy would eventually fall down.
2.95 The worst experience for him was the physical abuse. The sexual abuse he was subjected to was
not brutal, and the Brother who sexually abused him would give him sweets, so he did not see it
as being as bad as the beatings from Br Donato.
2.96 A witness present in the early 1960s recalled his very first experience of physical abuse. The boys
were out for a Sunday walk and, on their return, they used the toilet and were talking to each
other in there, unaware that it was against the rules. Br Alfonso overheard them and sent for them
up to the office, where they were made to bend over a stool and hold the legs of the stool. Br
Alfonso administered six “benders” on that occasion. The witness was not the first of the four to
be punished:
I wasn’t first, I don’t know who got the first one. Someone was first. Three of us would be
standing watching this and believe me when you get one of these, if you thought you
couldn’t jump, you would jump when you get one of these, six feet in the air, no problem,
especially with Br Alfonso. He really physically forced. (Indicating) It was like a golf driver
and he was a golfer. That’s what he used to spend his time, playing golf. He used use
the straps like a golfer. I never got so much pain in my life. I remember the first one of
those I got. I never thought anyone could go through so much pain as what we went
through with them. I got six of those and you were that colour, all your hips would be that
11
12
13

colour for weeks after and (indicating) you couldn’t tell no-one. If you told anyone you
would get more.
2.97 Other Brothers, including Br Donato and Br Ludano,14 gave him beatings, but none were as severe
as Br Alfonso’s.
2.98 He did not accept the contention that punishments were limited to three slaps on the hand. He
said that he was slapped on the hand on one occasion, and the rest of the time he was beaten
on the buttocks, and he sometimes got between 12 and 14 strokes of the leather.
2.99 A witness who was also resident in the early 1960s said that, from his earliest days in Upton, the
daily routine often involved receiving a smack on the face for minor things, such as not getting
out of bed quickly enough in the morning. He was only 10 years old at the time, and remembered
how boys had to stand to attention all the time, even when they were being beaten by a Brother.
After dressing, the boys went to the yard and then to Mass. Any misbehaviour at Mass resulted
in being sent to the office for benders:
Punishment in St. Patrick’s, Upton was a regular thing. I would have to say it was – you
went to school, you went to bed, you went to work and there was nothing but fear, fear,
fear. It was just fear the whole way.
2.100 He recalled receiving one severe beating from Br Alfonso. He was about 11 years old when he
was accused of ‘scamping’, a name used for masturbation. He also described how it was a regular
enough occurrence for a boy to be brought to the office for punishment, this usually related to the
boy being accused of ‘scamping’. He also recalled hearing the screams and cries of boys who
had been taken from their beds in the evening to the office for punishment, as the office was
situated underneath the centre of the dormitory. Punishment by the Prefect was normally
administered in the office, but the boys could be beaten anywhere, in the washroom, or in the
shower room on Saturdays.
2.101 One witness resident during the early 1960s recalled an incident when the boys were watching a
film, which they did not enjoy and, at the end of it, they gave a slow handclap. Each boy was
brought out into the yard, one by one, and called into the washroom and beaten. He thought there
were about 150 boys punished in total. This fact was confirmed by another witness. He recalled
one Brother, Br Alfonso in particular who often beat him. The Brother was fond of music and
particularly of hurling and golf. He used to make the boys fetch his golf balls and beat them if they
couldn’t find them. He said that punishment was normally administered on the buttocks with a
leather strap. According to him, the minimum number of strokes with the leather was six, and he
said ‘If you didn’t get six you didn’t get anything’ and if the punishment was administered on the
hand he would be ‘very lucky’.
2.102 Another witness remembered being taken out of school to attend to the needs of an ill priest. He
said he did not smoke at the time, but was accused of stealing Lucky Strikes from the priest’s
room. He denied he had ever done such a thing, but Br Marcello brought him upstairs to a
classroom and told him to put on swimming trunks and proceeded to beat him severely. He also
recalled a boy who was extremely thin being leathered in the showers by Br Marcello. This Brother
requested that this witness should hold the boy down while he beat him. He said he refused to
do this because the boy was so young.
2.103 Finding oneself in the wrong place at the wrong time was a matter for punishment, according to
one witness. He received the leather for not having his socks darned. He later attended a normal
14

national school, and was anxious to differentiate between the slaps that were acceptable there as
compared with the punishment in Upton. He said:
The level of punishment, the force, the ferocity of it. It was done in such a savage manner
that it was way beyond anything that you could class as being the norm.
2.104 He did not agree with the Resident Manager, Br Alanzo,15 who wrote in the late 1950s in response
to a complaint, which compared the treatment of boys in Greenmount and Upton, that the leather
strap was rarely used. He thought that what was written was an untruth.
2.105 One witness said he was not long in Upton before he was called into the office by Brs Ludano
and Donato, and questioned about his brother who had been in Ferryhouse and was now in
Daingean. Once they established they were siblings, the Brothers said words to the effect ‘we
won’t make the same mistake with you’ and proceeded to strike him across the face and gave
him ‘benders’ on the buttocks with the leather. He was black and blue from this beating. He
recalled being beaten also by a Fr Gian16 on the farm, but the main punishments were meted out
by Brs Ludano and Donato.
2.106 The witness spoke about the punishment for immorality with others. He explained how, every
couple of months or so in Upton, Brs Ludano and Donato would take a boy into the office and
strap him until he offered up the name of a boy who had been scamping with him. This went on
as the next boy would name another boy, ‘it was a never ending ... circle’.
Internal survey carried out by the Rosminians

2.107 A decision was made in 2002 by the Rosminian Order to carry out a survey of all surviving
Rosminian Brothers and priests, to assess the extent of their knowledge of physical and sexual
abuse at the time. The survey was carried out in respect of both Ferryhouse and Upton. In
response to a question about knowledge of physical abuse in Upton, the following responses
were elicited:
2.108 Br Tomasso17 said that, although he had never witnessed anything himself, he did recall hearing
that Br Alfonso administered excessive punishment on a number of occasions.
2.109 Fr Stefano18 said that he thought that there were a number of cases of excessive punishment.
2.110 One anonymous respondent, when asked whether he felt that corporal punishment was
excessive, replied:
Yes, the longer I spent there: but then, there were few Fr Flanagans in Ireland: nobody
knew any better: it was common in most places at that time.
2.111 When asked if the Rector was aware of the fact that excessive punishment was being
administered, he stated:
If he wasn’t Blind, deaf and dumb, he must have known: but he didn’t know any better. In
my years as prefect there was a punishment book, wherein we, prefects had to write in
all punishment – three slaps were allowed. This was Fr Fabiano’s idea: it ended with him.
2.112 Fr Gustavo19 said that he witnessed Br Alba20 beating boys in the old infirmary for talking in the
dormitory. He said that he questioned Br Alba but was told to mind his own business. He said
that he heard that Br Alfonso was tough and cruel.
15
16
17
18
19
20

2.113 Br Flavio21 said that, while he was a scholastic in Upton, he often saw punishment administered.
He implied that this was excessive in nature as, in the next sentence, he stated ‘while in charge
of discipline in Omeath, I too punished excessively’; when asked whether the Rector, Frs Alanzo
and Eduardo,22 knew about the excessive violence, he replied ‘not sure if the rector knew all the
sordid details – probably not’. He identified Brs Donato and Alfonso as excessive punishers.
2.114 All Brothers surveyed agreed that there was inappropriate punishment in Upton.
Conclusions on physical abuse

2.115 1. It was not in dispute that physical abuse took place, and the only issues were how
widespread it was and how brutal.
2. Physical abuse was widespread and systemic. Excessive punishment was an everyday
occurrence and was brutal and severe.
3. Like many other institutions, Upton kept control over the boys by maintaining a climate
of fear.
4. Corporal punishment was used by religious and lay staff as an instrument of control
as well as for the purpose of chastisement.
5. The punishment book of the early 1950s documents brutal corporal punishment.
6. Punishment was not supervised or controlled and the severity of punishment was a
matter for the individual who administered it.
7. The abusive nature of the regime as recalled by complainants is corroborated by the
entries in the punishment book, and by some of the religious.
Sexual abuse
Order’s approach to allegations of sexual abuse

2.116 At the Phase III public hearing held on 9th May 2006, Fr O’Reilly, Provincial of the Rosminians,
went further than previous concessions, saying that:
I accept totally that there are people out there who have also been – who have been
sexually abused in our institutions who have not come forward to this Commission. I know
that, and we accept that, there are people who were abused in our institutions, sexually
abused who have not come forward to this Commission, or to any – or indeed to other
forum.
2.117 Fr O’Reilly was asked whether the attitude of the Order in relation to the issue of sexual abuse
had been changed by the evidence given at the Phase II hearings. He responded:
I think we have grown in appreciation of the impact that being in the industrial schools
had on the children. I think we feel different about the whole thing now than we did
previously. Two years ago we had come an awful long way, I think we have come further
since then. I think it has impacted on us enormously.
2.118 Fr O’Reilly acknowledged that the response of the Order, in the wake of revelations of sexual
abuse, had been inadequate. He did concede that it was the fear of scandal which prompted them
to keep quiet about the situation. However, he justified this response on the basis that those in
authority at the time lacked a proper understanding of the situation:
21
22

I think clearly at the time they did not want the scandal to be known, because they felt it
would affect the entire Institution. I think they had a very immature sort of understanding
of what the problem was ...
2.119 He did not concede that the Order’s primary motive was to protect the abuser and cover up the
situation, and instead asserted that those in authority at the time ‘did know it was wrong and that
it was hurtful to the boys and that that was the first priority’. However, they did not seek at the
time to consider the impact of such abuse on the boys. Although knowing it was wrong, such
sexual abuse was not reported to the Gardaı́ until 1995, despite the Order being aware of sexual
abuse in the 1960s and, more particularly, in 1979. Instead, known abusers were moved to
other institutions.
The Rome archive
2.120 Related inquiries led to the discovery of cases in 1956, 1957 and 1959. Questionnaires were
circulated to members of the Order who had little or no involvement with the Industrial School.
These corroborated the written material and referred to other previously unknown allegations.
2.121 Fr Gaffney also stated that he had asked the Superior General of the Rosminian Order in Rome,
Fr James Flynn, to carry out a search for documents containing references to sexual abuse
through all the records of correspondence between the Generalate and the Irish and English
Provinces. This search disclosed a considerable number of documents, 68 in all, dating from 1936
to 1968. They dealt with, among other things, seven sexual abusers who worked in Upton. The
Rosminians provided this information, together with the questionnaires and related material, to
the Committee in May 2004. These documents proved to be very significant and came to be
known as the Rome files.
Documented cases
2.122 Respondent evidence and the Rosminian survey disclosed that sexual abuse perpetrated by a lay
teacher and employees in the Institution had been discovered and was dealt with through the
removal or transfer of the offenders.
2.123 Little information was available as to the nature of the abuse that was discovered or the
circumstances in which it was detected. It is clear, however, that a large number of the perpetrators
of the abuse were discovered as a result of the activities of Br Alfonso, who zealously pursued a
policy of relentlessly rooting out and punishing sexual activity among the boys.
2.124 This Brother was responsible for the exposure of six persons who were committing sexual abuse
of boys in Upton. He served in the Institution from 1953 to 1960. In his curriculum vitae, he wrote:
I also enlightened the boys who had been molested by the staff members, of the evil that
had been perpetrated against them. I left no stone unturned to eradicate this evil.
2.125 Complainant witnesses confirmed the prevalence of sexual abuse by some of the Brothers during
this period.
2.126 The question is whether the period during which Br Alfonso served in Upton was a particularly bad
period for the occurrence of sexual abuse, or whether it merely showed what could be detected or
discovered by one campaigner.

Fr Carlo23
2.127 Fr Carlo was posted to Ferryhouse in the late 1930s as Prefect, and remained in the School until
he was transferred to Upton a few years later.
2.128 The information that is available about his departure from Upton is limited. The Superior General,
Fr Montes,24 wrote to the Irish Provincial, Fr Giuseppe, stating:
Fr Carlo told me, sincerely, I think the whole story. He tearfully acknowledged his mistake.
I sent him to Diano Marina on the sea between Genoa and Nice ... He accepts his present
situation as a penance but I am convinced that we will have to find a place for him by
September. Could he not go to America? ... I can understand that you were relieved at
his departure. One could have had certain fears for the Upton house, also because, in
the past the Government had some unfavourable reports regarding morality between the
boys, as you will recall.
2.129 Although the letter in this case does not say it, it is apparent that the reason for Fr Carlo’s
departure was very serious, and that he was extremely contrite about it. He left the School at an
unusual time of the school year, so it may be inferred that his transfer was made urgently, rather
than waiting until the late summer when transfers took place. His situation at the time was ‘a
penance’, and the Superior General was faced with a problem of where to put him. The Provincial
was pleased at his departure from Upton, and the Superior General acknowledged that there
could have been fears that were related to immorality between the boys. Fr Montes thought of
sending him to America, a solution that was employed on a number of other occasions for people
who sexually abused. There was no indication of any other abuse or fault that could have
accounted for Fr Carlo’s unseasonal departure, and in the circumstances the inference is that, on
the balance of probabilities, Fr Carlo was guilty of sexual abuse in Upton.
2.130 He continued to work as a priest in a number of parishes in England until his death in the late
1970s.
2.131 • The probability is that Fr Carlo was removed from Upton because of sexual abuse but
the matter is not beyond doubt. The inferences from Fr Montes’s letter are all indicative
of sexual abuse, as indeed is his use of allusions rather than specific terminology in
his letter to the Irish Provincial
The Rome file: Fr Santino25

2.132 Fr Santino worked in Upton from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when he died just before he
was due to be transferred to a teaching position at Omeath. He began sexually abusing children
in England some time after he was ordained a priest in the 1920s.
2.133 He served in his first parish for 20 years before it was discovered that he had been sexually
abusing children. He was then quietly transferred to another parish. The Provincial, Fr Andrea,26
wrote to the Superior General, saying that, although the change had caused some surprise, ‘he
was glad to say’ that it was received quietly enough. He stated that the fact that it occurred at
decree time, a time when changes in staff would have been common, made it less conspicuous.
Fr Santino was not happy with the transfer and wrote a letter of complaint to the Provincial who
noted in a letter to the Superior General that:
23
24
25
26

The curious thing I note is that his compassion is merely for himself. He does not seem
to realise the injury inflicted upon his victims and the consequences to them of his conduct.
To me, at all events, this aspect of the affair is the most dreadful.
2.134 The Superior General agreed, and suggested that in Fr Andrea’s reply to Fr Santino he should
stress the need for Fr Santino to pray that,
The persons to whom he has done such great harm will not carry its ill effects for their
entire lives.
This exchange shows how both the Provincial and the Superior General were acutely conscious
of and apologetic for the hurt and pain caused to those who suffered abuse at the hands of
Fr Santino.
2.135 In the late 1940s, in his new parish, it was discovered that Fr Santino ‘had again lapsed. Badly’.
The newly appointed Provincial, Fr Arturo,27 stated in a letter to the Superior General, Fr Montes,
that he had been trying to figure out what to do with Fr Santino, but he had come to the conclusion
that there was no work in the English province that he would feel justified in allowing him to do,
except perhaps as a Minister of a Rosminian house at Rugby. However, he stated that he could
not place Fr Santino there immediately, because of the ‘admiratio’28 that it would cause to the
members of the institute. Fr Arturo suggested sending Fr Santino to the Novitiate at Kilmurry,
County Cork in the Irish-American Province for a period of six months, and that ‘his face could be
saved by making it part of an exchange between the two provinces’. He added that Kilmurry was
a place where Fr Santino would be ‘safe for the time being’.
2.136 Fr Montes replied that the latest revelations constituted ‘really bad news, even if not completely
unexpected’. He told Fr Arturo that he had stressed the need to inform the local Rector in Kilmurry
of Fr Santino’s history, so that the latter could keep an eye on him. He informed Fr Arturo that he
had been in communication with Fr Orsino, the Provincial of the Irish-American Province, about
what could be done with Fr Santino. He noted that Kilmurry was short of space and that the only
available position was that of confessor of novices, a position that Fr Montes stated that he
‘couldn’t in conscience give him that, even apart from his deplorable weakness’. He said that Fr
Santino ‘deserves to do two months of penance at Melleray’, and he gave permission for him to
be sent there. He also noted that Fr Santino ‘will always be a problem because he does not
acknowledge the evil he has done’, and suggested that he would be somebody for Fr Torre29 to
study. Fr Torre was a member of the English Province who had some skill as a psychotherapist.
2.137 Fr Santino went to the Cistercian Abbey at Mount Melleray in the late 1940s but, instead of staying
for a period of months, he remained for 10 years and only left because the Cistercians would no
longer have him. The problem then was to find a place for him. It was thought that Ferryhouse
was not suitable because:
Melleray and Clonmel are both in Waterford diocese – and news travels even from the
hidden depths of Melleray. I should be surprised if he returns to England. Perhaps he is
the Providential answer to the quest for an English confessor at Porta Latina.
2.138 For the time being, Fr Santino was sent to Kilmurry, pending a decision to place him on a more
long-term basis. The Superior General thought of sending him to Florida but nothing came of that.
2.139 In 1959, Fr Santino sought permission to visit his family in the UK whom he had not seen for
years. This came to the attention of Fr Arturo, the Provincial in the United Kingdom, who wrote to
his Superiors in Rome in March:
27
28
Latin for curiosity, astonishment, surprise.
29

I am very worried about Fr Santino. I presume that you know his sad history. In spite of
the fact that his misdeeds are known to quite a few people here in [parish] he has been
writing, I understand from Fr Lanzo,30 to various people here in [parish] saying that he
has returned to the Institute etc. My fear is that he will want to return, perhaps on a visit,
here, to see some of his friends. In my opinion it would be really dangerous of him to
return here at all, since, if some ill-intentioned person were to denounce him to the police,
he would be in danger of arrest, and the scandal produced would be disastrous. Hence I
would ask you to make sure that he does not return to England and particularly to
[parishes where he worked] ... I do not know whether Fr Placido31 knows all the
circumstances of the case, and I have therefore not wished to write to Fr Placido direct
about it. I do not think my fears are exaggerated, Fr Santino is a man who has been
singularly blind to implications of his case, and seems quite capable of thinking that he
can act as though his past were forgotten, and that he could start afresh as though nothing
wrong had happened. I therefore beg of you to take what steps are necessary to ensure
that he does not return to England.
2.140 Fr Arturo’s worst fears were confirmed when he received word that Fr Santino was proposing to
call to the parish where he first worked, to see his brothers and sisters:
As I said in the letter I have just written to you, in my opinion, in no circumstances must
he go to [parish] – to tell the truth I do not like the idea of his coming to England at all,
since what he did in both [parishes] is a criminal offence for which he could be prosecuted.
He seems to have no sense of the fact that he is disgraced man in the eyes of, at any
rate, some people in [parish].
2.141 The Superior General wrote to Fr Santino forbidding him to leave Ireland. Fr Arturo, in another
letter to his Superior in Rome, set out his concern more specifically:
Most Reverend and very dear Father General, Fr Santino’s trouble is homosexuality.
When I became Provincial, my predecessor Fr Andrea, thought it his duty to let me know
that for 15 years (on and off I suppose) Fr Santino had been corrupting boys in [parish].
It was known to various people, but none dared come forward and report it. Fr Andrea,
as soon as he knew about it, removed Fr Santino immediately to [another parish]. But the
same thing began to occur again at [this parish]. Fr Calvino32 telephoned me urgently one
evening, and I went straight down to [the parish] and sent Fr Santino immediately to
Ireland; there was danger of prosecution by the police – this offence being a criminal one
in England. I interviewed Fr Santino, and suggested to him that the only thing for him to
do was to retire into some place like Mount Melleray and do penance. This he did.
He seems incredibly unaware of the gravity of the whole position. Fr Lanzo tells me that
when Fr Calvino was appointed rector of [the parish], Fr Santino wrote an indignant letter
to the Provincial, to Fr General and to the General’s monitor, complaining that after all his
years of faithful service, he had been passed over for a rectorship!! Also Fr Lanzo tells
me that during these last years he has frequently written to [former parish] people, and
they have been to see him at Melleray. Fr Lanzo has imagination, I know, but there is
probably foundation for what he says. I remember too in my last interview with him eight
years ago that he blamed Fr Andrea for his troubles, because Fr Andrea had always been
hostile to him. And from my last letter (which you apparently had not received when you
write to me) he is actually expecting to be allowed to return to [former parish] for a visit –
oblivious of the fact that for a certain number of people in [former parish], he is a
completely disgraced person. Fr Santino tells me in the letter he wrote asking permission
to come that he is translating some writings of the Founder with a view to publication. I
30
31
32

think it would be a disaster to have any writing of Fr Founder’s published over Fr
Santino’s name.
2.142 In August 1959, Fr Placido was again required to deal with Fr Santino because Fr Salvatore33 was
no longer willing to keep him in Kilmurry, where he was having an unhealthy influence on certain
members of the professed and also on some of the novices. He suggested that, if no alternative
could be found, he would as a last resort be compelled to keep him in Upton but warned: ‘there
would be grave risks in accepting him here considering the class of boy we have in certain age
groups here’.
2.143 Despite this anxiety, Fr Santino was assigned to Upton and he remained in the School until the
early 1960s when he died suddenly, just when he was due to be transferred to a teaching position
at Omeath.
2.144 A former resident, who was present in the School from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, alleged
that Fr Santino sexually abused him:
Fr Santino did approach me from the back with both hands on my shoulder. I felt him
leaning up against me, in doing so I ran away. I did so, I met a particular Brother, Br
Ludano, at the end of the stair who asked me why was I running, I told him why and I
was punished for it.
2.145 During cross-examination, counsel for the Rosminians apologised for the abuse that this witness
received. He asked him how Fr Santino was perceived. The complainant replied that he
remembered Fr Santino as being very approachable, with a great way with children. He would
talk to them all day. Fr Gaffney accepted his allegations in his responding statement:
I have no justification for doubting the complaint of sexual interference made against Fr
Santino, and those actions were shameful and wrong. I apologise for the hurt inflicted on
[this witness] and for the association of the Rosminian Institute of Charity for that conduct.
It was profoundly against the ideals and expectations of the institute.
2.146 Another former resident of Upton, who was there from the mid to late 1950s and who himself was
subsequently convicted of paedophile offences testified that he engaged in mutual masturbation
with Fr Santino, whom he described as the only adult who seemed to take any interest in him. He
stated that the relationship lasted a couple of months.
2.147 The story of Fr Santino sheds light on the Rosminians’ attitude to child sexual abuse at the time.
In a letter from the Provincial of the English Province to the Superior General, the Provincial
showed his awareness of ‘the injury inflicted upon his victims and the consequences to them of
his conduct’. The Superior General replied, stressing the need for Fr Santino to pray that ‘the
persons to whom he had done such great harm will not carry its ill effects for their entire lives’.
2.148 • The Order was aware of the damage caused to victims of sexual abuse. Although the
Provincial and Superior General were critical of the offender in this case, they did not
take steps to prevent further injury or harm being perpetrated on other victims.
• Although Fr Santino was known to have sexually abused children for many years in
his first posting, he was transferred to another post where he repeated the abuse. He
was transferred because of fear that there might be a police investigation and without
regard for the safety of children.
• The next move took him out of the United Kingdom and brought him to Ireland, again
for the purpose of obviating investigation.
33

• It is clear that Fr Santino’s conduct in each of his postings in Britain was criminal, and
that he offended repeatedly to the knowledge of his superiors. His transfer from one
English parish to another was irresponsible. The Order was aware of the risk that he
posed and of the damaging impact of his behaviour on his victims.
• The transfer to Ireland was for the purpose of Fr Santino’s spending a short penitential
stay in Mount Melleray. It was obvious that full information should have been given to
the Abbot so that careful supervision could be exercised, but there is no evidence that
such steps were taken and he remained in the monastery for a period of 10 years.
• Assigning Fr Santino to a position in Upton was irresponsible and reckless. With the
knowledge that the Order possessed about his past history and attitudes, they must
have been aware of the likelihood that he would sexually abuse boys in this Institution.
It follows that the Order was prepared to put boys at risk in order to find a place for
somebody who might cause public scandal if he were to be located elsewhere.
• The documents do not indicate any attempt by the Order to dismiss Fr Santino from
the priesthood. They appear never to have given consideration to the possibility of
doing so.
The Rome file: Br Umberto34

2.149 Br Umberto joined the Rosminians in the mid-1940s. He made his perpetual vows eight years
later. He was posted to Upton as an Assistant Brother in the mid-1950s, and remained in the
School for approximately three years until he was transferred to Kilmurry to work on the farm.
2.150 The reason for his transfer was that he had been interfering with the boys in Upton, and the details
were set out in a letter from the Irish Provincial, Fr Placido, to the Superior General, Fr Lucca,35
in which he said that the Brother:
Who had been previously warned by the Rector [Fr Fabiano] and myself has not been
discreet cum pueris [with boys] and is a periculum [danger] to them so I have been
compelled to send him to the Novitiate house where circumstances are different.
2.151 It is clear from Fr Placido’s letter that it was not the first time that Br Umberto had offended, but
there was no evidence that dismissal was considered.
2.152 Fr Lucca approved the decision to remove Br Umberto, and he remained in Kilmurry until the early
1960s when he was sent back to Upton. Although there was a new Rector, who may not have
known the recent history at the time when Br Umberto returned, Fr Placido was still Provincial
and in residence at Upton. On this occasion, the Brother remained for approximately six years,
until he was transferred to Omeath. He continued to be a member of the Order until his death.
2.153 • This Brother was found to be committing sexual abuse with boys notwithstanding a
previous warning, and the Provincial reacted by moving him to the Novitiate House
‘where circumstances are different’. This decision appears to have been a short-term
expedient, because the Provincial returned the Brother to Upton five years later,
notwithstanding the danger that he represented to the boys.
• The case of Br Umberto is interesting because he left Upton while Br Alfonso was
Prefect, yet he is not mentioned by Br Alfonso. It is surprising that Br Alfonso, a
relentless pursuer of sexual abusers, did not hear of this case, particularly because
of the reference to Br Umberto’s having been previously warned by both the Rector
and the Provincial. It illustrates the secretive way in which abusers could be removed.
34
35

• Returning Br Umberto to Upton in the early 1960s amounted to reckless disregard of
the safety of the boys, particularly as at that time a known sexual abuser who had
served years at Upton had recently been uncovered. There should have been an
appreciation of the need to eliminate the risks the boys faced.
The Rome file: Br Constantin36

2.154 Br Constantin was sent to Upton in the early 1950s, where he remained until he was transferred
to Kilmurry. He was transferred in November, not at the more usual time of September, because
he had been discovered sexually abusing children. The Brother subsequently applied for a
dispensation from his vows two years later and, when it was granted, he left Kilmurry.
2.155 The correspondence between his superiors concerning his application for a dispensation provides
some information about his sexual activities. In a letter to the Superior General concerning the
matter, the Provincial, Fr Placido, stated:
I enclose the request of Br Constantin for a dispensation from his final vows ... He was ...
here at Upton ... when he asked for a transfer to Kilmurry as his contacts cum pueris hic
erat ei periculum [with boys, this was his danger]. He was getting out from here as he
was really under suspicion and investigations were being made regarding some serious
matters. I regret to say that he was most seriously involved in the case of at least two.
2.156 The Provincial asked the Rector of Kilmurry, Fr Salvatore, to write to the Superior General, setting
out his views on the matter. In a letter, Fr Salvatore wrote:
Br Constantin’s case is a sad one. He came here [Kilmurry] over a year ago from Upton.
Fr Provincial will, no doubt, have informed you that this Brother had great difficulty in
observing his vow of chastity. His Rector at Upton was forced to send him away from that
house because he had proof that, in two cases at least, he had sinned with boys. The
fact that he is still a religious is due to the charity of his Superiors because, generally, in
these kinds of cases the rule is to send the accused person away. I must say, Father,
that Constantin himself did ask his Superiors to take him away from the occasion [in the
sense of the occasion of temptation]. Sending him here was seen as saving his vocation
but it is not like that.
2.157 The letter from Rome to Fr Placido informed him that the dispensation sought from the Order of
Religious had come through. The letter went on to say that the dispensation itself was retained in
the Rosminian archive in Rome. Br Constantin was, therefore, free ‘to return to the world without
further delay ...’.
2.158 Former Br Constantin reappeared in the early 1960s at Mount Melleray Seminary, Cappoquin,
County Waterford, as appears from a letter to the Provincial:
Dear Father Provincial,
We had a student here last year named Constantin who spent some time in your
Congregation. It was only quite recently that information of that fact reached me. He was
admitted here on the recommendation of a priest in England and I would never be satisfied
to keep him without a reference from his former Superior had I known he was in religion.
I am writing now to you for a reference for him as I am expecting him back soon and he
will get a bit of my mind for not telling me he was with you. He is very quiet and well
conducted as a student but that would not be enough to get him into a major seminary
later on.
With every good wish, I am, dear Fr Provincial,
Yours sincerely in DIE
President
36

2.159 There is no record to show whether a reference, or even a reply, was sent, nor is it known whether
this ex-Brother joined the Cistercian Community.
2.160 Further light on this episode emerged from the evidence of Br Alfonso, who described how one
of the boys complained to him about Br Constantin’s activities, which he immediately reported to
the Rector and the Provincial.
2.161 An Assistant Prefect at the time, Fr Giovani,37 in a statement supplied to the Committee confirmed
the discovery of abuse by this Brother and another:
Later on we were both scandalised and shocked and distressed to find that two lay
brothers, ... were also sexually molesting the boys in their care. Immediately Br Alfonso
and myself reported this to the then Provincial of the Institute of Charity, Fr Orsino, I.C.,
who removed the offending Brothers: one brother later died in the institute, Bro Fausto,38
the other, Bro Constantin, left the Rosminians and I haven’t heard of him since.
2.162 Another Rosminian, Br Tomasso, who was lodging in the School at the time, responded to a
Rosminian questionnaire as follows:
As a student ... residing in Upton [during the 1950s] I made enquiries about Bro Constantin
– when he had been absent for some time – and was told by Fr Gian that he had been
interfering with boys, and had left the Order.
2.163 • When the Rosminians discovered this Brother was sexually abusing boys, the first
response was to move him. There does not appear to have been any proper
investigation of the extent of his activities because Fr Salvatore’s letter says that the
Rector at Upton had proof ‘in two cases at least’. There were very possibly more. It
would appear that he went on to be a problem once more in Kilmurry, because sending
him there ‘was seen as saving his vocation but it is not like that’.
• The priority was again keeping the matter secret. Permitting the Brother to obtain relief
from his vows avoided the need for a formal process, which suited the Order, and
was convenient for the offender, particularly as the actual dispensation was not even
contained in his record. Taking this course meant that minimal information was
recorded about the departure of the Brother from the Order.
The Rome file: Br Fausto

2.164 Br Fausto was sent to Upton as Assistant Brother in the early 1930s. He made his perpetual vows
in the mid-1930s and later was transferred to Omeath. He spent another year in Upton in the mid-
1940s. He returned to Upton in the early 1950s, and worked in the Community kitchen. He was
moved to Ferryhouse approximately three years later, and his record card indicated that this
was done ‘during year’. He was transferred to Glencomeragh in the early 1960s. He died in the
early 1980s.
2.165 This Brother was discovered to be sexually abusing boys in the 1950s. Br Alfonso said that he
discovered that Br Fausto had been sexually abusing children at the same time that he found
out about Br Constantin. Fr Giovani corroborated the discovery of Br Fausto in his statement. A
complainant, resident in the early 1950s, gave evidence that his brother, while being punished by
Br Alfonso, complained to him that he was being abused by a Brother whose name the witness
did not recall correctly, but by a similar-sounding name:
When he started laying into him with the strap my brother turned around and said that he
was abused by a Brother called [similar sounding name to perpetrator] ... Br Alfonso
37
38

stopped dead in his tracks, put the strap back in the thing and he couldn't apologise
enough. [The Brother] was removed from the school shortly thereafter ... No, I did not
witness that. My brother mentioned it to me a couple of years ago, three or four years ago.
2.166 The note of the Brother’s transfer to Ferryhouse in the mid-1950s ‘during year’ would indicate that
there were urgent reasons for the transfer, and that it did not occur in the ordinary way, carrying
the implication that there was some apprehension on the part of the authorities that dictated
the move.
2.167 In other records, there are references to this Brother that are suggestive of improper conduct on
his part, but nothing that was clear and unequivocal or that could be understood without knowing
the evidence of Br Alfonso and Fr Giovani.
2.168 Fr Fabiano, Resident Manager at Upton, wrote to the Provincial at Rome referring to this Brother.
He said that he had done nothing more about an episode concerning him. He added:
as it would be needlessly bringing things into the limelight again and I could do nothing
without authority. The assertion about [Br Fausto] came up casually as having happened
in the past and I decided that the prudent thing to do was leave it in the past while you
decided what should be done. My own opinion about the matter is that he should quietly
get a change and be taken out of the danger because it will always be there.
2.169 Other documentary references to the Brother are even more vague, although generally suggestive
of reasons for apprehension about his behaviour. For example, one comment read, ‘Fr Salvatore
... told me that he did not consider Fausto’s influence there as being to the spiritual advantage of
the Novices’.
2.170 Another reference discussed his suitability as follows:

you don’t mention Kilmurry; from what Fr Salvatore ... was saying to me, I have my doubts
if Fausto is the best one for that house. But the Novice Master holds him in high esteem.
2.171 Another document remarked that his conscience was in a class of its own:
I hope Fausto won’t be a destructive element in the Novitiate I think he has a conscience
that is sui generis.39 At Omeath he used to bring the Scholastics with him, secretly, for
a smoke.
2.172 In another letter, the Resident Manager said he knew of the Brother’s propensities for particular
friendships.
2.173 In a letter from the Superior General to Fr Orsino, Provincial in Ireland, he wrote:
As regards the other, I can understand that because he flatly denies everything, one can
only give him the benefit of the doubt. However, from what you write, it seems there is
some suspicion in his regard and this obliges us to make provision for the future. You say
that the there is more than one victim. This needs to be checked out with great prudence,
or else find a good excuse for sending Fausto away from Upton.
2.174 • Concerns about this Brother are expressed in correspondence from the mid-1930s to
the mid-1950s. It seems clear that there was grave suspicion about his conduct. The
evidence of Br Alfonso and Fr Giovani put the position beyond doubt, and reveals the
full meaning of the earlier written statements.
39
Latin for in a class of its own.

• The failure to express these concerns clearly indicated a degree of concern on the part
of the authorities that no information should escape on this issue, as it was seen to
be potentially damaging. Such secrecy resulted in the serious consequence that there
was reduced consciousness about the problem.
• The interest of the Order in avoiding adverse publicity was given priority over the
protection of the boys.
• Transferring the Brother to Ferryhouse was another example of a reckless approach
to child protection.
The Rome file: Br Mateo40

2.175 Br Mateo was a postulant in the Franciscan Friaries in Killarney and Louvain during the 1930s.
No records exist about his departure from the Franciscans. He joined the Rosminians in the late
1930s, and made his perpetual vows in the mid-1940s. He was sent to Upton for just over a year
in the mid-1940s, and he then went to Omeath for almost 15 years, before returning to Upton in
the late 1950s.
2.176 This is another Brother who was discovered by Br Alfonso to have been sexually abusing children
in Upton. The matter is referred to in a letter in the late 1950s from the Provincial, Fr Placido, to
the Superior General, Fr Lucca, without mentioning Br Alfonso’s involvement:
Bro Mateo here has recently been indiscreet cum puero41 or perhaps cum pueris42 so Fr
R deems it advisable that he should be changed to avoid danger or talk especially in view
of the big influx. We thought first of sending him to Kilmurry but the Rector put forward
good reasons against that apart from the fact that the place would be unsuitable for the
brother’s health in view of the insomnia from which he suffers. We are of the opinion that
Omeath would be the better place where he had been previously ... and there was no
complaint about him as regards conduct ... Bro Mateo should be satisfactory ... and I think
his slip will be a lesson to him to be careful and watchful ...
2.177 Fr Placido wrote again, expressing his relief at having received a reply to his previous letter, which
he feared had gone astray, a matter which would have concerned him greatly as it contained
references to matters about Br Mateo which he did not wish to become widely known. In the same
letter he stated:
I don’t think we need worry about Bro Mateo at Omeath as he has got a warning and the
Rector will be vigilant. There wasn’t much of a serious nature against him si dice.43
2.178 A complainant from the late 1950s gave evidence that corroborated Br Alfonso. He alleged he
was sexually assaulted by Br Mateo in his early days in the School. He recalled he was playing
ball one evening and the ball went into the hall. Br Mateo found the ball and called the complainant
over and sat him on his knee and fondled his privates and kissed him. This abuse went on over
a period of time until it was eventually reported to Br Alfonso. He did not officially report it to Br
Alfonso. What actually happened was that Br Alfonso found him coming out of the hall one night
when he had been missing from the games room. He was initially frightened to tell Br Alfonso
what was happening but eventually he did, and he was told to go and wait for Br Alfonso in the
office. Some time later, Br Alfonso came back and questioned him further, and he gave all the
details and was told not to worry any more as Br Mateo would be transferred. During the hearing
into this evidence, counsel for the Rosminians intervened and said that they accepted that it had
happened as described.
40
41
Latin for with a boy.
42
Latin for with boys.
43
Latin for As spoken.

2.179 • No steps were taken to dismiss this Brother, but he was transferred to another school
where it was believed that he would be less of a danger.
• The Provincial was complacent and did not regard what the Brother had been doing
as being extremely serious, referring to it as a ‘slip’.
The Rome file: Br Mario44

2.180 Br Mario’s parents died when he was young, and he was raised by the Rosminians at Upton. He
took his perpetual vows three years later. In the mid-1950s, he was transferred to Upton and
appointed to an administrative role. In the early 1960s, he was sent to Ferryhouse where he was
appointed as an assistant to the Rector.
2.181 He was discovered by Br Alfonso to have been sexually abusing boys during his posting in
Ferryhouse, where he had been transferred following his term in Upton. A letter from the Provincial
to the Superior General in the mid-1960s reported the discovery, and stated that the Brother had
been transferred to Kilmurry for the time being. The letter said:
that there were two members of his community who had been rather indiscreet with the
boys and owing to some talk there and admiratio45 he wished to have the two changed
sine mora.46 One was Br Mario47 ... and went to Clonmel [Ferryhouse] at the request of
Fr Alanzo ... He admitted his faults and went to Kilmurry on 19th pro tem and about the
middle of January Fr Pietro48 will find suitable work for him in the office there – at
Drumcondra and so will accept him with the debite cautele49 ... You will fully appreciate
in such circumstances how instant action is often necessary and the changes made are
a cover up in some respects.
2.182 He wrote again, a month later, stating that:

I hope you got two previous letters I sent ... the second one was about the changes of
the brothers I was compelled to make owing to two who failed in fidelity to the sacredness
of their work amongst the boys.
2.183 Fr Lucca replied a few days later. He wrote:

The distressing news ... shows that the Rector is very attentive and decisive. I approve
the changes you had to make and I hope that the guilty ones are convinced of the serious
wrong they have done and are repentant. All this causes me great sadness especially
[when I consider] the elder of the two. We really must work out our salvation ‘in fear and
trembling.’ I am well aware of the Brothers whom you have had to change in these painful
circumstances and I pray that the Lord will help them in their new positions ... I am sorry
for you too who have had to make all these urgent and painful changes. Let us pray the
Lord that nothing else of the like will occur.
2.184 Br Mario was transferred to a Rosminian School for the Blind, where he remained until his death
over 10 years later.
2.185 Transferring a Brother with this history of sexual abuse to a school for blind children was reckless
and inexplicable.
44
45
Latin for curiosity, astonishment, surprise.
46
Latin for without delay.
47
48
49
Latin for due caution.

2.186 A complainant, who was in Upton from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, made a complaint about
Br Mario. He alleged that Br Mario pinned him up against a table in the kitchen, and the
complainant said he was conscious of Br Mario’s arousal. This happened on a number of
occasions and only ceased when the complainant threatened to tell Fr Eduardo, the Resident
Manager:
That man annoyed me week in week out for four or five weeks, commencing when I was
working in the kitchen. Now, he knew I wanted to go on holidays, that man used to have
me in tears. He would come up behind my back when I would be scrubbing pots, and I
mean scrubbing pots now, and he would put his arms around me and he would be saying
to me “I don't know will I let you go on holidays or not”. He used to force me up against
the sink. Believe me he used to have an erection on him. This was going on for weeks ...
He used to annoy me every day of the week for weeks until I threatened to tell Fr Eduardo
on him. I told him to do what he wanted. I got the holidays anyway. When I threatened
him with Fr Eduardo he didn't come near me any more.
2.187 The question arises why this Brother was not removed, or even given a formal Canonical
Warning. The Provincial expressly acknowledged the main purpose of transferring
Brothers who had been abusing when he said ‘the changes made are a cover up in some
respects’.
The Rome file: Br Gilberto50

2.188 Br Gilberto joined the Rosminian Order in the early 1940s, and he took his perpetual vows in the
mid-1940s. He was in Ferryhouse in the mid-1940s for 10 months and again in the early 1950s.
He was sent to Upton in the mid-1950s in an administrative role.
2.189 His personnel card recorded that he was moved from Upton to Kilmurry before the end of the year
in which he moved to Upton. The words ‘during year’ follow but are crossed out, and the words
‘left on this date: and later was dispensed from vows’ inserted. His service in Upton, accordingly,
was very short, extending from his transfer there, which in the normal way would have happened
in September. This Brother was another alleged sexual abuser who was reported by Br Alfonso.
2.190 The actual reason for his sudden removal from Upton and his quitting the Order was made
perfectly clear by the evidence of Br Alfonso to the Investigation Committee. The reasons for his
departure can be further deduced from a letter by the Superior General, Fr Montes to Fr Orsino,
the Provincial in Ireland, although the details are obscured by circumlocutions:
As regards the latest painful news of Gilberto, keeping precedents in mind and his own
spontaneous remark dating from last Spring about leaving the Institute, I now think that
the best advice to offer him is to ask for a dispensation. He must realise that, after what
has happened at Upton, he can no longer enjoy the confidence of Superiors and could
not be happy in the Institute. If he agrees to what is suggested, tell him to write his petition
on a large size sheet, as big at least as the one I am writing on, and to say that he is asking
for a dispensation because he feels himself unequal to the obligations of a religious.
2.191 It seems that the Brother was induced to apply for his dispensation, and the request was in fact
granted, but the Superior General was unhappy about the form of the request from Br Gilberto,
and he gave advice to the Provincial about how to deal with cases like these:
He [Br Gilberto] included a petition for dispensation that is worthless because he
concludes saying that he is seeking it “because I have been requested to do so”. His
complaint is: “I have been condemned without being informed of the nature of the charge
against me. Nor have I been called upon to state my case”.
50

2.192 Fr Montes went on to give advice about procedure ‘in cases like these’:
Even though the situation was difficult and dangerous, Fr Fabiano should have spoken
with Gilberto before sending him to Kilmurry. He could have told him it was in his best
interests to be sent away from Upton for the time being in order to put an end to gossip.
I feel for Fr Fabiano because he was in a delicate situation, but experience has taught
me in cases like these one has to let the person accused have his say. Otherwise, he will
always be able to argue that he was condemned without being given the opportunity to
defend himself.
2.193 • There is a lack of explicit detail in the correspondence. Because the issue of sexual
abuse was a sensitive one, the Rosminians developed a means of discussing it that
obscured the facts in vague and coded language. The reason why an abuser left one
institution and went to another was concealed. Such secrecy not only lessened the
likelihood of the reporting and discovery of any further abuse in the new setting, but
also reduced the awareness of sexual abuse as a major issue among the Community
as a whole.
• The safety of boys in Upton, where this Brother had so recently served prior to his
being discovered, were entirely ignored.
• Even though the petition for dispensation in this case was considered ‘worthless’, the
authorities were nevertheless in a position to achieve the desired outcome of the quiet
departure of the offender from the Order.
• It would appear that no investigation took place as to how many children might have
been abused or how they might have been affected.
Conclusions on the Rome files
2.194 • The contents of the Rome files illustrates the importance of good archives. Not merely
did the files help to establish, through contemporary documents, the extent of sexual
abuse, they also afforded corroboration of many of the allegations made by
complainants. From the Rome files, the Committee also learned about attitudes to the
sexual abuse of children at that time, and how known abusers were dealt with by the
Order. They proved invaluable sources of information.
• An institution without good records is one without a memory. It cannot learn from the
past, so the management has to deal with each case of abuse as a new problem.
Failure to keep records increases the risk of more children being abused, and of the
discovery of abuse being mismanaged.
Respondent evidence
2.195 Three members of the Order gave evidence. Two of these denied any knowledge of sexual abuse
as an issue in Upton. The remaining individual, Br Alfonso, gave detailed information about sexual
abuse that he had discovered and the action he had taken on foot of those discoveries while he
was Prefect in Upton and Ferryhouse between the early 1950s and early 1970s.
2.196 Br Alfonso said that, when he was Prefect, he was responsible for identifying to his Superiors
seven sexual abusers operating in Upton. He confirmed they were as follows:
Br Fausto;
Br Constantin;
A named night watchman;
An unnamed lay teacher;
Br Mateo;
Br Mario,
Br Gilberto.
2.197 He said that all of these individuals were removed from the School.
2.198 Br Alfonso said he reported these individuals to his then Superiors, Fr Fabiano and Fr Alanzo. Fr
Orsino, Provincial of the Order, was also involved in the reporting of one of these individuals. He
said that, when he reported these people, he was never given any indication about whether they
had any previous history of abuse:
These things were not tossed around among the Superiors nor were they ever mentioned
at a table at any time, they were always kept secret.
2.199 Despite the number of individuals who were found to be sexually abusing children in Upton, Br
Alfonso told the Committee that there was never any instruction given to watch out for possible
abuse and abusers, nor were there guidelines on how to deal with such activities.
2.200 What seems clear is that, following his discovery of some sexual abusers in Upton, Br Alfonso
went on a crusade to purge ‘immorality’ amongst the boys themselves. His evidence suggests
that, once he revealed the identity of the abusers amongst staff members, the opportunity was
afforded to boys to come forward and to tell him if they were being abused by fellow pupils. This
version of events is in stark contrast with the evidence from witnesses, some of whom describe
being falsely accused of ‘scamping’, a term used in the School to describe masturbation.
2.201 One witness recalled an incident when another pupil received a postal order. The boy was showing
the postal order to the complainant and had his arm around his waist. Br Donato came along and
accused them of interfering with each other. They were taken into the washroom and told to take
off their pants. They were then told to hug each other, while Br Donato leathered the two of them.
This went on for about an hour, until a Brother came along and they were sent off.
2.202 Another witness recalled that Br Alfonso and Br Donato were totally obsessed with sex and the
boys. They were super-vigilant and constantly accused him of masturbation and other sexual
activity. He alleged that he was often beaten for the entire day, as the Brothers took turns to
extract a confession of masturbation from him. He also alleges that the Brothers beat a confession
from another boy who lied and gave his name up to the Brothers. The name he gave appears in
the punishment book.
2.203 He described how these two Brothers had regular purges, and the boys called them ‘hobbles’.
2.204 During the cross-examination of Br Alfonso, it was suggested to him that the punishment book
could be divided into two sections. As was discussed above, the first period of the book is from
1952 to 1954. The second period from 1954 to 1963 showed a marked difference in the type of
offence being punished, in that the almost exclusive reason for punishment was immorality. He
was asked to explain this shift in emphasis of punishment, and he failed to give a precise answer.
His counsel attempted to ‘explain’ what Br Alfonso was saying:
By his actions in reporting the activities of the community and the lay person, he brought
a situation out into the open where the boys were now more comfortable coming forward.
So the boys who had been allegedly victims of each other were now coming to Br Alfonso
to report incidents between themselves as opposed to between themselves and the
community. So that those things had now become more open, there was an atmosphere
of honesty coming out that these things were no longer taboo, that there was a way to
get some action.
2.205 Br Alfonso also said that the reason why there was so much punishment for immorality in the
punishment book during his time was due to an increasing awareness that sexual behaviour was
unacceptable. He said:
All I was saying is that somehow or another it must have in some way leaked out to the
children that this is not acceptable, this standard. I think my attorney here spelt that out,
that the boys realised that and then started to come to me and say, “this is what is going
on here with us, these boys are molesting and will you stand up for us”. If that makes
sense, I don’t know, but I cannot explain it any other way.
2.206 Br Alfonso gave evidence that the punishment that was administered was normally three or four
slaps on the hand, or 10 strokes on the seat of the pants for more serious offences. The
punishment book recorded that 20 strokes were administered to a boy for sexual impropriety and,
on other occasions, 15 strokes were administered. When asked to explain why he said 10 was
the maximum delivered, which was clearly incorrect, Br Alfonso explained that the severity of that
particular punishment arose from a highly unusual situation. He said:
I am saying that in these events we are talking about, boys wouldn’t be one on one in this
situation. They would be like animals among one another, everybody would be involved
in it, young boys and all. It was having whatever, I don’t know what you would like to call
it, an orgy, I don’t know what it would be. Certainly it wasn’t a normal one to one thing.
That is all I can say.
Complainant evidence
2.207 The evidence of complainants who made allegations against documented abusers has already
been set out. In addition, further credible evidence of abuse was given.
2.208 One witness who was resident in the 1950s alleged that he was sexually abused in the tailor
shop. The routine was normally that a boy would arrive in the tailor shop, and whatever item of
clothing that required repair would be repaired on the spot. On this occasion, he was told by a lay
worker to remove his trousers for repair. The lay worker then put him on his knee, on the pretext
of showing him how the sewing machine worked. He sexually abused him, and he and the lay
worker ended up on the floor. This only happened on one occasion, as the person normally in
charge of the shop was absent. He did not report this incident, as he was too frightened.
2.209 Another resident, present in the 1960s, alleged that he had been raped while he was a pupil in
Upton. He stated that he awoke on a number of occasions to find a dark figure groping him. He
stated that, on one occasion, a lay member of staff persuaded him to accompany him to the
kitchen for the purpose of giving him cookies and milk. While in the kitchen, the man pushed up
against him and attempted to lift him up. However, the witness stated that he froze and the lay
worker got a fright and stopped. However, he was told to go straight to bed and not to say anything.
2.210 Another complainant, present in the mid to late 1960s, said that he was sexually abused by a
man named Mr Vance51 who came into the School and would take the boys out for a walk. He
would attempt to fondle him when they were out for the walks. He says he fought off his advances.
The statement of Fr Giovani

2.211 Although he was not called to give evidence, the Committee were able to consider a statement
made by Fr Giovani, who was Prefect in Upton during the mid-1950s.
2.212 Fr Giovani stated that one of the most distressing memories he had of Upton was when he and
Br Alfonso discovered that one of the primary teachers had been sexually abusing the boys. He
stated that Br Alfonso immediately reported the matter to the Resident Manager, and the teacher
was dismissed. He also stated that he and Br Alfonso discovered two members of the Community,
51

Brs Fausto and Constantin, engaged in similar activities. Again, Br Alfonso reported the matter to
the Resident Manager, and the offenders were removed from the School.
The Institute of Charity internal survey

2.213 One section of the internal survey conducted by the Institute of Charity related to allegations of
sexual abuse in Upton.
2.214 Br Tomasso said that, as a student residing in Upton in the 1950s, he had been told that Br
Constantin had been removed for interfering with the boys. He had also heard that Br Fausto was
engaged in similar activities. Fr Stefano said that he had heard from Br Romano52 that Mr Vance
had been interfering with the boys.
2.215 One respondent to the survey stated that, in the mid-1950s, a teacher had been fired for abusing
boys behind the blackboard. He also stated that this individual had found employment in a local
school a week later.
Conclusions on sexual abuse

2.216 1. it is impossible to quantify the full extent of sexual abuse by religious and lay staff in
Upton. The documented cases disclose that it was widespread and it is very likely that
more abuse happened than was recorded.
2. Sexual abuse by religious was a chronic problem: a timeline of documented and
admitted cases of sexual abuse shows that—
a. For more than half the relevant period, there was at least one abuser working
there;
b. For more than one third of the period, there were at least two abusers present;
c. For periods of years in the 1950s, there were at least three abusers present;
d. In the course of two separate years, there were at least four abusers present in
Upton at the same time.
3. The succession of cases that confronted the authorities must have alerted them to the
scale of the problem, and to the need for a thorough ongoing investigation as to how
deep the problem went among the Brothers and staff in Upton. Such an investigation
did not happen. Instead, each case was dealt with individually, as if no other case
had occurred.
4. Br Alfonso brought about the exposure of a large number of sexual abusers, and gave
rise to the question whether any of them would have been discovered if he had not
been there.
5. The question in this Institution arises, as it does in many others, as to whether the
discovery of a large number of abusers represented a period that was a bad time for
abuse or a good time for the discovery of abuse.
6. Transferring abusers to other institutions where they would be in contact with children
put those children at risk.
7. The Order was aware of the criminal nature of the conduct, but did not report it as
a crime.
8. Sexual abuse was dealt with in a manner that put the interests of the Order, the
Institution and even the abuser ahead of the protection of the children.
9. The Order did not expel members for sexual abuse.
10. The extent and prevalence of the problem were not addressed.
52

Sexual activity amongst the boys: documented cases
A case from 1936 which led to a Special Inspection of Upton by the Department
of Education
2.217 The issue of sexual activity amongst boys in Upton came to the attention of the Department of
Education in 1936, when it was notified by the Attorney General’s office about criminal cases that
had come before Cork Circuit Court, involving former residents of both Greenmount and Upton
Industrial Schools. The facts were that two former pupils of Upton, aged 19 and 16 years
respectively, were convicted of crimes including attempted buggery, gross indecency and indecent
assault. The boys were sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.
2.218 The Attorney General was the prosecuting authority at the time, and he felt it necessary to notify
the Department because the defendants in their court depositions dated ‘their original misconduct
to a time when they were detained in the Industrial Schools ...’. Prosecuting counsel reported to
the Attorney General that:
The revelations about Upton and Greenmount, at this sittings have given me furiously to
think about Industrial Schools and Religious Orders ...
2.219 The Attorney General’s office wrote a carefully phrased letter to the Minister for Education, not
making reference to the charges or other sexual activity, but simply referring to ‘misconduct’ and
respectfully suggesting that the Department should take some form of intervention:
The Attorney General is slow to draw unfavourable general conclusions from these cases,
and he transmits the information merely in the hope that the Minister in collaboration with
the School Authorities may be able to devise some means of keeping the number of such
cases in future at the lowest possible level.
2.220 The letter went on to suggest a remedy:

The Minister may take the view, which would be shared by the Attorney General, that a
closer supervision of the older boys would be calculated to discourage the formation of
these unfortunate habits.
2.221 It nevertheless acknowledged the problem for school authorities:

The Attorney General is fully alive to the great difficulty experienced by the school
authorities in eliminating as far as possible these particular tendencies on the part of the
older boys.
2.222 The Minister for Education directed his Department officials to conduct a special inspection of
both Greenmount and Upton, with particular emphasis on the supervision methods employed at
both schools. This special inspection took place on 1st and 2nd December 1936 and was conducted
by two officials of the Department, namely the Inspector of Industrial Schools and the Deputy
Chief Inspector of the Primary Branch. The Minister considered that, as the matter was very grave,
the services of a very experienced inspector from the Primary School Branch were required to
assist the Industrial Schools Inspector, hence the appointment of the Deputy Chief Inspector of
the Primary Branch. The internal Departmental memoranda made it clear that their brief was only
to inspect the supervision practices at both schools, because:
... their visit is really one of inspection rather than enquiry but they should if necessary
impress on the manager of the two schools the gravity of the recent cases, the need for
stricter supervision etc.

2.223 The only other guidance provided to the two Inspectors, regarding the inspection of supervision
at these two schools, was that they should ascertain ‘the measures taken to prevent or put an
end to the occurrences which gave rise to the recent cases before the Cork Courts’.
2.224 The Inspectors submitted their report to the Assistant Secretary of the Department on 14th
December 1936. In it, they noted that the ‘supervision exercised in both schools is adequate in
ordinary circumstances and the recent occurrences will tend to keep the school authorities on the
alert’. However, the Inspectors gave it as their opinion that there was always a danger of sexual
activity occurring between boys, which could be increased in particular circumstances:
there is an ever present danger of these cases arising no matter how well planned the
supervision and the danger is aggravated when, as in the case of Greenmount, a member
of the staff is known to have been implicated.
2.225 The Inspectors particularly stressed the need for supervision of the older boys:
The problem, as we understand it, is for obvious reasons a most difficult one to deal with
and we consider the only action that can be taken is to impress on the Manager (verbally
for preference) of each boys school the possibility of such cases occurring and the
necessity for close and constant supervision of the boys, especially the senior boys i.e.
boys over 14 years of age, in all their activities.
2.226 The Inspectors noted that members of the Community were always present during boys’ recreation
and free time. In addition, a Rosminian priest or Brother slept in each of the dormitories, and the
Superior made visits to the dormitories. Furthermore, the Resident Manager had prevailed upon
the senior boys who were destined for the Novitiate, unbeknownst to each other, to report to him
‘doubtful conduct among the boys’, in an attempt to prevent such activity occurring.
2.227 The Department informed the Attorney General’s office on 30th December 1936 of the outcome of
the special investigation, and that the Minister for Education was ‘satisfied that everything possible
is now being done to stamp out and to prevent a re-currence of the practices referred to in the
cases in question’. The letter added that the Minister ‘also approved of a suggestion that the
Inspector of Industrial Schools should impress upon managers of Boys’ Schools the danger of
such practices existing and the importance of continual and close supervision of the senior boys’.
2.228 The importance of the court cases was clear to the Upton authorities and beyond. Writing to Fr
Orsino in Rome on 20th October 1936 about his brother, Fr Giuseppe, the Resident Manager, Fr
Gerodi,53 described how the Manager was detained on urgent business:
Fr Giuseppe was unable to be away from Upton, owing to a matter which had troubled
him much for several weeks and during last week he had to be on call on the telephone
... Some ex-Upton boys got into very serious trouble, and there was very great danger
that the reputation of the School would suffer.
2.229 That appeared to be the end of the matter, in the eyes of the Department, until another case
involving a former Upton boy came to the attention of the Gardaı́ in Cork in 1944.
2.230 • The Inspectors considered the supervision as described to them to be satisfactory,

while acknowledging the difficulty of dealing with the problem, and the only step they
took was verbal exhortation as to supervision.
• No new measures were put in place, yet the Minister was able to inform the Attorney
General that he was satisfied that everything possible was ‘now’ being done to deal
with the problem.
53

• The School authorities were concerned about the ‘very great danger’ to the reputation
of the School.
The case from 1944

2.231 Alarming evidence of more extensive sexual activity among the boys at Upton came to light in
August 1944. A former resident of the School, who had been detained there from the late 1930s
to the mid-1940s, was arrested and charged with larceny. The boy had been released early from
Upton on licence to a farmer and was considered very troublesome. He was convicted and
sentenced to two years’ detention in Daingean Reformatory in 1944.
2.232 The boy was medically examined while he was in custody, and he was found to be suffering from
venereal disease. He admitted that, while he was resident in Upton, he had engaged in anal
intercourse with other boys on several occasions, and he made a statement to the Gardaı́ in which
he named seven other boys with whom he had engaged in such acts, one of whom had died in
the intervening period. The Gardaı́ interviewed the six boys, of whom all but two denied the
allegations.
2.233 In their statements, the boys who admitted such sexual activity with each other gave explicit
details of the acts, which took place in a number of locations such as the kitchen attached to the
infirmary, the farm, water closets, the dormitory and the infirmary. One of the boys complained in
his statement that he had been anally raped on approximately 10 occasions during his time there.
He said that he told one of the Brothers what this boy was doing to him but, when the matter was
reported to the Resident Manager, Fr Fabiano, the latter beat him. This boy named five other boys
with whom he had committed these acts.
2.234 The two boys who had made admissions had been discharged from the School on the expiration
of their detention orders and were residing with their parents. The prosecuting authorities decided
that they, together with the first boy, who was in Daingean, should be charged, and that the
remaining boys who had denied the allegations were not to be prosecuted.
2.235 The authorities at the School did not relish the prospect of another trial of sex charges involving
boys from Upton, and they went to work to try to prevent the prosecution going ahead. When the
local State Solicitor was at the District Court in Cork, he was approached by a senior member of
the Order, who pointed out to him that the offences took place a long time ago when the boys
were very young. He said that the boy in Daingean was to blame for the incidents, that the other
boys ‘did not realise what they were doing’ and that they had been punished accordingly at the
School and were now leading good lives. He specifically asked the State Solicitor ‘that no
prosecution should be taken’.
2.236 The Resident Manager of Upton, Fr Fabiano, followed up this representation with a letter to the
State Solicitor in 1944. He stated that the School had been aware of sexual activity amongst the
boys in question, and had dealt with the two boys at that time who ‘afterwards became very good’.
He impressed upon the State Solicitor that no good would be derived from prosecuting the two
boys who had now changed their ways and were now upright citizens. He said:
We believe that we have attained our object when we make of these boys upright law
abiding citizens, but it is now unjust to draw into the limelight the sins of their youth or
perhaps I should say misdemeanours as they may not have been sins at all.
2.237 Fr Fabiano took a benign view:

I wonder if the law in this case is being interpreted rightly or if the name attributed to the
crime of adults can rightly be applied to children who often may not know that they are
breaking the law of God let alone the law of the State.
2.238 In praise of the children, he asserted that they ‘are good normal children perhaps better than the
average and have a right to their good name’.
2.239 These efforts proved successful, and the State Solicitor recommended that the three boys should
not be prosecuted, and the Attorney General agreed. The reasons were, first, that the boy at the
centre of the allegations was already serving a two-year sentence of detention at Daingean, and
it was felt that no benefit would be derived from a further prosecution. Secondly, with regard to
the other two boys, it was felt that, having considered all the circumstances of the case, no
prosecutions should be taken. Each of these reasons existed at the time when the boys were
charged, and the only new development was the opposition of the Upton authorities to a
prosecution.
2.240 There could have been strong arguments put forward for not proceeding with this prosecution, but
one of the motives of the Manager appears to have been to avoid adverse publicity and ‘very
great danger’ to the reputation of the School. The attitude to sex between boys, that he advanced
in his letter seeking to stop the case, was very different from what emerged from their attitude in
other cases.
2.241 An unwelcome consequence of this Garda investigation for the School management was the
renewed attention of the Department of Education. The Superintendent of Bandon Gardaı́
informed the Inspector of the Department of Education in 1944 of the charges being brought
against the three boys. An internal enquiry was mooted by the Department of Education, but it
was decided that there was no point in writing to the Resident Manager of Upton to ask him ‘to
explain how these acts went undetected until it had been proved that they took place’, i.e. until
after the court cases. Such an enquiry never went ahead, presumably because there were no
prosecutions.
2.242 The Department was unsure as to how it should deal with the situation, but eventually decided
almost two months later to write to the Resident Manager to express the ‘Minister’s grave concern
at the continued prevalence of this serious vice in the School’. This the Inspector of Industrial
Schools duly did, by letter dated early the following year. He expressed in very strong terms his
concern on behalf of the Minister of the ‘continued prevalence of sodomy amongst the boys’ in
Upton, and he specifically drew attention to the 1936 Special Inspection, whereby the need for
tighter supervision of senior boys was stressed to the Resident Manager at the time. The letter
also expressed, even more forcefully, the burden on the Minister who, as the regulator of all
industrial schools, was placed in a grave predicament when these allegations of sodomy arose.
In order to impress upon the Resident Manager the urgency and problem posed by sexual abuse
amongst the boys, he threatened that the school certificate would be withdrawn if radical action
was not taken to eradicate the problem:
The danger that this is so places a burden of the gravest responsibility on the Minister,
since it is by virtue of his continued recognition of the School as an industrial school that
a steady stream of young boys are sent there under the Children Acts. If it should become
clear that this ruinous vice has taken firm root in your school and cannot be eradicated
so that boys are exposed to an abnormal degree to the danger of indulging in it, the
Minister may feel bound to withdraw his recognition from the School.
2.243 He then requested the Resident Manager in the letter to take ‘radical action immediately to stamp
out this vice’, by tightening up supervision and keeping surveillance of boys over the age of 14
years, with particular attention to their activities on the farm.
2.244 This letter evoked a quick and indignant response from both the Resident Manager and the
Provincial at Upton. The Resident Manager in his letter to the Department admitted that ‘we do
get odd cases of immorality’, but ‘I most emphatically deny that this school is the den of iniquity
implied in your letter’. Fr Fabiano defended the management of the School in unequivocal
terms, stating:
It has always been my greatest anxiety to see that the boys are moral in every way and
that they are never exposed to any risk, whatsoever, in other words as far as it is humanly
possible this particular danger is guarded against.
2.245 He went on in the letter to defend the actions of the school staff in preventing such abuses taking
place, stating that he had 18 years’ experience in the School and knew how to protect the boys’
morality, in addition to making frequent visits to the farm and the whole school ‘at all sorts of odd
and unusual times’ and having ‘always dealt severely with anything like indecent conduct and
have taken a particular interest in the boys concerned making sure they become God fearing
boys’. The Resident Manager ended his six-page letter with a challenging declaration:
If the minister is worried about the welfare of these children and is ready to accept the
evidence at its face value notwithstanding Fr Giuseppe’s statement to the contrary I am
authorised to state that he (Fr Giuseppe) is willing to hand up the certificate in the interests
and for the safety of the religious staff dealing with the school.
2.246 The Provincial, Fr Giuseppe, also wrote to the Department on the same day, expressing his
outrage and annoyance, but went further and expressed his desire to resign the certificate of the
School and prevailed upon the Inspector ‘to make provision as soon as possible for the committed
children at present in the care of the Fathers of Charity in this school’.
2.247 The fact that the Department did not take very seriously the Provincial’s threat to close the School
can be gleaned from an internal memorandum. They considered that the decision by the Provincial
was made ‘in a fit of pique, seeing that this incident follows on the heels of the clean up at his other
school, Clonmel’. However, they sought to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Upton authorities by
issuing a ‘mild apology’ and explaining the reason behind the forceful letter that was sent. They
wrote to the Provincial and offered the explanation that the Department thought that, when the
two inspectors visited the School in 1936 and urged stricter supervision, that was the end of the
matter of sodomy. When it came to light in 1944 that abuses had taken place over a further seven-
year period from 1938, this gave rise ‘of grave concern and disappointment’. The statements of
the boys were also furnished to the Provincial, in the hope that this would clarify and explain the
gravity of the situation and the response of the Department:
I have no doubt that you will recognise this when you have read the statements, and that
you will understand why it was considered desirable to urge you in the strongest terms to
spare no efforts to stamp out this form of misconduct in your School.
2.248 It did not have the desired effect on the Resident Manager. Instead, after having read the
statements of the three boys, he wrote a very defensive letter to the Inspector, dismissing his
concerns outright. As to the statements of the three boys, the Manager analysed them and pointed
out reasons why they should not be believed, and he referred to the difficult backgrounds from
which each of them came. He certainly did not think that he was in any way to blame for the
misconduct of the boys, and insisted that the acts complained of in the statements were well
known to him and he had done everything in his power to be vigilant:
I do not know that there is a case mentioned in any of the statements which was not
either known or suspected and every vigilance was exercised.
2.249 Instead of attempting to understand or alleviate the concerns of the Department in this matter,
the Resident Manager took the moral high ground and dismissed outright the stance taken by
the Department:
My conscience is quite clear and untroubled about the whole matter and I do not believe
I could have done more.
2.250 The Assistant Secretary stated in an internal memorandum in 1945 to the Secretary that the letter
‘is reasonable enough on the whole’ and that he did not expect that the Resident Manager would
actually resign the certificate. The course taken by the Department was simply to do nothing more
about the matter and to let it all blow over. When the Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe,54 carried
out a routine General Inspection of the School on 19th March 1945, she had a long discussion with
Fr Giuseppe about the situation and particularly his threat to resign the certificate. She considered
that the threat was ‘a bit of a bluff’. The Manager informed her that he could always turn the
School into a secondary boarding school. By April 1945, a reply to the Manager’s letter had not
been issued from the Department, and they felt it was unnecessary to do so and that it was safe
to ‘assume that the Provincial will not pursue his threat to resign the Cert. of the School?’.
2.251 • This episode illustrates the priority given by the school authorities to avoiding
adverse publicity.
• The Resident Manager was prepared to make light of what was considered to be the
most heinous conduct that a boy could commit in Upton, in an effort to stop the
prosecution and thus avoid adverse publicity or ‘danger to the reputation of the
school’.
• The correspondence demonstrates the weakness of the Department; first it did not
achieve its purpose, second to assert its entitlement to supervise this School, and
third to protect vulnerable children.
Neglect and emotional abuse

2.252 The Department of Education and Science furnished, as part of the discovery process, General
and Medical Inspection Reports for Upton spanning the period 1939 to 1966. Although a number
of them are missing for various years, they are a valuable source of information on the conditions
that prevailed in the School at the time. These documents allowed the Committee to view
complainants’ evidence in the light of contemporary records.
Living conditions
2.253 The Department’s Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, considered the School ‘well run’ and the
premises ‘well kept’ for the most part. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, her reports reflect
anticipation of improvements in general living conditions, but any such improvements occurred
very slowly. A difficulty with Dr McCabe’s reports is the fact that no specific information is provided
as to the actual condition of the School or the nature of the improvements needed. The food and
clothing of the boys were the two main areas with which she was least satisfied, and these are
discussed in detail in the paragraphs below.
2.254 After a General Inspection of Upton on 9th June 1939, Dr McCabe was very impressed with the
School. She found that the house and grounds were ‘in good order’ and the ‘boys appeared very
healthy and bright’ and their physical condition was ‘excellent’. Apart from their outward
appearance, Dr McCabe noted that the ‘boys all appear very pleased and content, and freely talk
with their Superiors’. She also commented that the boys had ‘plenty of playing space – a great
big cement yard and field’ as well as a ‘fine Swimming Pool in the grounds’.
2.255 The next available record of an Inspection by Dr McCabe is a report dated 10th November 1943.
On that occasion, conditions had deteriorated somewhat from 1939. Dr McCabe described the
School as only ‘fairly good’ but she noted that the boys were ‘well cared and happy’. The reasons
for her dissatisfaction included the fact that there were dirty tablecloths on the tables in the
refectory, and the towels for the boys were worn and ragged. She recommended that these be
54
Dr Anna McCabe was the Department of Education Inspector for most of the relevant period.

replaced. She also called for better supervision of the boys in the dressing room and for each boy
to be supplied with a toothbrush.
2.256 The next available Inspection Report, two years later, reported conditions had not altered. In her
report dated 19th March 1945, Dr McCabe again described the School as only ‘fairly good’ and
the premises as being ‘fairly well kept’. But she did not elaborate on what needed to be done to
improve conditions. She commented that improvements were being made to the School, but did
not specify what the improvements were, except to say that a new kitchen was being built. Again,
she found that the boys were ‘well cared and happy’.
2.257 On the next General Inspection, which took place on 2nd September 1946, she found the School
was ‘much improved’. Dr McCabe noted that the new kitchen was a great success and a new
sanitary annexe had been added. Of even greater importance was the fact that a bungalow had
been built on the grounds of the School, for the purpose of housing six nuns who were due to
arrive to assist in the running of the School. Their presence, according to Dr McCabe, would bring
about great changes ‘for the best’. These nuns were from the Dominican Order and arrived in
Upton in October 1946.
2.258 When Dr McCabe visited the School on 27th October 1947 she found ‘altogether there is a great
improvement in this school’ which was due in no small measure to the arrival of the Dominican
nuns. She declared that ‘the advent of the Nuns has made a great difference to the school’. In
particular, she felt that the nuns had brought about much improvement on the domestic side of
the house. In 1948, she noted the same improvements, again because of the nuns. In her report
dated 22nd October 1948, Dr McCabe detailed that the corridors and dormitories had been
repainted and the premises were clean and ‘well kept’.
2.259 There are no Inspection Reports for the years 1949, 1950 and 1951. The next available Inspection
Report is dated 21st May 1952. On that occasion, Dr McCabe again praised the nuns for bringing
about ‘great changes’ in the dormitories and kitchens, and found that the School was altogether
‘much improved’ and the painting of the entire house was being undertaken at the time. Dr
McCabe made similar comments when she visited on 17th December 1954. She remarked that
the ‘school continues to improve’, particularly in the area of clothing and food.
2.260 From 1947 to 1954, Dr McCabe consistently remarked on the great positive changes which had
taken place at the School by the arrival of the Dominican nuns in 1946. The precise changes
cannot be gleaned from her reports. However, by 1955 the nuns had to leave Upton due to staff
shortages in the Dominican houses. Dr McCabe lamented the departure of the nuns in her
Inspection Report of 11th November 1955 where she stated:
School has improved – Unfortunately now that the Nuns have departed I wonder if this
happy state of affairs will continue.
2.261 Despite the departure of the nuns, the School conditions had not deteriorated, as was evidenced
by Dr McCabe in her General Inspection Report of 29th November 1956. She still considered that
the School had ‘much improved’ and there was a ‘Nice Spirit’ prevailing.
2.262 Dr McCabe’s Inspection Reports from 1958 to 1964 repeatedly record her anticipation of
conditions improving in the School. Throughout those years, she consistently stated that
‘improvements have been made’ and ‘continue to be made’, but very little information was
provided as to the exact nature of these ‘improvements’ except to say that they were occurring
‘slowly’. In 1958, Dr McCabe remarked in her report that the Resident Manager ‘is investigating
the central heating’. It took another four years before central heating was installed in the School.
During those years, Dr McCabe consistently described the School as ‘well run’ and the boys
‘well cared’.
2.263 In 1961, with the appointment of a new Resident Manager, Fr Eduardo, Dr McCabe was positively
hopeful that he would bring about greater improvements, which up to that time had been occurring
slowly. She wrote, ‘Now with Fr Eduardo in charge I expect to see great works’.
2.264 Dr McCabe’s last inspection was carried out on 12th May 1964. On that occasion, the Resident
Manager, Fr Eduardo, came in for particular praise by her:
Fr Eduardo deserves the greatest praise for the work he has done since his appointment.
He has redecorated all the school inside and outside and its appearance is much better
and brighter. Great improvements everywhere.
2.265 Every area of the School on that occasion was referred to as being ‘very good’, including the food
and diet of the boys, which had been an ongoing issue for the Medical Inspector for a number of
years. Even the clothing on that occasion was described as ‘much better’.
2.266 Her view, however, was contradicted by the Lord Mayor of Cork, who visited Upton in January
1965 with a number of students. His report gave a very different account of life at the School.
Each week, a number of students from Cork visited Upton ‘to help brighten the lives of the boys’.
On one of these visits, the Lord Mayor was invited to join them, which he did on 26th January
1965. Whilst there, he admitted to taking ‘an unofficial tour of the buildings’ and he arrived in the
dining room while the boys were preparing for tea. The scene that greeted him ‘came as quite a
shock’. He went so far as to say that:
The conditions I saw would not be tolerated in a workhouse of by-gone days.
2.267 The conditions in the dining room, which came as such a shock to the Lord Mayor, were the
battered tin plates and cups from which the boys ate and drank, the dirty tables stacked high with
piles of bread, and the lack of knives and forks. One Brother and a woman did the entire cooking
for 130 boys.
2.268 He was also critical of the boys’ dormitories, where he found ‘some eighty beds all closely packed
together’. Apart from the lack of privacy, he found that the pillows were hard ‘as if made of straw’
and there ‘didn’t appear to be any sheets’. He commented:
It is bad enough to see delinquents subjected to these conditions but orphans who are
there through no fault of their own should surely deserve more humane treatment.
2.269 The only positive remark he had to make was in respect of the recreational facilities, but felt that
‘surely essentials should come first’. He concluded from what he saw that:
It is hard to visualise any of these lads adapting themselves to conditions in the outside
world after their years in Upton.
2.270 This report reached the Department of Education and it prompted them to dispatch a senior officer,
Mr McDevitt, to inspect the School on 4th and 5th March 1965.
2.271 In his report following his inspection, Mr McDevitt ‘found the school generally very much improved’.
He commented on each of the complaints raised by the Lord Mayor. First, he reported that each
boy received a fork and spoon, but confirmed there was a shortage of knives, with only 30 in
existence, which resulted in two knives being supplied to each table of eight boys. He noted that
the Brother in charge of the kitchen complained of the shortage of knives. Secondly, he disagreed
that the boys used tin cups, stating that the tableware was aluminium, which had been purchased
in the interests of hygiene, as the Department of Health had issued a warning on the dangers of
eating from chipped or cracked delph. Previously, according to the report, delph cups were used
in the School. He did, however, concede that, owing to constant wear and tear, the aluminium
plates and cups had become battered and needed to be replaced. Thirdly, he reported that the
dining hall was adequately heated, that tablecloths were not used in any industrial school, and
the tables were newly topped with formica. Fourthly, he found that the kitchen was adequate, with
first-class equipment, but it was supervised by a Brother who ‘has had a nervous breakdown and
seems rather neurotic’.
2.272 Mr McDevitt was of the view that the dormitories were ‘highly satisfactory’. He added that there
were two sheets to every bed and a blanket underneath, and that the pillows were stuffed with
either feathers or fibre. He concluded that the School ‘has improved immensely’. In support of this
conclusion, he cited figures provided to him by the Brothers that £32,000 had been spent: on
renovating the toilets, play hall and T.V. room; on the central heating; and in extending the
dormitories and shower rooms.
2.273 That appears to have been the end of the matter. At the Phase I hearing, Fr O’Reilly, when
questioned about the Lord Mayor’s report, conceded that a ‘lot of his comments – would have to
be accepted’. But he added that:
... a lot of it depended really on what a person’s background was. If [he] had extensive
experience in other places where the standards were entirely different obviously then his
criticisms were justified. But if the Inspector had a different standard then that told its own
story obviously.
2.274 The final General Inspection of Upton took place on 15th June 1966, shortly before its closure, by
Dr Lysaght. He provided a very detailed and lengthy report on the School. His overall observations
of the School were good. He found that the premises ‘for the most part’ were in a ‘reasonable state
of repair’ but the roof in the recreation hall was leaking. He was critical of the lack of wardrobes and
lockers available in the boys’ dormitories, which he viewed as a necessity. The mattresses on the
beds he felt could be replaced, as wire meshing and film were outdated. His report noted that
there was a modern bathroom in place, fitted with communal showers. Dr Lysaght noted that the
Resident Manager gave sex education classes to the boys. Dr Lysaght was very impressed by Fr
Eduardo, the Resident Manager, as he came across as someone ‘very interested in his work and
devoted to the boys’ welfare and sorry at the prospect of the school closing down’.
Food
2.275 The Rosminians concede that boys were hungry in Upton. Fr O’Reilly, at the Phase III public
hearing, said, ‘I absolutely accept that children were hungry ...’.
2.276 Dr McCabe’s reports were not of great assistance, because she describes the food in very general
terms as being ‘satisfactory’ or ‘could be improved’. Nevertheless, she repeatedly recommended
to the Brother in charge of the kitchen to vary the diet.
2.277 Dr McCabe, in her report dated 21st June 1939, summed up the boys’ food as ‘good in quantity,
quality and variety’. Thereafter, in the 1940s it appears to have deteriorated, as Dr McCabe
described it as ‘fairly satisfactory’ or ‘satisfactory’. No precise details of the quality, quantity or
type of food provided can be elicited from these reports. A number of reports are missing for the
1940s and early 1950s. The reports of 1943 and 1945 characterised the food as ‘fairly
satisfactory’. In 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1952, Dr McCabe described the food as ‘satisfactory’. There
are no Inspection Reports from 1949 to 1951.
2.278 When Dr McCabe visited the School on 27th November 1953, she commented that the food was
‘much better’. Between 1953 and 1962, her reports regularly described the food as ‘improved’,
although it is not clear what it had improved from or what it was actually like. Her report of 1955
categorised the food as ‘very good’. But, by the following year, problems had arisen again with
the food, as her report of 29th November 1956 asserted that the food ‘could be improved’.
2.279 Dr McCabe’s report of 1956 gives some indication of the problem regarding the food, namely that
not enough food was being given. In particular, she was critical of the insufficient quantities of
meat and milk provided for the boys. At the time, only 15lbs of meat per meal was provided for
180 boys, and she recommended to the Brother in charge that this should be increased to between
30lbs and 45lbs. She also recommended that each boy should be given one pint of milk per day.
In addition, she suggested that honey or golden syrup and ‘vitaminised’ margarine should be
supplied at lunchtime.
2.280 In 1957, when Dr McCabe called on the School on 1st November, she again reported that the food
‘could be improved’ but added that it was ‘on the whole not too bad’. From her 1957 report, no
information can be gleaned as to what the nature of the problem with the food was or how it could
be improved. Unlike her report in 1956, she provided no recommendations to improve the food.
Neither did she report whether her 1956 recommendation had been implemented.
2.281 Former residents of Upton complained that they were constantly hungry and that the food provided
was of poor quality. One witness, who had been resident in Upton throughout the 1950s,
complained that he was ‘always hungry’ while he was in the School. His hunger was such that he
had to resort to eating the slops and leftovers from the priests’ kitchen. In evidence, he recounted
this vivid memory of watching and waiting for his own brother, who worked in the priests’ kitchen,
to bring the slop from the kitchen to a pit so that he and his friends could eat from it. He said:
He used to take the slop from the kitchen, he used to take it down to this pit. It was quite
a way away from the house. I used to watch him. I used to see him take the food down
to this pit, apple skins and bits and pieces. When he left I used to go down there with my
little team and we used to go eat all the apple skins.
2.282 A witness from the mid-1950s described the food as ‘absolutely terrible’ and insufficient in quantity,
particularly for boys who had to do heavy farm work:
The food was absolutely terrible; a starvation diet is all I can say it was, everything was
rationed. We were expected to work, do men’s work on that kind of food.
2.283 He said that breakfast consisted of bread and dripping, with porridge on some mornings, but no
milk. Bread with margarine was provided for supper, and the dinner he described as ‘pea soup’,
which had the consistency of ‘gruel’.
2.284 Another witness, who had been in the School for a short period of time in the late 1950s, stated
that the boys were starved in Upton, and the situation was one of ‘a total lack of food’.
2.285 The issue of lack of meat for the boys was also attested to by another witness. He remembered
each week that two sheep were killed on the farm, but the meat from the sheep was not given to
the boys. His only recollection of meat was of black pudding and sausages, in a stew with potatoes
for dinner. But, as regards other forms of meat, he stated adamantly that they never got any:
Meat, you would never see meat. You might get a chunk of fat now and again but you
would never see meat even though I was there and I knew it was there. The boys never
got any of it.
2.286 This witness who worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes saw a distinct difference in the food
provided for the priests and the boys: ‘there was food for the clergy and food for the boys’.
2.287 Fr O’Reilly at the Phase III public hearing, conceded that the Brothers received better quality food
than the children:
I accept that the food was so much better for the people who lived and worked in the
place, yes. I would say it was a better quality of food.
2.288 In 1958, Dr McCabe noted that the food for the boys had ‘improved’ but, at the same time, she
felt that more could be done as she ‘had a talk with the Br in charge and advised several
improvements I thought could be made’. Again, there are no details provided as to what was
needed to be done to ameliorate the food situation.
2.289 A complaint about the food was made in May 1959, when fathers of two boys who had been
transferred from Greenmount Industrial School to Upton complained to their local TD about the
poor conditions prevailing in Upton, and he forwarded their complaints to the Minister for
Education, Mr Jack Lynch. One of the complaints was that the boys only got three slices of bread
with dripping for their tea each day, compared to Greenmount where they received bread and jam
each evening and two ounces of cheese four nights of the week (other complaints were made
about punishment). He felt compelled as their local TD to forward the complaints on to the
Department of Education, but he did not think there was much merit to the complaints, as he
qualified his letter by saying that much of what they said was hearsay and that, having questioned
them very closely on some of the information, he had formed the view that some of it ‘is obviously
exaggerated to say the least of it’.
2.290 The Department of Education forwarded the letter of complaint to the Resident Manager, Fr
Alanzo, for comment. He replied in a letter dated 3rd June 1959, stoutly defending the food
provided in Upton:
All I can say is St. Patrick’s was always outstanding and still is regarding feeding the boys
well. Our friends ... did not say that our boys get sausages and eggs Sunday mornings,
which they never got in Greenmount. Our boys are the admiration of all visitors, because
they look so healthy. Hungry children do not look healthy.
2.291 He did not take the complaints very seriously as he considered them to be ‘100% exaggerated’.
Nor was the complaint taken very seriously at Department level. Dr McCabe, whose opinion was
sought on the issue, dismissed the complaint outright. Her views about the complaints are
contained in an internal Departmental note dated 11th June 1959, as follows:
The boys in this school are very well fed and cared. I have no comments to make on this
letter as I consider it is a ‘grouse’.
2.292 One witness was questioned about receiving sausages and eggs as contended by the Resident
Manager in 1959, and had the following to say:
Well, it sounds as if they owe me a few breakfasts by the sounds of it. There is just no
answer to that. That’s just a joke. I wouldn’t know a sausage down there if I tripped over
one. That’s just not the case.
2.293 When Dr McCabe inspected the School on 17th December 1959, she commented in her General
Inspection Report that the ‘quality and quantity’ of the food had ‘improved’. Despite this
improvement, she still felt it necessary to make further recommendations to the Brother in charge
of the kitchen to vary the diet. Again, the exact nature of the problem with the food was not
specified.
2.294 Dr McCabe called to the School on 13th August 1960, and yet again she discussed the need for
improvement with the Brother in charge of the kitchen, particularly with regard to ‘various methods
of varying meals’, and in this she found him ‘most co-operative’. In her 1961 report, Dr McCabe,
whilst commenting that the food and diet had improved, remarked that she had ‘discussed problem
of food with Br in charge and he hopes to make further improvements’. In 1962, the food was said
to have ‘improved’. By 1963 and 1964, it was ‘good’.
2.295 As discussed above, the Lord Mayor’s criticisms in January 1965 led to an inspection by the
Department’s Inspector, Mr McDevitt on 4th and 5th March 1965. The Mayor had not made any
criticism of the food, but Mr McDevitt investigated that matter and uncovered a problem with the
kitchen and the diet. The source of the problem, as he saw it, lay with the ‘neurotic’ Brother who
was in charge of the kitchen. When questioned about the food by Mr McDevitt, this Brother replied
that the ‘diet was highly satisfactory except that the milk and cake rations were inadequate’. He
was also questioned about supplying margarine rather than butter to the boys, and his reply was
that margarine was more nutritious. Mr McDevitt summed up this Brother as the ‘problem child of
the community and as the likely original source of the complaints made to the Minister’. When he
mentioned this Brother to other members of the Rosminian Community, they replied ‘with either a
smile or an expression of sympathy for his nervous condition’. Yet this Brother was in charge of
supplying the daily nutritional requirements for all the boys.
2.296 Overall, Mr McDevitt did not give much credence to the Lord Mayor’s complaints, and the root of
the problem, as he saw it, lay with the Brother in charge of the kitchen. From the documents
furnished, no action was taken on foot of the report with regard to this Brother.
2.297 The final General Inspection of Upton took place on 15th June 1966 by Dr Lysaght. He reported
in detail on the food and diet of the boys and listed the four meals a day which they received and
enclosed a sample food menu. He commented that the boys get ‘all the milk they want at dinner
or any other meal’. However, he noted that the Resident Manager, Fr Eduardo was ‘not altogether
satisfied with the meals’ which he felt could be improved with better culinary equipment.
Clothing
2.298 An ongoing area of dissatisfaction for Dr McCabe, and one which she often raised in her General
Inspection Reports, was the clothing provided for the children.
2.299 The first recorded complaint is contained in Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Report of 10th
November 1943. She described the boys’ clothing as ‘fair – but rather patched’. She had the same
complaint to make two years later, on 19th March 1945, when she characterised the clothing as
‘Fair – rather patched’. On her next inspection, on 2nd September 1946, Dr McCabe noted that
the clothing ‘Could be improved’. No details are given in this report about the exact condition of
the clothing or the nature of the problem. When she spoke to the Resident Manager, he informed
her that they had experienced ‘great difficulty in obtaining material for suits’, and as a result they
had to purchase a number of them from shops in Cork ‘which was most expensive’. He
nevertheless said that he would ‘endeavour to make improvements’. She noted that he ‘is severely
hampered on account of small quota of material’ and wanted to obtain a permit for supplies so
that he could ‘obtain sufficient material’.
2.300 When Dr McCabe called on the School on 27th October 1947, she commented that the clothing
was ‘improved’ but she gave no information as to how the clothing had improved. In her Inspection
Report of 22nd October 1948, Dr McCabe again described the clothing as ‘improved’ and added
that ‘much remains to be done’. Again, no further details can be elicited from her report on the
extent of the problem or what exactly needed to be done to rectify the situation.
2.301 Four years later, Dr McCabe, in her General Inspection Report of 21st May 1952, again found that
the clothing of the boys had ‘improved’ and added that the tailors were busy making new suits.
There are no Inspection Reports in existence between 1948 and 1952. For the years 1953 and
1954, Dr McCabe described the clothing situation as ‘much improved’. In her Inspection Report
of 1955, clothing was simply described as ‘improved’ but, by 1956, the clothing was again
described by Dr McCabe as ‘much improved’. From 1957 to 1960, Dr McCabe consistently used
the words ‘improved’ or ‘much improved’ in the section on clothing in her General Inspection
Reports.
2.302 On 22nd February 1961, Dr McCabe noted that the clothing was ‘improved’, but she specifically
recommended that the boys ‘could do with a new issue of clothing all around’. The subsequent
Inspection Reports do not provide any insight as to whether this recommendation was carried out.
When she visited the School on 20th June 1962, she again remarked that the clothing was
‘improved’. In 1963, she said it was ‘much improved’ and, by 1964, she described it as ‘much
better’.
2.303 The Lord Mayor, who visited the School in January 1965, was also critical of the boys’ clothes.
He was told the boys slept in their shirts, as they had no nightclothes. According to his report,
their everyday clothing was ‘rough and ready’.
2.304 The General Inspection Report of 15th June 1966 by Dr Lysaght provided somewhat more
information on this matter. He described the boys as being ‘well clothed neat and clean’. According
to his report, the tailor on site made the boys’ suits with the assistance of some of the boys. In
the summer, they wore shorts and blazers.
2.305 A former resident who was in the School in the 1950s gave evidence about the type of clothes
the boys wore. He told the Committee that the clothes were unsuitable and inadequate, and
summed up the situation as follows:
We wore the same things year in year out; khaki shirt, khaki pants and a short jacket. No
pullovers, no underwear.
2.306 The footwear, he said, consisted of leather ankle boots, which were made by the boys. He said
that sometimes he had socks and sometimes he didn’t, by reason of the fact that they each got
only one pair, and when they needed repair they were sent to the knitting shop. While they were
being repaired, boys went without socks, as there was no replacement.
2.307 Another witness, who was in Upton in the 1950s, described the clothes he wore as ‘rags’,
comprising a top, shorts and a pair of sandals. He also said that they wore no underwear and had
a change of clothes once a week. They did have nightclothes, in the form of a nightdress, and
there were no heavy winter clothes provided.
Bed-wetting
2.308 Bed-wetting was a persistent problem for some of the boys in the School. It was treated as a
disciplinary issue by the Rosminians, and they attempted to solve the problem by the use of
physical punishment. They sought at the time to halt the problem by waking children during the
night to go to the toilet. Boys who wet the bed were known as ‘slashers’ and were placed in a
separate section of the dormitory. Each morning, these boys had to take their wet sheets or
mattresses to the boiler house to dry. Fr Matthew Gaffney, in his general statement in 2002,
accepted that this was the regime regarding bed-wetting, but stated that:
In past decades the psychological nature of the difficulty was not understood, and it was
thought that deterrence through corporal punishment or embarrassment in front of others
was an appropriate remedy. I can appreciate by present standards, that such a response
was obviously humiliating and unfair.
2.309 Former residents gave evidence of being beaten for bed-wetting. This allegation is accepted by
the Rosminians. Fr O’Reilly, at the Phase III public hearing, stated, ‘I accept that boys, regrettably,
were punished for bed-wetting’.
2.310 Bed-wetting was seen principally as a disciplinary issue. Fr O’Reilly added, ‘the response to bed-
wetting was more than wholly inadequate, it was terrible. It was terrible on boys to be punished
for this’.
2.311 He also conceded that the practice of carrying wet sheets down to the boiler house to dry was a
humiliating ritual for the boys:
... I think that boys felt humiliated by having to carry sheets. Whether it was intended to
do that or not, I don’t know. But obviously, having to carry your sheet in front of other
boys ... was a deeply embarrassing thing to boys. There might have been just a practical
reason in terms of removing the sheets from the bed where they’re wet to another place
where they’ll be dried. But obviously it was embarrassing.
2.312 A witness, who arrived in the School in the late 1940s, recalled that he was relegated to the bed-
wetting section of the dormitory. He clearly remembered the nightly visits to the dormitory by the
night watchman, who used to call the boys three times during the night to go to the toilet. He
described this night watchman as a ‘savage’, as he would hit the boys with his walking stick to
wake them and get them out of bed. According to this witness, it was like trying to ‘run the gauntlet’
to the toilet, trying to avoid a blow from this man’s walking stick. If they wet the bed during the
night, the next day they had to carry their mattress across to the boiler house to dry, which this
witness found degrading. On the way to the boiler house, they were teased and humiliated by the
other boys. His entire memory of Upton was of ‘stale urine, overflowing toilets, abuse ...’. This
witness also recollected that the night watchman used to have a slice of bread and butter with
sugar for his ‘pets’ that did not wet the bed. Eventually, he got the treat of bread and sugar
when he stopped wetting the bed so in that sense he felt that giving a treat did work in halting
bed-wetting.
2.313 Another witness who was in the School in the 1950s also remembered that the same night
watchman would do the rounds of the dormitory, and would wake the boys who wet the bed by
roaring at them and hitting them with his blackthorn stick. Even though he himself did not wet the
bed, he recalled that this practice of hitting the boys to get them out of bed continued from the
time he arrived until the time he left the School, which was over a five-year period.
2.314 One witness remembered being sent to the ‘slashers’ dormitory, which was the name given for
those who wet the bed. To his knowledge, he did not wet the bed in the previous industrial schools
he had attended. The punishment for bed-wetting was to receive benders.
2.315 The Committee also heard evidence from Br Alfonso. As Prefect in Upton for a period of six years,
he was a dominant figure, and his evidence is dealt with in more detail in earlier sections. He
completely rejected the allegation that there was an atmosphere of fear in Upton, and he insisted
that during his time in Upton he never beat anyone for bed-wetting and never saw anyone being
beaten for it.
Education and trades

2.316 The Order stated that the boys were educated to primary level only. According to the records of
the Rosminians, 339 boys sat the Primary Certificate Examination between 1943 and 1966,55 of
whom 167 passed, 164 failed and 8 were disqualified. The Irish language was the main difficulty.
When they reached 14 years of age, their formal education ceased and they went to work in the
trade shops, such as the tailors or the shoemakers or on the farm.
2.317 One witness, who spent approximately five years in Upton in the 1950s, recalled that when he
first arrived in the School he was unable to read or write. However, while at Upton he learnt to
read and write, an achievement that he attributed to the lay teacher there who was ‘very good’.
He went on to sit the Primary Certificate, which he passed. When his schooling ended, he was
sent to work full-time in the garden and subsequently on the farm.
55
Records exist for only 19 of the 23 years.

2.318 A witness who was in Upton in the 1960s did not recall learning anything much while he was
there. He had attained fifth class standard before going to Upton and, once there, he compared
the education to being back ‘into first class again ...’. He felt that he didn’t learn anything more
than what he had been taught prior to going there. His schooling lasted a total of three weeks,
and then he was sent to work in the Brothers’ kitchen to wash pots and pans and scrub the floor.
He remained there full-time until he came back from holidays one year – he had delayed his return
and he was sent to the garden as a punishment for this, to work for the rest of his time there.
2.319 One witness described how the regime of punishment interfered with his ability to learn in the
classroom and in the tailor’s shop. In particular, he recalled that another lay teacher used to hit
him on the tips of his fingers with a map, which was cylindrical in shape and wrapped around a
stick. According to him, it was very hard to learn anything because, as he said in evidence:
It was very, very hard to learn anything because everything was pressure and violence,
abuse, “shut up”, “sit down”. I can never remember anyone saying anything with any
degree or modicum of affection or tenderness, I can never remember.
2.320 Not all boys learnt a trade in Upton. Some of them, once their schooling ended at the age of 14,
were sent to work in the kitchen or the farm or in the garden, and some worked with the builder
who was on site at the time of the renovations taking place in Upton. A number of boys went on
to become members of the Rosminian Order.
2.321 No secondary education was available in Upton itself as there was no secondary school. However,
boys who were sent forward to the Novitiate in Omeath received secondary education, as was
evidenced by Fr O’Reilly. Reference was made by Fr. Christiano to three to four boys who
attended Omeath returned to the School during holidays etc. They were segregated from the other
boys. They slept in an old infirmary, ate in a small refectory and did odd jobs around the School.
2.322 Br Nicoli,56 who was the Secretary in Upton for over 15 years until the late 1960s, was, according
to the Rosminians, ‘quite meticulous in sourcing work and trades for boys’ once they left the
School at 16 years of age. This Brother was unique in this regard, as he took it upon himself to
seek work for the boys, since there was no policy in the School itself concerning aftercare. He
kept a diary record of the number of boys who were apprenticed and engaged in different
occupations. From this record it appears the boys got work in the Army, and as blacksmiths,
butchers, post office clerks, postmen, draper’s assistants and welders.
Family contact
2.323 The boys detained in Upton came from many of the surrounding counties and also from as far
away as Dublin. They were officially allowed home in July for two weeks. They were also allowed
to receive visits from parents and relatives. However, the amount of family contact depended on
where the children came from and their family circumstances. For some, this meant reasonable
family contact, and, for others, little or none.
2.324 One witness was already one year in the School when his brother arrived. He also had regular
visits from his parents. His father came almost every second week. They would be allowed to see
each other alone in a room for visitors at the end of one of the corridors.
2.325 The separation from family was described by one witness, who said he was deeply affected by
the fact that he was sent 160 miles away from his family. He got no visits and only recently
became aware that his father had extensive correspondence with the authorities, seeking to have
him transferred to Artane or to an Institution nearer the family home. His mother even wrote to
President De Valera at the time. His mother died in 1957, and she had been buried by the time
56

he was told about it, despite the fact that his father telephoned and tried to have him released in
time for the funeral.
2.326 Another witness said he had no family contact and was prevented from going home on holidays,
as the ISPCC put a stop to it because his mother had illegitimate children. He was sent home at
age 16 on his own, having been institutionalised at the age of four, and only then met his sister
for the first time.
2.327 A witness described how, when his mother died when he was eight years old, which resulted in
him being sent to an industrial school, it effectively broke the bonds between him and his siblings:
As I say, having lived in a family environment, however limited that may have been it was
still a family, you still had your siblings and you had a parent and to be taken from that
environment and placed in a place where you suddenly were no longer human, you were
treated as a number and any chance of having any love, affection...
2.328 When he was discharged from Upton, he was sent to the home of a neighbour who had previously
looked after him. This arrangement was not successful, as the father of the house abused him,
and he eventually ran away to sea at the age of 14. The whole experience was extremely unhappy,
and he believes the neighbouring family should have been properly vetted.
2.329 One witness described how, during his time in Upton, his father consistently applied to have him
discharged. His family made him aware of this fact, but he was never told of it by the authorities
in Upton. He did go home on holidays and his parents also visited him. They used to send him
money and parcels from home.
2.330 Witnesses remembered being allowed home for two weeks in the summer. For about a month
beforehand, the regime was relaxed a little bit and the boys were reminded not to speak about
Upton at home. The boys were also allowed to write a letter home once a month, and this letter
was written for the boys on the blackboard and they were checked before they were posted.
Conclusions on neglect and emotional abuse

2.331 1. At times during the relevant period, food, clothing and accommodation in Upton fell
below acceptable standards, for which lack of resources was not an excuse.
2. Boys went hungry and, given the size of the farm at Upton, there was no reason for it.
3. The food that was provided to the boys was poor in quality. The Brothers and priests
who lived in Upton received far better food than the children.
4. Bedwetting was a persistent problem, and children were punished, humiliated and
segregated in a futile attempt to deal with it.
5. The regime of punishment and fear interfered with children’s ability to learn in the
classroom.
6. Removing children to this distant Institution caused emotional harm, because it cut
them off from their families and social networks.
2.332 General conclusions on Upton and Ferryhouse are at paragraph 3.454 of the following Chapter
on Ferryhouse.

Chapter 3
St Joseph’s Industrial School,

Ferryhouse, Clonmel, (‘Ferryhouse’),
1885–1999
Introduction
Buildings and layout

3.01 St Joseph’s Industrial School is located in the townland of Ferryhouse, some three to four
kilometres due east of the centre of Clonmel, on the northern bank of the river Suir, in County
Tipperary. The original building was erected at a cost of £10,000 in 1884 by Count Moore, a
wealthy local Catholic benefactor, and, shortly after its construction, he invited the Rosminians to
run the School. He gave them an additional £1,000 to furnish the School.
3.02 It was a large, three-storey red brick building located on approximately nine acres of farmland. It
was cruciform in shape, with the central projection in front housing the main entrance, with the
Resident Manager’s office, a reception area and the church, which included the sanctuary area.
Above the entrance, set in an alcove, was a statue of St Joseph. There were steps running down
to the river from the entrance. The projection to the rear housed the main staircase. A cloister at
the rear of the building served as a corridor.
3.03 Shortly after opening, three new wings were erected, a west and east, each with two storeys, and
a north-facing building of one storey. With the main house, these buildings enclosed a yard or
quadrangular area, with access through an archway on the northern side. More land was bought
during the course of the following decades so that, by the 1950s, the farm had increased to
approximately 50 acres. In later years, a series of buildings, including a chapel, an infirmary and
various workshops, were built. The focus of the School remained the original main building. The
School was entirely rebuilt during the early 1980s.
3.04 The dormitories were in the two upper storeys of the original three-storey building, with senior
boys on the first floor and junior boys on the second floor above. Each dormitory accommodated
100 beds and a Prefect’s room. On the ground floor were a number of offices.
3.05 The west wing was a two-storey granite structure providing community accommodation, the
infirmary, nurse’s room and boys’ kitchen and dining area.
3.06 The two-storey east wing housed the School classrooms up until the 1960s when they moved to
prefab accommodation. This area was then converted in 1967 to a junior dormitory, at which stage
the dormitory accommodation was divided into junior, intermediate and senior areas. The ground
floor of the east wing comprised the hall, offices and various recreational rooms.
3.07 The north-facing section was a single-storey building which housed the trade shops and, in later
years, various recreation areas.
3.08 There were also various outhouses and maintenance sheds and, in the 1960s, an extension to
the original central building was added, providing toilet and shower facilities.
3.09 The Community had a separate refectory and kitchen in the main house. The Rosminian
Community residence was located in the main building. All of the buildings and land still in
possession of the Rosminians was transferred to the State in 2002, apart from a small holding of
land unsuitable for farming south of the river Suir.
3.10 A plan of these buildings is given below:
3.11 A report has been compiled by Mr Ciaran Fahy, consulting engineer, on the physical surroundings
of Ferryhouse, with particular reference to the buildings. A copy of this report is appended to
this chapter.
Number of boys in Ferryhouse

3.12 As can be seen from the following charts, there were between 150 and 200 boys in Ferryhouse
until the 1970s. In January 1885, a Certificate was granted for the School to receive 150 boys
and, in 1944, this Certificate was increased to 200. The numbers in Ferryhouse ranged from 189
boys in 1940, increasing to a high of 205 in 1960. This number decreased to 160 in 1970, but it

was still a high number of boys. Thereafter, the numbers began to gradually decline. Up until the
1980s, the numbers were far in excess of the certified number.
3.13 Numbers in other schools began dropping from the 1950s onwards, but Ferryhouse continued to
be at or near its capacity, largely because it took children from other schools. Upton closed
following a major fire in 1966, and 28 boys were transferred to Ferryhouse. The chart below shows
the breakdown of numbers of residents throughout the years:
Year Certification number Type of admissions

1884 licence for 150 children Committed
1900 155 children Committed
1930 193 children Committed and voluntary
1960 205 Committed and voluntary
This data may also be illustrated in graph form as follows:
Numbers in Ferryhouse
250
200
150
100
50
0
1884 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1994 1995 1996 2004
3.14 The boys were aged between nine and 16 years.
First impressions of the School as described by former residents

3.15 On first entering the School, several complainants described being over-awed by the numbers.
One witness, who went there in the late 1940s, described his first day as follows:
Oh, it was frightening, to see them big doors open. I was introduced to the Rector at the
time ... who was a very nice man, he was, very pleasant. I was taken into a room. I was
given some bread and cocoa, a change of clothes ... Then you could say I was thrown
out into the yard with the other boys, really frightening ... I have never seen so many boys
in my life. I thought – well, I should imagine you would expect about 50 or 60 like that
was in [the convent] but when you see about 200, oh dear.
3.16 A resident who was in Ferryhouse in the 1940s described his first day as fearful. His mother had
recently died and five of the large family were sent to Ferryhouse. He recalled:
When I arrived, we were brought in a front door and then you came through a kind of a
cloister and you came out a door and there was a clock over the door – now you didn’t
see that until you came back in – and I seen this massive amount of boys. There was
about 200 boys there at my time when I arrived there. There was a massive amount of
boys, all ages, running, and shouting. It drove the fear of God in you and that’s the truth.
We kind of cuddled together, the five of us.
3.17 Another witness, in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s, also stressed the frightening impact of so many
boys together at one time. On recalling his first day:
We were escorted up to a laundry house and, if I am not mistaken, the laundry house
would have been underneath the main stairs or somewhere in that area of the main
building of Ferryhouse before you go out to the yard from the Rector's office. There was
a little laundry room there which Br Leone1 was running and there he handed you out
whatever clothing or blankets, I can't remember what it was. I remember the smell of the
laundry room. That is all I remember of it.
When I walked out the door that day and seen so many boys running around, I think it
was the first and last time I actually had a good cry because I knew where I was. I didn't
know there was no come back, but I knew that was the first time I actually said to myself
I really missed my mother. I realised I was after being taken away.
3.18 Another witness described a similar routine at mealtime:

You lined up every morning for your meals ... the small guys up the front and the bigger
lads at the back. It would be like an army ... you would go in and line up. There was 11
at each table and you had a leader at the top of the table, he was responsible for cutting
the horrible block of margarine that each one got a square of.
3.19 By the 1960s, the nineteenth-century buildings were becoming dilapidated and outmoded. A
surprise inspection by the Department of Education of Ferryhouse, on 21st July 1966, referred to
outmoded methods of housing children. Dr Lysaght, the Medical Inspector, described ‘a
depressing air of mass communal living’ due to the large size of the dormitories and the large
number of beds. His report, which is dealt with below, recommended that the dormitories should
be broken into smaller units, and the Department responded by sanctioning six new prefabs for
the School. These changes prefaced the huge rebuilding programme undertaken a decade later.
3.20 After the School was rebuilt, some complainants described their first impression as favourable. A
resident who went there in the late 1980s, after Ferryhouse had been rebuilt, said:
The first day we went down I was with the police and they were showing us around. They
brought us out in the building first, they showed us where we would be just so we would
settle in. Then they brought us all around the buildings, telling us what buildings was
which and then brought us out to the back where there was a kind of farm, just showing
us where the animals were and saying if we wanted we could help out with the animals
and all. Looking around it was real nice, I thought it was going to be nicer than when I
was in Michael’s beforehand, because I was in St. Michael’s for three weeks before going
down. I was thinking it was real open, not closed doors everywhere. I thought it was a
real nice place and I thought it would be okay.
1

3.21 Later he added:
The first few weeks it was more or less the same like, everybody was okay. Then I think
the first time I got hit was when I was in a fight with one of the lads, we had a
disagreement.
First impressions and atmosphere of the School as described by staff
3.22 The conditions within Ferryhouse, and its atmosphere, were vividly described by some of the
former and current members of the Rosminian Order. One priest, Fr Antonio,2 who was there in
the late 1960s and 1970s, described the grim conditions that he found prior to the rebuilding of
the School. He told the Investigation Committee:
Things were very Dickensian in the place at the time in 1967/68 ... Things were very, very
bad at that time. My first vision of the dormitory were all these beds in the big dormitory,
full stretched up the whole way, and all the wet beds on one side of the dormitory which
was a very Dickensian situation and a cruel situation at that time.
One of the earliest memories I would have had going in there was a place at the end of
the stairs and a young 12 year old would be in charge of the laundry and he would go in
and take out all these shirts and bring them out and put them on the beds. A tall fella could
have a shirt down to his navel and another fella could have his shirt down to his ankles.
... Some of the saddest memories I would have is of the boys who wet their bed bringing
out their sheets to laundry in the morning because there was only one woman in the
laundry and they used to have to bring them out.
Daily routine
3.23 With small variations, the daily timetable for the boys and staff in Ferryhouse followed the activity
pattern set out below:
Time Activity for boys Duty for staff

6.30 Rise/ prepare breakfast etc
7.30 Mass
8.00 Boys called/ Wash and dress Raise boys
Supervise
8.30 Mass then breakfast/ polishing Supervise
boots and clothing inspection etc
9.00 School/ Workshops/technical Return to dorms to check all is
classes Mondays and clean
Wednesdays
11.30 Playtime Supervise
12.00 to 12.45 Catechism
12.45 to 1.00 Playtime Supervise
1.00 Dinner/play Supervise
2.30 Workshops
3.00 Band until 4.45 for players
5.00 Play Supervise
5.30 School
7.45 Supper/Play Supervise
9.00 Bed Supervise until night watchman
arrives/ on call
2

3.24 In earlier years, the boys started earlier, but shifts in the time scale did not alter the basic routine.
3.25 For this daily routine to run on time, the boys had to be drilled with near military precision. As one
priest, Fr Ludano,3 who stayed at the School in the late 1940s and early 1950s, put it:
Probably even at that time I considered it harsh ... well, there was a lot of regimentation,
some of which I didn’t think was necessary. It was run almost on army lines, which I think
was unnecessary.
3.26 While this regimentation allowed things to run on schedule, it led to quick physical chastisement
of boys who fell behind the others. One witness, resident in Ferryhouse in the late 1940s,
described the regimentation and how it was enforced:
In the yard playing around. Then when evening came, bedtime, I was shown the bed I
would be sleeping in, an iron cast bed. We got up in the morning, wash your face, wash
your hair. There was two lines of sinks, wash basins. You had to take your shirt off, one
line at a time in each line of sinks. When they were finished another line would go in.
Now, we had to wash our hair and our face, cold water, carbolic soap and if we didn't get
the soap off in time we got a whack across the head with a cane so everybody had to
rush to get the soap off ...
Then we would go out and then we would make our beds. The other lot would go in, wash
their heads and face until everybody was done. Then we would dress ourselves, down to
Mass. We went to Mass every morning. After Mass we would go back up to the dormitory
again, dust our beds, the frame of the beds, dust it. The laymen would come around, feel
the bed. If there was a bit of dust left on it, if there was a bit left on it we got a wallop.
What does a 10 or 11-year-old child have to get a wallop because there is a bit of dust
on the frame of the bed?
Anyway after that we would go down to breakfast: two slices of bread and dripping, either
a cup of tea or cocoa. Then we would go to the various classes, school. We had four, I
think it was four lay teachers ... We had no lady teachers, there was no ladies at all in the
school while I was there, no ladies at all.
After school we would have our dinner. We would have to line up in the yard like an army
barracks. They would shout out in Irish, ‘Stand to attention. At ease’. Line one would go
into the refectory. Then line two. We didn't say a word. If we said anything we got a
wallop. We would say our grace for what was on the table, which wasn't much. We would
sit down, have that, not a word out of us. Tin plate and a spoon. We would come out and
then we would start playing. Then about half past four line up again for our last meal of
the day. Two slices of a bread and jam and a cup of cocoa or whatever it was, tea or
cocoa then about. We would be out playing then and we would have – no, I beg your
pardon. Before the lunch we would go to the workshops. I was in the knitting shop. There
was a tailor shop, a shoemaker shop and that would go on for several hours. Then we
would have our lunch. We lined up again for that. After that we would go out and play,
and at about eight or half past eight we would go to bed then. We would say our night
prayers. We would get up again in the morning, same routine again.
3.27 Within this regimented timetable, each boy got to know his duty. One witness explained:
Some people who wet the bed might get a clattering and that would be the start of the
day for them, after showing their sheets and the mattresses. Those that wet the bed would
have to go for communal showers after Mass and then go to the office then to get the
strap for the same thing ... Then you had your morning chores after that. Some people
cleaned the long corridors of the school, clean it. Some people cleaned the dormitories.
3

Not everyone had morning chores, but there was a designated number of people who
would do the morning chores.
Priests and Brothers in Ferryhouse

3.28 The Rosminian Community in Ferryhouse generally consisted of 10 members of the Order, both
priests and Brothers. All of the members of the Community lived in the School, and each had
different responsibilities. The Resident Manager and the Prefects ran the School, and the Prefects
had the most direct contact with the boys. However, other Brothers and priests had responsibilities
with the boys to a lesser degree.
3.29 Fr Stefano4 was appointed as Resident Manager of Ferryhouse in the mid-1970s. He detailed in
his evidence what staff were available to him at that time. What he described was typical of the
previous decades in Ferryhouse:
In the community when I arrived, I had a bursar; I had three Prefects, one for each group;
and I had an assistant, a student, and a Rosminian student who was studying for the
priesthood and he was there as well and he would help out in different units at different
times. I had the farm manager. There was a retired gardener, a Brother who died shortly
after I arrived there. I had another Brother who was helping in maintenance. There was a
Brother who was in charge of the community kitchen and there was a mission secretary
– that was a priest who worked full-time for the Missions raising money for our African
Missions and he lived with us.
3.30 Fr Stefano, therefore, had three Prefects to call upon to take care of over 150 boys. His other
staff, although involved in the running of the School, were not directly involved in the day-to-day
care of the boys. Throughout its history, Ferryhouse used only a small number of staff to take
care of the boys. It is a fair estimate that less than 20% of the religious Community present in
Ferryhouse had a direct role in the provision of care to the boys:
Sample table of staff to pupil ratio in Ferryhouse
Year Number of boys Total number of Number of Prefect/boy ratio

resident Rosminian prefects
Community
1930 193 9 2 96/1
1940 189 9 2 94/1
1950 182 10 2 91/1
1960 205 12 2 102/1
1970 160 12 3 53/1
4

Physical abuse
Physical abuse: what the Institute of Charity have conceded

3.31 As far back as 1990, on the occasion of the public opening of a new school in Ferryhouse, the
Provincial spoke of the boys who had been damaged by the years they spent in the old
Ferryhouse, and of those who looked back in anger and bitterness on their time there. He said:
The greatest guilt has to be borne by those of us who utilised or condoned or ignored the
extreme severity, even brutality which characterised at times the regime at old
Ferryhouse.
3.32 This awareness of the extreme severity, even brutality, of the old regime was reiterated in
statements made to the Investigation Committee. Fr O’Reilly, speaking on behalf of the Order at
the Phase I public hearing on 7th September 2004, outlined its position on the use of corporal
punishment at St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse. He told the Investigation Committee:
I’d say that most of the boys who were in Ferryhouse would have received corporal
punishment at one time or another in the course of their time there for what was regarded
as misbehaviour, be that absconding, or some other thing, and I think that corporal
punishment was the standard that was acceptable at that time.
3.33 He went on to say, however, ‘I am sure that punishment at times for running away was excessive’.
3.34 The Rosminians prepared a respondent statement in response to each complainant’s allegations
of physical abuse. This statement was furnished to the Commission by Fr Matt Gaffney, Provincial
Superior, in May 2002. It further clarified the attitude of the Order to the era when corporal
punishment was in widespread use. He wrote:
Corporal punishment should be seen in an institutional context where the maintenance of
control was an absolute necessity, and in particular in the light of social attitudes of the
time. It is true that the ideal of child-care in Industrial Schools was to avoid corporal
punishment when possible, but that unfortunately provided an aspiration without the
means of achieving it. The absence of child-care training left staff at the schools without
any practical policy other than personal judgment, which was fallible and always hard-
pressed. The use of corporal punishment as a general disciplinary measure, and its uses
also as a punishment or deterrent for bed wetting, absconding and other infractions, in
times when corporal punishment was generally socially acceptable, produced a
disciplinary environment in which the distinction between punishment and abuse could
become blurred.
3.35 In their Final Submission to the Investigation Committee, after all the hearings had been
completed, the Rosminians wrote:
The susceptibility of corporal punishment to abuse seems inherent. If left to discretion,
a cause can always be found for its use, especially where authority is threatened or
insecure ...
It must be said that Prefects seem to have varied widely in their use of corporal
punishment. This appears to be reflected in the pattern of complaints. This in itself would
suggest that problems of corporal punishment were created in part by a lack of policy
and supervision.
3.36 The approach taken by the Rosminians had many advantages for the complainants giving
evidence to the Committee. Above all, it made it easier for them to tell of their experiences. The
Rosminians’ inquisitorial approach actively engaged with the Commission in searching for facts.
The victims were sometimes helped to recall details, and were often asked to add to the facts
known to the Order.
3.37 However, the Order were loath to admit that the kind of corporal punishment administered as part
of the regime often constituted physical abuse. This contrasted with their approach to known
sexual abusers, where they did not dispute the abusive nature of the behaviour.
The role of Prefect

3.38 While all members of the Order and the lay teachers could use corporal punishments, the majority
of the complaints received by the Investigation Committee named members of the Order who had
been appointed Prefects. Until the late 1960s, when the number of dormitories was increased to
three following a critical inspection, there were two Prefects, one for the junior and one for the
senior section. Fr O’Reilly told the Investigation Committee:
... it was regarded as the responsibility of the Prefects to look after the children, regardless
of how many there were there ... once the children came out for all activities, whether that
was football or hurling or soccer in the yard or whatever it had to be, you had to organise
that and you had to ensure, as far as you could, that you had an eye on all the children
or as many as you possibly could have, because that is your responsibility.
3.39 It was regarded as an impossible task, unless the supervision of the children also involved a
degree of control over them through fear of punishment. One former Prefect told the
Investigation Committee:
I certainly would have hit chaps with the palm of my hand as well if the frustration got too
much ... I wouldn't have been unique, I don't think, no ... we always tried to leave that
side of it to one of the others if they would do it. Somebody has to take on the responsibility
of the disciplinarian, one of us could step back and let ... whoever was there do it ... That
kind of shoved you into a role at the time as well.
3.40 The Prefects, he explained:

allowed somebody to take the flak, we all do it in groups unfortunately at times, somebody
else takes on this role of being the disciplinarian and everybody else can sit back and say
I’ll send you to [the Prefect].
3.41 A Prefect from the 1960s, Br Alfonso,5 described the role of Prefect in the following terms:
the Prefect of Discipline was public enemy numero uno. That he was the first public enemy
because he was the only one who is to dish out discipline. He was to physically punish
the children if that were necessary.
3.42 Fr Antonio, who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1940s and 1950s, told the Committee, ‘The advice
I was given when I went over there first, make sure they know who is boss and your job was to
keep control. There was very little support, I might add’.
3.43 Once ‘shoved into’ the role of Prefect, he went on:

You just have to go in and pretend that you are the big boy, which I did at the time ... I
roared and shouted and put a fella away and said that will stop that messing now. I don’t
remember hitting anybody that particular night, many a time I did. You would kind of take
on the acting role ... Then, looking back now, while I was acting I’m sure the children
didn’t think I was acting at all, so that would have frightened them as well ... You would
think I was going to kill them. It was using fear really to get control.
5

3.44 Fr Antonio told the Committee that he had requested that he be removed from the Prefect’s
position. He said:
I was glad to get away from the prefecting ... it was too boring and walking around just
like that all day, nothing to do. I would prefer to be working, doing something.
3.45 He took up another position in the School, and became happier in his work. Indeed, one of the
complainants singled him out as a kind and helpful Brother, whereas, when Prefect, he did rule
by fear, and was named by many complainants as unfeeling, cruel and severe.
The leather straps

3.46 The official instrument used to punish was the leather strap as discussed in the chapter on Upton.
There were two kinds: one was a shaped single piece of leather; and the other was known as
‘a doubler’.
3.47 It is likely that different straps were in use from time to time, and it is not certain that all of them
contained metal or coins within them.
3.48 The heavier strap was kept in the Prefect’s office on the ground floor, a room that served also as
the sweet shop, and boys who had committed more serious offences were sent there for
punishment. Another strap, also a ‘doubler’, was sometimes kept in the Prefect’s room adjacent
to the dormitory. It appears that some Prefects carried a strap in their cassock or up a sleeve, to
act as both a deterrent and to punish as they felt appropriate.
3.49 Both boys and Brothers agreed that, to receive the strap, the boy faced the Prefect or Brother,
and blows from the strap were along the length of the hand and forearm. The Brothers spoke of
giving a boy a few slaps, but when the witnesses described their pain and distress the full pathos
of corporal punishment emerged. Many graphic descriptions are given below. As one witness put
it, ‘The doublers ... when you were getting hit it used to go up your arm ... You got it right up the
arm’. Many said the most painful was the blow upon the wrist.
3.50 Being beaten on the hands was known as getting ‘handers’, and being struck on the buttocks or
back was known as a ‘flamming’. In theory, ‘flammings’ were reserved for very serious offences
such as absconding and, as a rule, only the Prefects administered them.
3.51 The Rules and Regulations governing Industrial and Reformatory Schools, issued to all certified
schools in 1933,6 allowed ‘Chastisement with the cane, strap or birch’, but made no attempt to
describe the implements. The Department of Education Inspector, Mr Mı́cheál Ó Sı́ochfhrada,
issued more precise guidelines in a circular of 1946, in which he stated that corporal punishment
should in future be confined to the form usually used in schools, that is, slapping on the open
hand with a light cane or strap. Any form of punishment that was not in accordance with the
circular was ‘strictly prohibited’.
3.52 The heavy double straps in use until 1993 in Ferryhouse, often weighted with coins, could not be
described as a light strap. Nor could a blow along the arm be described as ‘slapping on the open
hand’. Therefore, neither the implement nor the manner of delivering the blow were in accordance
with the rules and regulations governing corporal punishment.
Documentary evidence on physical abuse

3.53 There is no documentary evidence on the use of corporal punishment and the issue of physical
abuse. There is no punishment book for Ferryhouse. This is all the more surprising, given the fact
6
Set out in full in Volume I.

that the Prefect who had introduced the punishment book in Upton in 1952 also served as Prefect
in Ferryhouse from 1960. Since the punishment books were intended to control the use of corporal
punishment and curb its excesses, its absence makes it more difficult to establish the extent and
severity of such abuse.
The evidence of the complainants

3.54 The Investigation Committee heard evidence from 29 individuals who spent time in Ferryhouse
as children. Nearly all of them described being physically punished. Many expressed an
acceptance of corporal punishment if it was proportionate and deserved. For example, one
witness, in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s and early 1970s, told the Committee:
You just have to be, kind of, street wise down there, you know ... I was never really
punished much ... if there was a group of you you would always get one or two on the
hands and that was it. You would just take it and leave it, you know ... sometimes they
were deserved, yes.
3.55 He went on to describe the kinds of offences that incurred different levels of physical punishment:
Sometimes would be two, sometimes it would be four. Six if it was something bad, you
know what I mean, smoking, say, for instance ... or cursing, you know, if you called
somebody something you would probably only get two or three ... but really really trouble
you would get six.
3.56 A predictable tariff for offences would have allowed boys to work out what was fair or deserved
punishment, and also taught the ‘street wise’ boy what to do to avoid being beaten. If applied
properly, it would have made the punishment regime predictable. This particular witness accepted
being physically punished if he had done wrong and if he got what he deserved. He reserved his
criticism for unfair punishment, or excessive violence. He told the Investigation Committee:
It was strict ... like, when you look back over it, it is for stupid things; wet the beds or you
soiled your pants or something like that.
3.57 He elaborated on this theme later:

Soiling your underpants, checking your underpants and if you are soiled everyone else
know about it. That is not human. You used to have to go up and open your underpants
and show them in a line and there would be people scrubbing and spitting on them ...
they are the things that stick in your mind.
3.58 Many witnesses described being physically punished in circumstances that they considered being
excessive, unfair and capricious. Although a few spoke of being punished by the Resident
Manager, or by other members of the Rosminian Community, almost all focused on punishments
inflicted by the Prefects, who were in charge of the boys.
3.59 Complaints were not confined to the use of the strap as an instrument of punishment. Some
testified to being struck by various other implements, and a number of witnesses spoke of being
punched or kicked.
3.60 Complaints of physical punishment related to every decade in respect of which the Investigation
Committee heard evidence. The earliest evidence came from a witness who was admitted in 1943.
The latest evidence came from one who left Ferryhouse in 1991.
3.61 In each of these decades, boys living in Ferryhouse complained of punishment that was severe
and excessive, and beyond what was permitted under the rules governing industrial schools.
Excessive punishment
3.62 Several witnesses described beatings that went far beyond the limits of moderate chastisement.
These severe beatings were usually given after serious offences, such as absconding. Running
away was viewed as particularly serious for several reasons: first, the safety of the boys
themselves was a consideration; secondly, there was a fear that the neighbours in Clonmel might
be burgled or disturbed by the absconders; thirdly, all cases of absconding had to be reported to
the Department of Education, so involved extra administration and possible reprimand; fourthly,
one boy absconding unsettled the other boys and frequently triggered a spate of absconding; and
finally, the Gardaı́ would have to be informed and searches had to be organised. The Prefect had
the responsibility of organising the search for absconders.
3.63 For all these reasons, absconders were dealt with severely. When they were returned, they were
usually punished with the strap, often in view of other boys, and in the earlier years their heads
were shaved. At one stage, Fr Antonio informed the Committee:
They used to put them in pyjamas and coats over the top to stop them running away ...
Again it was Dickensian ... And there were other occasions where they were put in short
pants as well.
3.64 The major deterrent remained corporal punishment, and, as the Rosminians have conceded,
corporal punishment for running away was at times excessive.
3.65 A witness who was resident in Ferryhouse in the late 1940s, when he was aged approximately
14 years, told the Investigation Committee of a particularly severe beating he received for
absconding. He ran away four or five days after his arrival and was found by the Gardaı́ and
brought back. He was not punished on this occasion. A week later, he ran away again, and was
picked up a few days later, early in the morning, by the Gardaı́ at his home. He was put in a police
cell, ‘a dirty stinking hole of a dungeon’ and was forgotten about until there was a change of shift.
He received no food at all, and was collected late that evening by a Brother, and driven back to
Ferryhouse. He described what ensued:
Went to bed because it was very late at night. Within about 15 minutes, I was hauled out
of bed by Br Gian.7 In those days we had no nightclothes, we slept in our shirt, he grabbed
hold of my shirt and pulled it up over my head and my arms were held up like that and I
was flogged unmercifully for a long period of time ... across the back, small of the back,
the buttocks, the backs of my thighs and he left marks nearly an inch wide and they were
there for months. When my mother come to see me they wouldn’t let her see me because
she could clearly see the back of my legs, they were all bruised.
3.66 He did not try to run away again. ‘Neither’ he added, ‘did anybody else. We lived in fear, I never
looked up from the ground after that’. Following that beating when he finally left the Institution and
went home, he never left the house for a period of two years.
3.67 A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the 1950s described seeing a boy who had absconded
receive a severe beating in the dormitory on his return. He was visibly distressed as he told
his story:
He was 14, I think, 14 years of age, a big lad. A nice person. I used to refer to him as a
gentle giant ... he was given an example beating in the dormitory ... He ran away with
another two lads or something like that ... he was protesting, he had been in the school
because he was 14 and the Committal Order was until he was 14 ... He should have been
out. I think that was his general thing so he ran away. He was caught, brought back and
up in the lower dormitory, at night time, when we were all up in the dormitory ... He was
7

again brought out in the dormitory ... and he was approached by this Br Maximo8 ... Br
Maximo would be the main physical man. [There were three other staff there] ... I don’t
know. Did they want him to tip over so they could strap him on the backside? ... He
wouldn’t anyway. He grabbed the bed and he wouldn’t let go of the bed so Br Maximo
then proceeded to come down on his fists, on the boy’s fists on the bed ... then Br Maximo
went to physically attack him anyway on the body ... He gave him a couple of whacks of
the strap as well to see would that loosen the grip. It didn’t. We were all kind of getting
closer and closer to what was happening ... In the end I think .... did, out of pure weakness,
let go of the bed. Br Maximo started strapping him with the strap ... From fisting, and from
clattering and from the strap ... it was quite a bad beating he got. Bear in mind he was
only a young boy and you have a full physical adult using fists and what have you on him.
3.68 A witness who was there in the late 1960s absconded twice, the first time with his brother and
another boy, and the second time with two other boys. He told the Investigation Committee, ‘I
think the first time they let us go because we were only young and they realised we wanted just
to go home’. The second time, however:
We were brought back and we were made to shower again in our swimming trunks, and
they would dip them in salt and they would slap us again and give us a much more severe
beating this time, maybe 12 times.
3.69 Many former residents described severe beatings they called ‘flammings’, a term apparently
peculiar to Ferryhouse. One resident, who was in Ferryhouse in the 1940s, defined a ‘flamming’
as follows:
They were administered mostly in the dormitory in front of everyone. They consisted of
you being called. Then you took off your shirt because you wore your shirt at night ... and
you were put across the bed ... The strap that I was talking about was laid into your body
and they didn’t care where they hit you ... You were completely naked ... Most of the time
you were made put your hands across over the bed, sometimes they were held ... You
see, you were in constant fear ... of being punished for the least thing, for the simplest of
reasons or maybe for no reason at all.
3.70 He went on to draw a distinction between punishment and abuse:

If you asked me before to ban corporal punishment, I would have said corporal
punishment is a necessity ... The corporal punishment we got, if we got it properly, it was
right, it is the corporal punishment that was not right that I did not agree with. The corporal
punishment that became abuse is what I’m talking about. Putting out your two hands ...
we all got it in school, but flammings you didn’t get in school ... in schools you got the
hand, you may even have got the pulling of the hair or the ear when you done something
wrong. I wouldn’t be here today complaining about that.
3.71 A former resident who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s and early 1970s described a beating
that went from being a deserved punishment, given because he was seen doing a two-finger
gesture behind a Brother saying Grace, to being a vicious assault. He told the Investigation
Committee:
I was called into the office ... I knew I was caught ... Fr Paolo9 had [the leather] in his
hand. He said put out your hand, so I put out me hand and I took one ... and he asked
me for the other one and I said my thumb was sore, I was after bending it back playing
football and I didn’t want it on that hand because it would have been worse then, because
if you take two or three on one hand you don’t feel them. If you are getting six you won’t
8
9

feel the other three or four anyway and I wouldn’t and he insisted and I kept moving. I
wanted him to catch me this side [indicating], rather than this side of me thumb ... He kept
missing me because I kept moving it ... One time he skinned it, and the next time he went
and I pulled it, and he missed completely ... I could see in his face he was going to batter
me ... I seen it and he went for me and I just went down in a huddle ... As I was going
down I seen him drawing back to hit me and he caught me with the width of the thing ...
It wasn’t the flat part. He caught me with the thickness of it on the back there, on the back
of the neck there ... I was down for a minute and he stood back. He didn’t go mad on me
or anything. It was one blow ... When I looked he was back ... I stood up and he said,
“Put out your hand” ... I put out this hand and I took the rest. I do not know if it was one
or two more on me hand, and I walked out.
I had genuinely got a sore thumb but everyone used to say it because if you took two you
don’t feel the rest because your hand is numb. That was a ploy but they knew about it as
well you know.
3.72 A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the latter half of the 1960s gave a similar account of a
punishment that went out of control. The punishment was meted out by Br Valerio10 who, in the
private hearing, instructed his counsel to say, ‘Br Valerio does not deny [the complainant’s]
allegation as it is set out in his statement of complaint.’11 The statement said:
When I was 1312 years old, maybe 14 years, I was going for a walk with other boys from
St Joseph’s. I don’t know which Brother had us out for the walk but we were walking in
twos and on the way out we were doing some messing ... When we got back to the school
Br Valerio called me and another fellow out because of what happened on the walk. I was
sent to the office to see him ... Inside the office Br Valerio asked me about the messing
on the walk and if I had been involved and I denied it. He said he would give me one
more chance to tell the truth. I denied it again and this time he got out the long leather
strap. He had a reputation of not using his fists to hit boys but of using the strap. He gave
me blows with the strap to each hand and he started to hit me all over the body with the
strap. He hit me all over but did not hit my head. This lasted a good 5 minutes.
3.73 Fr Ludano who was resident in Ferryhouse in the early 1950s recalled one occasion when he
was approached by a few boys about a Brother who had punished another boy. He told the
Investigation Committee:
Some of the boys came to me and said: “Brother so and so, he slapped so and so even
though he is only a baby.” And that stayed in my mind ... I was horrified ... [I did] nothing
... I didn’t know what to do ... You see, my own position would have been a visitor, or just
passing through or whatever ... I was very sorry for the little fellow who was involved, you
know, and he was only a baby.
3.74 Even in an institution that was accustomed to the use of corporal punishment, there was an
awareness of what was excessive and cruel. Neither the boys nor the priest, however, could
challenge the right of the Brother to inflict punishment as he saw fit. Within Ferryhouse, it was the
Brother in charge who set the rules.
Unfair punishment
3.75 The Investigation Committee heard many complaints of punishments that were essentially unfair.
It was not the severity of the beating but the injustice of it that gave cause for grievance. As one
witness put it, ‘Nothing you could do, could be an accident. Everything was deliberate that you
did so you were punished’.
10
11
Br Valerio did not give evidence to the Committee; he lives abroad.

3.76 One witness described one such incident, when he was unfairly beaten by Br Maximo:
I was coughing in the dormitory, I wasn't feeling well, I was sick and I was coughing and
I don't know what time it would be, maybe it would be after ten or eleven or twelve o'clock
at night and Br Maximo came out. He went down along the aisle of the dormitory, one of
the aisles, and he wanted to see who was coughing. So he spotted me anyway and he
said, “Were you coughing?” I said, I was. So with that he went and started belting me and
clattering me from head down across the body for coughing ... With his hands, yes and
told me not to cough again ... He gave me a fair old walloping that time ... It was so unfair
severe at the same time. I never heard of anyone getting a hiding for being sick. That
would be my view.
3.77 Another former resident recounted an incident when he was beaten with a strap, even though he
had done nothing wrong:
I used to go to the boiler room to turn the steam on, and one day a glass was broken ...
It was on the side of the boiler, a kind of dial to show how much water was in the boiler.
I didn’t break it, but I got belted for it on the hands because I was supposed to have been
the only one who had gone in there.
3.78 A resident in the early 1960s described being beaten for something that he did not realise was a
serious offence in the eyes of the Order. He explained:
I got a serious beating there – there used to be a girl, I cannot think of her name now,
she used to come out from Clonmel on a bicycle ... I remember the address. She was
talking to me one day at the hay barn, I suppose I was maybe 15 at the time, but I knew
nothing about young ones or anything like that, I was just plain ignorant and that. I was
talking to her at the hay barn and the next thing Fr Dino12 came along. He gave her a
clatter and sent her off home anyway to Clonmel. We were just talking, there was
absolutely nothing involved; but I got a bad beating that day and I ended up, I ran away
out of Ferryhouse over it. That was a serious beating I got over that.
3.79 A resident in the 1940s described two ‘flammings’, he was given undeservedly. On one occasion,
he was accused of asking a person for a cigarette on the Waterford Road, which ran by the
School. ‘I didn’t do it’, he said, ‘but someone else’s word was taken instead of mine and I was
flammed for that’. The worst beating he received was when he was accused of allegedly claiming
he had seen a priest eating in the kitchen when he should have been fasting. In fact, he had
simply said he had seen the priest in the kitchen. ‘I got an unmerciful hiding that day and not
alone that did I get a hiding, at periods I was sent out and made stand against the wall with my
fingers up against the wall like that’ ... [indicating].
Other forms of punishment

3.80 Staff members were not merely authorised to use corporal punishment, they were given the
freedom to use it at will. This freedom allowed for even greater scope for abuse. One complainant,
a resident in the early 1970s, told the Investigation Committee:
Not only me, we all got hidings for nothing, it all depends which way Br Valerio woke up
in the morning. If we didn't make our beds right, if it wasn't inch perfect we got the slap.
If our shoes weren't properly done or if our collars weren't properly inside our jumpers we
got the slap for it. More or less for anything.
3.81 A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1950s described a physical punishment favoured by
Br Maximo:
12

A few times, I don't know what for, I can't remember what it was for but I remember a few
times where he told me, he used to do this a lot with a lot of people, hold the head steady
by holding the ear to make sure that you didn't move your head when he was going to
give you a clatter on the other side of the head. He would give you several clatters maybe
on the other side ... with the open hand.
3.82 The Rosminians conceded that most of the physical punishment would have happened in a
spontaneous way. If there were an incident in the yard, a Prefect would hit a boy a slap as
opposed to going through the whole process of administering corporal punishment at a designated
time. Fr O’Reilly called these ‘spontaneous responses’. He explained, ‘it wasn’t corporal
punishment in terms of receiving the cane. Like, I would acknowledge that it is quite possible that
a Prefect just immediately slapped the boy’.
3.83 These ‘spontaneous responses’ allowed some Brothers and priests to use physical chastisement
as a first resort for correcting a child, and it was not always confined to one or two slaps.
Depending on the mood of the Prefect, it could be a few slaps or a severe beating. A witness
from the late 1960s told the Committee that even good boys would be beaten. He explained:
I was very quiet. I kept myself to myself and stayed out of trouble ... we were beaten on
regular occasions for talking in the refectory, or whatever. Stuff like that ... Every one of
the boys got beaten on some occasion. No matter how good you were you were always
beaten at least at some certain occasion.
3.84 He gave an example of such on-the-spot chastisement:

[Fr Paolo] said, “Lights out” and we weren’t allowed to speak after lights out and one of
the boys might say something and he would be called out in front of Fr Paolo and he
would hit him with his back handed slap ... the boy would be looking up to him, he would
be only tiny, he would be only seven or eight years old, and he would put a full slap on
with the back of his hand and he would put him actually spinning.
3.85 The clatter was often the main means of correction, so boys lived in an environment where they
expected to be hit regularly and often.
3.86 Perhaps the worst effect of gratuitous and capricious punishment was its unpredictability. No
matter what the boys did, a punishment was still a possibility. The result was a climate of fear. A
witness who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s vividly described the kind of fear he experienced
every day. He told the Investigation Committee:
I cried most days in that school. I was so scared when the next beating was going to
come, whether it would be me. I mean I cried for my friends, my friends cried for me. We
didn’t deserve this stuff, we really didn’t deserve this ... It was the beatings that was given
and dished out in there was savage, man, savage ... I was a child you know, a child. I’ve
walked landings with hard men in the Joy [prison], in Cork, wherever. I was never afraid.
I would stand eye to eye with people that killed people. I wasn’t afraid. But I was afraid
when I was in that school, every day of my fecking life. That is what I want you to
understand.
Punishment for bed-wetting

3.87 Fr O’Reilly, in his evidence to the Investigation Committee given on 7th September 2004 at Phase
I, said that nocturnal enuresis had always been a problem at their schools:
If we are taking bed-wetting or enuresis as a problem, it seems to me that you are talking
somewhere between 20 and 30% of the boys with a problem in that area.
3.88 When asked how bed-wetters were dealt with, he replied:
Well, we have no records to say how boys were dealt with who wet the bed. Were boys
punished for wetting the bed? We don’t have records of that and when I spoke with
members of the Congregation who would have worked there, they would not recall that
boys were punished for wetting the bed.
3.89 He conceded, however, that boys who wet were kept in a separate area known as ‘the sailor’s
dorm’, and that boys were also given the term ‘sailors’. The Rosminians explained, ‘It is generally
felt that these beds were kept together so that the smell of urine did not pervade the whole
dormitory and thus the boys who did not wet the bed did not have to suffer the smell’.
3.90 The Rosminians now accept that it would have been humiliating for a boy to be known as a ‘sailor’
or ‘bed-wetter’. They also state that ‘it is quite possible that certain Prefects used this as a way of
asserting their authority’.
3.91 The Rosminians also concede that other practices were used to try to stop bed-wetting. The boys
were required to wash their own sheets each morning. They would have to take their wet sheets
down from the dormitory to the laundry, wash them and then hang them up to dry. In the evening,
they would have to collect their own sheets and return them to the dormitory. This practice
continued until a new Prefect arranged for the sheets to be washed by a housekeeper. The boys
still had to bring down their wet sheets to the laundry room, and that continued to mark them out
and humiliate them.
3.92 Two further humiliating practices existed for boys who wet the bed. The Rosminians admitted that
‘a very demeaning practice developed for a short time of making boys with enuresis wear a short
skirt for a period of a day or two’.
3.93 Another practice also developed, whereby bed-wetters would be required to walk around the
schoolyard with a mattress above their heads.
3.94 It was put to Fr O’Reilly that bed-wetting seemed to have been treated as a problem of discipline,
even though it was probably the least subject to discipline. He replied:
I would have to agree with you. You know, if a child has a difficulty in that area and is
upset, obviously you are going to increase the problem by drawing even more and more
attention to it and certainly by punishing the child or by causing the child to be even more
afraid than he was.
3.95 However, he again added, ‘I don’t know that children were habitually punished for wetting the bed’.
3.96 The question of whether bed-wetting was routinely punished was fully answered in the evidence
given to the Investigation Committee at the private hearings.
3.97 One of the Prefects in charge of the dormitory, Br Ignacio,13 told the Committee:
[The top dormitory] was divided into two, they were all the wet beds, as we call them,
there on one side, and then the rest of the boys on the other ... When I went there I
always thought they were punished ... Which I didn’t agree really, but as it before I went
and it was well before I went there, I wasn’t the one to stop the discipline. Hard as it was
for me to administer a couple of slaps for each boy ... They were punished every day if
they wet the bed ... They went down with their sheets ... to dry them below where the
heating for the showers were ...
13

3.98 He added, ‘That is the way it was when I went in there. Boys [who wet the bed] were always
slapped ... one in each hand ... before they went to bed the next night’.
3.99 He went on to say that he had never agreed with punishing the boys, because ‘some boys I know
didn’t do it purposely, just in their sleep they wet the bed, they couldn’t be accountable for that’.
However, he added ‘That was the case when I became Prefect and I didn’t discontinue that’.
3.100 He was then asked how the boys should have been treated. He replied:
If I know what I know now, I wouldn’t have administered punishment at all, but I was
young at the time and that is the way it was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during
all the course of the years.
3.101 He went on to advance the bizarre proposition that some boys deliberately wet their beds, ‘I knew
some fellows didn’t mean it, just did it in their sleep ... but there could be others there who didn’t
... I couldn’t distinguish’. It was put to him that he was therefore punishing them all in case one
boy deliberately wet the bed. He knew that some of the boys could not help wetting the bed and
it was not their fault but, at the same time, he felt that some of them deliberately wet the bed and,
as he could not distinguish between them, he punished all who wet the bed. He replied, ‘Exactly,
yes and two slaps would not hurt anyone, never, you know’.
3.102 He then said, ‘I am very sorry for it, very sorry for having done that indeed’.
3.103 His counsel apologised on his behalf to a complainant who had been beaten for wetting the bed.
He told him:
Br Ignacio does not and will not in his evidence seek to justify the administration of
corporal punishment to bed-wetters in an effort to deter bed-wetting. He accepts there is
no justification ... for the administration of corporal punishment to people who wet the bed
in the hope or expectation of deterring them from wetting the bed in the future ... Br
Ignacio now accepts this was a stupid thing to be doing if he wanted kids to stop wetting
the bed ...
Br Ignacio will say in evidence that the Prefect that he replaced when he took over as
Prefect ... and the Prefect who succeeded him ... administered corporal punishment to
the bed-wetters ... he accepts now it was entirely wrong.
3.104 The Prefect himself apologised again, and the conflict between his own beliefs and feelings about
how to treat the children and the requirements of his duty to follow the rules and tradition of the
Institution fully emerged:
There was one thing I do regret is having to punish the boys who wet the bed. That was
all. That was the biggest, or should I say ... the worst and I couldn’t bear to do that and
still it was the done thing, give a couple of slaps on the hand and it was against my nature
to do that...I didn’t want to do that at all although it was done the whole time, years and
years before I went there and that was done all the time and that was the, how shall I
say, the order of the time....It was against my nature altogether to do that because I knew
very well some of them couldn’t help it but it was the done thing like. I couldn’t very well
be the one to stop that, because I would be the worst in the world. You might have the
whole lot of them wetting it after a while.
3.105 He found it impossible to break with the School’s precedents and tradition. Beating boys to stop
them wetting the bed was acknowledged to be ‘a stupid thing to be doing’ because it was
ineffective and did not stop the wetting. Indeed, it may have made bed-wetting worse. The practice
of beating them, however, ‘was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the
years’, and the Prefect felt he was powerless to stop it, even though it was cruel and pointless.
As in many institutions, tradition outweighed reason.
Evidence on bed-wetting from former residents

3.106 The Prefect whose evidence has just been discussed expressed the belief that ‘two slaps would
not hurt anyone’. Many of the former residents told the Investigation Committee about the effects
of facing these beatings at the end of every day. A resident from the 1940s said:
It was rampant throughout, not just the bed-wetters, everybody got beaten. If you were a
bed-wetter my God it was a second helping, a third helping, but you got beat during the
day as well, but you were guaranteed it every night. I wished they would give it to us in
the morning, get it over with. No, you were all day sweating and you got a few handers
during the day and you still had to take whatever. Once it was over thank God, but you
got it the next night again because you knew you were going to wet.
3.107 He had earlier tried to express the pain of the experience:

The wet-the-beds went into the toilet, in they would walk. You would have to hold your
sleeve of your corduroy to get the full whack of the hand. When you are getting beat, you
shake, you can't help it, you couldn't with them. “Keep your hand still” and there you are
– we had a little thing at the beginning but they copped on to that very quick. When the
slap came down we used to bring the hand with it. Anyway, if you didn't they would keep
beating you until you keep it still. You try to keep a still hand and the blue marks and the
pain and the swelling with a leather strap. If you didn't stop they would just put it across
the sink and you couldn't move it then so you got it.
3.108 A resident in the early 1960s told of how the beatings had shifted to the mornings, but the
inevitability of being beaten for wetting the bed remained. He had not wet the bed in the previous
institution, but on his way down to Ferryhouse he drank too much lemonade. That night he wet
the bed, was beaten and consigned to the ‘sailor’s’ section. From then on, he lived in fear of doing
it. He explained:
I used to try and stay awake until I wanted to go to the toilet and then I would go to the
toilet, but it didn’t work. I would fall asleep eventually.
3.109 He described the ritual the next morning:

If you wet the bed you had to put your hand up the next morning. They would go around
and ask, “Any sailors?” and you would put your hand up. So you took your mattress and
your sheet and brought it downstairs to a drying room and you got a cold shower ... If you
stepped out of line in the cold shower, if you didn’t stand directly underneath the cold
shower, you were hit with a strap. If you stood underneath the shower you still got your
punishment over in the office. Once you wet the bed you were due a punishment ... Some
of them would hit you up there (indicating his arm) ... Some of them would barely get you
up the wrist ... Some of them would hit you right up the arms.
3.110 He differentiated between one Brother, who ‘would take pleasure in hitting you for nothing’, and
another Brother who ‘would kind of gave you your slaps and let you go ... he would just give you
your dose of medicine and you would be gone’.
3.111 According to the evidence of Fr Antonio, he did occasional holiday relief work in Ferryhouse from
the late 1960s to the late 1980s. He later worked as Director of Ferryhouse from the early to mid-
1990s. He said those who wet their beds during his time were not physically punished. That had
stopped sometime in the mid-1960s. Also, boys were no longer segregated into a separate
section. However, the boys who wet the beds still had to take their sheets down the old fire escape
and across the yard to be washed in the laundry. He told the Committee:
Some of the saddest memories I would have is of the boys who wet their bed bringing
out their sheets to laundry in the morning because there was only one woman in the
laundry and they used to have to bring them out.
3.112 During the 1960s, other steps were taken in an effort to ease the situation. During Fr Rafaele’s14
time (mid-1960s to early 1970s), electronic devices that woke the boys went on trial. The
segregation of those who wet the beds in the designated section of the dormitories ceased.
3.113 Fr O’Reilly admitted to the Investigation Committee that the number of boys who wet the bed
decreased only when conditions got better, because there was a reduction in the level of fear and
anxiety about bed-wetting and because boys were no longer humiliated by being required to carry
their sheets down to the laundry room themselves.
Documentary evidence on the punishment of bed-wetting

3.114 In 1962, a County Waterford mother wrote a letter of complaint to the Department of Education
about the way in which her son was punished for wetting the bed while in St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse.
She wrote:
Dear Sir
I am writing this to ask you about my boys ... whom Justice Skinner released three weeks
ago, well I want to tell you what happened their brother ... who was only sent also [earlier
in the year] for three months, he was suffering from kidney trouble and the punishment
they were giving him for wetting the bed was stand under a cold shower and one night
he was put out of the bed by the Brother and given four showers at 9:30 p.m. Then into
the office in the morning and nine whips of the leather on each hand, and they told him
they would increase it, well he had to run and I said it to the Priest, you would run too
and so would I. Well he ran home in a terrible state chilled to the bone so I thought he
would have a nervous breakdown so I wired for his father to come for him.
3.115 Fr Alanzo15 twice wrote to the Reformatory and the Industrial Schools Branch of the Department
of Education about the mother’s complaint. In his first letter in 1962, he spoke despairingly of her:
‘I have had more trouble from their mother than I have had from the rest of the boys’, but he does
not deal with the complaints raised. His second letter to the Department, sent a month later, is
revealing insofar as it conceded that cold showers were given, and suggested that bed-wetting
was 99% a bad habit and the result of bad upbringing and laziness on the part of the boys, and
it goes on to describe the mother as a neurotic person. Fr Alanzo failed, however, to deal with the
question of whether corporal punishment was administered for bed-wetting, and, if so, whether it
was the Institution’s policy. The Commission does not have any documentation suggesting that
the Department followed up this issue.
3.116 What does emerge from the correspondence is the way in which the mother was seen as a
neurotic troublemaker. The Manager’s main concern was not dealing with the substance of the
complaint, that her son had been ill-treated and beaten for bed-wetting, but placating the
Department of Education on the matter. In another sense, her persistence paid off, because her
third son was released before the end of the month.
3.117 The General Inspection Report of Dr Lysaght dated 21st July 1966 refers to the problem of bed-
wetting in the School, stating that it is ‘somewhat a problem’. According to the acting Resident
Manager, Fr Dino, there were about a dozen cases of bed-wetting in the School at that time, and
it was his belief that the ‘boys who came from the Convent schools were the worst in this regard’.
14
15

The movement towards the abolition of corporal punishment
The minutes of a meeting of Rosminian Superiors to discuss the issue

3.118 The question of corporal punishment in Ferryhouse was considered at a meeting of Rosminian
Superiors and others, which took place in Drumcondra on 19th April 1968. Fr Filippo,16 Provincial
of the Rosminian Institute, called this meeting, and amongst those who attended was Fr Rafaele,
Resident Manager of Ferryhouse, Fr Pietro,17 a previous Resident Manager there, and Fr Lucio18
who succeeded Fr Rafaele in 1970. Also in attendance was Fr Ludano.
3.119 The problem of corporal punishment was raised by the Fr Provincial, Fr Filippo, because ‘Recent
events seemed to indicate that the administration of it had gone beyond the mean in the past’.
His solution was to make it ‘the responsibility of the Rector or the Headmaster’, with the Provincial
as manager ultimately responsible. He canvassed their opinions.
3.120 One of the solutions suggested had in fact been in the regulations for decades, that ‘all
punishments of this kind should be recorded, and further that they should be administered in the
presence of a witness’. The Brothers suggested ‘the need for a written guide ... such had been in
existence in Upton’.19
3.121 There was recognition that much depended on the appointment of capable Prefects.
3.122 There was an objection to turning to the Rector even in small things, but it was again asserted
that, even there, ‘a little record should be kept’ and ‘a ceiling to the punishments’.
3.123 They discussed the current punishment systems in Ferryhouse and Omeath and agreed ‘Corporal
punishment was judged the most humiliating of the lot, and the least effective’.
3.124 This meeting in 1968 was, in short, debating the need for the regulation of corporal punishment
and was reaching conclusions that had been contained in the 1933 guidelines.
3.125 Notwithstanding the acknowledgement that it was humiliating and ineffective, the use of corporal
punishment continued in Ferryhouse for a further 25 years, until its abolition by the School in 1993.
Remarks on corporal punishment by the Department of Education Inspector

3.126 The Department of Education Inspector, Mr Cobalt,20 touched on the subject of corporal
punishment and recorded his concern at its continued occasional use in Ferryhouse. In an
addendum to his General Inspection Report of Ferryhouse dated 30th May 1979, Mr Cobalt noted
that corporal punishment was still used occasionally, and added that he had not examined the
facts of its usage.
3.127 Mr Cobalt’s Inspection Reports for the following and successive years, noted the sanctions that
applied to the children. A report dated 26th October 1980 listed the sanctions applied to the children
as: (a) loss of TV; (b) loss of pocket money; and (c) early bed/loss of home leave. The reports
of 1981, 1983 and 1984 are in similar terms, and make no reference whatever to the use of
corporal punishment.
16
17
18
19
This is believed to be a reference to the Upton punishment book.
20

Circular 9/82 prohibiting the use of corporal punishment in national schools
3.128 In January 1982, the Department of Education issued Circular No 9/82 that prohibited the use of
corporal punishment in national schools. On 7th May 1982, Fr Stefano, Resident Manager in St
Joseph’s, Ferryhouse wrote to the Department on the issue of corporal punishment:
While the general practice, philosophy and ideas of the school would be against the use
of any form of corporal punishment, nevertheless, because of the nature of the work in
which we are involved, there may be certain occasions when the Manager or his Deputy
(Care or Education) might feel that some form of corporal punishment should be used.
3.129 He went on to ask the Department for its views as to whether or not Circular 9/82 nullified the
Manager’s powers under the 1908 Act and 1933 Rules. Despite the considerable reforming zeal
that had led to the rebuilding of the nineteenth-century institution, and to numerous other reforms,
the abandonment of corporal punishment it seemed was a step too far for him.
3.130 Various officials in the Department considered Fr Stefano’s letter. One such official, a Miss Nı́
Fhearghail, set out her views on the issue of corporal punishment in an internal memorandum
dated 11th May 1982 and entitled ‘Corporal Punishment in Special Schools’. She wrote:
... in my view Circular 9/82 only covers the conduct of the children while they are in the
national school. It does not cover out of school activities. Even within the school the Rules
which were approved under the Act may hold precedence. I think we would need to
consult the Chief State Solicitor.
3.131 However, the issue lay dormant in the Department for a number of months until March 1983,
when Miss Nı́ Fhearghail, in a memorandum addressed to Mr Ó Crı́odháin, noted that Fr Stefano
never got an answer to his query. Mr Ó Crı́odháin referred the matter to Mr MacGleannáin who,
by memorandum dated 14th April 1983, replied:
This matter needs to be cleared up. I think policy should be to prohibit corporal
punishment. Undoubtedly, however, members of staff in these schools have to restrain
youngsters physically and a thin line divides physical restraint from corporal punishment.
3.132 The matter was referred to the Chief State Solicitor. By letter dated 9th June 1983, the Deputy
Assistant Chief State Solicitor advised that rules made under the 1908 Act took precedence over
the rules for national schools, as they had the force of statute, while the rules for national schools,
although they had been judicially noticed, were not made pursuant to an Act. He suggested that
the matter should now be rectified by the provision of rules made pursuant to Section 3 of the Act
of 1941 for all certified industrial schools.
3.133 On 3rd August 1983, the Department of Education passed on to Fr Stefano the advices received
from the Deputy Assistant Chief State Solicitor. They wrote:
The present Rules and Regulations for Certified Industrial Schools were approved by the
Minister some fifty years ago and have, to a great extent, become out-moded in practice.
I would be grateful if you would give earnest consideration to the question of statutory
Rules for the conduct of your school and would draw up a schedule of Rules deemed
appropriate. It would be helpful if a copy of these draft Rules were forwarded to the
Department not later than the 30th September, 1983.
3.134 Fr Stefano gave evidence that nothing was done about this request. The School was being rebuilt,
and the management were apparently too busy to respond.
3.135 It would seem that the use of corporal punishment continued in Ferryhouse. The report of Mr
Cobalt of 13th April 1989 records that the strap had been given to one boy and was witnessed.
He wrote that a positive decision should be made about its use as a punishment for out-of-school
misbehaviour. In a note attached to the end of the 1989 Report, he advised that the use of corporal
punishment be discontinued ‘as the evidence is that is does not change deprived boys in their
anti-social behaviour ... and my experience confirms that’.
3.136 In July 1989, a draft Circular (1/89) was prepared which, on the face of it, imposed a ban on the
use of corporal punishment in industrial schools operating under the terms of the 1908 Act. In
evidence, Fr Stefano said he had no recollection of ever receiving this circular. He believed that,
if he had seen it, he would have remembered it, and would have discussed it. He presumed he
would have ceased the use of corporal punishment. Fr Stefano said that, when the 1989 draft
circular first came to his attention at a recent meeting in preparation for his evidence to the
Commission, they carried out an extensive trawl through the Ferryhouse documentation relating
to this period, but failed to disclose the original.
3.137 The issue remained a live one in the early 1990s. At the end of a document concerning requests
for amendments to the School rulebook, dated 12th April 1990, there is a handwritten comment by
the Inspector:
It is noted that corporal punishment can still be administered in St Joseph’s. I raised this
matter with the Director on my recent visit to the school and he would be strongly opposed
to any move to alter this rule.
3.138 At a meeting in 1993, the senior management team at Ferryhouse took a decision to stop using
the strap.
3.139 What emerges from the foregoing is that there was concern about the use of corporal punishment
in Ferryhouse during the period of time under investigation, and attempts appear to have been
made in the late 1970s and 1980s to devise a policy in respect of its use, but there was little, if
any, regulation of this policy by the Department of Education. Ferryhouse was given leeway to
continue its use.

3.140 1. Corporal punishment was the option of first resort for problems. Its use was pervasive,
excessive, unpredictable and without regulation or supervision and for these reasons
became physically abusive.
2. Frequent corporal punishment was the main method of maintaining control over the
boys and it created a climate of fear that was emotionally harmful.
3. The system of discipline was the same as in Upton and the Rosminians accept that
there was excessive corporal punishment in Ferryhouse.
4. Young and inexperienced staff used fear and violence to assert authority. Severe
punishments were inflicted for a wide range of acts and omissions.
5. Rules and regulations governing corporal punishment were not observed and a
punishment book was not maintained. The rules were regarded as merely guidelines,
with no provision made by the Department of Education for sanctions and reprimands
being issued to schools that ignored them. They were therefore ignored with impunity.
6. Excessive, unfair and even capricious violence did lasting damage to many of the boys
in Ferryhouse.
7. For most of the period under review, boys were punished for bed-wetting and were
subjected to nightly humiliation, degradation and fear.

Sexual abuse
3.141 Two religious members of the Rosminian Institute and one layman were convicted of sexual abuse
of boys in Ferryhouse. Another religious who served in Ferryhouse was convicted of a crime
committed elsewhere, on a boy who had previously been a resident of Ferryhouse and who was
then living in another Rosminian institution. These three religious offenders served in senior
positions in Ferryhouse and the layman was a volunteer there for different periods of years
between 1968 and 1988.
3.142 The fact that sexual abuse occurred was not in dispute. The issue that the Committee had to
decide was whether the abuse was systemic, related to failures of the Institution or of
management, or whether the abuse was to be viewed as episodic acts perpetrated by individuals,
unrelated to the nature of the Institution and its management.
3.143 The most revealing evidence about sexual abuse came from Br Bruno,21 who worked as a Prefect
in Ferryhouse in the latter half of the 1970s, and who was convicted in 1999 of a number of counts
of serious sexual assault on four young men when they were boys in Ferryhouse.
3.144 Br Bruno’s account described how he committed systematic and repeated abuse of boys during
the four years that he was a Prefect in Ferryhouse. He gave candid evidence at a private hearing
about his modus operandi, how he was able to escape detection (which surprised even himself),
and how he was able to frighten boys and prevent them from reporting him or talking about him.
He was frank about the nature of his acts, the circumstances in which he committed them, and
the extent of what he did.
3.145 His account of his deeds, and what enabled him to perpetrate them, provided an insight into the
behaviour of a child sexual abuser. He operated in the late 1970s, when living conditions and the
building itself were better than in the old Ferryhouse. His testimony on what enabled him to abuse
for so long may well be relevant to the Institution at other times in the past, when conditions were
more likely to facilitate such coercive, furtive and abusive behaviour.
Convictions
Br Bruno
3.146 Br Bruno was arrested in 1996 and charged with counts of buggery, indecent assault and assault
occasioning actual bodily harm, in respect of four people who had been in his care at Ferryhouse
between 1975 and 1979. He was the Brother in charge of ‘A’ group comprising some 36 to 40
boys aged between nine and 11 years. He appeared before the Circuit Criminal Court in 1999,
pleaded guilty to the offences charged and was sentenced to a term of nine years imprisonment
with the last three suspended.
3.147 Br Bruno’s activities as a perpetrator of sexual abuse in Ferryhouse came to light in the late
1970s, following which he was dismissed from the Order, but the case was not reported to the
Gardaı́ until the mid-1990s.
3.148 The disclosure occurred when two boys who had absconded from the Institution were hitching a
lift. The Resident Manager, Fr Stefano, saw them on the road, picked them up and brought them
back to Ferryhouse. As they travelled back to the School, one of the boys broke down, and told
Fr Stefano that Br Bruno ‘was at him’. This had an immediate impact on Fr Stefano and, when
they got back to the School, he brought the boy to his office, cautioned him about the seriousness
of what he had said, and sought details from him. The boy stuck by his story and said that another
21

boy would confirm what he was saying. He said that Br Bruno had started to abuse him when he
was in his unit, but that the abuse had continued when he was transferred to the senior group.
3.149 The other boy was sent for, and Fr Stefano described how ‘the two boys sat in my office and
unfolded to me a most horrific story of what had been happening to them’. The boys told Fr
Stefano story after story of cruelty and abuse. The worst, as far as he was concerned, was the
abuse of one of the boys during the Pope’s visit to Ireland in 1979. The whole school went to see
the Pope in Limerick, except for one of the two boys who was not allowed to go because of his
record of absconding. Br Bruno volunteered to stay back and supervise him. The boy told Fr
Stefano that, when the rest of the boys left, ‘this Brother came and raped me in my bed’.
3.150 Fr Stefano said that he had never suspected Br Bruno; indeed, he found him a very enthusiastic
member of staff. His dedication to the work seemed unquestionable: ‘this was a man who seemed
to be the last in bed and the first up every day’. Nevertheless, when the allegation was made, Fr
Stefano began to see it all very differently:
... 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.
3.151 He gave the example of an earlier discussion, at which one of the other Prefects said that a boy
had heard someone in the dormitory the night before, and Br Bruno had volunteered to check
it out.
3.152 The same night that the boys disclosed the abuse, Fr Stefano drove the short distance to
Glencomeragh to report to the Provincial. He returned to the School where he met Br Bruno the
next day. Br Bruno initially denied the allegations but, when he was told that the boys were willing
to confront him, he confessed. Br Bruno left the School and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital
in Dublin. Shortly afterwards, he was dismissed from the Order.
3.153 Br Bruno’s career in Ferryhouse began in the mid-1970s and he became a Prefect, which he
continued to be until the events of 1979. As Prefect, he was in charge of ‘A’ Group consisting of
36 to 40 boys aged between nine and 11 years.
3.154 Br Bruno sexually abused numerous boys during his time in Ferryhouse. He had easy access to
and exclusive control over his group, who were located in the junior dormitory, which was separate
from the other residents and Brothers. This dormitory was located on the second floor of the east
wing. Br Bruno’s own room was located off the boys’ dormitory. These arrangements had been
put in place in the late 1960s, to replace the old system of two large dormitories housing junior
and senior boys. The boys were now separated into age groups in three smaller dormitories, each
accommodating up to 80 boys.
3.155 Br Bruno’s preference was for pubescent boys, whom he selected with considerable care. Under
the pretence of checking whether they had wet their beds, he approached their beds at night. He
would fondle their genitals to see if they became aroused; weekends were more suitable times,
because there were fewer people around.
3.156 When he had fixed on a boy whom he intended to abuse, he waited until the weekend and then
gave the boy an anti bed-wetting pill that he knew would have a soporific effect. He would spend
some time with his colleagues in the west wing, where he would socialise and have a drink, before
returning to the dormitory where he carried the boy to his private room and sexually abused him
before returning the boy to bed.
3.157 Br Bruno began his evidence to the Committee with some initial hesitation; he began to imply that
he had pleaded guilty to offences he had not committed. He said:
I fondled them in their bed ... It began when I was moved to the A unit, when I was
checking beds at night time for wetting ... Just by touching it started ... The boys didn’t
mind, they didn’t stop me ... I knew it was wrong but I continued ...
3.158 At that stage, he denied anal rape:

I never penetrated ... I would be sexually excited, yes ... it just ended at that ...
3.159 The Chairperson then spoke to him about the need for him to give a full and honest account,
without trying to recant or change evidence accepted in court. After a brief adjournment for legal
consultation, the hearing resumed, and Br Bruno gave a very different account of events. He
now said:
[That boy] was one of the boys that I pleaded guilty to in my criminal trial ... I pleaded
guilty to buggery. I did take him into my bed and penetrated but not in a full extent but I
did bugger, I did penetrate him ... I told the Gardaı́ that I had abused [the other boy] ... I
took him to my bed and I penetrated him ... [The third boy], I pleaded guilty to fondling,
abusing him in that way.
3.160 He acknowledged that these acts of abuse happened on more than one occasion. He also
accepted that these were not the only boys that he sexually abused:
There was one or two other boys that I took there but the names are gone from me at
the moment.
3.161 He was asked to give some estimate as to when the sexual abuse began, and he replied:
The fondling and the feeling at bedtime went on a few months after I taking charge of the
group. It went on at that time. The serious matters that were dealt with in the criminal trial
went on in ... [1978/79] ... up to that moment that the Superior ... it was reported to the
Superior and he called me in and I admitted to it ... Four, five boys, I think.
3.162 He took charge of the dormitory in the mid-1970s, and until Fr Stefano confronted him in December
1979 there were some four years of abuse. When asked to estimate the number of boys he had
abused, he answered that, if he was being asked to estimate the numbers he had groped and
interfered with, ‘It could be dozens, yes ... Yes it would be dozens’. When asked to try to put a
more precise figure on it he replied, ‘over maybe 20, over a period of years’.
3.163 The fondling took place during the week. The acts of penetration tended to occur at weekends.
He explained:
I fondled them ... I carried them to my room ... left them in my bed and fondled them ... I
attempted myself to penetrate them ... It was a weekend basis. Friday, Saturday night ...
I was able to go over to the community room ... in the community room we would have a
social evening and I would have a drink.
3.164 There was a community room upstairs in the west wing, where the members of the Order could
relax. It had ‘comfortable chairs, a cocktail cabinet and a big television screen’. Here, he would
have a couple of pints of Guinness and perhaps a couple of shorts: ‘I may have been a bit
unsteady, but not falling down ... they would know that I had some drink taken’. He would then
return to his room where he would also ‘take a little tipple’ from bottles of spirits received as gifts
that he kept there. He added:
I should never have been left in the unit on my own, solely on my own and isolated from
the rest of the community. There was no such thing as shift work, night staff, night staff
even for a weekend, all of those things should have been in place in a group like the
group that I was in.
3.165 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.
3.166 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.
3.167 As he knew which boys had taken a tablet, he knew which ones would be drowsy. These tablets
allowed him to choose those boys who would be asleep and remain asleep. When he was finished
with a boy, he took him back to his own bed in the dormitory. His activities show how planned
and pre-meditated the abuse was.
3.168 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.
3.169 He told the Investigation Committee, ‘I am sure the other boys in the dormitory knew what was
going on’. However, such was his control over them that they never told. In Fr Stefano’s words,
‘quite a lot of the boys who went through his unit ... have told me of the control that he was able
to keep when he locked that door at night time ... he had them terrorised’.
3.170 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.
3.171 He agreed that he had a reputation as a Prefect and the boys were afraid of him, and that this
facilitated his ability to do these things without being reported.
3.172 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.
3.173 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.
3.174 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.
3.175 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.
3.176 He was asked if he thought it was fairly safe to do it because it was almost permitted within the
Institution, and he replied, ‘Yes ...’.
3.177 He later added: ‘They [the boys] were mentioning that other members of the community were
abusing the boys’.
3.178 This assertion, that abuse was so widespread that it seemed to be permitted, does not accord
with the way in which Fr Stefano took instant action when the abuse perpetrated by Br Bruno was
disclosed to him. However, Br Bruno had been abusing for about four years before it was reported
to Fr Stefano, who was completely unaware that he ‘was living with an abuser’.
3.179 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].
3.180 His next encounter with Br Bruno occurred when the latter was posted to Ferryhouse. Under the
pretence of checking for bedwetting, Br Bruno would fondle him under the bed sheets and bring
him to the toilet, where he ‘would start massaging, that's your privates like, and it would start from
there’. He also described how Br Bruno would take him to his bedroom and then he would sexually
abuse him. He said there was no penetration involved.
3.181 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.
3.182 Br Bruno denied he had abused this witness, but the witness’s recollections mirrored the known
events. As the witness claimed, Br Bruno did visit Woodstown before he became a Brother and
he did reappear as a member of the Order. The events described in the dormitory and in the
Brother’s room are not dissimilar to the account Br Bruno gave of his own activities.

3.183 Another complainant from the same period described a similar incident of nocturnal intrusion into
his bed. He was in ‘A’ group which was supervised by [Br Bruno]. He said that one night, a couple
of weeks after he had arrived at the school he woke up in pain. He was being sexually abused .
He could not see who it was and he started to scream. This woke the boy next to him who turned
on the light. The complainant blamed this boy but he denied it.
3.184 The next day, the mystery of the nocturnal intruder was solved. The complainant told another boy
what had happened, and the boy said, ‘This is the start of it. He won’t stop ... It will go on and on’.
3.185 He said that other boys told him ‘It was Br Bruno himself, he does it to all of us’.’
3.186 The complainant ran away and, on his return to the School, said that he had reported the fact that
Br Bruno was at his bed to two staff members, but nothing happened. Neither could recall this
complainant reporting the matter to them.
3.187 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.
3.188 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.
3.189 The number of complainants who gave evidence about Br Bruno’s activity was not indicative of
the number whom he abused. He molested dozens of boys. He himself remarked that the only
ones he was likely to have recalled were those whom he raped. None of the four boys who were
named in the indictment as being victims of this crime gave evidence before the Investigation
Committee. It would appear that the number of boys who he raped over the period of four years
when he was in Ferryhouse was greater than he remembered.
3.190 In a trial that took place in the mid-1990s, a victim named in Br Bruno’s indictment himself faced
trial on charges of sexual abuse of children. Mr Cumin22 pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old
boy. He had previously been convicted of rape in Britain. In mitigation, his counsel submitted that
he had been sexually abused while in care, and this abuse had had disastrous consequences on
his own sexuality. The court jailed him for six years.
3.191 The lessons learned from this case can be applied to the question posed at the start of this
section: was the abuse systemic, related to failures of the Institution or of management, or was it
episodic, namely, acts perpetrated by an individual, unrelated to the nature of the Institution and
its management?
22

3.192 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.
3.193 The fact that the Institution had a history of keeping the stories of known abusers secret must
have contributed to Fr Stefano’s unawareness of the real possibility of abuse in a residential
institution for young boys. Because the archives recording the discovery of previous abusers were
not available, this meant the Institution could not learn from the past.
3.194 • This case shows how easy it was for an abuser to gain access to the boys in
Ferryhouse.
• Br Bruno’s activities went undiscovered for four years, despite the fact that many boys
were raped and a much greater number were fondled and groomed in his selection
process.
• Br Bruno’s activities happened at a time when other sexual abuse was happening in
Ferryhouse and when improper access to the boys was a feature of the Institution.
• The extent of these activities suggests that boys felt unable to report abuse.
Mr Garnier23
3.195 Mr Garnier was convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy from Ferryhouse Industrial School
on a number of dates in the mid-1970s.
3.196 Mr Garnier lived and worked in Clonmel and was a voluntary worker in the School for many years.
He had free access everywhere in the Institution, even in the dormitories when the boys were
going to bed and afterwards. He had particular contact with ‘C’ Group, which was managed by Br
Leone, who was a friend of his. Another man from Clonmel, named Mr Tablis,24 had similar access
on the basis of his friendship with Fr Lucio, the Resident Manager.
3.197 Fr Paolo recalled Mr Garnier and Mr Tablis being there in the 1970s, but did not remember them
being there in the mid-1960s, although it seems that Mr Garnier certainly had access over many
years, which could indeed have extended back to that earlier period. Fr Paolo was suspicious of
the two men. He thought that they had no business being in any of the dormitories, and made
sure that they did not come to his group, ‘A’ Group. Although Fr Paolo was careful in what he said
about these men, he agreed that it was inappropriate for them to be in any dormitory, and that
his concern would have been less if they had been in the downstairs gym or a ground-floor
recreation area.
3.198 Despite Fr Paolo’s concern about the incursions into the boys’ dormitory, and his determination
to keep such men out of the one under his control, he did not interfere in what another Brother
was doing. The convention of allowing colleagues to run their ‘empires’ as they thought fit
remained paramount, even when the safety of the boys was an issue.
3.199 Fr Stefano arrived in the mid-1970s. He said that Mr Garnier was someone who had an
involvement with Ferryhouse for many years and that his access was in two main areas. On
Sunday nights, he used to come and play cards with the boys ‘and he would go up along to the
dormitory with them, it would be mainly the senior dormitory, from what I recollect’. He never heard
23
24

anyone make a complaint about Mr Garnier and did not at the time think that there was anything
inappropriate in his having access to dormitories. He ‘never had any reason to suspect anything
wrong was going on’. He said local community helpers were needed and appreciated in
Ferryhouse, and the two men were accepted in that context. They had a long history of
involvement in the School ‘probably because there were so few people to do anything’. Outsiders
were involved in the sports day and in fundraising, and people were in and out all the time. He
said that it could happen that the Brother in charge of the senior dormitory would be required to
drive a distance of some miles to collect a boy who had absconded, for example. In such
circumstances, he thought it was likely that Mr Garnier would have volunteered to stay on. Fr
Stefano accepted that he was perhaps somewhat naı̈ve, in not being uncomfortable about the
access that Mr Garnier was permitted. He suggested that, if there was an error of judgement or
a lack of alertness, it should be seen against a background of involvement by the local people in
helping Ferryhouse.
3.200 There is an enormous difference between involvement by the community in the running of the
Institution, and allowing outsiders to enter the boys’ dormitories and to spend time there on a
frequent basis. Clearly, the Brother in charge of the dormitory, Br Leone, should not have permitted
the access, but he happened to be the contact in the School on whom Mr Garnier relied, and who
introduced him to the School in the first place.
3.201 Mr Garnier told the Gardaı́ 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.
3.202 Fr Paolo told the Committee he was uneasy about what was going on, and while he would not
have allowed the man into the dormitory under his charge, he did not make his concerns known.
As in many other cases, Brothers did not interfere with what other Brothers were doing.
3.203 Before Fr Stefano took over as Resident Manager in the mid-1970s, Fr Lucio was in charge, and
he permitted similar access to his friend, Mr Tablis. With such connections over such a period of
time, it is unlikely that any action would have been taken, even if Fr Paolo had reported his unease
about the access enjoyed by these outsiders.
3.204 Fr Ricardo25 was present in the School for two periods during the 1970s and 1980s. He gave
evidence to the Committee, and he also did not see anything inappropriate about Mr Garnier’s
access. He said:
He used to play a lot of cards, particularly Friday evening and he would help Br Leone in
playing cards, that basically was his job. Sometimes he would lock up the unit or come
up with Br Leone and he might come up to the dormitory but generally he would go off
then before Br Leone would turn the lights out. And I think Br Leone would have seen Mr
Garnier, or [Christian name], as I would have known him, as some kind of a help, to help
him to get the boys to bed.
3.205 Mr Garnier confirmed to the Gardaı́ the level of his involvement with the School. He visited
regularly about once a week. He would play table tennis with the boys, and would play cards; he
worked at the School sports day and helped with the pantomimes and the Strawberry Fair. In
addition, he said:
I’d take some boys out for drives. About four or five boys at a time. I had my own car. We
went to Youghal once and the steam rally in Upton.
25

3.206 The boys would also visit him in his house in Clonmel after visiting the cinema, and he would give
them ‘a drink of minerals and maybe some money’.
3.207 He mostly remembered the boys in the older group in Br Leone’s care who were about 14 or 16
years old. He was with the seniors more than the juniors but he had contact with all the groups.
He bought sweets and gifts for the boys. Mr Garnier denied allegations made by boys that he had
fondled and masturbated them, but he did admit having had sexual contact with two boys in
Ferryhouse. The first one happened at a time when Br Leone was in charge of the group, and Fr
Lucio was the Resident Manager. The incident happened in the ‘C’ Group dormitory. He described
how he had kissed the boy and sexually abused him.
3.208 The abuse with the other boy followed the same format. He was in ‘C’ Group, which was under
the stewardship of Br Leone.
3.209 A witness resident in Ferryhouse in 1970s alleged in his evidence to the Committee that Mr
Garnier sexually abused him. Mr Garnier was not represented at the hearing. The witness said
that Mr Garnier was a friend of Br Leone and that he would visit the School regularly. He spent a
lot of time in the junior dormitory and only left when the lights were turned off:
He used to come into the school and he would be up in the juniors, upstairs with the
juniors. He would be buying sweets, he would buy torches and he would buy different
things for you.
3.210 He also visited Mr Garnier’s house in Clonmel:

We had gone to the cinema and we were on our way back, thumbing likewise. [Mr Garnier]
pulls up and says “you can come up to the gaff for a few cigarettes”. Deadly, you know.
We went up and he gave us 10 smokes.
3.211 The abuse that he alleged happened followed a similar pattern to that admitted by Mr Garnier in
his Garda statement, which he confirmed as correct through his solicitor.
3.212 Mr Garnier’s involvement with the School continued throughout this complainant’s time there.
Br Sergio26
3.213 Br Sergio was convicted of sexual assault in 2002. The offences were committed at locations
in Clonmel and Dublin in the early 1990s. Br Sergio received a sentence of three and a half
years’ imprisonment.
3.214 The victim of one assault was a former resident of Ferryhouse, who was living in the Rosminian
aftercare centre in Dublin at the time the assaults took place. He was aged 18 at the time of the
first assault. The accused, Br Sergio, worked in the aftercare centre. The victim complained to the
Rosminian authorities, and the Provincial confronted Br Sergio with the allegations. Br Sergio
admitted his guilt and was immediately removed from the centre. He was admitted for treatment
at Our Lady of Victory in Stroud in the mid-1990s, and he was treated there for a number months,
although he remained in follow-up care for a number of years. He applied for and was granted a
dispensation from the Order. In the late 1990s, the victim of the sexual assault contacted the
Rosminians, to tell them that he was reporting the matter to the Gardaı́. The Rosminians informed
the Department of this, and told them that they would co-operate fully with any Garda inquiry.
3.215 Br Sergio had previously worked in Ferryhouse from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. In his
evidence to the Committee, he said that he had been appointed Prefect in the late 1970s, when
he was given charge of ‘B’ Group, which was composed of about 37 boys aged between 10 and
26

12. He took over from Fr Antonio, who had been transferred to ‘A’ Group to replace Br Bruno who
had left the School suddenly, as a result of the discovery of his activities as a sexual abuser. He
became aware of the reason for Br Bruno’s departure ‘a week or two’ after his departure. Given
the age of the boys in his group, and the length of time he was in charge, his group would have
contained many of the children who were sexually abused by Br Bruno or who were aware of
his activities.
3.216 One complainant who was present in Ferryhouse in the late 1980s alleged that Br Sergio sexually
abused him. He told the Committee that he was taking a shower after he had been brought back
to the School after attempting to abscond. Br Sergio was supervising him and molested him in
the shower.
3.217 He also described other less serious instances of improper behaviour, when Br Sergio ‘put his
hands on me’. He alleged that Br Sergio would rub his knee while driving him down to see his
relatives.
3.218 Br Sergio denied these allegations, both through his counsel during the cross-examination of the
witness and directly during his own evidence, when he described them as ‘totally untrue’.
3.219 Br Sergio denied abusing children in Ferryhouse or even being attracted to them. When asked if
he had ‘inappropriate sexual feelings towards the young boys under your care,’ he replied, ‘It
would be very wrong to say that, it would be very wrong to say that’.
3.220 He was also very reluctant to talk about the treatment he had received in Stroud because of his
abusive activities. He said that it was a very traumatic time and:
I don’t have any recollection of what I would have said or what and I don’t have any
papers left from it at all.
3.221 He was also uncomfortable about being asked about his knowledge of Br Bruno’s departure in
the late 1970s.
3.222 Br Sergio vigorously denied any abuse during the time when he was in Ferryhouse. His
subsequent conviction cannot be regarded as evidence that he committed abuse at an earlier
time and in different circumstances.
Fr Valerio
3.223 Fr Valerio, a Rosminian priest, was convicted of assault, including indecent assault in respect of
two boys who had been in his care in Ferryhouse in the early 1970s, when he was a Prefect in
the School in charge of a group of boys. He received a suspended sentence. The trial judge took
into account, in mitigation of sentence, the fact that the accused had himself been a pupil in
Ferryhouse and had been sexually and physically abused there. The Court of Criminal Appeal
agreed that the accused:
came from a very difficult background – a background which the Court is all too familiar
with as representing a cycle of abuse which notoriously has gone on in cases of this
nature from one generation to another and the respondent in this case was part of that
rather dreadful cycle.
3.224 The first allegation of sexual abuse against Fr Valerio was made in the early 1980s, when a 15-
year-old boy from the United Kingdom complained to a priest there, Fr Penrose27, that Fr Valerio
had attempted to ‘embrace and caress’ him while he was on an Irish holiday with Fr Valerio, who
was working in Wales at this time and the boy was one of his parishioners. Fr Penrose wrote to
27

the Provincial, who spoke to Fr Valerio. There is no record of how Fr Valerio responded to the
allegation, but the Provincial left instructions for his successor as Provincial not to let Fr Valerio
go to Wales again.
3.225 This allegation resurfaced in the early 1990s, when the victim contacted the Rosminians after
seeing a television programme on clerical abusers. He inquired whether Fr Valerio was still a
priest. When he was told that Fr Valerio was still in Holy Orders, he threatened to expose him in
the media unless he left the priesthood. The Provincial, Fr Stefano, met Fr Valerio, who was now
in parochial work, and he admitted his guilt. He was removed immediately and admitted to a
psychiatric hospital and later to Our Lady of Victory, Stroud, for assessment and treatment. He
was told that he would never be allowed to work in a position where he would have access to
young people. In the early 1990s, he applied for, and was granted, a leave of absence
(exclaustration) from the Order. In the mid-1990s, he applied to be laicised, and his application
was granted.
3.226 The Rosminians received further complaints of sexual abuse against Fr Valerio in the mid-1990s,
and reported the matter to the Department of Education.
3.227 Fr Valerio’s first involvement with Ferryhouse was in the mid-1950s when, at age nine, he was
committed to the Institution by the courts. He remained there until the eve of his 16th birthday. He
alleged in his Garda interview that he was sexually abused during his time there. After leaving,
he joined the Order in the mid-1960s. He was posted to Ferryhouse as Assistant Prefect in the
late 1960s. He took over charge of ‘B’ Group, which was composed of boys aged between 14
and 15 years, from Fr Antonio. At the time, Br Andino28 was in charge of ‘A’ Group, and Br Leone
was in charge of ‘C’ Group. As Prefect, he slept in a room just off the dormitory where the boys
slept. He remained in this position until he left the School, four years later, to begin his studies for
the priesthood. Other members of staff present during this period described him as a hardworking
albeit strict Brother ‘who seemed to me to have a great rapport with the lads in general’. He was
ordained in the late 1970s, and spent the next 10 years as a religious teacher. In the early 1990s,
he was engaged in parochial work in Dublin and Wales.
3.228 Fr Valerio did not give evidence to the Committee, he lives abroad, but he did have a legal
representative present. Information about his activities can be ascertained from: the offences to
which he pleaded guilty in court; statements of admission made to the Gardaı́; admissions made
to his Superiors in the Order; and concessions made by his counsel on his instructions at the
private hearings. These sources make clear that he sexually abused at least seven children while
he worked as a Prefect in Ferryhouse, and a further two children after he left the School. In a
statement made to the Gardaı́ in the late 1990s, Fr Valerio admitted abusing boys in his group in
Ferryhouse. However, he stressed that he never used violence. He told the Gardaı́:
It was possible that the likely place that I assaulted these boys was in my own private
room in Ferryhouse. I would have masturbated these boys. These boys would then
masturbate me ... After these acts were over I would have little conversation with them.
3.229 He described how he once brought two boys to his private room on the pretence that he wanted
to give them a prize for swimming. The prize was a pair of swimming togs, which he gave to them
and asked them to put on. He also described how he brought one of these boys to his room on
another occasion and sexually assaulted him.
3.230 The Gardaı́ interviewed him on a number of occasions, concerning a series of new allegations of
sexual abuse that had been made against him. He accepted that he had sexually abused the two
individuals in question, but differed in his account of the abuse. He stated that he engaged in
28

mutual masturbation with a boy, at his mother’s house, after the boy had left Ferryhouse but he
denied rape. Fr Valerio admitted that he had sexually abused the second person. The Gardaı́
subsequently interviewed this victim, who alleged that Fr Valerio abused him in Ferryhouse, but
Fr Valerio denied that the abuse took place in the School. He told the Gardaı́ that, when he was
studying for the priesthood in Dublin, he was sent to Ferryhouse on an errand and, while he was
there, he was asked to take the boy to Dublin. Instead of taking the boy straight to Dublin, he took
him to his home and sexually abused him there.
3.231 One of the victims whom Fr Valerio admitted abusing in Ferryhouse gave evidence. He was in
the School in the early 1970s:
My encounter with Valerio was more by chance than anything else, you know. I had an
occasion, I believe, to come across a situation where he was quite violent to somebody
else and I intervened. From that incident I was put to his room, told to go to his room,
which I did. I waited for a little while and he came in, and just a rage, you know, a physical
rage on him. He started getting my clothes off and, again, the same thing. It wasn't like
Fr Daniele29 where it was more psychological, you know, more the fear over you, but
Valerio was more the doing of the fear; the beating, the grunting, the dragging, the tearing.
He was just like, I do not know, the eyes of him, he was like a man who was possessed,
you know. He got me ... down and he beat my face off the ground. He done his best to
penetrate me, I don't believe to this day he ever did it.
3.232 Another witness who was present in the early 1970s gave evidence that Fr Valerio started to
abuse him when he was transferred to ‘B’ Group. He said that the abuse happened regularly,
about once a month, and that Fr Valerio would come up to his bed at night and ‘get all pally pally
with you’ and bring him up to his room where he was forced to perform oral sex. He said he was
not the only one who was brought to Fr Valerio’s room at night. It happened regularly, and he
believed all the boys were aware of what was going on. Fr Valerio was represented at this hearing
by counsel, but did not cross-examine the witness.
3.233 One witness said that one night, while he was crossing the yard, Fr Valerio saw him and called
him into the office, where he tried to sexually abuse him. He refused to co-operate and was beaten
as a result. He felt that he was singled out for punishment after that.
3.234 During the cross-examination of this witness, counsel for Fr Valerio stated that Fr Valerio denied
the allegation, and further:
That he is certain that if any attempt at indecency occurred – and he has admitted in other
circumstances an offence of indecency, but he says in your case that if any attempt at
indecency occurred it was never in the context of violence or associated with violence.
3.235 Another witness gave evidence that Fr Valerio abused him after he had left the School:
Br Valerio, while I was actually in the School he never actually touched me but when I left
School I was in my uncle's house ... and he appeared at the door one day and he asked
me to come for a drive or whatever, I presumed I was going back to the School or
something for some reason. He took me to his elderly mother's house ... and he asked
me to stay the night or something there. I presumed I was going to have my own bedroom.
I went to bed and he followed me in and he actually got into the same bed with me. I can't
remember, I think it was sometime in the early 1970s, I can't remember the exact dates.
It was around Easter or something. He put me to bed and he got in with me and he
proceeded to fondle me and touch me and he actually masturbated me and made me
29

do the same thing to him. That was the one occasion. He never touched me before or
after that.
3.236 Counsel for Fr Valerio did not accept or reject the allegations but, in his statements to the Gardaı́,
Fr Valerio accepted abusing other boys in this fashion.
3.237 • This man served as a Prefect in Ferryhouse for four years until he left to study for the
priesthood. He exploited his position for the purpose of sexual abuse.
• In Ferryhouse the system allowed individuals to gain absolute control over large
groups of children so that they could do what they liked with little risk of detection.
Other cases
Mr Tablis
3.238 Mr Tablis was another outsider who worked in Clonmel and who had easy access to the boys in
Ferryhouse. He does not seem to have had quite the same access to the dormitories as Mr
Garnier had, but there are allegations against him in respect of sexual impropriety. Mr Tablis was
a friend of Fr Lucio, the Resident Manager before Fr Stefano. Fr Ricardo described the situation
as he recalled it:
Mr Tablis , to my understanding, again was involved with [local club] and they used to
bring the boys to ... a daily outing, where they would collect them in the cars and bring
them to ... Mr Tablis would call alright, but I think he was a friend of Fr Lucio’s, he got to
know the boys, but I think it was more got to do with the ... He wouldn’t be playing cards
so much, I wouldn’t recall him being up in through the school generally.
3.239 Fr Antonio recalled that Mr Tablis ‘was very friendly with Fr Lucio, he might take two or three of
the lads off for a spin in the car and all that kind of stuff, but ... didn’t have any specific role’.
3.240 Fr Paolo, who was a Prefect, was uneasy about Mr Tablis, just as he was about Mr Garnier. His
determination to keep outsiders away from the boys in his group extended as much to Mr Tablis
as it did to Mr Garnier.
Mr Ducat30
3.241 A witness who was present in the School from the latter half of the 1970s alleged that he was
sexually abused by Br Bruno and Mr Ducat. Mr Ducat was a local man who used to visit the
School regularly, doing odd jobs. Fr Antonio gave evidence that Mr Ducat would regularly drive
the boys to concerts. The witness alleged that, on one occasion, Mr Ducat asked him if he wanted
to go for a drive in his car. He said that he would like to and they went for a drive around the
football field. They then left the School grounds, and Mr Ducat stopped the car on the Waterford
road:
He pulled his car in and he tried to get me to commit a sex act for him ... I opened the
door and ran back towards the School but to my surprise I was told I won't be going home
again because I had tried to run away. Ducat had gone back and told whoever was in
charge that I had tried to abscond. In fact I didn't try to abscond. There was no point
reporting the matter because there was never anything done about the matters when you
reported them.
3.242 Fr Stefano was asked about Mr Ducat. He said that he had never received a complaint about him,
but that, in the late 1970s:
30

I was tipped off by a detective in Clonmel that they were worried about him, you know,
and I sent for him immediately and he was never allowed in the gates of that School after
that again.
Documented cases
Br Gilberto31
3.243 Br Gilberto served in Ferryhouse as Assistant Prefect in the mid-1940s, and he returned there as
a student from the early to the mid-1950s. He was sent to Upton in the mid-1950s and, shortly
afterwards, it was discovered that he had been sexually abusing boys there. A fuller account
appears in the Upton chapter.
Br Emilio32
3.244 Br Emilio joined the Rosminians in the late 1940s, but left the Novitiate at Kilmurry after only three
months ‘against [the] counsel of [his] Novice Master who thought his decision to leave imprudent
and his judgement premature’. He returned to the Rosminians three years later and was re-
admitted to the Novitiate in the early 1950s. He was sent to Ferryhouse in the mid-1950s, and he
remained there until he was dismissed by decree of the Superior General some three years later.
3.245 The reasons for his dismissal appears from the correspondence. In a letter to Fr Lucca,33 the
Superior General in the mid-1950s, the Provincial wrote:
I regret that there is another Brother Emilio who is stationed at the Clonmel house and
who is very unsettled in his vocation and desires a dispensation from his triennial vows,
which he took on the [two years ago]. His reasons for desiring the dispensation are that
he cannot remain until his vows expire as he feels unhappy and discontented – feels
keenly the restrictions of obedience and has reasons for fearing that contact with boys
would be a danger to him.
This brother is very faithful and conscientious in the office entrusted to him at Clonmel
and his external behaviour is good ... I offered him a change to another community but
he would not accept that. I am satisfied that it is a case for a dispensation ...
3.246 Fr Lucca replied:

As regards Br Emilio try to encourage him to be faithful to his vows until their expiry
next September.
3.247 The Provincial, Fr Placido,34 was unhappy with this response and wrote again, setting out different
reasons why he felt Br Emilio should be dispensed. Br Emilio was ‘of good character but somewhat
unbalanced’, ‘self willed, obstinate’, he had ‘an intense antipathy to the Prefect of the boys ... and
caused great deal of trouble influencing unduly two other members of the Community against the
Prefect’, ‘he is a trouble maker’. Fr Placido concluded:
I think it is urgent to obtain a dispensation from him since he is so unhappy and so
unspiritual in his outlook and his presence at Clonmel would endanger still more the peace
and happiness of the Community.

In view of the explanation you now give me regarding Br Emilio, I believe it is better that
he goes. I am dispensing him from his Triennial Vows according to the faculties given me
31
32
33
34

by Canon Law. I am very sorry but it is better for himself, and for the community that he
goes. Send him home straight away, and may the Lord protect him and accompany him.
3.249 Despite the fact that the correspondence implies that the Brother was granted a dispensation, his
personnel card records that he was dismissed. The full details of this case remain uncertain.
3.250 • The fact that the Brother had ‘reasons for fearing that contact with boys would be a
danger to him’, were not sufficient for the Superior General to grant dispensation.
• The Provincial then sought the dispensation on the ground that the Brother was
disrupting the community and this did persuade the Superior General.
• The primary concern was about managing the Brother’s case. The safety of the boys
was not a consideration.
Br Lazarro35
3.251 Br Lazarro joined the Rosminians in the early 1950s. He was sent to Ferryhouse in the mid-1950s
as Assistant School Prefect and was promoted to Prefect in the early 1960s. He left Ferryhouse
after a year, when he was transferred to Omeath. The reason for his sudden removal from the
School is apparent in a letter from Fr Placido, the Provincial, to Fr Lucca, the Superior General:
The other case is that of Br Lazarro who was prefect and over a period had been very
indiscreet. He left for Omeath ... You will fully appreciate ... how instant action is often
necessary and the changes made are a cover up in some respects.

The distressing news conveyed in your letter ... shows that the Rector is very attentive
and decisive. I approve the changes you had to make and I hope the guilty ones are
convinced of the serious wrong they have done and are repentant. All this causes me
great sadness especially [when I consider] the elder of the two. We really must work out
our salvation “in fear and trembling.” I am well aware of the Brothers whom you have had
to change in these painful circumstances and I pray the Lord will help them in their new
positions ... I am sorry for you too who have had to make all these urgent and painful
changes. Let us pray the Lord that nothing else of the like will occur.
3.253 A former resident, present in the School in the early 1960s, complained about Br Lazarro, alleging
fondling of a sexual nature when the Brother was Prefect:
He put his hand under the bedclothes and started, you know, all that. I suppose, you
know, this is kind of bloody hard talking about this in front of women, I tell you that much
now ... I don’t know how long it went on for, I was in a position that my job was cleaning
his bedroom and that, so it went on there as well ...
3.254 He said that the abuse continued up to the time that Br Lazarro disappeared. He was unable to
remember the circumstances of the Brother’s departure, but said ‘This is only hearsay as well, I
heard that someone complained about him’.
3.255 He said that the Resident Manager called him into his office and questioned him about the abuse
and then punished him. He added, ‘He used the strap on me, more or less saying “it is your fault”’.
3.256 The witness had difficulty recounting the abuse, and instead confirmed to the Committee the
contents of the written statement that he had provided, which contained further detail about the
sexual abuse that he alleged against Br Lazarro.
35

3.257 The witness was complimentary about the Resident Manager, despite the punishment he said
that he received. He liked Fr Rafaele, and felt pleased that he had got rid of the offending Brother
as quickly as he did.
3.258 Fr Matthew Gaffney, Provincial of the Rosminians, made a written response to these allegations
on behalf of the Order in 2001. He stated that ‘the passage of time since the event described ...
make it impossible for me either to respond to them or to investigate them adequately ...’.
However, he added that ‘if the allegations of sexual abuse made by the complainant are true, the
abuse was shameful and horrific, and I should apologise for the terrible injury he must have
suffered’.
3.259 In the time between the writing of that statement and the hearing of the complainant’s evidence,
the Rome files came to light, containing documents which identified Br Lazarro as an abuser. As
a result of this, the Order changed their response. At the commencement of his cross-examination
of the complainant, counsel for the Rosminians said:
We accept what you have said, we trust the truth of it completely. There is one very big
thing which you have done today ... and it is a testament to the pain you suffered and
others with you.
3.260 Most of the other former residents who referred to Br Lazarro did so in the context of physical
abuse. However, one resident present in the School in the late 1950s recalled one occasion when
another Brother instructed him to fetch the leather strap:
I ran over to the office and I ran into the room, into the office; when I went into the office
Br Lazarro was sitting down with a boy on his lap, a young boy ... he was only probably
10/11 ... he shouted at me, "what are you doing in here, what are you doing in here?" I
said "Brother Donato36 sent me over for the leather, he wants to slap [a boy]". He gave
me the leather and said “I will see you afterwards.”
3.261 Staff members who served in Ferryhouse at the time of Br Lazarro’s departure were unable to
remember the circumstances of his leaving, which suggests that there was secrecy about the
matter. It is nevertheless surprising that, in a small community, a sudden departure would not
have generated a great deal of interest. Moreover, Fr Lucca’s letter cited above refers to talk and
‘admiratio’,37 suggesting there was indeed curiosity about the departure.
3.262 In reply to an internal Rosminian survey, other members of the Order who were not in the School
at the time recalled how they heard about the Br Lazarro episode. One priest, who was appointed
teacher in Glencomeragh in the mid-1960s, stated in his questionnaire that he heard that Br
Lazarro had been involved in improper behaviour and that the Rector, Fr Rafaele, was suspicious.
Similarly, another priest described a conversation that he had with members of the Institute in the
early 1960s, when he was a student in Glencomeragh, in which it was mentioned that Br Lazarro
and Br Mario ‘were somehow implicated with some boys at Ferryhouse’.
3.263 It is unclear from the documentation whether Br Lazarro was assigned to work directly with the
boys or for the staff.
3.264 In the case of Br Mateo,38 he was given a warning for sexually abusing children in Upton and
transferred to a post at Omeath that did not bring him in contact with boys. The Rector of Omeath,
Fr Lucio, was given instructions to be ‘vigilant’.
36
37
Latin for surprise and wonder.
38

3.265 Fr Lucio was still Rector when Br Lazarro was sent to Omeath, although he was replaced a few
months after the transfer of Br Lazarro.
3.266 When Br Lazarro joined Br Mateo in the early 1960s, there were two sexual abusers working
in Omeath.
3.267 • The Order was unsure how to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct by Br
Lazarro but, once the correspondence in the Rome files was found, the Order accepted
unreservedly the truth of what the former resident said and apologised to him.
• Although there is some doubt as to whether the two offenders worked together, it was
particularly reckless to have two known sexual abusers working in proximity in an
institution like Omeath.
Br Fausto39
3.268 Br Fausto was discovered to be sexually abusing boys in the mid-1950s, while he was serving in
Upton. He was moved to Ferryhouse and his record card indicates that he was transferred ‘during
year’. His position in Ferryhouse was that of assistant superintendent of the boys’ kitchen. He was
transferred to Glencomeragh in the early 1960s. The account of how he was discovered to be a
sexual abuser is told in the Upton section.
Br Mario
3.269 Br Mario was transferred to Upton in the mid-1950s. In the early 1960s, he was sent to Ferryhouse,
where he was appointed to an administrative role. He was discovered to have been sexually
abusing boys during his posting in Ferryhouse in the early 1960s, to where he had been
transferred following his term in Upton. Once again, Br Alfonso, himself then serving in
Ferryhouse, was the discoverer. The full details of this case are given above, in the Rome files
section.
The Department of Education investigation

3.270 Following the disclosure of sexual abuse perpetrated in 1979 by Br Bruno, Fr Stefano, having
consulted the Provincial of the Order, made a decision to inform the Department of Education. He
spoke to Mr Black,40 an official in the Department dealing with industrial schools, early in 1980. No
contemporary written evidence of this reporting has been found and furnished to the Commission.
3.271 Mr Black gave evidence to the Investigation Committee, where he recalled receiving a phone call
from Fr Stefano early one morning and being told that he wished to report a sexual assault on
a pupil.
3.272 Mr Black accepted that his recollection of the detail of the conversation was not clear, but he
recalled being told that Fr Stefano had caught one of their Brothers in bed with a boy, that the
Brother was ‘now on a train out of his way out of the place’ and that Fr Stefano was very
distressed.
3.273 Mr Black told the Committee that he told Fr Stefano to leave the matter with him, and he then
contacted Mr Orange,41 the Secretary of the Department. He told Mr Orange exactly what Fr
Stefano had relayed to him, and said that Mr Orange reflected on the matter for a few moments
and decided that no further action was necessary, as the person responsible for the assault had
been caught and was now removed from the School. He told the Committee that, as far as he
could best recollect, that was what happened.
39
40
41

3.274 Mr Black said that he had not made a written record of the events. He accepted that he may have
‘slipped up’ in not making a note. He gave two reasons for not doing so: first, he had not been
told to; and secondly, he understood the School would have kept a record in the daily register of
the School which, under the terms of the Act, should record notable events to be laid before
the Inspector.
3.275 There is no evidence available to the Investigation Committee indicating that Mr Orange, Secretary
of the Department, kept a written record either.
3.276 Mr Black also confirmed that he had not asked whether Fr Stefano had reported the matter to the
Gardaı́. He explained:
If I was doing it today – hindsight is grand, of course – the first thing I would have said is
“Have you reported that to the Guards?” That is the first thing I would have said to Fr
Stefano. Secondly I would have taken a note, even if only to protect myself. So, mea
culpa.
3.277 He confirmed that there was no follow-up investigation, as the ‘culprit was found’.
3.278 Mr Black explained that, at the time, there were no guidelines in the Department as to how one
should handle a complaint of this nature. He did, however, refer to a complaints procedure, which
had been handed down by tradition in the Department, to deal with complaints from ‘the woman
who was making the complaint or whatever it was’. It involved sending an investigator out to
interview the people concerned.
3.279 When asked why this procedure was not set in motion in relation to the complaint against Br
Bruno, Mr Black replied:
Because the thing was finished, the crime was solved, the culprit was on his way off ...
What more could I do at that time? I should have now have told the Guards, of course,
you know, because it was a crime, but it wasn’t regarded in that light at that time.
3.280 The Department’s Child Care Advisor, gave evidence that he became aware of Br Bruno’s
dismissal, shortly after it occurred, through a phone call from Fr Stefano:
To the best of my knowledge, I then reported that to Mr Black, .... who I think already
knew of the issue, and he said that he would be dealing with the matter or to leave it with
him at that stage.
3.281 He was asked what procedures were in place to deal with information received in this way:
To record it and to consult with the managers, to make certain it is all on record ... If the
Secretary had been informed, you would obviously go back and keep him updated of
where you were with that situation. You would then consult with the Order as to where
they were with the situation. Because they have ultimate responsibility for – and I think
there was, as far as possible, good communication.
3.282 It was put to him that one would expect the matter to go on record, and the record to go on file,
because that is the way the Department worked and he responded:
Yes. I expect there was a file in the Department, because when I am listening to the
Chairman, my mind is thinking of – not an incident like that, but there was an incident of
a fire in Cavan many years ago and I know that incident is on a file. So that's the same
sort of major incident we are talking of really.
3.283 He added that he did not report the matter to the Gardaı́:
I certainly didn't inform the guards, as Mr Black was dealing with that situation and he
said to me, "leave it with me". I left it with him. Maybe on hindsight that was wrong.
3.284 It is clear that the Department of Education did not conduct any investigation into the events that
took place in Ferryhouse in 1980. Nor did the Department facilitate any such investigation, whether
by the Garda Sióchana, by the Department of Health, by the local Health Authority or by any
other agency.
3.285 The position of the Department of Education in relation to the investigation and reporting of abuse
is set out in its document, ‘Statement to Commission To Inquire Into Child Abuse’ dated 19th May
2006 and prepared in advance of the Phase III hearings. It states:
In detailing the allegations of abuse in Clonmel and the response of the Department, it is
worth noting the Department’s position with regard to dealing with allegations of this nature
was that the Department does not investigate allegations of abuse. This is a matter for
the employers of the staff (in the case of St Joseph’s this would be the Rosminian Order),
the Gardai and the health authorities. The responsibility of the Department would be to
ensure that the welfare and safety of children was protected and that the matter had been
reported to the appropriate authorities and that appropriate steps were being taken to
investigate the matter and protection of children.
3.286 The Department’s TN030 file was discovered to the Investigation Committee by the Department
of Education. It had not been among the other documents disclosed earlier because it was an
ongoing file, and was not in the archive, but among the files of senior Department staff. As Mr
Black, former Principal Officer, told the Committee:
They had in that Section in the Primary Branch, they had a safe for confidential files ...
any offences with a suggestion of a sexual offence in them were kept there. I asked the
girls about this thing ... one girl I knew in the section, “Did you ever remember any cases
like this?” “Oh no, we wouldn’t see them at all.” They never went down. There was a rule at
one time that girls were not to see any things like that, they were very sensitive creatures.
3.287 It is the only file of the period covered by the inquiry that deals explicitly with the reporting and
management of sexual abuse. The file cover bears the heading, ‘Meeting with Clonmel Authorities
Wednesday 4th December 1996’. The earliest memorandum it contains is dated 9th December
1994. The file contains the Department’s record of events involving sexual abuse commencing
with the year 1994.
Events of 1994
3.288 On 8th December 1994, Fr Antonio, the then Director of Ferryhouse, telephoned Mr Grey,42
Principal Officer in the Department of Education, in relation to allegations of sexual abuse made
by a person who had attended Ferryhouse from 1971 to 1973. The alleged abuser was a member
of staff in the School. Mr Grey’s memorandum was headed, ‘Note for Secretary’s Information
“Allegation of Sexual Abuse at St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Clonmel, in 1971/1973. This school
is operated by the Rosminian Fathers”’, and it was dated 9th December 1994.
3.289 The note recorded the details of the phone call. According to Fr Antonio, these allegations had
been made to Fr Stefano, who was then the Provincial. The alleged abuser is not named in the
note, but Fr Antonio is recorded as saying that he was a member of the Rosminian Order at the
time. He had left Ferryhouse some years previously and was no longer a member of the Order.
42

3.290 Mr Grey recorded being told that Fr Stefano, on learning of the complaint, attempted to arrange
a meeting with the person making the allegations but these attempts were rejected, and that the
accuser had said he would be pursuing the matter through his solicitor. Mr Grey also recorded
that the Order had held a Council meeting on 7th December 1994 to discuss the matter (see
below), and that Fr Antonio was unwilling to provide further details over the phone but suggested
that the Department’s Child Care Advisor should call to St Joseph’s as soon as possible, where
he would be given all the information available.
3.291 Mr Grey further noted he had explained to Fr Antonio that the Order should report the matter
immediately to the Garda Authorities, and should not wait until a complaint was received by the
Gardaı́ from another source. He requested that Fr Antonio should provide him with a written report
on the matter. Fr Antonio agreed to bring Mr Grey’s comments to the immediate attention of the
Provincial, and stated that he considered that the course suggested by Mr Grey was the proper
one in the circumstances. A handwritten note on the memorandum indicates that it was delivered
to Mr Green,43 the Assistant Secretary, at 10.30am on 9th December 1994. The word ‘sexclon’ is
also handwritten on the top of the page.
3.292 Mr Grey addressed a further memorandum to Mr Green in December 1995. It was in this
memorandum, dated 4th December 1995, that Mr Grey became aware that the allegation was
against Fr Valerio. The list of religious personnel indicated that, as of 1994/1995, Fr Valerio was
still a member of the Order but seeking laicisation.
3.293 In it, Mr Grey referred to his earlier memorandum and recorded that, on 8th December 1994, he
was contacted by Fr Antonio, Director of St Joseph’s, who explained that the allegation was made
by a person who had called to the Order’s house in Dublin at 2.00am. The person in question
was very drunk and somewhat incoherent at the time, but agreed to leave a telephone number at
which he could be contacted, and indicated that he was reporting the matter to his solicitor. Several
attempts to contact the person by telephone and by registered letter, sent on 9th December 1994,
were unsuccessful. In this letter, the Provincial sought more information on the allegation, and
told him he should take it to the proper authorities and ‘that Fr X is available to meet him anytime’.
3.294 According to Mr Grey, Fr Antonio explained that he had had lengthy discussions with the Order’s
solicitor, and that he had been strongly advised that, in view of the circumstances surrounding the
making of the allegation, he should take no further action at that stage. Rather, he should await
receipt of a formal complaint. The Provincial had been advised that he did not currently have
sufficient grounds to formally confront the alleged offender, and that any such action on his part
could expose him to legal challenge from that source.
3.295 Mr Grey made a note to the effect that he had been told that the alleged offender was effectively
out of the Order for the last two years, a situation which was in the process of being formalised
at present, and that the alleged offender was no longer dealing with children.
3.296 It is clear from these memoranda that the Garda authorities were not notified by the Rosminian
Order in 1994, and that Mr Grey and Mr Green were aware of this fact.
3.297 It is not clear whether the Department officials were informed at this stage that Br Valerio had
admitted: (1) the truth of a complaint of sexual abuse on a minor as far back as January 1980, to
the Provincial; (2) that, in 1992, Br Andino had told him of a further incident circa 1990; and (3)
that, when challenged in 1992, Br Valerio had admitted to him (Fr Stefano) that an incident had
occurred when he was a scholastic in Clonmel (around 1968).
43

3.298 Fr Stefano was aware of all of these facts when contact was made with the Department in
December 1994.
3.299 Several questions arise from the management of this case. Did the solicitor who advised no action
have all the information available on this Brother? This advice prevented the Order from following
Mr Grey’s advice to report the matter immediately to the Gardaı́. Was Mr Grey or Mr Green in a
position to overrule the solicitor, whose main concern was for his client and not the abused
children? Furthermore, having regard to what they actually knew about him, one might ask
whether the Rosminians should have reported Br Valerio’s activities to the Gardaı́ when the
opportunities arose in 1980, in 1992 and in 1994.
3.300 The issue was obviously a matter of grave concern to the Rosminians, as they appointed a media
consultant to advise them almost as soon as the sexual abuse was reported. He attended their
Council meeting on 7th December 1994, and advised them ‘that the media would “savage” anyone
involved in sexual abuse and its concealment’. The minutes record that he strongly recommended
‘that the Provincial and his Council appoint a group who would take responsibility for investigating
any allegations and make recommendations in turn to the Provincial and Council’. He then advised
them specifically about the allegations made by the former resident of Ferryhouse and discussed
the ‘civil and canonical rights of the accused’.
Events of 1995
3.301 On 29th November 1995, Fr Stefano met with Mr Grey, this time in relation to Br Bruno. At this
stage, he also contacted the Garda Superintendent in Clonmel, to inform him of his 1979 discovery
of Br Bruno’s activities and of the allegation of sexual abuse being made against Fr Valerio. In his
undated statement furnished to the Commission, Fr Stefano put into context how this came about:
I was serving as Provincial of the Irish Province of the Rosminians. The Protocol on Child
Sexual Abuse was being developed by the Hierarchy and CORI. As we reviewed the Draft
Document we decided that we should once again report these matters. Accompanied by
Fr Vito44 I first travelled to the Department of Education, Athlone and reported the matter
again to the then Principal Officer, Mr Grey and, in the afternoon of the same day, reported
the matter to the Garda Superintendent at Clonmel Garda Station.
3.302 This is in line with his evidence during the Emergence Hearings, where it was conceded that, by
then, there was already a Garda involvement ‘not directly with us, but we knew, like, that Gardaı́
were asking questions’, and that past pupils had been making complaints to the Gardaı́.
3.303 Mr Grey’s memorandum dated 4th December 1995 puts a slightly different perspective on Fr
Stefano’s motivation for this visit. In this memorandum, Mr Grey first points out that there were
two distinct allegations. He deals with the 1994 allegation, goes on to identify Fr Valerio as the
person being referred to, and alludes to the complainant’s failure to report the matter to the Gardaı́.
Mr Grey then recorded the meeting on 29th November 1995, at Fr Stefano’s request, in connection
with a second allegation, this time against Br Bruno. At that meeting, Fr Stefano advised Mr Grey
that a former pupil had been approached by the Gardaı́ and questioned about abuse in the School
in the 1979 period. The Garda enquiry arose from comments made by the former pupil that had
been overheard. Fr Stefano explained to Mr Grey that the person who made the allegation was
himself the victim of very serious physical abuse and torture at the hands of his own father, and
it was not clear whether the overheard allegation related to abuse in the School or at home.
3.304 Mr Grey recorded that Fr Stefano was seriously concerned at these developments. He was
anxious that the Department should be made fully aware of what was involved, and he would also
be travelling to Clonmel, where he had arranged to meet a Chief Superintendent of the Gardaı́ in
44

relation to the matter. He wrote that Fr Stefano then went on to tell Mr Grey in detail about the
revelations in 1979 concerning Br Bruno, and the steps taken to remove Br Bruno from the Order
and from contact with children. He also told him of his contact with Mr Black in the Department
and that, in later years, Mr Black had confirmed to him that ‘he had passed the matter on to
protect the Order and the school’. Fr Stefano did not know the identity of the person to whom Mr
Black was referring.
3.305 Mr Grey recorded that, on 30th November 1995, Fr Stefano contacted him again, on this occasion
confirming that he had met with the Garda Superintendent in Clonmel on the previous afternoon,
and had provided him with all the information at his disposal in relation to the 1979 allegation
and the allegations against Fr Valerio. The memorandum goes on to detail the Superintendent’s
reservations as to whether any action would be taken in either matter.
3.306 It is clear from the TN030 file that the Garda enquiry into Ferryhouse did not result from information
provided by the Rosminians or by the Department, but from overheard comments made by a
former pupil in a public place. It was not just the ‘Draft Protocol on Child Sexual Abuse’ that
triggered Fr Stefano’s decision to tell the Gardaı́. The knowledge that a Garda inquiry was
underway also led to their decision to contact the Garda authorities and contribute to their inquiry.
3.307 It is enlightening that, at the meeting with the Superintendent on 29th November 1995 and in the
course of his contact with Mr Grey on 30th December 1995, Fr Stefano did not also refer to the
other complaint of abuse that had been made against a third Brother (Br Sergio). The decision to
help with ongoing inquiries had not yet become a broader inquiry into sexual abuse. It was as if
each case was seen as a separate problem, rather than as a single issue about child protection
and crime prevention within St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse.
Events of 1996
3.308 In a memorandum of 10th December 1996, which was e-mailed to Mr Green, Mr Grey made a
note of his meeting with the current Director of St Joseph’s, Fr Vito, on 4th December, when he
was informed that the Gardaı́ had now interviewed over 70 boys who were in Ferryhouse in the
late 1970s. Arising from the Garda inquiries, at least five boys had made allegations, all against
the same person, a former member of the Order, Br Bruno, who had admitted the offences to the
Gardaı́ in respect of at least four of the cases, and the file had been sent to the Director of
Public Prosecutions.
3.309 Mr Grey recorded that Fr Vito expected that ‘once the matter became public, St Joseph’s could
expect a repetition of the Goldenbridge situation. The Order and the management were already
planning for such an eventuality’. According to Mr Grey, Fr Vito was enquiring whether the
Department would be in a position to assist the School, by covering the cost of legal representation
for any member of staff interviewed by the Gardaı́, the cost of delegating staff to handle anticipated
enquiries and all contact with the media, and the cost of providing counselling services for staff
who were likely to be traumatised by the developments. There was no mention of counselling for
the victims.
3.310 Mr Grey noted that the more critical issue was the need for the School to be able to offer adequate
assurance that the children now in the School were not exposed to the danger of abuse; this he
saw as a difficulty, because ‘the main purpose of the meeting with Fr Vito was to discuss staff
shortages and specifically, concern that staff and children are currently exposed because of
inadequate staff cover’.
3.311 Mr Grey recorded that this was an issue that needed to be urgently addressed in advance of the
abuse cases coming to public attention. He noted that the issue of staff shortages had been
recognised for some time, but the Department had not made a case to the Department of Finance
because the School authorities had failed to provide data to support the claim. At the meeting, it
was agreed that the School would provide the information within weeks, and the Department
would make the necessary approach.
3.312 While Mr Grey expressed concern about the need to be able to offer assurances as to the safety
of boys currently in the School, there was no expression of concern for those who had been
abused by the Brother. The urgency was to resolve the question of staff shortages, thereby
avoiding the Department’s being exposed to serious criticism when the abuse cases became
public.
3.313 Again, it is worth noting that this memorandum also makes no reference to the complaint against
Fr Valerio. The concern was to deal with each problem as it arose, rather than to survey the
broader picture.
3.314 Finally, there are two memoranda dated 19th and 20th December 1996 addressed to the Minister,
from Mr Green and Mr Grey respectively. These appear to be memoranda briefing the Minister
about the allegations against Br Bruno, and are identical save for the date and the name of their
authors. They begin:
Fr Vito ... contacted Mr Grey recently and advised that a number of former pupils of St
Joseph’s Industrial School, Clonmel had made allegations of sexual abuse against Br
Bruno to the Gardaı́ ...
3.315 These memoranda make no reference to the allegations against Fr Valerio, of which both Mr
Green and Mr Grey had been aware since December 1994. They are somewhat misleading,
insofar as they give the impression that their knowledge of Br Bruno’s abuse had come to them
in the recent past, and as a result of the contact recently made by Fr Vito. They fail to refer to the
fact that, in November 1995, Fr Stefano had informed them of Br Bruno’s activities.
Events of 1997
3.316 According to the Department file, Mr Grey was first informed of a boy’s allegation against Br Sergio
on 12th February 1997. In his notes dated 13th February 1997, Mr Grey recorded being told by Fr
Stefano that the previous weekend a former pupil had called to Ferryhouse and indicated that he
now intended reporting the incident to the Gardai, and that the Clonmel authorities had indicated
that they would co-operate fully in any inquiry which might arise.
3.317 Though this information only came to the Department in 1997, the incident had occurred three
years previously in 1994. The former resident had been working in Dublin and staying in a house
maintained by the Rosminian Fathers as part of their aftercare programme. He went on a
prolonged drinking spree and returned to the house. That night, he awoke to find Br Sergio ‘on
top of him’. The young man became distressed and left the house, and the next day he went to a
relative of Br Sergio’s to tell them about it. He did not take the matter further at that time, but
moved to work in Clonmel. Mr Grey noted that the relative in turn told Fr Stefano, the Provincial,
who immediately had Br Sergio removed ‘to a facility in ... the U.K. which caters for the
rehabilitation of members of religious orders’. Two years after this incident, Br Sergio applied for
dispensation from his vows and he left the Order at the end of that year.
3.318 There the matter rested until 1997, when the young man decided he would report the incident to
the Gardaı́.
• This investigation was recorded in File TN030 of the Department which was not
included in the Department’s original discovery and was the subject of
procedural hearings by the Commission in 2003.
• The Department dealt with the case with extremes of caution that prevented the
matter being dealt with properly as a report of serious crime.
• The principal issue for the Department was how to deal with the scandal.
• The children who had been abused or put at risk were not considered by the
Department.
• It took a further 17 years before the matter was reported to the Gardai and the
offenders’ risk to children was addressed.
Complaints made by witnesses

3.319 Two witnesses made allegations of serious sexual abuse by two staff members in the early 1970s.
Br Leone
3.320 A witness who was present in Ferryhouse from the late 1960s alleged that he was sexually abused
by Brs Leone and Valerio. The abuse took place in Br Leone’s bedroom, when they would return
to the School late after sporting tournaments. It continued for about two and a half years.
Fr Daniele
3.321 A complainant who was present during the early 1970s alleged that Fr Daniele sexually abused
him. He said that Fr Daniele sent for him and, when he arrived, started asking him about his past
and educational history. Up until this point, he thought of Fr Daniele as a nice, jolly man who was
very encouraging to the boys. However, on this occasion in his room, Fr Daniele told the witness
to take off his clothes, as he needed to examine him. The witness was surprised at this request
and hesitated, at which point Fr Daniele became very angry and threatened to beat him.
3.322 Eventually, he complied with Fr Daniele’s request, and he alleged that he was raped by Fr Daniele.
3.323 Fr Daniele then gave him some chocolate and sent him on his way. When he went to bed, he
awoke in pain and noticed that there was dried blood on his leg. He said that this happened on a
few occasions. Fr Daniele would send for him in the evenings or ask himself if he bumped into
the witness.
3.324 The witness accepted that the Rosminians had a very high opinion of Fr Daniele but stressed that
‘my memory is far different’.

3.325 1. Sexual abuse by religious was a chronic problem in Ferryhouse throughout the
relevant period but the full extent cannot be quantified. Some of the abuse is verifiable
by contemporary documents or admissions.
2. During most of the years between 1952 and 1988, there lived and worked in Ferryhouse
a member or members of the Rosminian Order who at some time were found to have
engaged in sexual abuse of boys. In more than ten of those years, there were at least
two abusers present and in at least two different years there were three abusers there.
3. Complainant witnesses from every era, from the early 1940s onwards, testified about
the sexual abuse of children in Ferryhouse. The Rosminian Institute acknowledged
that not all of those who were sexually abused have come forward as complainants,
whether to the Commission, to the Redress Board, or to An Garda Sı́ochana. In their
Final Submission to the Investigation Committee they wrote, ‘We know that some boys
were sexually abused who have made no complaint to the Commission or otherwise,
but have spoken to us about it’.
4. The Rosminian authorities discovered that some members of their Order had been
abusing children, but their response was wholly inadequate. When sexual abuse was
detected, the Order sought to cover up the situation by removing known abusers and
transferring them to other institutions.
5. It was only when the Gardaı́ had already become aware of allegations that the
Rosminians reported abuse to the Gardaı́ in 1995.
6. At no stage did the Rosminians query whether other boys had been abused when a
known abuser was discovered.
7. The impact of sexual abuse on the boys themselves was not a consideration on the
part of the Rosminians.
8. The Department of Education did not act responsibly when an allegation of sexual
abuse was made to it in 1980 and distanced itself from the allegations, seeking to
minimise the publicity and scandal which might arise for the Department and the
Order.
9. The approach taken by the Department was an ad hoc one. There was no clear policy
on the management of sexual abuse.

3.326 A senior member of the Rosminian Order told the Investigation Committee:
That’s my belief that every child that was ever in this situation was abused in some way,
emotionally, physically or whatever the case may be and you would say that we were part
of that because we didn’t stand up at the time and probably say so.
3.327 This statement goes further than simply to admit that abuse occurred. It states that the kind of
institutional life that was made available in Ferryhouse until the late 1970s was in itself abusive.
Boys lived in a system of military-style regimentation, and endured a ruthless regime of control by
corporal punishment. The objectives were to reform them, and mould them into obedient and
subservient citizens, but the system did not allow for the fact that they were young children with
emotional and developmental needs. It offered them the cruel and austere life of a nineteenth-
century institution that had survived largely unchanged into the third quarter of the twentieth
century. It had few caring adults who could show affection, compassion and sympathy. The rare
staff member who did treat them as individuals, and offered them kindness and support, were
singled out by former residents for special mention. For the rest, the adults were there to control
the children, and the children had to look to each other for emotional and social support.
3.328 Whether the boys had been orphaned, or sent in by the courts for juvenile criminal behaviour,
they were dragooned into the same system, where the needs of the Institution dictated the way
of life. They were forced to adapt to a lifestyle that did not meet their special needs, and if they
rebelled they were always seen as trouble-makers rather than unhappy children.
Orphans and delinquents

3.329 A senior Brother, who served as a Prefect in Ferryhouse in the 1960s, explained how the presence
of orphans and delinquents was a major problem in the institutions:
Well, you see, after all, I remember somebody saying to me that it was a good thing for
the orphans to be exposed to the delinquents, that could make no absolute sense to me
whatsoever ... there is an example of what I'm speaking about, of all the children being
lumped together in one recreational facility, you see. You're coming from different places,
orphans are coming from different places. Orphans needed entirely different treatment
to delinquents.
3.330 It was put to him that the orphans came from broken homes, or homes where parents were ill or
dying, or dead, and their need was for another family, for love and affection, and gentle guidance
by example, but the delinquents were sent there by the courts, and their need was for control.
They had families and homes, and wanted to return, whereas the orphans had no other home.
The real problem was trying to administer a system which was treating both the same. Inevitably,
it would become more a kind of prison for delinquents than a surrogate family home for children
with emotional needs. The Brother replied:
The system couldn't work any other way, that's the bottom line. I'm saying that that was
the sad point about it. That it had to deal with the most belligerent if you like, if you like
to put it that way. That there was no escape from it.
Living conditions
3.331 In the 1940s, because of the Emergency, there was a period of deprivation and food shortage.
One witness described the bitter cold they had to endure:
There was a big freeze up and the children, including myself, we got chilblains between
our fingers, on our fingers, on our toes and they swelled up. Some poor kid – they burst
and the cold was bad enough, but the pain from those things when they burst made it ten
times worse ... At no time were they put in any place warm, they were put in that old
recreational place beneath the classrooms. There was a doorway but no door on it ... The
Prefects would tell them to keep moving, they wouldn’t let them stand still; keep on moving
to try to get the circulation going.
3.332 This witness was lucky, in that he was given a job in the kitchen, where there was warmth and
more food. He explained:
Naturally I could eat more than the other kids because I was cooking it ... I was protecting
myself, they could not protect themselves ... I have a lot of feeling for those little children.
I didn’t suffer half as much as a lot of them did. Don’t forget they were hungry, not just
for the six months I was hungry, some of them were there nine or ten years, they were
hungry every day for nine or ten years.
3.333 His guilt about hiding in the relative comfort and warmth of the kitchen was worsened when, in
his last year there, he was given the ingredients to make a Christmas pudding. There was some
left over and he was told to put it away for 6th January. When he took it out on that date, it was
covered in mould. He was horrified, but he was told to cut the mould off and serve it to the boys.
It was the first time ever they had been given Christmas pudding, and it went mouldy. It was
terrible, ‘if you look at something like that and then you think of children going to eat it’.
3.334 Fr Antonio described the refectory as follows:

One of the earliest nightmares you would have was being in charge of the refectory
because you knew the food wasn't good and even the tables were coming to the sides
and they used to use what they called hods, which was plastic bowls and plates and stuff
like that. It was – nearly I would regret an awful lot, hindsight is a great thing but at that
time it was a very cruel situation. And because there was only one person in charge of
the 150 there would have been a lot of bullying ... I remember one occasion where the
older boys were kind of selling slices of bread, which they used to call “skinners” to other
lads. “I will give you a slice of bread for two sausages”.
3.335 He singled out the conditions of the refectory for special criticism:
I remember the tiles in the refectory were slippery and if the steam rose up you would slip
and break your leg or anything on the floor there ... Let’s be honest about it, there was a
chef there that used to stir the pot of stew with the handle of a brush. These things
happened and I can’t deny them.
3.336 At one point, he made clear the abhorrence and disgust he felt, in retrospect, about how the boys
had to eat. He said:
For obvious reasons looking back now ... it was horrific. The question I would have to ask
myself is, would I have eaten the food out of the bowls the boys were eating out, no, I
wouldn't and I didn't.
3.337 On the other hand, he admitted, ‘It was a hell of a lot different’ for the members of the Order. He
told the Investigation Committee, ‘The quality of the food would have been better for a start. You
had people serving you’.
3.338 He had grown up as a child in Clonmel, so he knew of the School before he went to work there
as a member of the Order. He recalled:
My understanding of Ferryhouse at that time was as a child growing up in Clonmel. We
used to see them going through the town in lorries with black stockings and red tops in
lorries going through and the threat of my age group, and indeed everybody else at that
time, was that you would be sent to the monastery if you misbehave. Ferryhouse at that
time was known as the monastery. I would have visited and played football against the
Ferryhouse boys at that time.
3.339 When he went to work there in the 1970s, he had found the physical conditions even more stark
and primitive.
3.340 The Department of Education’s Medical Inspector, Dr Lysaght’s report of 1966 described the
dormitories as the worst he had ever seen. They bordered on being overcrowded, and had ‘a
depressing air of mass communal living’. There were no lockers or wardrobes and ‘as is usual
then the boys store personal belongings under the mattresses and of course destroy the springs’.
3.341 Almost a year later, a Public Health Inspection found the conditions overcrowded and ‘a hazard
to the health of the child’. As a result of this report, the Department of Health withdrew their
children from the Institution.
3.342 In his evidence to the Investigation Committee, Fr Antonio, a former Resident Manager, spoke
about an experience he had dealing with boys who were sent to Ferryhouse from Artane:
One of the – I suppose one of the things that made me angry ever since was that I was
sent up on a bus to Dublin to collect the Artane boys and the instruction I was given at
the time, go up – the Artane boys were told, I don't know where they were told they were
going but they weren't told they were coming to Clonmel. My instructions were go up on
the bus and don't stop the bus or let them out because they will run away. I stand very
guilty of that that I hadn't enough courage at that time to say this is not right. I remember
well, coming down on that bus and they were arriving in Ferryhouse. From what we heard
at that time, I couldn't swear by this, at least there were nuns cooking in Artane, their
standard of food was a lot of better. Certainly their standard of clothes were a lot of better.
Because I remember them coming down and they were all given three khaki pants and
three T-shirts and whatever and they were light years to what our lads were doing. That
would have made me quite angry at the time that I was going up to bring all these lads.
3.343 The boys from Ferryhouse looked different. Taken from homes that were deemed to be poor and
unable to provide proper care, they were placed in an institution that made them look poor and in
need of proper care. It is no wonder that they resented the experience.
Family bereavement
3.344 A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the 1940s came from a family where illness, poverty and
death led to social upheaval. He was the eighth in a family of 13 children. His mother died of
pneumonia. Her youngest child at the time was just one month old, and the complainant was
seven years of age. The entire family was placed into various institutions. The four brothers were
initially sent to Ferryhouse, but then were split up and the younger two were sent elsewhere. He
was unaware that one of his brothers was later returned to Ferryhouse. The witness explained:
After he became a certain age, five years of age or that, he was sent to Ferryhouse. But
the point about it was he was two and a half years in Ferryhouse before anybody told us
he was our brother. So he was in the school for two and a half years and nobody knew
he was – well, at least we didn’t know – we knew he was [names the boy] but that was
it. We never knew he was our brother.
3.345 He was frightened and confused on entering the School, and he was ‘never prepared’ for leaving
it. He recalled leaving the School and meeting his brother-in-law who took him into his flat. There
was no job found for him, and the Rosminians never checked on him after leaving the School. He
lived in dire circumstances with his sister and brother-in-law until he joined the Irish Army.
3.346 A witness, who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1970s, told the Investigation Committee of his family
circumstances. He was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters older
than himself.
3.347 He was physically abused in his primary school, so stopped attending the school. After a number
of appearances before the District Court, he was sent to Ferryhouse. His mother was ill with
epilepsy and this also contributed to his school non-attendance as he would remain at home to
help his mother. He recalled the judge telling him that his parents did not care for him, as they
were not even in court. He felt this was a huge injustice. He explained:
My mother was after taking an epileptic fit as she was getting off the bus at Christchurch
and it took some time to revive her. When my father got to the Court that time he pleaded
with [the judge] who, could do nothing at that stage.
3.348 His mother in fact was terminally ill, and she died while he was in Ferryhouse. He was called to
the office. He then told the Investigation Committee:
I went into Fr Antonio's room and Fr Antonio started crying. And he said to me, "I have
something to tell you." And I said "What? is it my mother, my father, my family, something's
wrong." He said to me, "Your mother has died", he said. He started crying and I looked
at him to say “what are you crying for?”, because it was all coming down now, what my
father was crying for [in the Court].
3.349 He was driven to Dublin by a Brother. Instead of taking him directly to his family home, the Brother
took him to a pub near his home. The witness remained in the car for hours and it was almost
8.15pm when he arrived at his family home. The Brother walked in through the door of the house
and gave his condolences to the witness’s sister and then left, saying that he would see her at
the grave. He then described the funeral:
She was buried on the following day, as far as I know, after Mass in [the cemetery]. I was
at the grave in [the cemetery], just inside the gate, and [the Brother] said – he was at the
grave as well and just as the ceremony was over and people were starting to walk away,
he said his condolences again to my father and to my sisters. I don't think he said anything
to my brothers and took me by the hand and just brought me over and put me in the car.
I was brought back then ...
On my first night back to Ferryhouse, it was actually the early hours of the morning I woke
to find another chap, a boy in the school, and he was at my bed as well and he said he
was only trying to climb into my bed to comfort me over my mother's death. That's what I
remember about my mother's funeral.
Family separation
3.350 A witness, who was in Ferryhouse in the late 1960s and early 1970s, described a family
breakdown when his stepmother rejected both him and his brother. He knew his brother was
placed in another institution and, when he got out of Ferryhouse, he went in search of him:
I found out when I came out of Clonmel, I found out that is where he was and I went. I
only found my brother five years ago, if you can understand that. That is how long we
have known each other, other than the childhood ... Some family ... took him ... I knew he
was in [another institution] and I knew where that was and I went up and I wanted to see
me brother ... he was the only brother I had ... I was bigger so I had to protect him.
3.351 He never found him, and discovered his whereabouts only because his brother kept his surname.
‘An aunt of mine found him’, he said, and the two of them had to get to know each other after
being separated for nearly 30 years.
3.352 A witness who was in Ferryhouse in the 1950s also recounted how his family was separated and
dispersed into the care system, and where no contact was provided for the siblings. There were
five children, three sisters and two brothers in the family. The mother died in childbirth, and the
witness was sent to stay with an aunt and uncle for four or five months. One other member of his
family was sent with him to these relations. His new baby sister was sent to other family members,
along with his brother. His other older sister was sent to another institution. He could recall being
taken to court and being sent to Ferryhouse on his own. He was devastated by the separation
from his family.
3.353 From then on, he had ‘No contact, no contact as such, no. I did write letters. The regime was a
letter once a month, I think’. When he got out of Ferryhouse, he went in search of his sisters who
had been placed in an industrial school in Leinster. Unfortunately for him, the girls had no memory
of him and did not even remember having any other siblings:
I found the school ... and I knocked on the door and looked for the two people by name
... The Sister in charge invited me in and after about 20 minutes or so she came up with
these two other girls and they were my younger sister and her other sister. That was the
first time really I had seen the baby since our mother died ... she would have been only
nine or ten at that stage. [The other sister] would have been about 11 or 12 or something
like that. They didn't know anything, in fact it was completely blotted out of their minds,
that they had any other members of family.
3.354 The break-up of the family unit meant that there was no real connection between any of them:
It kind of, if you know what I mean, it ended with no closeness at all, it is just that we
know each other. There is no connection as such. We just know we are brothers and
sisters like.
3.355 He left a loving family, and went to an institution where he found no love. He said:
No one cared, that's what it seemed to me, devoid of any emotional context or devoid of
anything. The only thing that was there was physical approach ... I thought, it seemed to
be deliberate. It appeared to me that it was deliberate at that time to break the strings. I
don't know why, that's the impression I got that, that the strings separate and cut the
string so you have no one left, you are more or less on your own as an independent. It
was probably easier to control as well I suppose in the school situation, that maybe after
a couple of years you forget that you had any connection with anyone at that time ... I
don't know if anyone made friends there, if they just gathered together. One thing that
struck me when I left the school there was no goodbyes or anything like that, it wasn't
“come back” or anything like that, there was boys, no farewells or anything like that,
just under the arch and up to get the bus away from there. Basically it was cold ... A
cold environment.
The State’s knowledge of the conditions in Ferryhouse
Evidence from a local health inspector

3.356 In 1967, a local health inspector visited the School, following the death of a boy from cerebro-
spinal meningitis. His report to the Department of Health was thorough, beginning with an
examination of the living conditions that might have caused the disease. He wrote:
Now this disease can be due to overcrowding, so I accordingly caused accurate
measurements to be made of the dormitories, school, etc. and what emerged is what we
expected: The school holds twice the number of children – there are 192 boys. The floor
area and the cubic space available to every bed is 25 sq. ft. instead of 55 sq. ft. which is
the normal and 200 cubic ft. instead of 400 c. ft.
We introduced every protection for the pupils by way of prophylactics. However we run a
serious risk of recurrence. The matter is grave, in fact more than grave, it is unjust, and
a hazard to the health of the child ... You will note by the detailed report attached that the
school structure where the children are taught is also doubly overcrowded. Again a serious
hazard is the level of overcrowding.
3.357 Having found that ‘the dormitory sleeps exactly twice the number of boys recommended’, the two
officials drew the Department of Health’s attention to a number of serious matters, namely:
1. Social malaise. There is clear evidence of social malaise in the institution among
the younger “denizens”. 43 out of a total of 192 boys are bed-wetters. This matter
I have taken up with the M.O. to the institution and also with the Assistant Co.
M.O., and will deal with it as well as possible,
2. Dental Care. This question I have taken up with the Chief Dental Officer. I feel we
should give very full dental care to the boys in Ferryhouse from the clinic during
school closure periods etc. Without parents, you will appreciate, it is difficult for
them unless the County Council acts broadly in lieu thereof.
3.358 Unlike the School, which traditionally saw bed-wetting as a matter for discipline and learning, the
Public Health Officer saw it as a symptom of the level of distress among the boys. Furthermore,
he did not see the Order as being in loco parentis because he asked for the local authority to take
on the role of parents in caring for dental health. The full report contains other examples of neglect.
Among the facts listed were the following:
1. Another unsatisfactory item is that toothbrushes for boys in each dormitory are
kept in a wooden box (measuring 4’ x 5”). The brushes standing close together
each in its own slot. This would appear an excellent method of spreading ’flu,
mouth infections and throat infections etc.
2. On inspection only four of the ten w/c’s worked properly. Some were blocked or
partially blocked, some did not flush. The anti-syphon pipes on these particular
w/c’s were not connected back to the soil pipes, and flowed over after being
flushed. These should be either adequately connected or blocked, as they cause
the floors to be continually saturated. Ventilation is through one large roof window
and is inadequate.
3.359 Within the main letter is another complaint about the closed nature of the Institution. The Public
Health Officer wrote:
There is a question, now advanced, of building a new National School within the walls of
the Institution. It is my opinion that this is a grave mistake. This is also the opinion of the
Medical Officer to the Institution and of [the], Ass. Co. M.O.H. who know fairly well, as I
do, that children going out of this Institution because they have no contact outside find it
difficult to adapt. We feel the children should go outside to school ... where at least there
will be some dilution with children with some pennies in their pockets, or the Clonmel
Schools.
3.360 The Department of Health Boarding-Out Inspector, Ms Fidelma Clandillon, seized on this report
and wrote:
This shocking report confirms some unofficial information I have had over the years
concerning Ferryhouse – yet two smaller and better schools were closed for economic
reasons. From what I have heard the ill-treatment of the boys could do with investigation
also. One person who spoke with me about this matter was an inspector of the I.S.P.C.C.
It is scandalous that only the death of one of the boys has led to the conditions there
coming to light ...
[The Secretary, Tipperary (S.R.)] ... informed me that the report had not been sent to the
Department of Education but had been sent here as a health matter. I would urge the
necessity of this Department’s informing the Department of Education of the findings of
this report.
3.361 At the time of the report, there were 23 boys maintained in Clonmel under the Health Act, and
they were transferred without delay to other placements. The other boys, some 169 in number,
had been admitted through the courts and came under the Department of Education’s remit. They
remained in Clonmel while the Department and the Rosminians discussed how best to handle
the problem.
3.362 On 21st July 1966, less than a year before the local health inspector’s report, Dr Lysaght, the
Department of Education’s Medical Inspector, made a thorough inspection of St Joseph’s,
Ferryhouse. At that time, there were approximately 160 boys in the School. The numbers were
later swelled when Upton closed, and 31 boys were moved down to Clonmel. Under the heading
‘Conditions of Premises’ he wrote:
The structure appears for most part in good repair. Several parts require decoration and
repairs to fitments in washrooms, and sanitary annexes are needed. It would appear from
what I saw in this regard they are inclined to be destructive.
3.363 He seemed to be blaming the boys for the broken sanitary facilities.
3.364 Under the heading ‘Dormitories’ he wrote:

Two in number ... Very large, extending the length of building – contain each about 80
beds ... The size of these dormitories and the presence of so many beds conveyed a
depressing air of mass communal living ... While there was free passage way between
beds and most probably sufficient floor space to avoid justification of any accusation of
overcrowding it would be only marginal and there was not room for any further beds.
3.365 In the same month as he was writing the report, a fire broke out in the east wing of Upton Industrial
School, and 31 boys were transferred to Ferryhouse. Dr Lysaght’s report made it clear there that
there was no room for them.
3.366 Dr Lysaght went on to say:
In any event these dormitories are much too big and they should be broken up into smaller
units. I can appreciate the need for supervision but it can be got as in the case of Salthill
without resort to what I regard as a soul destroying and de-humanising expedient. There
is little use in discussing the desirability of having small homes or schools with less than
50 beds, the avoidance of institutional atmosphere from every aspect and at the same
time countenance the concentration of double the number sleeping in one room in serried
rows of beds, end to end ...
I had the feeling that these dormitories were the worst I had seen ... There was a general
air of “dinginess”, bare boards none too clean, bed covers dull and unattractive etc. which
did not impress favourably ...
3.367 He found the beds adequate though spartan, there were adequate blankets and sheets, but the
latter were ‘none too clean at that’. He then added:
There is a large sanitary annex containing W.Cs. and urinals and washbasins off each
dormitory. The walls are just bare concrete and stained and discoloured. Damage to
fitments were seen – evidence of destructive tendencies.
3.368 He found ‘a rough and untidy look about the dining room’, but the food was good and ample in
amount. There were only 10 boys in the School at the time, as the others were on holiday at
Woodstown, so his judgements were made under exceptional circumstances. Of their clothing he
wrote, ‘The ten boys seen were reasonably well clothed’.
3.369 His comments on aftercare expressed deeper concerns. He wrote:

They try to get them jobs on leaving. Most do not want to work on farms – they say it is
too lonely ... Many join the army but unfortunately the army won’t take them til they are
17 ... Those who have training in trades ... would have to serve their time all over again
as apprentices outside ... They manage to frequently get places as men servants in
religious houses for boys. It would seem, however, that in the case of illegitimate and
orphans with no living near relatives the dice is heavily loaded against their getting a fair
start in life. This constitutes a social problem, which should be capable of remedy.
3.370 There is plenty in this report to alert the Department to the dangers of overcrowding and poor
hygiene within Ferryhouse, but the report falls far short of being a shocking indictment of the
place. It did not stop the Department allowing 31 more boys into the crowded School.
3.371 Apart from Dr Lysaght’s report, there were three reports from Dr Anna McCabe for August and
September 1963 and January 1964, when the School population was nearly 200 boys. They are
generally very positive. On 15th August 1963, she wrote under the heading ‘Condition of premises’,
‘Clean well kept. Improvements have been made and will be made. Outside and inside re-
decoration is being done’. Equipment, sanitation and health were all described as very good. Food
and diet, and clothing were described as ‘Improved’. Her general observation was that the new
Manager was ‘keen to make improvements’. She recorded that she had ‘discussed many points
with him and he will endeavour to have improvements made’. In an addendum following an
incidental visit, she wrote, ‘Improvements are being made and in time the school will be much
improved’.
3.372 In January 1964, she wrote an almost identical report. Again, the premises were ‘clean well kept’
and she commented, ‘Improvements are being made and continue to be made’. Accommodation,
equipment, sanitation, and health are all described as ‘V.Good’ and food and diet and clothing
are again described as ‘much improved’. She again ended with another optimistic comment.
She wrote:
Improvements have taken place and the new manager is most anxious to help in every
way he can to making the school brighter and more cheerful.
3.373 Just two years later, Dr Lysaght found the dormitories ‘the worst I’d seen’, with a ‘depressing air
of mass communal living’ and a ‘general air of “dinginess”’. He found the number of boys, about
160, bordering on overcrowded. A year after his report, the Public Health Officer found the
dormitory was sleeping ‘exactly twice the number of boys recommended’ and the School was ‘a
hazard to the health of the child’. The numbers were about the same as when Dr McCabe
inspected the School three years earlier.
3.374 It is hard to explain the inconsistencies in these reports. The Department of Education Inspector
concluded ‘in time the school will be much improved’ and found the accommodation ‘very good’.
3.375 Just three years later, a Public Health Officer had the Health Board remove their children to protect
them from a ‘grave’ situation wherein children’s health and lives were at risk. Ms Fidelma
Clandillon, in her memorandum of 17th June 1967, did indeed have grounds to write, ‘It is
scandalous that only the death of one of the boys has led to the conditions there coming to light’.
3.376 There were rumours and innuendo about cruelty and neglect in Ferryhouse, so it would be
expected that the Department of Education’s Inspector would have heard and seen things to
cause concern. However, Dr Anna McCabe’s reports gave no indication of the conditions found
by Dr Lysaght and the Public Health Inspector just two or three years later.
3.377 Even when the ‘shocking report’ arrived, and after the death of one boy through meningitis, there
seemed to be no sense of urgency to effect change. On 8th January 1968, the following letter was
sent from the Department of Health to the Minister for Education:
I am directed by the Minister for Health to refer again to the minute of 12th September
1967 (ref. 6.43) regarding conditions at St Joseph’s School, Ferryhouse, Clonmel, and to
request you to indicate the present position regarding the arrangements for the provision
of increased accommodation in the institution.
3.378 A handwritten note is added by an official in the Education Department. It reads:

Phoned Miss Little45 to inform her that Inspector T. McD. had visited Clonmel recently but
was unable to complete re-assessment of school’s capacity owing to illness of Manager;
that Inspector had since sustained broken ankle and would re-visit Clonmel to complete
inspection as soon as possible.
3.379 Reading this note, one would never guess that the matter under consideration was the ‘serious
hazard of overcrowding’, causing a grave risk to the health of some 170 boys.
The condition of the School in the 1940s and 1950s

3.380 If Dr McCabe’s reports in the 1960s are not a good indicator of the conditions within Ferryhouse
at the time, her earlier reports are more illuminating. The DES records include a report of a
visit on 2nd June 1939. Inspection Reports are available for each of the years that follow until
December 1944.
3.381 Initially, she reported that the School and premises were in a satisfactory state, and that she found
the Resident Manager very capable and kind. During the years that followed, conditions began to
45

deteriorate. In April 1941, the sanitation came in for criticism and she referred to a general
slackness about the School. In October 1942, she found the premises very unsatisfactory and
complained again about the outside sanitation facilities. This time, she warned that, if there were
not appreciable improvements all round, ‘drastic measures’ would have to be taken.
3.382 This threat had some effect because, in July 1943, she noted ‘much improvement’. The premises
had been cleaned and painted. However, she condemned the fact that most of the boys were
barefoot. She noted that, whenever she recommended improvements, the Resident Manager
complained that he did not have the money. She added that, with the increased grants, her
suggestions for improvements should be insisted upon. In a further discussion of her visit on 19th
July, she added details: she had found the sanitary annex obsolete and ‘dangerous to the health
of the inmates’, and the improvements needed included a whole new water carriage system and
modern W.Cs. She continued, ‘If this is not done immediately the money will be used for some
other purpose and on my next inspection the same rigmarole will start’. Apart from condemning
the boys going barefooted, she asked for a height scale to be bought, for the toothbrushes to be
replaced and the bathhouse improved.
3.383 The report of October 1944 is quite damning. While there were some improvements – the new
sanitary block had been erected and the bathhouse had been repaired – there was a general lack
of supervision. The boys were untidy and unkempt, the food and diet were unsatisfactory, and the
children were underweight.
3.384 She blamed the decline on the rheumatic disability of the Resident Manager, who was 73 and
gradually becoming senile, and she felt he was ‘unable for the arduous task of Resident Manager’.
She wrote:
He always looked after his boys well and I feel if he were active and capable would still
do so. He is unable to get about as actively as heretofore. The chaplain is on his sick bed
too and poor old Brother B. (76 years old) is nearly past his work too.
3.385 She called for the introduction of younger staff. She persuaded the Chief Inspector to write to the
Provincial to get him to appoint a successor to the ageing Manager. The Provincial brought in Fr
Eduardo46 to assist the Resident Manager, and appointed Fr Ambrosi47 as Dispenser to take
charge of the physical welfare of the boys, and in particular their food and clothing, which needed
a full-time staff member in view of the difficulty getting supplies.
3.386 Surprisingly, Fr Giuseppe48 disagreed with the conclusions of Dr McCabe’s report, the National
School Inspector had never expressed any discontent and had found the Principal teacher to be
‘highly efficient'. He contested her view that the children were underweight and asked her to
submit proposals as to what should be done in the top dormitory and sanitary annex. ‘In these
days of high prices’, he wrote, ‘constructural alterations are not undertaken except with great
caution and after proved urgency. Cost may be regarded as about three times what they were
before the war’.
3.387 He accepted, however, that Fr Basilio49 should not have accepted more boys than the 160
maximum. The School now accommodated 200 boys, and ‘the produce of the farm and garden
of 70 acres would be ample for a school of 160 boys; a larger number necessitates extern
purchasings and greater cost per caput’.
46
47
48
49

3.388 This extraordinary letter not merely denied that the boys were not gaining weight, a fact that could
be easily proven and was not just a matter of opinion, but stated that the farm produced enough
food to feed 160 boys. He did not state whether additional food had been brought in, but implied
it was not a customary procedure. Nor did he even consider the effects of overcrowding on the
health and welfare of the boys.
3.389 Dr McCabe was shown his letter and was asked to comment on it. She took him on roundly. In
her letter to the Chief Inspector dated 25th November 1944, she set out in detail her thinking on
the nutritional needs of growing children and the importance of weight and growth charts in
monitoring a child’s health. She wrote:
No well cared for healthy child should lose weight. Weight may tend to increase more
rapidly in one child than in another, but there should always be a gain.
3.390 She stressed the importance of diet, the need for vitamins A, B, C and D, minerals such as iron,
and calcium. She described milk as the most important single item of food, and that it was known
as the perfect food because it contained protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins and calcium and iron,
all important for growth and bone formation. She added:
That is my reason for so strongly advocating its use in the schools, and eventually I hope
to have each child supplied with one quart of milk per diem.
3.391 She went on to describe how she had been campaigning for an improvement in the diet scales in
the industrial and reformatory schools. Shortly after her appointment in 1939, she had revised all
diet scales and had advised the individual schools about the deficiencies in diet. She had
introduced many new items of food into the school dietary that had hitherto not been in use,
because they were unknown to the school managers. Things had gone well in the halcyon days,
when food was plentiful and cheap, but matters now could not be regarded as satisfactory. She
explained:
In practically every school which I visit, I find, with a few exceptions, that the children are
insufficiently fed. I have evidence in support of this statement from the medical charts
which, after considerable opposition from managers are now used in all the schools. I
have obtained verbally particulars of the quantities of the different foodstuffs supplied for
meals – such particulars are often imparted to me very reluctantly by the Sisters in charge
of the school kitchens. The quantities are, in my opinion, far short of what should constitute
an adequate meal.
3.392 After this resounding criticism, she went on to set out definitive standards of food provision for
each day of the week.
3.393 On 11th December 1944, the Provincial had replaced the Resident Manager in Ferryhouse. The
Chief Inspector wrote to him on 19th December 1944 to say:
We are particularly gratified at your choice of a young man. The position of Resident
Manager of an Industrial School is only too often regarded as a “retirement job” whereas
it is pre-eminently one for a young, active man, whose life’s work is still before him and
who can approach it with the fresh idealism of youth. A Resident manager shoulders the
heavy responsibility of father to hundreds of unfortunate boys. He moulds their whole lives
during the vital formative years they spend in his school, and there is no limit to the good
he may try to do for them except the limits imposed by his own capacity and will.
3.394 He then went on to comment on the standards being applied by the Department to clothing and
diet. He wrote:
If we have criticised the standards of diet and clothing at St Joseph’s, you may be assured
that, when doing so, we were only too well aware of the difficulties of obtaining supplies.
It is in no spirit of contention that I say that our standards in these matters are based on
actual conditions at the present time and on the average prevailing in the schools as
a whole.
3.395 He makes it quite clear that, even by the standards of the day, the School had been found wanting.
He defended the inspection system and commented on the excrement defiling the walls of the
sanitary annex.
3.396 The Department had hoped the new Manager would be a new beginning. Instead, he took up the
fight where his predecessor had left off. On 22nd January 1945, he replied to the Chief Inspector’s
letter: ‘As to diet; I do fear it will be very difficult to comply with all your wishes in this matter’. He
gave details of the boys’ diet and said he was at a loss to account for the weight loss noted in
very many cases. He estimated the cost of providing the diet recommended by the Department,
and protested, ‘Even managers of industrial schools have to meet their bills, so I fear on our
present allowance it just cannot be done’.
3.397 Dr McCabe was again showed the letter by the Chief Inspector, and she told him:
I do not like the attitude taken up by this new Resident Manager – What I have
recommended in the matter of diet is of very ordinary proportions and in no way could it
be called extravagant ... Financially the school management is better off since 1942. I
cannot see how he has such difficulty in managing on the state grant.
3.398 The Chief Inspector wrote back to the Manager on 31st January: ‘If the diet is adequate the children
put on weight at the normal rate – more rapidly, even, when they were undernourished before
admission to the school’. He again reiterated that Dr McCabe’s requirements were the minimum
requirements in all schools.
3.399 The Inspection Reports for 26th October 1945, 29th July 1946, 11th December 1946 and 18th June
1947 indicate progressive improvements in all areas. She warmed to the new Manager, despite
the earlier acrimony. In 1946, she wrote, ‘the present Resident Manager is an excellent man.
Already he has made many improvements ... He is trying to get a community of nuns to take on
the domestic side of the house’.
3.400 In 1947, she again praised his good ideas and added, ‘he considers that a separate amount
should be paid for food, clothing and maintenance’. She made no comment about the fact that
the capitation grant was intended to cover these things, and the Rosminians were meant to care
for their property themselves.
3.401 There was a terse exchange of letters dated 2nd October 1946. The letter from the Resident
Manager was not furnished, but it was clearly about the cost of equipment in industrial schools.
The official in the Department replied:
The suggestion made in your letter that the Minister, whether by design or otherwise, is
endeavouring to obtain a control over private property (Religious Property) to which he
has no right is altogether unwarranted, and I fail to see what evidence you can adduce in
support of that statement.
3.402 The letter then went on to deal with an increase in the rates payable per child as of various dates
in 1946.
3.403 A report exists for 4th and 5th October 1948, and then there is a gap until 3rd April 1952. Dr McCabe
had been absent owing to illness. The reports simply note improvements all round. With Fr Pietro
as Resident Manager, there were reports during the early to mid-1950s.
3.404 In February 1952, a new kitchen was being constructed, and Dr McCabe noted ‘While food and
diet have improved, much remains to be done’. The second visit, in October of that year, had the
same comment. 1953 recorded the diet to be ‘well balanced, varied’ and noted the new building
had made a ‘vast improvement to school’. In 1955, she gave the School an excellent report. From
1956 to 1959, the reports remained positive, calling it a well-run school and commenting on ‘the
modern facilities’ and calling the cooking facilities vastly improved and the food ‘better and varied’.
In 1956, she noted ‘knitting machine very good – all jumpers and stockings made at home’. In
1959, she noted with approval the new bakery, and in 1960 she noted the clothing had improved,
and that 62 new suits had been made for Confirmation ‘and very good they were’.
3.405 Her reports indicate that diet and health had improved, but the improvements were from a very
low standard indeed in the 1940s. At no stage did she comment on matters such as corporal
punishment, which, during the 1940s and 1950s, became both harsh and more frequent.
Conclusions on neglect and emotional abuse

3.406 1. Ferryhouse was a large institution and would have received adequate funding to
provide a reasonable level of care for the children for most of the relevant period. In
addition, it operated a farm and had trades such as tailoring and boot-making that
provided for the needs of the boys.
2. The boys were poorly fed. For much of the period, the food was of insufficient quantity
and quality.
3. Poor hygiene and overcrowding were serious problems in the School, and these
conditions placed the health and well-being of the boys in danger.
4. The boys were poorly clothed and looked different from children outside the
Institution.
5. The accommodation was unsuitable, unhygienic and badly maintained.
6. Family contact was not encouraged or maintained. Boys became cut off from their
families and friends.
7. The aftercare was minimal and often non-existent. Young teenagers unprepared for
the outside world were thrown into it and had to fend for themselves.
Some historical milestones
The Submission by the Rosminians to the Cussen Commission, 1936

3.407 The Cussen Commission received submissions from the various Orders that had been running
the schools, and a very detailed submission prepared by the Rosminian Order has survived. It
was published in the recent history of the Rosminians by Brı́d Fahey Bates.49
3.408 The Rosminians’ submission was prepared by the Provincial, the Very Reverend Giuseppe, who
was Manager of St Patrick’s (Danesfort) Industrial School, Upton. It was a lengthy document,
describing the industrial and reformatory school system operating in Ireland in the early 1930s,
and it outlined many of the problems and issues facing those working in this field. It is an
interesting document because its criticisms, detailed below, and recommendations closely
resemble the conclusions reached by the Cussen Report.
49
Brı́d Fahey Bates, The Institute of Charity: Rosminians. Their Irish Story 1860–2003 (Dublin: Ashfield Press
Publishing Services, 2003), pp 399–405.

The committal procedure
3.409 Fr Giuseppe contended that the Children Act, 1908 was not a suitable Act because it implied that
the children placed into this care system were either criminals or criminally inclined. They were in
fact, he pointed out, committed because of ‘poverty, the loss of one or both parents, or the
negligence of some parents’, but the actual procedure of committing a child to the industrial school
system through the courts nonetheless placed a ‘criminal taint to the whole system’. This
association of the child with the courts ‘created in the public mind a misconception that is
exceedingly difficult to remove’. It also created a feeling of inferiority in the child, which lowered
his self-confidence. The result meant that, despite all attempts made to help and encourage the
boy forward, he was already affected by what had occurred to him even before he arrived in the
industrial school. The children were brought to the schools by guards in uniform, and in some
places in the prison van. In some cases, the children were kept waiting in the public court until
they were called into the private court or justice’s room.
3.410 The Cussen Committee agreed completely with Fr Giuseppe on these particular points. The
Cussen Report recommended the following:
That the practice of hearing children’s cases in the ordinary Courts is objectionable. The
arrangement, which obtains in Dublin – a Children’s Court housed separately from the
District Courts – should be adopted wherever possible throughout the country.
The term “Committal Order” should be abolished and “Admission Order” substituted.
The Justices when hearing children’s cases should not wear the robes of Office. Gardai,
should not wear uniform when in attendance at Children’s Courts and when bringing
children to the schools.
Aftercare
3.411 On the subject of aftercare, Fr Giuseppe argued ‘that the aftercare of children, particularly in the
commencement of their career, is, in many respects the most important duty of Managers, who
should stand legally in loco parentis to the young persons for, say, two years’.34 He stated, ‘care
has to be taken that children do not return to unsuitable homes or surroundings’, for there was a
risk of their being exploited commercially. The School Manager, he went on, already carried out
the required work for the aftercare programmes efficiently.
3.412 The School authorities were the best suited to carry out this work. There was a mistaken
impression that the Managers lost interest in the children once they left the School. Boys frequently
returned to the School when unemployed, and were housed in the Schools until suitable work
was found for them. Even so, he contended that unemployment rates for former industrial
schoolboys were low but ‘relative’. Given the value of this work, the State should provide expenses
for aftercare in the industrial schools.
3.413 Again, the Cussen Report’s recommendations concerning the issue of aftercare agreed with Fr
Giuseppe’s argument. Recommendation 28 of Cussen asserted, ‘There is room for improvement
in the methods of supervision and aftercare of children discharged from the schools’. The Report
then recommended:
29(d) The after-care of pupils should be carried out by the Manager of the school or by a
carefully selected and experienced assistant.
29(e) Managers should be required to explain to all the children at the time of discharge
that if ever in difficulties during the statutory period of after-care they are entitled to
return to the school for advice and help.
34
Brid Fahey Bates, p 401.

29(f) The co-operation of charitable organisations should be enlisted in the work of after
care. The priest in the parish to which a child is sent should invariably be notified by
the School Manager of the place of residence and the name of the employer.50
Teaching
3.414 Fr Giuseppe discussed at length the situation of teachers of literary subjects in the industrial
schools. He pointed out the major problems facing the School Manager was keeping such
teachers in their Schools. These teachers, first and most importantly, were not recognised as
National School teachers. This occurred even though they were required to follow, in its entirety,
the National School programme and were subject to inspection by National School Inspectors.
This non-recognition made it difficult for Schools to retain fully qualified teachers. Teachers stayed
until he or she found a vacancy in a recognised National School. Industrial School Managers
could not bind them to any terms of service and they could not pay proportionate salaries. He
argued that a specific educational grant was required, out of which certified teachers would be
paid on the same basis as assistants, as set out in the National School scale. The balance of the
grant would be apportioned among the remaining approved teachers.
3.415 The Cussen Report agreed with the problems facing School Managers and literary teachers, and
agreed it required change. It recommended that the conditions of service for lay teachers in these
Schools called for substantial improvement, and recommended the following:
36(a) That the cost of literary education should be defrayed out of the State grants for
Primary Education (apart from the normal grants for maintenance).
36(b) That future appointment of teachers should be on the same conditions as in the
National Schools, and duties other than teaching should not be assigned to
recognised teachers who are not members of a religious community.
36(c) That unqualified teachers who have given long and faithful service but whose teaching
efficiency is not satisfactory and whose services could be otherwise availed of, should
be employed on other duties in the Institutions or, if this is not possible they should
be retired with compensation or pension, the cost of which should be defrayed by the
School Managers.51
Finance
3.416 Fr Giuseppe’s central argument was that the basic capitation grants were so low that most if not
all of the Schools were burdened with heavy debts and loans. Under the system, the local
authorities paid a sum of 4/6 or 5/- per week and the Treasury paid 7/6 per week. This sum, he
argued, was inadequate: ‘There remain rents, rates, and taxes, insurance, clerical, managerial,
literary and trade expenses, repairs, interest on money borrowed, expenses of after-care etc., all
to be met out of grants amounting to 12s or 12s6d per week per child’. The Religious had to meet
the deficit. Also, children under six years were not paid for by the Treasury.
3.417 Again, the Cussen Report agreed with Fr Giuseppe to a large extent with these arguments on
finance. It stated:
39 After carefully reviewing all the relevant circumstances we are of opinion that the
representations of the School Managers as to the inadequacy of the existing grants
would be reasonably met, if, in addition to being relieved of the cost of literary teaching,
the present State payments were supplemented by a grant of equal amount from the
local authorities, such payments being subject to periodic review so as to bring them
into line with any appreciable variations in the cost of living figure, or with any material
alterations in the numbers of children committed.
50
Cussen Report; p 53.
51
Cussen Report, p 54

40 Grants at a rate somewhat lower than that for other children should be paid in respect
of children committed under the age of 6 years.
41 Grants should be paid at the full rate in respect of children committed at the instance
of parents or guardians as incapable of control.52
Training
3.418 On the question of industrial training, Fr Giuseppe argued, ‘Owing to the great increase in the use
of machinery and of skilled workers, the trades of boot making, carpentry, tailoring etc in the rural
districts and to a great extent in the urban areas have gradually become diminished, and in some
cases have become defunct or obsolete’. Furthermore, the Rules and Regulations of Trade Unions
often debar certain classes of children from being apprenticed.
3.419 Fr Giuseppe argued that the training of boys ‘had to be adjusted to meet modern requirements
and the chances of obtaining employment after being discharged’. He believed that training of
boys in ‘Agriculture (Tillage), Horticulture, Dairy Farming, Forestry, Bee-Keeping and Rural
Science’ would better equip the boys for the positions in life they would occupy. In an agricultural
country, most of the boys must be put to agricultural work. He pointed out that there was very little
unemployment of boys so trained. Fr Giuseppe believed also that there should be scholarships in
Agricultural Colleges reserved for the boys from industrial schools. They had obtained preliminary
training already, and should be given an opportunity of advancement.
3.420 The Cussen Report made several recommendations reflecting the thinking of Fr Giuseppe:
29(c) Trade Unions should be approached by Managers with a view to endeavouring to
secure a modification of any regulations, which might act as a barrier to a boy’s
admission to a particular trade.
22 Where agricultural training is given, in addition to tillage operations such adjuncts as
poultry keeping, horticulture, and bee keeping should be included ... Instruction in
allied crafts associated with farming especially woodwork, thatching, hedging, and
harness-making should, in addition, be afforded in schools in purely agricultural
districts.
24 Special attention should be paid in the schools to training in the following:- house-
painting, paper-hanging, plumbing, electrical work, plastering, glazing, upholstery and
general house repairs.53
Conclusions to be drawn from the Rosminians’ submission to Cussen

3.421 The Cussen Report did lead, over a period of time, to some changes, largely related to the internal
management of the School. Capitation grants were increased and, by 1940, the teachers within
industrial schools did acquire additional status to put them on the same footing as the teachers in
National Schools. However, Cussen’s conclusion that the industrial school system ‘should be
continued subject to the modifications suggested in the Report’ and that ‘the Schools should
remain under the management of the religious orders who have undertaken the work’54 led to a
protracted retention of the status quo for decades to come. Impoverished children who had lost
one or both parents through death or social hardship, or who had been neglected or abandoned,
continued to be stigmatised by a system that incarcerated and punished them for being in need.
Both the Rosminians and Cussen deplored the effects of this system, yet they both seemed to
accept that a life in an institution run by a Religious Order was to be preferred.
52
Cussen Report, p 55
53
Cussen Report, p 52.
54
Cussen Report, p 49.

3.422 The Rosminians recognised the defects in the existing system, but did not advocate more strongly
the changes they knew were necessary. They knew that the system itself, no matter how well
funded, ‘militates against the child’s future and gives origin in the child to a feeling of inferiority
which robs him of his courage and lessens his confidence in himself in spite of all attempts made
to encourage him to realise his potentialities’, but they simply accepted more money to run the
malfunctioning system, making no changes until the post-Kennedy upheaval in the 1970s.
3.423 As quoted earlier, a senior member of the Rosminian Order told the Investigation Committee:
That’s my belief, that every child that was ever in this situation was abused in some way,
emotionally, physically or whatever the case may be, and you would say that we were
part of that because we didn’t stand up at the time and probably say so.
3.424 The submission they made to the Cussen Commission began to say so, but thereafter the voice
of the Rosminians became inexplicably muted.
The rebuilding of Ferryhouse: the possibility for change

3.425 Fr Stefano was appointed Resident Manager of Ferryhouse in the mid-1970s, and he remained
in that post until the early 1990s when he was appointed Provost Provincial of the Rosminian
Community in Ireland. Prior to his appointment as Resident Manager, Fr Stefano had previously
worked in Ferryhouse in the early 1960s and again in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He also
had worked as a volunteer in Ferryhouse.
3.426 During his tenure as Resident Manager, Fr Stefano carried out an extensive building and
renovation programme in Ferryhouse. As Fr Francesco55, Provincial of the Order, stated in the
early 1980s at the official opening of the new School in Ferryhouse:
The planning of to-day’s reality was begun even before I entered the Order. I recall the
late Fr Rafaele working on same. He was followed by Fr Lucio whom I am happy to see
here today. With the appointment here of Fr Stefano a necessary intensity and a vital
momentum was generated and the ideas became realities.
3.427 The conditions in Ferryhouse, despite some improvements in the late 1960s, were very poor. It
was for this reason that Fr Stefano set about an extensive rebuilding programme, which was
necessary in order to bring about the changes recommended by the Kennedy Report.
The rebuilding programme

3.428 Woodstown was a holiday centre in Waterford used by the Rosminian Order for holidays for the
boys during the summer vacation. The site in Woodstown was purchased in 1957 and, according
to Fr Stefano, was fairly basic. The camp provided basic facilities, which by 1979 were considered
inadequate. Fr Stefano’s first redevelopment project was the rebuilding of Woodstown. The
renovation in Woodstown began in 1977 with the addition of new kitchens, and a recreation-cum-
dining hall; and, by the following year, a new block which housed the sleeping accommodation
for the boys was built. According to Fr Stefano, they raised most of the money themselves, but
the Department of Education did provide a grant towards the building works. Justice Eileen
Kennedy officially opened the new Woodstown in 1979.
3.429 Fr Stefano’s next project was to rebuild Ferryhouse itself. One of the principal recommendations
of the Kennedy Committee was for children to be cared for in smaller group homes rather that the
large dormitory-based, institutional buildings. A scheme of capital funding for the provision of
group homes was introduced by the Department of Education with the approval of the Department
55

of Finance. The scheme provided for 90% grant aid towards building costs and service
installations.
3.430 The Department of Education, however, had a different view in relation to the group homes
scheme being specifically introduced into Ferryhouse. In 1974, the Government established a
Task Force on Child Care Services, which reported in 1980. The main purpose of the Task Force
was to monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the Kennedy Report. The Task
Force had difficulty with the Department of Education’s proposal to reconstruct Ferryhouse in
order to cater for 100 boys. The Task Force saw these proposals as being contrary to the future
childcare system, as set out by the Kennedy Report. Furthermore, the Task Force argued that,
once the full range of services they had recommended were fully operational, there would no
longer be a need for a large centre like Ferryhouse. Their interim report led to further discussions
and, in December 1975, the design team was asked to carry out a comparative cost study of a
school for 60 rather than 100 pupils. By early 1976, it was proposed that a school for 80 pupils
was the most economical number, with provision for 10 in a pre-leavers unit, and sanction was
sought for such a school from the Department of Finance.
3.431 The Kennedy Report and the Task Force envisaged that St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse would be the
centre charged with looking after boys with poor school attendance records or boys unsuitable for
foster care. The Task Force was very specific in designating Ferryhouse as a specialised
educational establishment, catering for the following categories of children:
• Those whose educational progress had been hampered by their home circumstances
and whose progress, even where they were attending special classes in special
schools, was grossly impeded by such circumstances.
• Children for whom schooling presented particular difficulties and who required special
educational help in a sympathetic and understanding environment.
• Children in trouble with the law or persistently truanting from school and who would not
have a community-based service available to them.
• Children educationally retarded requiring special educational help.
3.432 The existing services and buildings at Ferryhouse were out of date and totally unsuitable for the
role that was being planned for the School. As a result, an extensive building programme then
began in Ferryhouse. A complete transformation of the Ferryhouse complex began in 1980. The
planned reconstruction included:
• An open plan school building to replace the pre-fabricated classrooms.
• A bungalow style unit to be known as Piccola Casa. This was opened in 1980.
• A new sports centre, including a gymnasium, sports hall, swimming pool and canteen.
• Six two-storey residential houses, each designed to accommodate 10 to 14 boys.
• A new dining hall, reception area and service buildings.
3.433 The Department of Education funded this building programme. The Rosminians stated, however,
that they supplemented the cost of these buildings with charitable donations raised by their
members locally. Ferryhouse was now a much smaller complex, with state-of-the-art facilities,
caring for a much smaller number of boys. A General Inspection Report for Ferryhouse completed
in the post-reconstruction period (Report dated 14th October 1985) detailed the school conditions
and services. The Report stated that the diets and meals were excellent for adolescent boys. No
complaints were noted and, as diet was a central pivot of care, it must be highly commended. It
noted that the School had a consistent long-term psychiatrist, and provided an excellent
psychological service on a seasonal basis, with excellent reports on individual children. It
concluded that the School was an excellent and well-run, caring School and residential centre
that provided stability and security for boys, with well-balanced controls that were both meaningful
and sensitive.
The Kennedy Report and the staff today

3.434 After the publication of the Kennedy Report in 1970, fundamental changes in childcare policy in
Ireland began. Residential care was now viewed as the last option. The numbers of children in
full-time residential care would drop dramatically within this decade and would continue to do so
throughout the 1980s. Running parallel with the drop in numbers of children in care was an
increase in the numbers of staff working in the remaining residential schools.
3.435 Fr Stefano, in his evidence to the Investigation Committee, spoke about the increasing numbers
of trained staff made available to him during his tenure as Resident Manager in Ferryhouse.
3.436 As Fr Stefano stated in evidence:

I would like to compare that to the manager in Ferryhouse that comes on duty this
morning. He has two full-time deputy directors. Now, neither he nor the deputies, unless
there is severe crisis, would ever have to work a weekend, and they would work a nine
to five day. Underneath the two deputy directors there are eight unit managers.
Underneath the eight unit managers, there are eight assistant unit managers, and these
sixteen people run the school really on a daily basis, 365 days of the year. Under the
eight assistant unit managers, there are forty care staff, and most of these staff are highly
professionally trained staff. To assist them, there are ten night supervisors and, as Fr
O'Reilly said in the last day or two, you know, the average number of boys in the school
now would be 30 boys, and very happy about that, you know. These are the objectives
that we worked for over the years, but it puts in perspective what a person arriving at
Ferryhouse in 1960, 70, 75, the responsibilities that that person was taking on.
3.437 Today, the staff to pupil ratio is heavily in favour of the staff member. In earlier years, there were
just 2 or 3 young, untrained men in charge of 200 or so boys. The consequences of this imbalance
are evident from this report.
Improving the staff

3.438 Fr Stefano had noted that the residential group homes at Rathdrum, Lenaboy, Lakelands, Moate,
Cappoquin and elsewhere had been financed by 90% grants sanctioned by the Department of
Finance for the building of group residential homes. Fr Stefano also noted the State’s building of
three schools, Oberstown Boys Centre, St. Laurence’s, and St. Michael’s, and he was envious of
the staffing and conditions offered to residents at these schools. In response, Fr Stefano sought
the services of a consultant, to undertake an evaluation of the Ferryhouse services. Fr Stefano
then held a formal meeting with the Principal Officer (Special Education) to discuss the findings
of the consultant. The Rosminians, according to Fr Stefano, laid down an ultimatum to the
Department of Education. They required the funding to employ 16 lay childcare workers, as there
were no professional childcare workers in Ferryhouse. Furthermore, the Rosminians required a
budget system of funding for the School. Fr Stefano wanted Ferryhouse financed on a proper
budget system, and staffed with generous staffing schedules, in line with the other three new
schools recently built by the Department.
3.439 The Rosminians sought 16 care staff, to provide adequate cover for night shifts and weekends.
The Provincial informed the Department of Education that, if these proposals were not given, he
would close Ferryhouse.

3.440 The Department of Education acquiesced, and provided the staffing required by the Rosminians.
The staff changes, according to Fr Stefano, directly altered in a beneficial way the boys’ lives in
Ferryhouse. He told the Investigation Committee:
From the beginning, the early staff, we made a conscious decision that we would take on
female childcare workers rather than male childcare workers at the start because we had
four Rosminians and the balance was very overloaded in the boys' lives so all the early
childcare workers were female and there was a great sense of well-being and happening
in the air. They were young people who were very energetic and very enthusiastic.
3.441 Fr Ricardo gave evidence to the Investigation Committee. He was asked what improvements he
saw in Ferryhouse when he returned in the mid-1980s following a time of absence. He said:
At that time there were huge, I think, changes. No.1, lay staff – I know lay staff had come
in on the scene. One thing I do remember when the first lay staff came – like before they
came, the boys would be quite boisterous. I remember the Community having a long
discussion shortly after lay female staff came, how the boys had mellowed or softened in
general. That to me was one of the huge changes or factors. Also staff were being trained
as well, because the Waterford Regional College had set up a training course ...
3.442 The lay staff now employed in Ferryhouse had received proper training. This was a direct result
of the Kennedy Report, which had recommended that priority be given to proper training of staff
in residential institutions. The Department of Education state that their response to this
recommendation was immediate. A full-time residential course in childcare at the School of Social
Education, Kilkenny was established in 1971 with funding from the Department of Education. All
the industrial schools and reformatories were given funding to send their staff on the course. The
Department of Education was also involved in the organisation of in-service training courses at
numerous colleges nationwide. By 1974, approximately 75% of staff working in residential homes
had received training in childcare.
The budget system
3.443 The second part of the ultimatum given by Fr Stefano to the Department of Education was an
adequate budget system along the lines of the budgets provided by the Department to the newly
constructed schools. Fr Stefano told the Investigation Committee that the capitation system was
the only significant funding received for the School. The farm was ‘not making money at that
stage’ and he was determined that he ‘would never fundraise to put food on the table or clothes
on a boy’s back or anything that was the responsibility of the State’. He resolved that all fundraising
by the Rosminians was to enhance the lives of the boys and not to provide the basics.
3.444 This ultimatum in relation to budget funding for their School was in line with the thinking of
numerous other groups and individuals. The Kennedy Report recommended that the system of
payment of grants on a capitation basis should be discontinued, and replaced by an annual grant
based on a budget of estimated costs submitted by each school sufficient to cover all costs. The
grant was to be paid direct to the schools by the State. The criticism of the capitation system was
that it encouraged institutions to detain children rather than to release them to their families.
3.445 Fr O’Reilly spoke about the problems caused by the capitation system:
You needed to have a certain number of children in the School in order to make it
financially viable, which is not a good way to look at it, but that was the economic reality
at that time and therefore at times they were complaining about not having enough
children in the school and they wanted more children to be able to have a greater income
to spread across ... The system of its nature sought to, or it forced Managers into, trying
to have a greater rather than a lesser number of children.
3.446 The Department did not give Fr Stefano his required budgetary system immediately, but he
succeeded in obtaining a system whereby the School would receive deficit payment on production
of financial records every three months. This was a considerable improvement financially for the
Rosminians, as Fr Stefano stated, ‘so with money starting to come in, we could start planning’.
3.447 By 1984, a budget system of funding had been introduced into all the schools.
The changes to the education system

3.448 A number of critical factors combined to bring about fundamental changes in the education
provided for the boys in Ferryhouse and industrial schools generally. The Kennedy Report noted
that ‘if the task of integration of children in care into society is to be successful it is essential that
those in care for one reason or another should have educational opportunities to the ultimate of
their capacities’.56 The Report stated that the children in care were educationally disadvantaged,
and the industrial school educational system had failed to take this into account in catering for the
children’s educational needs. Therefore, in the light of deprivation suffered, the children should be
provided with more than normal educational facilities so that they could be educated to their
ultimate capacities. The Department of Education policy from the 1970s onwards, in relation to
education, focused on rehabilitation and compensatory education, provided by well-trained staff.
St. Joseph’s Industrial School building programme provided the opportunity to put these policies
to work.
3.449 With the new school building completed, class sizes were reduced considerably. This allowed
intensive remedial teaching to occur for the boys. The numbers of boys detained in Ferryhouse
had fallen dramatically, while the number of trained staff had increased. Additional teachers were
also put in place to provide teaching in the practical subjects. As a direct result, older boys would
undertake preparation for the State examinations in the School. The first State examination was
held in Ferryhouse in 1987.
3.450 The education provided in Ferryhouse today enables most of its residents to sit a State
examination, while a number complete the Transition Year programme, with the option of
completing the Leaving Certificate Examination while in Ferryhouse.
3.451 In September 2001, the Rosminians withdrew from active management of Ferryhouse and, in
June 2002, they transferred ownership of the centre to the Department of Education and Science.
3.452 The words of the then Provincial, Fr James Flynn, at the opening of the new Ferryhouse on 11th
May 1990, already quoted above, remain apposite:
Like any human institution, old Ferryhouse had its bad points as well as its good points,
its weaknesses as well as its strengths. It damaged some boys and those have looked
back in bitterness and anger to their time here. For many of them, this was the only home
that they ever knew and sadly they did not find it a good one. Let me say that a lot of that
anger is justified ... The greatest guilt has to be borne by those of us who utilised or
condoned or ignored the extreme severity, even brutality which characterised at times the
regime at old Ferryhouse. An occasion like this is an opportunity for me on behalf of the
Rosminians to publicly acknowledge this fact and to ask forgiveness of those who were
ill treated or hurt. We have sinned against justice and against the dignity of the person in
the past and we always need to be on our guard that we do not do the same today in
more subtle or equally hideous ways.
56
Kennedy Report, Chapter 7.

General conclusions
3.453 Physical abuse

1. Corporal punishment was the option of first resort for problems. Its use was pervasive,
excessive, unpredictable and without regulation or supervision, and was therefore
physically abusive.
2. Corporal punishment was the main method of maintaining control over the boys and
it created a climate of fear that was emotionally harmful to the boys.
3. The system of discipline was the same in Ferryhouse as in Upton. The Rosminians
accept that there was excessive corporal punishment in both institutions.
4. Young and inexperienced staff used fear and violence as a means of asserting
authority. Punishments were inflicted for a wide range of acts and omissions. The
severity of punishment was entirely a matter for the staff involved.
5. Rules and regulations governing corporal punishment were not observed.
6. Excessive, unfair and even capricious punishment did lasting damage to many of the
boys in Ferryhouse.
7. Boys were punished for bed-wetting and were subjected to nightly humiliation,
degradation and fear.
8. The regime placed excessive demands on the few men who did the bulk of the work.
Sexual abuse
9. Sexual abuse by Brothers was a chronic problem in Ferryhouse and it is impossible
to quantify its full extent.
10. Complainant witnesses from every era, from the early 1940s onwards, testified to the
Investigation Committee about the sexual abuse of children in Ferryhouse. The
Rosminian Institute acknowledged that not all of those who were sexually abused
have come forward as complainants, whether to the Commission, to the Redress
Board, or to An Garda Sı́ochana. In their Final Submission to the Investigation
Committee they wrote, ‘We know that some boys were sexually abused who have
made no complaint to the Commission or otherwise, but have spoken to us about it’.
11. The succession of cases that confronted the authorities must have alerted them to
the scale of the problem, and to the need for a thorough ongoing investigation as to
how deep the problem went among the Brothers and staff in Ferryhouse. Such an
investigation did not happen. Instead, each case was dealt with individually, as if no
other case had occurred. The Order was aware of the criminal nature of the conduct,
but did not report it as a crime.
12. Sexual abuse was systemic. When it was uncovered, it was not seen as a crime but
as a moral lapse and weakness. The policy of furtively removing the abuser and
keeping his offences secret led to a culture of institutional amnesia, in which neither
boys nor staff could learn from experience.
13. The extent and prevalence of sexual abuse were not addressed although the Order
had some awareness of its impact on children.
14. Once placed in posts, priests and Brothers had complete autonomy, and there evolved
a convention of not interfering with what other people were doing.
15. The Department of Education did not act responsibly when an allegation of sexual
abuse was made to it in 1980.
16. Living conditions in both schools were poor, unhygienic, inadequate and often
overcrowded.
17. Boys were hungry and poorly clothed in circumstances where funding was sufficient
to provide these basic needs.
18. Education and aftercare were deficient.
19. Family contact was not encouraged or maintained.
20. As their submission to the Cussen Commission reveals, the Rosminians knew the
detrimental consequences of the industrial school system, but did nothing to
ameliorate them. They could have changed the regime, but they did nothing until the
1970s.
The attitude of the Rosminians

21. The Rosminian Institute of Charity is to be commended for its attitude to the
Committee. The Rosminians’ refusal to take the conventional adversarial approach,
their sympathetic questioning of the witnesses, and their proffering of apologies to
the witnesses at the end of hearings, all contributed to an atmosphere very different
from that of other hearings.
22. The Rosminians used the memories of former residents to add to the Order’s
knowledge of life and conditions in their schools. The witnesses became a source of
information and, by tapping into it, the Rosminians helped the Committee’s inquiry.
23. The Rosminians’ attitude to the allegations evolved before, during and after the
hearings. They were the first Order to apologise publicly in 1990. They sometimes
modified their approach during the course of a hearing, and they issued a final
submission that was a balanced and humane response to the evidence they had
heard.

Appendix
Report by Mr Ciaran Fahy
1.0 Introduction
The purpose of this report is to describe the physical surroundings of St Joseph’s School in
Ferryhouse with particular reference to the buildings. It is based on research carried out by Mr
Ciaran Fahy and Mr. Neil Gillespie during the course of which, all of the documentation in relation
to Ferryhouse in the possession of the CICA was examined, including a model prepared by the
Rosminians shortly after the original buildings on site were demolished.
This report should be read in conjunction with the attached map and photographs.
2.0 Background
St Joseph’s School is located in the townland of Ferryhouse some three to four km due east of
the centre of Clonmel on the northern bank of the River Suir. The site is bounded to the north by
the N24 which is the road from Clonmel to Carrick-on-Suir, while on the east it is defined by a
secondary road running due south from the N24 continuing across the River Suir at Sir Thomas’
Bridge and continuing generally towards the Comeragh Mountains. Map 1 shows the school as it
was about 1951 and in particular, it shows the school buildings laid out in a quadrangular form
approximately 60m north of the River Suir. This map also shows the position of the N24 and the
road running due south from this towards Sir Thomas’ Bridge which obviously provided access
into the school. In addition, the school farmyard was to the north of the school buildings facing
onto the N24 and it will be seen there is an internal road linking this with the school buildings. The
distance from the N24 to Sir Thomas’ Bridge is approximately 320m and the distance from the
farmyard to the school buildings itself is some 150m.
St Joseph’s in Ferryhouse dates from 1884 when the Rosminians were invited by Count Arthur
Moore, the local MP to take over a house which he had built shortly beforehand. Count Moore
constructed the main red-bricked three storey house at a cost of £10,000 and he handed it over
on 14th June 1884, to the Rosminians apparently on 3.6 hectares of land and in addition, he gave
them a further £1,000 to furnish the house. It appears the land was rapidly increased to
approximately 16 hectares and in addition water was found and pumped while walls, gates,
outhouses and workshops were built and the house was furnished. In January 1885, the institution
was certified for 150 boys and apparently it had reached that capacity by May 1886.
The indications are that the buildings at Ferryhouse in the main were constructed very shortly
after the school was opened in the mid-1880s and this is evident in photograph no 8 which is an
old postcard apparently dating from about 1920. This was taken looking to the north and shows
in the centre the main three storey building with the three wings behind it forming the square or
quadrangle and behind this again there are three pitched roofs running more or less north-south
together with a further building just north of the quadrangle. There were some improvements and
changes over the years but the general arrangement described appears to have remained intact
until the construction of the new school commenced in the 1980s. This was constructed in phases
involving the removal of the original buildings and continued until the late 1980s when the original
main three storey building was demolished.
3.0 Details
3.1 Farm
There was a farm associated with the school from its inception until around 1979/1980 when it
was closed down completely and after that the land was sold off in pieces. The farm itself started
as approximately 16 hectares very shortly after the school was opened and this was initially
intended for the feeding of the pupils. The farm was enlarged over the years to about 32 hectares
or possibly up to 50 hectares and it extended from the house north towards the N24. However, a
portion of the farm was also located south of the river, while as stated previously the farmyard
itself was located alongside the N24. The main use of the land was for potatoes, dairy and also
hens and in addition, there was an orchard beyond the west wing. The farmyard has been
completely demolished and no detail of it remains. It apparently was updated some time in the
1960s with a milking parlour and a chicken house being added at that time. Finally, it should be
noted that all of the buildings and the land still in possession of the Rosminians was transferred
to the State in 2002, apart from approximately three hectares of land unsuitable for farming south
of the River Suir.
Some impression of the farmyard can be obtained from map 1 showing the layout in 1951. It has
been completely demolished and all that has been retained is a lodge alongside the N24.
3.2 School Buildings

Details of the school buildings are shown in the map. Essentially, this consisted of a quadrangle
formed by the main house which was the red brick three storey building constructed by Count
Arthur Moore in 1884, together with an east and a west wing extending north from it with the
entire enclosed by a north wing. Beyond that and just north of the quadrangle there were three or
possibly four other separate buildings. The main house itself was three storey, while the east and
west wings were each two storey with the north being single storey. The three or possibly four
other buildings north of that again appear to have been single storey industrial type buildings. The
general arrangement is quite clear in the photographs of the model number 1 and 2 and also in
the earliest photograph no 8 taken about 1920.
From scaling the Ordnance Survey sheet the outside measurements of the quadrangle were
approximately 66m x 66m. The inner space was approximately 48m east-west x 44m north-south
without making any allowance for the projection at the rear of the main house.
3.3 The Main House

The main house originally constructed by Count Arthur Moore was a three storey red brick building
shown clearly in the photographs of the model number 1 and 2. The main axis of the building ran
east-west and in plan it appears to have been approximately 35m x 12m. As originally constructed
however, the house was cruciform in shape with a significant front projection and also one to the
rear which incorporated the main stairs. As shown in the model, this had four floors and it may
well have been added subsequent to the construction of the original house. In addition, the main
house also contained a single storey extension at the rear or northern side known as the cloister
which connected into the west wing and which ran across the back of the house.
The main house is also shown from the rear in photograph 4 and this shows a fire escape leading
down to ground level alongside the cloister which runs as far as the gable. In the lower left hand
corner of this photograph, it is possible to see another external stairs, which apparently gave
access to the first floor level on the eastern wing. The photograph also shows the projection at
the rear of the main house, consisting initially of a high pitched section which was original and
incorporated the main stairs. Behind this, there is a four storey section with a flat or a low pitched
roof and which quite clearly was constructed in different phases.
The earliest photograph of the main house is no 8 which apparently was taken from postcards
dating back as far as 1918/1920. Photograph 8 shows that the construction of the house is
effectively unchanged in the later photographs.
Just inside the main entrance at ground floor level as shown in model photograph 1 and
photograph 3, the Resident Manager’s office was on the right hand side while there was a parlour
on the left hand side. Just beyond the Manager’s office on the right hand side there was a
secondary stairs which led to the first and second floor level and from which it was possible to
gain access to the dormitories. This, however, was not the main stairs and was not used by the
boys since the main stairs was in the rear return of the building. The upper floors of the front
projection apparently contained Community bedrooms used by the Resident Manager who
apparently slept above his office and also for the Prefects.
There appears to have been no main corridor at ground floor level within the building since this
purpose was served by the cloister at the rear. This cloister is shown in photograph 7 and also in
photograph 9, both of which were taken looking towards the west wing. Photograph 9, shows the
start of the main stairs on the right, while facing this, the doorway leads towards the main entrance.
The windows on the right hand side of the corridor obviously lead to the outside and the yard
enclosed by the quadrangle, while on the left hand side there was a Community room which
apparently had a large billiard table in it and beyond this again on the western gable was the
Community dining room. This is shown in photograph 10 which again was taken from an old
postcard dating from around 1920.
The upper two floors of the main house were used as dormitories with the junior boys being
allocated to the second floor and the senior boys to the first floor level up until the mid-1960s. In
each case, the dormitories ran the full length of the building and are described in a questionnaire
completed by the Rosminians in 1944 for the Department as being 33.5m long x 7.3m wide. Up
until the 1960s, it appeared each dormitory was laid out to accommodate 100 children without
any partitions. A report compiled in the 1940s says the first floor dormitory for the senior boys
contained 92 children, while the second floor for the junior boys contained 100. It describes each
of them as having central heating and electric light and it says the senior dormitory had 16
windows while the junior one had 26. The windows in the junior dormitory were obviously much
smaller, as shown in the photographs and in fact photograph 4 shows that two of them have been
removed to facilitate the fire escape. This 1940s report gives the height of the senior dormitory as
4.25m while that of the junior dormitory is 6m. Finally, it says there were 28 wash basins and two
lavatories for the senior dormitory and 17 wash basins and two lavatories for the junior one.
After the mid-1960s the boys were reclassified as A or junior boys up to the age 12, while the B
boys were from 12 to 14 and C boys were from 14 up. The junior or A boys were moved out to
the east wing while the B boys were placed on the second floor and the C boys on the first floor
level. At about that time, the arrangement of the dormitories was significantly altered with partitions
being introduced to give a cubicle type arrangement with four beds in each around a central
corridor. This reduced the capacity of the dormitories to approximately 40 beds in each case.
Photograph 17 was taken about that time and gives an impression of the layout in the first floor
dormitory.
There is a reference in the documentation and in particular, in a letter of October 1944, to a new
sanitary annexe having been constructed and prior to that there were only dry closets in the
playground. Consequently, it seems likely that this section of the building was originally two
storeys constructed in the 1940s and was subsequently extended to four floors in the mid-1960s.
Originally, the ground floor contained wash rooms, in other words showers and toilets while the
first floor was traditionally bedrooms used by the farming staff. When the second and third floors
were added these contained showers and toilet facilities allocated to the dormitories on that floor
within the main house. In addition, they contained linen rooms or store rooms for use by each of
the dormitories. The washing facilities at the top floor in this area are shown in photograph 18,
apparently taken about 1968.
3.4 East Wing

The east wing is shown in photograph 5, while it is also shown in photograph 6 where it joins the
northern wing. This shows an archway which was the only vehicular access into the yard as well
as a further fire escape or access point to the upper level. At ground floor level the east wing
contained the assembly hall as well as some storage and beyond this there was a recreation room
and also a visitors’ room at the northern end of the block. Access to the upper floor was via an
external stairs which gave onto a balcony running the length of the wing. Initially, this was open
and gave access into individual rooms but about 1967/1968 this balcony was covered and
enclosed and in fact photograph 13 was taken at that time showing the enclosed balcony.
Photograph 2 of the model also shows the enclosed balcony with the stairs near the main house
giving access to this level and the bottom of this same stairs is just visible on the lower left hand
corner of photograph 4.
Initially, the upper floor of the east wing contained five classrooms and also the tailors’ shop but
after about 1967/1968 the junior or A boys up to the age of 12 were moved to the first floor
displacing the classrooms and the tailors’ shop. At that time, it appears the first floor was divided
into three dormitories and in addition, there was a Prefect’s bedroom and bathroom/toilet located
at the northern end of the wing.
By scaling the Ordnance Survey Sheet the east wing appears to have been approximately 48m
long overall by 8m wide. The 1940s report referred to earlier describes five classrooms each of
them 7m wide x 4.2m high, with two of them being 11.9m long, a further two of them 11.3m long
and one 7m long. There is also reference to a play hall and a big school which may be the
assembly room and hall taken together. In each case the width of these is 7.3m and the height is
4.6m. The play hall is given as 22m long while the big school is described as being 12m long with
a 6m stage. The five classrooms are described as having stove heating and the number of pupils
ranged from 34 to 50. The tailors’ shop is shown in photographs 14 and 15.
3.5 West Wing

Access into the west wing was via the cloister at the rear of the main building and there was an
internal stairs at the southern end of the wing giving access to the first floor level. The first floor
was mainly taken up with Community bedrooms with the washroom/bathroom for them at the
southern end near the top of the stairs. Apparently there were nine Community bedrooms on this
floor and at the northern end of the wing there was a nurse’s bedroom and beyond that again
there was an infirmary with an outside fire escape.
At ground floor level there was the Community kitchen and then a storage area followed by the
boys’ dining room followed by the kitchen and the stores for the boys.
Overall, this block also scales approximately 48m x 8m. The boys’ dining room again taken from
an old postcard is shown in photograph 11, while the infirmary is shown in photograph 12. In the
1940s document this is described as being 6.7m x 8.2m x 4.2m high. It is described as having eight
beds together with a lavatory and a bathroom. No mention is made of heating, but photograph 12
clearly shows a stove.
3.6 North Wing

The north wing was single storey and divided into a number of rooms whose use changed over
the years. On the eastern side near the archway leading to the outside was the shoe shop or
cobblers. This was followed by the toilets which appear to have been accessed by means of an
open doorway and the model in photograph 2 for example, shows a flat roofed extension behind
this, which apparently was a new toilet, built in the 1960s. The wing also contained a nurse’s post,
a Prefect’s office and a recreation room. The dimensions of the north block appear to have been
similar to the other two i.e. about 48m x 8m, but no information is available in relation to individual
rooms. The cobblers shop is shown in photograph 16.
3.7 Other Buildings

The model in photograph 2 shows three pitched roof buildings beyond the northern wing running
more or less north-south. The one on the western side i.e. the right hand side of photograph 2
apparently was built around 1930 and was newer than the other two, which apparently were
interconnected as shown on the model. The newer building apparently contained the bakery in
the northern section while the band or music room was located on the southern side of this. The
other two units which were interconnected contained the main laundry as well as the boiler house
and maintenance workshops. The two interconnected buildings scale approximately 18m x 16m.
In the 1940s questionnaire the music room was described as 6.7m x 7.3m x 5.6m high. Finally,
there was a water tower as shown in the model just to one side of these.
At the end of the 1960s when the classrooms were moved out of the first floor of the east wing,
prefabs were placed to the north of the existing buildings alongside the internal road running
towards the farmyard. The positioning of these prefabs is clearly evident in the 1973 Ordnance
Survey aerial photograph. It appears the prefabs contained nine classrooms together with an arts
and crafts room, a tailor shop, a knitters’ shop and a general purpose room.
An open and unheated swimming pool was constructed by the school in the 1950s and this was
located on the southern side of the River Suir just beyond Sir Thomas’ Bridge and it was open to
members of the public as well as being used by the school.
3.8 Services
The school was apparently supplied with electricity from early on, in other words shortly after its
construction but the source of this is not clear. It is known that the gas company in Clonmel never
serviced the school. There is a reference in the early documentation to water being found and
pumped but it appears the main supply was from the Glenmorgan River south of the River Suir
and this continued to be the case until mains water was supplied probably in the 1970s. Initially,
the school was served by septic tanks and this continued until a small treatment plant was installed
in the 1980s which apparently was not very successful. The use of this was discontinued
approximately two years ago when a pumping station was installed to connect to the main town
sewer. It appears the school had been provided with oil fired central heating from the 1960s and
before that solid fuel was used. However, there is a reference in the 1940s report to stoves being
used to heat the classrooms.

Ordnance Survey Aerial Photograph
Taken 28 June 1973

Chapter 4

Greenmount (‘Greenmount’),
1871–1959
History and establishment of St Joseph’s Industrial School,

Greenmount
4.01 St Joseph’s Industrial School, Greenmount, was the only industrial school run by the Presentation
Brothers. The first boy was registered on 5th April 1871 and the last was registered on 27th
February 1959. A total of 3,592 boys passed through Greenmount.1 The School closed on 31st
March 1959, when there were still 127 residents in the School, 113 of whom were sent to other
industrial schools and 14 were discharged.
The Presentation Brothers

4.02 The Presentation Brothers owe their origin to Edmund Ignatius Rice when, in 1802, he founded
the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. The Communities inspired by Edmund Rice
adopted a modified form of the Rules of the Presentation Sisters and were under the jurisdiction
of the bishops of their local dioceses. In 1820, Pope Pius VII granted Edmund Rice’s application
for his society to be given papal approbation and a Constitution. Under this new Constitution, all
the houses became united under a Superior General except for the house in Cork, where Bishop
Murphy refused his consent, despite the desire of most of the Brothers to be part of Br Rice’s
wider congregation. In 1826, the Cork house joined the others, but one of the Brothers, Br Austin
Riordan, dissented and offered his services to the Bishop of Cork who placed him in charge of a
school in the south of the city. With his secession, the teaching congregation known as the
Presentation Brothers was created. The number of Brothers grew rapidly and, despite their having
split from the main group of Brothers of the Christian Schools, they still regarded Edmund Rice
as their founder and inspiration.
4.03 The new Congregation spread across Ireland and moved their base to Dublin. They continued to
be subject to their respective bishops until 1889, when Pope Leo XIII confirmed the Congregation
and all the houses united under a Superior General. This independent status allowed the
Congregation of the Presentation Brothers to expand further, with branches in all the provinces of
Ireland, and houses in England and Canada.
4.04 The Presentation Brothers take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They live in small groups
or communities, organised on hierarchical lines, with the younger Brothers obeying their superiors
without question. Their daily life is organised by strict monastic rules, involving a daily routine of
1
Dermot Keogh, ‘St Joseph’s Industrial School, Greenmount, Cork’ (Report prepared for the Presentation Brothers, May
2001 and submitted to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 19 May 2004), pp 187–188.

prayer, meditation and study. They adopted the motto of the Jesuits, ‘Ad majorem Dei Gloriam’,2
and the Brothers place the initials F. P. M.3 after their name. Their mission is to ‘form Christ in the
young’ through education. Their work is with disadvantaged and marginalised people, both young
and old, and it was this mission that led them to accept the running of an industrial school and
orphanages.
4.05 Apart from these vows, the Brothers undertake to devote their lives to all people and are forbidden
to enter into ‘particular friendships’. Professor Dermot Keogh, in a report he prepared for the
Presentation Brothers in May 2001, wrote:
Inside the monastery a Superior would strongly advise against the formation of what were
known as ‘particular friendships’. No definition is readily available to help amplify the
meaning of this phrase. But it was usually intended to refer to the development of a close
emotional bond between two brothers.4
4.06 He quoted the Visitation Report of 9th October 1901 which exhorted:
Particular friendships cannot be too carefully guarded against. They rarely, if at all, are
without harm and never do any good ...
Familiarities with the boys should be most cautiously guarded against, being most hurtful
both to boys and Brothers. Even with employees and externs there should always be
maintained a reserve that would keep them at proper distance and enable them to have
for the Brothers that respect due to their position.5
4.07 The implications of this need to keep ‘a proper distance’ will be discussed later.
The establishment of Greenmount

4.08 The site that was renamed Greenmount in the 1870s was originally called Gallows Green. It was
made available in 1852 at a rent of 30 shillings a year for 500 years to the Bishop of Cork, Dr
William Delaney and other Catholic Church dignitaries, including Edmund Paul Townsend, one of
the Presentation Brothers. On it they built St Patrick’s Orphanage, a residential home for orphaned
and abandoned boys, commencing the building in 1858. The Bishop requested the Presentation
Brothers to run the orphanage and they took charge of it in 1862. It soon reached its capacity,
and had to be extended in 1866 because of the increasing number of boys needing admission.
4.09 Dr William Delaney, the Bishop of Cork, who held that position from 1847 until he died in 1886,
was a forceful personality and an advocate of educational reform. He was determined that Cork
would be the location of a model industrial school run by a Catholic Order, and he saw it as an
important step in overcoming the years of discrimination against Catholics by the governments of
those years. It was this ambition that drove him to turn the newly founded St Patrick’s orphanage
into an industrial school. He saw the industrial schools system as one that would benefit the
children who were being raised in poverty and ignorance in the Cork area. Because of his drive,
his ambition was soon achieved: the orphanage acquired the status of Industrial School on 14th
March 1871.
4.10 The existing orphanage building was not large enough for the new project and so, in 1872, work
began on a new building adjacent to the orphanage. It was to be named St Joseph’s School for
Boys. An aggressive fund-raising effort, spear-headed by Dr Delaney, raised sufficient funds for
the construction of the School, with accommodation for approximately 220 boys. The Cork
Examiner described the building as it neared completion:
2
For the greater glory of God.
3
Fratrium Presentionis Mariae.
4
Keogh, p 54.
5
Keogh, p 57.

The new building itself is a handsome and substantial edifice, built of red brick, in the
domestic Gothic style of architecture, from a design and plan furnished by Mr George
Ashlin, the eminent architect. The front (or northern) elevation presents the bold and
effective appearance of a three-storey house, pierced by about forty windows, of which
the limestone dressings relieve the ruddy monotony of the chief material, and a lofty,
projecting gable at either end with cut limestone barges, flanks the long range of the body
of the building. The edifice as it stands, covers an area of 120 feet by 50 feet high. The
first rooms met with in this corridor, on either hand, are intended for a reception parlour,
17 feet by 22 feet; a refectory for the Brothers, 22 feet by 23 feet; and a sitting room for
the chaplain, 20 feet by 17 feet. Farther on, in the front of the building, is the refectory for
the boys, a spacious and cheerful hall, 57 feet long by 28 feet wide, capable of sitting
200. It is lighted by six large windows of plate glass, and above each window appears a
ventilator, which passes upward in the thickness of the wall to the eaves. At the eastern
end of the refectory will be the kitchen, 20 feet by 15 feet, separated from the refectory
by a partition, and communicating with it through a turnstile ...
Opposite the refectory door is a convenient staircase, by which we ascend two flights to
the first floor, passing on the first landing a room for one of the Brothers. Another ample
corridor, like that in the basement, traverses this floor, and from it we enter the first
dormitory, occupying the whole front of this storey, 120 feet by 28 and a half feet, with a
similar arrangement as to the light and air to those observed in the refectory. The
monotonous interior of this splendid apartment is broken near either end by moulded
piers, united by three neatly moulded arches, at a distance of 15 feet from each wall.6
4.11 The article went on to describe the boys’ dormitories, which were built over two floors, the one
above corresponding in every respect with the dormitory below. Each housed 125 beds. The new
larger School was opened on 1st December 1874.
4.12 There were also plans for numerous additional facilities at the School, such as the provision for
the building of a chapel, schoolrooms and workshops for the training of shoemakers, carpenters,
coopers and bakers. Building continued throughout the School’s early history. In 1888, trade shops
with schoolrooms were erected. By 1896, buildings comprising a day room, band room, coal
house, toilets and additional schoolrooms had been built. In 1900 and 1901, the kitchen, pantries,
storeroom, boiler house, scullery, bath and toilets were added.
4.13 Bishop Delaney wanted a model industrial school for the Cork area, and the building matched the
grandeur of his conception. It was built to the highest standards, designed to be an institution that
the Church and the city could take pride in. This imposing building, unlike many other industrial
schools, was located within Cork City, and local townsfolk formed links with the School, providing
both charity and, later, social contact for the residents.
4.14 The Bishop outlined his ideal in a speech given at the Chamber of Commerce in March 1874 to
mark the completion of ‘the Greenmount Male Industrial School’. He told the audience:
The object of this institution is to take from the streets poor boys who are on the way to
perdition, to rescue them from vice and misery, and to save the community at large from
the consequences of allowing them to grow up ... untrained, steeped in misery, and with
no means of support save what they can obtain by depredations on the community.7
4.15 He praised the Industrial Schools Act (Ireland), 1868 for making such schools possible. It stemmed
from the ‘finest principles that should govern humanity’. He went on:
6
Cork Examiner, 28 March 1874, cited in Dermot Keogh, ‘St Joseph’s Industrial School, Greenmount, Cork’ May 2001.
7
Cork Examiner, 30 March 1874, cited by Keogh, May 2001, p 41.

There is gentleness of treatment for those to be reclaimed; there are reformatories for
those who have fallen away, and the perfection of the system was to anticipate evil, and
save young people from vice, from misery, and from mischief to their fellow citizens; and
for this the Industrial School Act has been passed.8
4.16 The conception was idealistic and motivated by a genuine desire to turn the poor and abandoned
children of society, who had to live by pilfering and scavenging, into educated and useful citizens.
4.17 Professor Keogh made the point in his report that:

There is no contemporary suggestion that the conditions under which the boys would live
in Greenmount would be severe. The bishop had stressed the reforming nature of
industrial schools. The school ethos was intended to provide a safe environment for the
boys, who would range in age from six to sixteen.
4.18 The following ground floor plan of Greenmount was made available to the Committee:
Source: Professor Dermot Keogh
The acquisition of lands surrounding Greenmount

4.19 Having built a model school, the plan then was to extend the grounds so that it would become a
farm capable of giving the boys training in farm work, and at the same time provide food for the
School and additional income from the sale of farm produce. The School was built on eight acres
of land, and the staff and boys in the School began cultivating the surrounding land. The farm
was deemed a commercial success. The Cork Examiner reported, ‘In the past seasons
8
Cork Examiner, 30 March 1874, cited by Keogh, May 2001, pp 41–2.

Greenmount has sent the earliest and best potatoes to the Cork market and produced other
vegetables in abundance and good quality’.9
4.20 The Brothers continued to expand the farm. They purchased much of the surrounding land at the
turn of the century, and the adjacent farm comprising approximately 39 acres by the early twentieth
century. Greenmount also had two further farms located at Lehenagh, on the outskirts of the city.
It is recorded in the School annals that the Management decided to sell these farms because of
difficulties arising in the day-to-day management of them.
4.21 Department of Education records described the farm:

The farm attached to this school has an area of 39 acres. It is used to supply milk and
potatoes to the institution. Fifteen cows are kept and the feeding for these is grown on
the farm.
4.22 In a Report to the General Council dated 1954, reference was made to the farm and its produce:
There are 10 milch cows, one heifer, 4 sows, 33 bonhams and 3 horses on the farm.
There are two workmen besides a gardener employed. Brother Ignado10 is in charge.
Brother Arrio11 in his poultry farm has 52 hens and 42 pullets. He gets about 15 eggs per
day. (From that number he should get 36 or 40 eggs a day.)
4.23 As the following table shows, profits from the farm were modest and, in some years, the farm ran
at a loss. The bakery, however, was more successful:
Extracts from financial records for the farm and the bakery, 1945–1957
Financial year The farm contribution The bakery contribution

1945 –£1,244 £1,545
1946 –£1,152 £1,396
1947 –£859 £1,137
1955 –£69 £1,736
1956 £775 £48
1957 £114 £1,012
4.24 The large profit made by the bakery in 1955 is explained by the fact that there was a five-month
strike by bakers in the city, and Greenmount sold bread to the local shops. The demand was so
great that they even bought a second-hand van to replace their horse-drawn cart to speed delivery.
Certification
4.25 The original certificate for the School allowed 168 boys to be accommodated, and this figure was
increased to 188 in 1885. The late 1890s saw a further increase to a capacity of 200 and, in 1913,
the accommodation limit was increased to 220. In 1933, there was a final increase to 235 children.
Management made representations in 1942 for yet another increase in the certified number of
children, but their application proved unsuccessful on the grounds that nearby Upton and
Baltimore industrial schools were not operating to their full capacity. However, in 1944, further
funding became available to the Department of Education, and 11 additional certificates were
allocated to Greenmount, bringing the certified limit to 231 from 1st February 1944.
9
Cork Examiner, 24 March 1874.
10
11

4.26 The School was recognised under the Children Acts as a place of detention for boys on remand
awaiting criminal trials or committal to certified schools, and it accepted a small number of boys
in such circumstances. In October 1944, the Brothers were asked whether they would increase
the number of places for boys on remand from four to eight, in view of the increasing number of
boys coming before the courts in Cork. They agreed to do so on the basis that such boys were
under 15 years of age, but regretted ‘having to state that, for obvious reasons, we are not willing
to receive boys under eighteen years of age’. It is not altogether clear from the documentation
whether or not boys on remand were actually sent to Greenmount, as in 1950 the School was
asked once again whether they would take such boys. The Resident Manager responded,
confirming that, although he was willing to do so, he felt impeded by the fact that the School did
not have separate accommodation to house these boys and the fact that he understood that the
School would not receive payment for these boys from the State. The Department of Education,
after consulting with the Department of Justice, assured the Resident Manager that the School
was entitled to payment for boys remanded to Greenmount, and indicated that the accommodation
issue should not present an insurmountable difficulty. Br Esteban12 wrote back on behalf of the
Resident Manager, confirming that the School was willing to accept up to eight boys. He added,
‘I would like the age limit not to exceed 16 if possible, and also not to accept any cases who may
be brought before the District Court for immorality’. When asked whether they would consider
accepting boys between the ages of 16 and 17, the Resident Manager responded, ‘I think it
would be an injustice, both morally and otherwise, to the boys already in the School, to accept
such youths’.
4.27 From 1st April 1952, the capitation grant for industrial and reformatory schools, which were also
recognised as a place of detention for remand juveniles, was almost doubled from a grant of 3s
6d per day per child to one of 7s 0d for those children detained there on remand.
The number of boys in Greenmount

Number of children in St Joseph’s Industrial School, Greenmount
Year Number of children under detention

1937 206
1938 199
1939 218
1940 219
1941 220
1942 219
1943 224
1944 218
1945 123
1946 224
1947 230
1948 236
1949 226
1950 209
1951 179
1952 164
12

Year Number of children under detention
1953 148
1954 152
1955 136
1956 70
1957 125
1958 133
250
200
150
100
50
0
1937
1939
1941
1943
1945
1947
1949
1951
1953
1955
1957
1959
Management structure
4.28 The Superior General ensured that the rules and the Constitution of the Congregation were being
observed and that there was agreement to the horarium. A system of internal supervision, whereby
the Superior General or his delegate visited the School twice a year, was set up for this purpose.
While the focus was on the life of the Community, the overall operation of the School was observed
and occasionally commented upon.
Staff and management of the School

4.29 Between August 1938 and March 1959 when the School closed, there were a total of seven Resident
Managers appointed. Five of the seven held the position in the 1950s. These frequent changes
must have resulted in a degree of instability in the running of the School. A number of these
Managers admitted they had had no training or suitable experience for the position.
4.30 Both the Department of Education and the Congregation were well aware of the importance of
having a suitably experienced person in this pivotal position in the School. The report entitled
‘Report on the Occupational Training Provided in the Industrial Schools and in Glencree
Reformatory’ commissioned by the Department in the mid to late 1930s, which is referred to in
detail in the section ‘Industrial Training’ below, and also the Cussen Report13 emphasised the
importance of having a Manager with the requisite experience and qualities for this ‘highly
specialised task’. Yet in Greenmount, as in other industrial schools, because the Resident
Manager was very often also the Superior of the Community, the Department did not get involved
in this appointment and left it in the hands of the Congregation. The Congregation, for its part,
13
Report on Reformatory and Industrial Schools, 1936.

does not appear to have recognised the importance of the appointment, particularly in the 1950s,
which was unfair both to the Resident Managers appointed, some of whom must have found
themselves struggling to cope with the task, and most importantly, to the boys.
The daily routine
Time Activity for boys Duty for staff

6.45 Brothers rise
7.15 Prayers in oratory
7.30 Boys called/ dress
7.30–7.50 ‘Chalks’ – cleaning duties.
Monitor in charge of 8-10 boys
7.50 Boys strip in yard or hall and
wash at sinks
8.00 Mass Mass
8.30 Breakfast – bread and coffee Breakfast in refectory
9.00 School Teaching Brothers work in school
1.00 Lunch Dinner – meat and two Lay Brothers supervise
veg then play
2.00 Workshops/trades/band
5.00 Play
About 6.00 Evening meal – Bread and cocoa
9.00 (Later in summer) Bed
Visitation Reports
4.31 Apart from the Department of Education Inspection, the School in Greenmount received two visits
per year, from the Superior General, the Provincial, or a Brother delegated to conduct a visit, who
was known as the Visitor. The visits usually lasted two days and concentrated on ensuring the
observance by the Community of the rules of the Congregation. The Visitor frequently criticised
the way in which prayers and the Office were recited. The reports also made brief comments on
how the School was run. At the end of each visit, a Visitation Report was completed and placed
in a book that was left at the School. A separate report was made to the General Council of
the Presentation Brothers, which was based at Mount St Joseph’s, Passage West. In 1952, the
governance structure of the Congregation changed, and an additional tier of authority was
introduced in the form of the Provincial Council, which reported to the General Council. Therefore,
from 1952, in addition to the usual Visitation Reports, there are also Provincial Reports available.
(These Provincial Reports were based on the Visitation Reports.)
4.32 The Visitation Reports gave a good insight into the life of Presentation Brothers in Greenmount.
The Reports concentrated on the absolute necessity for strict observance of the Constitution of
the Congregation, and any derogation was frowned upon. Many of the reports prescribed reading
lists of religious texts which the Brothers were expected to study.
4.33 The Provincial Reports and Visitation Reports that made specific reference to the welfare of the
boys generally remarked that they appeared well cared for, well fed, happy and healthy. The use
of words such as ‘the boys appeared’ would indicate that the Visitor’s assessment of the boys
was a superficial one, based on observation rather than on any careful examination of actual
conditions. In particular, there was no evidence that the Visitor spoke with the boys about their
experience of the School. Despite spending two full days in the Institution on each visit, none of
the concerns noted in the Department of Education Inspection Reports at various stages were
commented on in the Visitation Reports. Visitors, as a rule, asked about the level of punishment
administered and were usually assured that it was kept to a minimum. This assurance, however,
was given by the persons who were responsible for the punishment and, in the absence of a
punishment book, it was impossible to estimate the extent or severity of punishments
administered. For example, the 1940s was a period when an acknowledged regime of harsh
punishment operated in Greenmount, and yet the Visitation Reports did not reflect this.
4.34 Lay workers were kept at arm’s length. ‘The time of the lay workers in the Institution should not
be wasted by Brothers holding unnecessary conversations with them’, reported the Visitor, Br
Diego,14 in his Visitation Report dated 12th June 1934. In the same Visitation Report, he ordered
that a nurse should only be called in to attend to a sick Brother after permission was obtained
from the Superior General or, in his absence, a senior assistant. Similar lines of demarcation were
laid down for the Brothers. Only the Superior and Bursar were permitted to visit the boys’ infirmary,
which was regarded as the strict domain of the nurse.
4.35 In the Visitation Report of December 1936, Br Diego set out various recommendations for the
Brothers and the boys. The local Superior was requested to notify the Superior General if any
Brother was outside the house after 9pm, even with permission. Brothers were expected to retire
to their rooms at 10pm every night. They were required to stay away from such ‘world
amusements’ as were unbecoming to a Brother, as well as places where their attendance would
cause scandal. Attendance at horse races, dog races and opera houses was singled out as
particularly inappropriate. The Superior was not to, directly or indirectly, supply cigarettes to the
Brothers. The cinema was out of bounds unless the film was approved having regard to the Papal
Encyclical on Films of 1936. The recommendations for boys included advice that no boy should
be allowed to go to a Brother’s room after night prayers. Organised games should be introduced,
with playing fields made available.
4.36 In the Visitation Report of October 1942, Br Diego complained that the farm staff was unduly large
and that staff levels could be reduced by 40 percent. He also noted with criticism that labourers’
wages were above the Government standard and that overhead costs had soared.
4.37 Br Diego again visited the School in March 1944 and found that ‘the management, discipline, the
general tone and atmosphere of the school have dropped some points’ since 1941. He did not
elaborate on the reasons for his view or make recommendations for improvement. There was no
Department of Education General Inspection Report or Medical Report for that year for comparison
purposes. In any event, by December 1944, another Visitor, Br Enrique,15 noted an upward trend
in the management, discipline and tone of the School and was confident that the high standards
would be restored.
4.38 The Brothers were expected to be completely self-reliant and were forbidden from discussing
Community business with outsiders. Br Juan16 visited the School in 1945 and noted, ‘the brothers
should be careful not to disclose Community affairs to those who have not the right to know them
– not even to priests or relatives’. He also cautioned against incurring expense except when
absolutely necessary.
4.39 There were no adverse comments regarding the management and conduct of the School in the
remaining Visitation Reports of the 1940s.
14
15
16

4.40 Br Jose17 reported in June 1951 that the education of the boys was well managed, but warned
the Brothers of the Community:
... of the heavy responsibility placed on their shoulders of training these boys to face the
world. The spiritual, moral, educational and even industrial training should receive very
careful planning and attention.
4.41 He recommended that the Brothers consult with each other and pool their ideas as to how best
to further the training of the boys.
4.42 The following year, the Provincial Report noted, ‘the average age of the Brothers is too high, for
the exacting duties they are called upon to perform. A Bursar and another young Brother would
be required to carry out the necessary work’. The report went on to state that, with falling numbers,
the financial viability of the School was in doubt.
4.43 In May 1953, Br Jose recommended that the boys should receive regular instruction in ‘the civic
and moral virtues’. The Provincial Report of the same year also recommended that a maid be
employed in the Brothers’ kitchen instead of the boys. Further Provincial Reports of the same
year complained that there were not sufficient boys in the workshops, despite the fact that half
the total number of boys in the School were at the trades training age. In a Provincial Report the
following year, it was recommended that all of the boys in 7th class be transferred into trades
training classes.
4.44 The Provincial Report of June 1955 referred to the fact that Br Garcia18 had complained that
discipline under the current Manager was somewhat lax. This report also made reference to
immorality among the boys.
4.45 Br Blanco19 completed a Visitation Report in December 1955 and he acknowledged the difficulties
in running a school of 133 boys from troubled backgrounds, particularly when the average age of
the Brothers was 54. He emphasised the need for supervision, and that all members of the
Community should pull together to ensure that the School was properly managed.
4.46 The Provincial Report of autumn 1957 was most critical of the management of the School and
noted:
The boys seem to be well supervised etc. At the same time they appear to me to be very
raggedy and unkempt. I am convinced that all the uplift which we – a religious body should
give – is not being given. We should be able to do something for them and make
something out of them and do more than merely keep them. All my suggestions to this,
and in fact to any matter were turned down by the superior as Utopian, impractical and
impossible ... To sum up, the superior is good to organize, sees about the boys and is
efficient generally. He is handicapped to some extent in the staff he has. However, he
knows everything, he is open to no suggestion, he is lax about obeying higher superiors
and I would say, he does not and will not realize very fully his responsibilities as leader
of a religious community.
4.47 The Provincial Report the following year noted that the same observations still applied.
4.48 The final Visitation Report in December 1958 by Br Jose continued to express concern at the
condition of the School. He stated that, although the School was well conducted, ‘the discipline,
17
18
19

supervision, food, and general training of the boys would need to be thoroughly investigated so
as to devise methods to get the best results’. The School closed three months later.
The Investigation
4.49 The Committee obtained discovery documents from the Presentation Brothers, the Department of
Education and Science, the Diocese of Cork and Ross, the Garda Sı́ochána and Fr Andrew.20 In
addition former members of staff and former residents furnished statements.
4.50 In preparation for the hearings, the Commission sent letters to 19 residents listed on its database
as having been resident in Greenmount and wishing to proceed with their complaint as of
September 2005. Of those, one confirmed that he was not proceeding with his complaint and six
did not reply. The remaining 12 were listed for hearing, seven of whom were heard and five
withdrew. A further complainant had been heard in 2002. In addition, evidence was heard from
one respondent.
Physical abuse
What the Presentation Brothers have conceded

4.51 Br Denis Minehane, Vice Principal of the Presentation Anglo Irish Province, gave evidence during
the Emergence Phase on 1st July 2004 in relation to the position taken by the Presentation
Brothers on the issue of whether there was physical abuse in their Institution. He told the
Committee:
we have not formed a view that systematic child abuse occurred at Greenmount Industrial
School. We are prepared to accept that a harsh regime operated there which would be
unacceptable by today's standards. In relation to the specific complaints made to the
Investigation Committee it is extremely difficult to perform any meaningful enquiry into
these allegations which relate to events between 40 and 60 years ago. This is
compounded by the fact that virtually all the Brothers who worked at the School are
deceased, and furthermore many records are incomplete.
4.52 He explained that the ‘Anglo Irish Province have not issued an apology but the Congregation as
a whole, in updating its website six weeks ago, did issue a public apology’. This apology stated:
The Presentation Brothers apologise to any person who was abused while in their care.
The Brothers are committed to implementing the appropriate national guidelines for
dealing with complaints relating to child sexual abuse, and will respond to the best of their
ability to any person who comes to them with a complaint. Accordingly the Brothers have
appointed a Child Protection Coordinator in every unit of the Congregation to meet with
people who have complaints to make.
4.53 Br Minehane said of the apology:

It was along the lines of, “we apologise for any wrongdoing or any abuse that occurred to
any person while in our care.” That was done for two reasons. First of all to give our
regret. Secondly to encourage anybody out there who is hurting to come and make that
complaint.
4.54 Br Minehane then confirmed that the Presentation Brothers had contributed to the Redress
Scheme. He stated:
Well, we were members of CORI and in 2000 when this came up first we were
participating in the Faoiseamh help line and we contributed to the Faoiseamh help line.
20

We were a member of the 18 congregations and when the question of the contribution
came up we felt that especially because of our 1955 incident that we would feel very
exposed if all this went to litigation. We felt that it was prudent management to make a
contribution to the Redress Board.
4.55 Br Minehane said that the Presentation Brothers knew of around 60 allegations of abuse
concerning their Congregation by 2002, when they signed into the Redress Scheme. He confirmed
that any Brother against whom allegations were made and who was still alive was interviewed
and, in all cases, ‘there was total denial’.
4.56 When asked what view the Congregation had ‘of the reality of the allegations being made’, he
replied:
Well the Community would have to believe that if these allegations were made that there
was grounds to believe that there was wrongdoing taking place. To that extent we
apologise and regret that anything like that did happen while children were in our care.
4.57 He could say nothing about the specific complaints because of the passage of time and the
unavailability of either witnesses or detailed records to corroborate or disprove the allegations. He
added, ‘the furthest I could go, I think, is that I must concede that at least some of those complaints
are valid’.
4.58 During the course of the Phase II hearings, further, more precise concessions were made.
Counsel for the Presentation Brothers said of one Brother (Br Arrio) who was Resident
Manager/Superior at Greenmount in the mid-1930s and again from the mid-1940s to the early
1950s:
My clients suggest that he was a strict disciplinarian, Br Arrio, he was a very strict man.
We accept that certainly from time to time he may have overstepped the mark.
4.59 In Phase III, Br Minehane was asked if there was unwarranted physical abuse in Greenmount and
he replied:
Yes, by today's standards there certainly was, especially at a period during the 1940s,
our research would show that there was certainly excess corporal punishment.
4.60 Br Minehane was asked to clarify what he meant by the phrase excessive physical punishment
‘in the light of today’s standards’. He replied, ‘my interpretation of it is that corporal punishment in
schools was totally acceptable until 1982’. Under questioning, he went on to concede that some
punishments were indeed excessive by the standards of the time, and that he did not need to use
the term ‘by today’s standards’.
4.61 In summary, the Presentation Brothers made the following concessions:
1. Greenmount operated a harsh regime, especially in the 1940s.
2. The corporal punishment administered by the Superior, Br Arrio, during the 1940s
was excessive.

Br Arrio
4.62 Br Arrio was at Greenmount from the mid-1930s until his death in the late 1950s. As mentioned
above, he was Resident Manager/Superior of the School in the mid-1930s for three years and
again from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s. A Visitation Report from the mid-1940s noted that
‘The Management, discipline, the general tone and atmosphere of the school have dropped some
points since my Visit [three years previously]’. The reappointment of Br Arrio during the mid-1940s
soon turned this situation around, because the Visitation Report commented, ‘The management,
discipline and tone of this school are on the upward trend. I am quite confident it will very soon
hold the honoured place it occupied prior to [the appointment of Br Arrio]’.
4.63 During the 1940s, the annual reports furnished by the Resident Manager of the School to the
Department of Education gave a glowing picture of benign discipline being enforced in the School.
In the early 1940s, it said, ‘Punishment of every kind is all but a dead letter in the school’. One
year later, the Department was told ‘Punishment of any kind is all but abolished in the school’.
The reports for the following two years used the same phrase, ‘Corporal punishment of every kind
is, all but, completely abolished’. From the mid to late 1940s, in answer to the question ‘Nature of
the punishments for misconduct’, the identical answer was given: ‘Forfeiture of rewards and
privileges, which are allowed boys of good conduct’.
4.64 The 1940s were precisely the years that the Presentation Brothers acknowledged to have been
an era marked by excessively severe corporal punishment. Br Minehane was asked to explain
the contradiction. He began by saying, ‘I would have question marks about it’. He then went on
to explain that the Resident Manager, Br Arrio, was in charge of discipline, and was ‘the same
person who wrote that report’. He then said:
He was the Resident Manager and I have no explanation for it except that he regarded
himself as the disciplinarian in the School. And from his point of view ... corporal
punishment was part of it.
4.65 The fundamental inadequacy of the system could not be more apparent. The Brother who was
himself operating a severe and harsh regime was the same Brother who reported to the
Department. His reports to the Department were misleading: they claimed that punishment
consisted of a system of withdrawing privileges, when in fact the School was being controlled by
severe beatings and a climate of fear through a regime that he himself commanded.
The testimony of a former Presentation Brother in respect of Br Arrio

4.66 Mr Olivero21 (formerly Br Olivero) joined the Presentation Brothers in the mid-1940s. He spent a
year teaching in Greenmount before going to a Training College in Waterford. He returned to
Greenmount in the late 1940s, where he again taught for one and a half years. He left the
Congregation in the late 1950s. He gave evidence to the Investigation Committee in respect of Br
Arrio and his disciplinary regime.
4.67 Mr Olivero said that, when he arrived at the School, he was told that if any boy committed a
misdemeanour he should be sent to the Head Brother, Br Arrio, who would look after him. He
said that Br Arrio was regarded as a strict disciplinarian and the boys were fearful of him. He
agreed that the boys had good reason to be afraid of him. He explained:
if a boy did commit any misdemeanour, if he fought in the yard and if he didn't try and
pull himself together, all I had to say was, okay, do you want to go to Br Arrio and they'd
say no.
21

4.68 When he was asked if he thought it was a good thing that the person who was in ultimate control
should instil such fear in boys he replied, ‘I thought it was maybe a bit extreme’.
4.69 When asked if he had seen boys being caned in the yard, he explained:
When the boys were lined up in the evening time, before going, maybe, for a meal, for
the evening meal, I did see him chastising boys with a stick. I thought it was very extreme
because if he had, we'll say, twelve lines of boys there was a monitor for each who was
responsible for each line of boys ... And the monitor, if he couldn't explain the absence of
some boy in his group he was punished, and I thought that was very unfair.
4.70 Mr Olivero also confirmed in oral evidence a particular method of punishment that was referred to
by complainants and which is outlined below. This involved the boys climbing a ladder in a
storeroom and Br Arrio beating them with a cane.
4.71 He was asked whether he and those Brothers with similar views could together have had some
influence over a Brother who was harsh or severe with the boys. He replied that there was no
mechanism at all to have such an effect. He explained:
... I was too young and too inexperienced at the time to make a complaint. If I did make
a complaint I would probably – I don’t know would I be listened to ...
4.72 His dilemma was a common one. Those Brothers low in the hierarchy could not challenge their
seniors because of their vow of obedience. This inability to challenge the status quo meant that
progress or change was virtually impossible unless it came from the top.
4.73 Although he felt some complainants exaggerated the level of abuse in Greenmount, the
complaints about Br Arrio were, he believed, justified. He said, ‘... I wouldn't mind if they do make
complaints about the treatment he meted out to them’.
The evidence of the complainants about Br Arrio

4.74 A witness who was in Greenmount from the early 1940s to the early 1950s recalled Br Arrio taking
over from his predecessor, whom he described as ‘a stern man, but he got on and I suppose he
done his job’. Things changed for the worse, he said:
I can still remember that man, if I can call him that, as a tyrant ... He took pleasure, and
it helped him in some sick, sadistic way to beat children, and he had his own ways of
doing it. If you were reported by another Brother to him you had what was commonly
known in Greenmount School as "up the ladder". That will never leave my memory.
4.75 When asked to explain, he said:

You stood on – that type of ladder ... and you were naked, which was a horror thing for
any man saying he was a member of religion or knew there was a God there or recognised
a God, as a child you are up there hanging on to ropes with your hand on them so you
wouldn't slip, naked. That's when he lashed you across the buttocks, the hips or maybe
the raw thighs. And the way he left you, you were given a white nicks like a footballer and
you wore that for many days, all dressed up and the boys could laugh at you, but on top
of that you had to go to the nurse and get iodine on it.
4.76 He conveyed his feelings at the time by saying:

If you hit a dog he’ll squeal, a human, a little boy who was an orphan, feels just as much
as a stray dog and that’s the way we were treated.
4.77 He went on to describe the implement used to hit boys:
He had a cane maybe. Now I am speaking as maybe a ten year old or an eight year old,
nine year old, so I am going back. Maybe it was that length of a stick (indicating). I always
remember there was a knob on the end of it, it was a bamboo cane and it would bend
around your leg. He said that he got that from the Garda – the Department of Justice, he
made a big note of it one time, telling us where he got it, and to use it liberally ... he used
keep the stick in the back, up behind his belt. You never looked at him in the face, you
always looked to where that damn stick was.
4.78 Another complainant recalled this method of punishment. He was a resident in Greenmount from
the mid-1950s, and he also told how Br Arrio gave him a beating ‘up the ladder’. He told the
Committee:
Br Arrio would take off your clothes and you would have just an underpants on you and
you would walk up the ladder and he would give you a slap of the cane ...
That took place in a little room .....He brought me into that room and he said – he asked
me what did I run away for and all this and I told him that I just ran away, I wanted to go
home. So he gave me a hiding for it as well ... He told me to walk up the ladder ... It was
one of those ladders that you could go up the top and come down the other side of it.
You go up one side and down the other side ... I was asked to strip to my underpants
and walk up the ladder ... He was hitting me [with a bamboo cane] so I ran up the ladder.
... He used to run around after you. He wasn't as old as people was making him out to
be, he was able to run and he was able to do his thing, what he had to do... Br Arrio
always made ... the kids climb up the ladder.
4.79 Mr Olivero was asked if he could confirm punishment by Br Arrio that involved the use of a cane
and a ladder in the storeroom, and he said:
I knew it happened. I never saw it happening, it was just hearsay. It was known that
punishment was administered there and that there was a record kept to be seen by a
representative of the Department of Education.
4.80 One witness described another form of punishment used by Br Arrio to punish a boy at dinnertime:
There was various degrees of punishment ... Somewhere, somewhere along the line that
man worked in another job, or he was taught of keeping your toes off the ground, eat
lying on your knees just and keep your toes off the ground but use your hands to go down
to a bowl, like a dog, that's the way you eat. That was another punishment of his.
4.81 A former resident of Greenmount who was there in the mid-1940s said:
Br Arrio used to stand in the room, once you darned your socks, you had to go up for his
inspection. If it wasn’t to his liking he would cane you and he would punch you in the head.
4.82 He also recounted an incident when Br Arrio beat him and his brother for complaining about
inadequate food at Greenmount:
It is the same story. My brother was beaten and he was beaten really bad. Why we were
beaten so bad is when we went home – my dad was home from England one time and
he said to us, "you look very skinny", in other words, thin. He said, "if I took you up would
you say it in front of the monks, Br. Arrio?" We said yes. So my dad took us up and Br.
Arrio was as nice as pie to him. And my dad said the boys said they are not getting
enough to eat. He said, "is that right, boys?" We made a big mistake and said yes. He
showed him the bake house, the farm and all that and said they were getting this and
that. When my dad went down to England he called us in about a week after and he gave
us a hell of a beating and [my brother] got the worse of it because he said he was the
eldest and he was the ringleader.
The Visitation Reports on Br Arrio

4.83 Some of the Visitation Reports single out Br Arrio for mention, but always in a favourable light.
After a visit in the late 1940s, the Visitor wrote:
There is a full quota of boys. They appear to be happy and well looked after, and great
credit is due to the devoted Superior and his staff for the successful management of
this Institution.
4.84 In a Visitation Report two years later, Br Arrio received specific praise:
The Superior ... has a long and very creditable experience at this kind of work, he is
patient, kind and self sacrificing with the result that he seems to have secured the good
will and best endeavours of all under his charge, nothing escapes his notice down to the
fixing of a new bolt in a door ...
4.85 Somehow, the harsh and severe regime run by this Brother to control the boys through fear and
physical punishment was not uncovered by the Visitor’s Inspections.
4.86 • The corporal punishment administered by this Brother was contrary to the Rules and
Regulations for Certified Industrial Schools and was severe by the standards of the
time.
• There was no system in place to control his excesses. Neither the Visitor nor the
Department of Education Inspector detected the violence or, if they did, neither
commented on the matter.
• The misleading nature of the annual reports to the Department of Education indicated
knowledge on the part of the authorities that what they were doing was wrong.
Br Garcia
4.87 A witness who was in Greenmount in the 1940s and early 1950s told the Committee about
unnecessary punishments administered during class by Br Garcia:
If you can imagine that being a desk and out here is the seating, it comes out about six
or seven inches from that, you knelt up on that and it is on the backs of the legs you got
the stick. You might say did he hit you four times, did he hit you six times, I couldn't
honestly and on oath say exactly how many times he struck me at any one time, but that
was his modus operandi of trying to teach. Now, he had a saying like when we would fall
in from school, he knew his class by the way they walked, a horrible thing for a human
being to say ... We were all limping, that's what he meant.
4.88 A Visitation Report to the General Council in the mid-1950s recorded that:
Br Garcia reported that he considered that discipline was somewhat relaxed since the
present Superior took up office. The Superior assured me that all care is taken to have
the boys superintended and supervised at all times.
4.89 His colleague, Mr Olivero, who gave evidence to the Committee, insisted Br Garcia had a great
rapport with the boys and ‘... wasn’t severe or anything like that. He would be a disciplinarian, as
I would have been myself, I presume’.

Br Allente22
4.90 A former resident who was in Greenmount in the early 1950s described a beating he received
from Br Allente. He was careful to state that he was not complaining about the use of corporal
punishment as such. He explained:
Well, the definition between punishment and brutality is this: in normal circumstances in
a classroom two, three or six slaps on the hand ... When you have all the force of a grown
man into punishing a child with severe strength that is brutality.
4.91 Br Allente, he said, picked on him because he was a slow learner, and used ‘the T-ruler’ on him
several times:
... after a while one bit broke off, I think he was banging it across my back and then
another time when he used the same ruler again the second part fell off. So he was left
down to just a small bit and the T ... I do not remember him beating as cruel to other
children in my classroom as he was with me.
4.92 Another witness described beatings he received from a number of Brothers whilst he was in
Greenmount in the mid-1950s. He mentioned Br Allente as one of these Brothers:
You never forget these beatings no matter how old you are, you never forget the beatings
you get in them schools.
4.93 The testimony detailed above indicates that several individual Brothers did use excessive corporal
punishment from time to time. However, many witnesses were anxious to point out that
Greenmount had many good points and many good Brothers.
4.94 One witness, who was there in the mid-1950s, not merely compared Greenmount favourably with
another institution, but made a point of praising some Brothers. He was moved with five other
boys from Carriglea to Greenmount, and told the Committee of the difference:
It was softer than Carriglea ... they weren't as cruel as regards beating you ... A bit more
freedom ... a bit more lax ... as regards the things you did, you weren't restricted to doing
anything. They were fairly lenient with you ... you could play soccer, which you couldn't
play in Carriglea ... Everything was played. But it wasn't trained, you weren't trained for
it, that was just between ourselves.
4.95 He was asked specifically if he felt that, in Greenmount, the Brothers there were a bit less violent.
He replied:
Oh yeah, they weren't as brutal as in Carriglea. They would have odd spasms of it, but
they were a lot more lenient ... Well, they used the strap and all that, but not as much as
it was done in Carriglea.
4.96 He described Br Allente as ‘a hard task master, but all right’, and said that Br Santiago23 was ‘a
nice man’. He said it was better when Br Santiago took over because ‘there was more tolerance’.
4.97 One of the other boys who was transferred from Carriglea also gave evidence. He was in
Greenmount from the mid-1950s until it closed in 1959. He told the Committee:
The good things were playing hurling and football in the pitch when there was sports,
when you were allowed to go out. The good thing was some of the Brothers were good
and treated you like maybe you should be. The other thing was going to the Father
Matthew Hall for the annual panto, which we went to and which we enjoyed going.
22
23

Eventually we started going to the cinemas in Cork because we used to have – sometimes
in the School they would show you the odd film here and there. But going out, it was
actually going out, getting out of the Institution and going down through the streets of
Cork in two by two.
4.98 He was delighted with the fact that they were allowed to go out escorted into the town. He was
asked if some of the Brothers treated the boys with respect and dignity, and treated them as
children. He replied, ‘They did, some were very good’. He added later, ‘The older Brothers seemed
to have more compassion with the children than the younger Brothers’.
4.99 Another resident from the late 1940s also stressed that there was both good and bad in
Greenmount. He said ‘there was a lot of rotten apples, right, in the School ...’ but he said some
of the Brothers were good to him: ‘The Brother that I used to work in the farm with, he was very
good to me’. He then named two of the five working Brothers and said ‘it was like hell with them’,
but he said the other Brothers were ‘grand’.
4.100 Mr Olivero, who had no qualms about denouncing Br Arrio as too harsh and severe, nonetheless
felt that there was not a violent regime. He said:
There was discipline there, there was strict discipline, but I mean it was no different to
what it was in an ordinary primary school ... in the absence of parents we did the best we
could. What more could we do?
4.101 The person most often mentioned in the complaints was Br Arrio, who was accused of being
consistently brutal. Other Brothers were also remembered for administering excessive or arbitrary
punishment, on a less frequent basis. As one complainant put it:
They used to beat you hard. The degree of beating they gave you was more than some
of the other Brothers, some were more lenient in their dishing out of punishment.
Conclusions
4.102 1. There was systematic use of excessive corporal punishment in the 1940s.
2. There were complaints about Brothers in the early 1950s, when corporal punishment
appeared to be widespread and on occasion severe.
3. Some Brothers were regarded as nice, friendly and approachable. When they used
corporal punishment, it was for misbehaviour and was accepted by complainants as
being justified.
Sexual abuse
1955
4.103 A major crisis in the affairs of the Industrial School came to a head in late 1955, when the Resident
Manager, Br Carlito24 and a senior Brother on the teaching staff, Br Garcia, were the subjects of
serious allegations of sexual abuse of boys in the School, resulting in the transfer of the Resident
Manager and the resignation from the Congregation of the other Brother. The latter protested
his innocence at the time, and subsequently maintained that his voluntary departure by way of
dispensation from vows came about because of his dismay at the way the matter was handled.
The Resident Manager remained in the Congregation and later was the focus of further complaints
of sexual impropriety.
24
This is a pseudonym..

4.104 There were a number of Diocesan and Congregation Visitations to the School during this year.
The Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr Cornelius Lucey, visited the School on 7th January 1955. The
School Diary records that:
He inspected the House, interviewed some of the Brothers and five boys separately. He
expressed his satisfaction as a result of the interviews and from what he saw himself.
4.105 It could be inferred from this note that the bishop was pursuing a line of inquiry, but he appears
to have been reassured.
4.106 The Provincial of the Congregation, Br Jose, carried out the annual Visitation between 14th and
16th June 1955, and the consequent Report was very positive about the School generally and Br
Carlito in particular:
As at the last Visitation I am pleased to note that the Constitutions are well observed and
that there is a good spirit of fraternal charity ... The Superior neglects no opportunity to
better the conditions under which the boys live, and together with his staff is devoted and
zealous in the care of the boys in their spiritual and temporal welfare ... The affairs of the
Brothers should not be discussed with the secular staff.
4.107 However, shortly after the Visitation, Br Jose received some disturbing news about immoral
practices amongst the boys, which he outlined in his report to the General Council:
Some days after the completion of this Visitation I got a report from a member of another
Community that immoral practices were being carried on between the boys themselves.
The information came originally from a Missionary priest (Fr. Brendan25 I think) who had
been Spiritual Director for a time to the Legion of Mary Praesidium at the Industrial School.
On being questioned about this, the Superior admitted that he was aware of the fact,
having been informed by Fr. Brendan himself. He knew the names of the four or five boys
concerned, had them all placed in Dormitories that they could not easily contact each
other, and giving special instructions to the Night Watchman without giving him any
information or naming any boys.
4.108 Some five months after this Visitation, Br Blanco, a member of the General Council, carried out
an unusually long Visitation to Greenmount. It lasted 12 days rather than the usual two to three
days. Allegations of sexual abuse of boys were made against two respected members of the
Community, Br Carlito, the Resident Manager, and Br Garcia, either before or during this
Visitation.
4.109 At the same time as the Visitation by Br Blanco, a separate investigation was being pursued by a
Canon David26 on behalf of Bishop Lucey.
4.110 No record survives of Canon David’s report to the bishop following his visit. Br Blanco, who
conducted the lengthy Visitation on behalf of the Congregation, left in Greenmount a report that
said nothing about sexual abuse and confined itself to pious exhortations. It seems that Br Blanco
interviewed boys and took at least one written statement, although no record of these interviews
survives. Neither is there any report from Br Blanco to the General Council regarding the matter.
4.111 A series of notes in diary form kept by the Superior General, Br Gomez,27 at the time sheds light
on the sequence of events.
25
26
27

4.112 On 29th November, two days into the Blanco Visitation, Br Gomez recorded that ‘Brother Blanco
called on Canon who said he had no doubt about their guilt’.
4.113 In his diary, Br Gomez records that on 5th December:

Bishop phoned at 7 p.m. to call on him. I understood he had no doubt of their guilt.
Told me that he had called in Canon David to hold visitation at Greenmount and to call
for him the following day at Bishop’s House to bring him to [Greenmount].
4.114 The following day, Br Gomez collected Canon David and recorded in the diary:
Asked Canon David when boys and Bros. had been interviewed if he wanted to see Bros.
Carlito & Garcia & he said yes. Phoned them at Passage W. & they came along within
half an hour.
Returning from Greenmount with Canon David he asked if a Brother had been holding
visitation there. I said yes but he had not yet delivered his report on visitation. In that case
he said he would say nothing.
4.115 It is not known why the bishop ordered his own investigation. However, Fr Andrew, the School
chaplain when these investigations were carried out, recalled to Professor Keogh that a Mill Hill
Father (he could not recall the name although it seems clear that the source of the allegations
was Fr Brendan, the Mill Hill Father who had previously raised the issue of immorality amongst
the boys) had made an allegation to the parish priest of the Lough, the parish in which the School
was located, that two members of the Greenmount Community were involved in an abusive
relationship with a number of the boys, and he reported the matter to the Bishop. Fr Andrew said
that Bishop Lucey is believed to have visited the house of the senior curate in the Lough, Fr
Charles,28 in order to interview a number of the Greenmount boys, and the bishop is believed to
have conducted these interviews without revealing his identity. If that is what happened, it would
explain why the bishop ordered the canonical investigation.
4.116 On 8th December, the bishop told Br Gomez, during the course of a telephone conversation, that
he would see Brs Carlito and Garcia, who were back at Greenmount following the Canon’s visit,
if they wished to see him. Br Gomez made an appointment for the Brothers to see the bishop the
following day.
4.117 Fr Brendan, from Mill Hill, appears to have interviewed a number of boys who presumably made
the allegations which led to the investigations. According to the notes made by Br Gomez, Br
Carlito, the Resident Manager, assembled a number of boys including two with whom he had
been accused of engaging in sexual activity. He questioned the two boys in front of the other boys
as to the truth of the allegations. One denied the allegation and the other, who had since left the
School, said that he was asked so many questions that he was confused. Br Carlito told him it
was his duty to go to Fr Brendan and make the matter clear to him in writing.
4.118 There appears to have been a struggle going on between the Superior, who was seeking
exculpation, and Fr Brendan, who had received some of the complaints and passed them on. The
Superior General’s diary records:
Fr Brendan told the boys
1. it would be a mortal sin to divulge the interview to the Brother
2. if they did they would have to go to the Bishop
3. they could be put to gaol.
28

4.119 The note continues:
Superior Carlito assembled the boys interviewed by Fr. Brendan and told them that any
words he was using were not in secret and could be used if they were ever interviewed
– and that he was using no threats or bribes
“if you think that what you have said is true stick to it but you must prove it. If you think
what you said is untrue be honourable enough to admit it.”
“He would follow this up [to] the very end ...”
4.120 On 27th December, Br Carlito resigned as Resident Manager but remained a member of the
Congregation. The Synopsis of his Service History provided by the Department of Education
indicates that he taught in a number of different schools until he reached retirement. He died at
an advanced age before the Committee began its hearings into Greenmount.
4.121 Br Garcia furnished medical evidence that he was incapable of testifying before the Committee,
but he did provide a statement dealing with these events:
I learned of these allegations in circumstances when I was walking along the corridor in
Greenmount Industrial School and Br Allente approached me and told me that I and
another Brother were to go to the Bishop’s Palace to speak to Bishop Cornelius Lucey
who was then the Bishop of Cork ... At this remove in time I have difficulty recalling the
precise allegations as related to me by Bishop Lucey. In general terms the allegations
were to the effect that children were being abused in the school and that I was being
blamed. I immediately denied those allegations to the Bishop and I inquired as to who
had made these allegations against me. Bishop Lucey would not provide these names. I
also inquired as to what individual had made the complaint and I did not get that name
either. I was then told to leave. Some time later I was invited again to the Bishop’s Palace
and had a discussion again with the Bishop about alleged sexual abuse in which I was
allegedly involved. I immediately denied any such involvement in this type of activity. I
was invited back again on a third separate occasion and I inquired of the Bishop as to
when all of this was going to end and I was told by the Bishop “that there was no smoke
without fire”.
I became extremely upset about the way in which this matter was being handled and took
the view that if this was the way that matters were being dealt with that I would be better
off out of the Presentation Brothers.
4.122 He continued teaching in the School until his dispensation was granted in February 1956:
I remember leaving Greenmount on a Friday and commencing teaching at Waterford on
the following Monday where I had secured a post.
4.123 Fr Andrew was chaplain to the School from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. In a letter dated
29th December 2005, he stated:
I wish to state clearly that during my years as chaplain, I saw no evidence whatever of
physical or sexual abuse.
4.124 However, he said that he had heard rumours about abuse in the School. He stressed that this
was clearly hearsay, but he was ‘happy to pass it on ... as it may help to clarify some aspects of
the Commission’s enquiries’:
Much of what I heard about enquiries into abuse in Greenmount came from young Mill
Hill community priests who were studying for the Higher Diploma in education in University
College, Cork ... Some information may also have come from Fr. Charles ... It was
probably he who informed me that I was being excluded from the enquiries because I
was hearing Confessions in Greenmount.
I believe that there were altogether three distinct enquiries into abuse in Greenmount
while I was chaplain there. The only one of which I was aware at the time was under the
care of Rev. Charles, curate in the Lough Parish (long since deceased.) I believe that this
enquiry was a formal Canonical Visitation, done by V. Rev. Mons. David.. I never saw him
while he was in Cork.
4.125 He did not know what action, if any, the Diocese took as a result of the inquiry, but he believed
that a number of Brothers either left the Congregation or were transferred elsewhere. When Fr
Andrew heard of ‘possible problems in Greenmount’ many years later, he informed the Diocesan
authorities of the Canon David investigation, but was told that there was no Canon David report
on file.
4.126 Fr Andrew stated that he later heard from Sr Vita,29 who had been in charge of the Boy’s Junior
Industrial School at Passage West, a feeder school for Greenmount and Upton, that Bishop Lucey
had visited her and directed her not to transfer boys to the two senior schools mentioned, thus
contributing to the closure of those schools.
Br Carlito’s later career
Early 1970s
4.127 In the late 1990s, an individual approached the Presentation Brothers with allegations that Br
Carlito had sexually abused him during the 1970s, while he was a resident at an orphanage run
by another Congregation and attended the nearby monastery school. Br Carlito was teaching at
the school. Br Carlito taught in this school from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s.
4.128 The man making this allegation met with the Superior of the monastery and told him that Br Carlito
had abused him. The Superior then met the Regional Leader, Br Hilario,30 to whom he gave the
following two-page report:
He told me he had been in an Orphanage in the local ... Convent. Bro C. used to visit
often. One day a boy broke his leg in the yard and was in ... hospital. Bro C took on a
motorbike to see him. That the first time abuse started. Then Bro C used to bring to the
monastery and take him up to his own room. Brought him to see Leeds v Sunderland Cup
Final on T.V. in monastery – then abuse. Usually gave him 2/-. Stopped around the time
the Orphanage closed ... Is undergoing Counselling. To see me & tell me was part of the
healing process ...
4.129 Br Hilario recorded these events in a memorandum. Following his meeting with the Superior, Br
Hilario telephoned the man:
I assured him that I believed his story and that I would be quite prepared to listen to him
if he so wished.
4.130 They subsequently met and the man repeated the allegations:
Brother Carlito was a regular visitor to the Orphanage. He took the boys on cycling trips
... at weekends. When he was in 3rd or 4th class the abuse began. “A lot of grooming had
taken place before it started.” Another boy from the Orphanage broke his leg and was in
hospital ... Brother Carlito took him on a motorbike to visit him. “This was the start of the
abuse” [the man] gave no indication as to the nature of the abuse or where it took place.
He was vague on dates. When questioned he said he was eleven or twelve at the time.
(It seemed to me that eleven or twelve was old for a boy in 3rd or 4th class but I did not
29
30

comment on this.) [the man] said he had been abused on four occasions ... Brother Carlito
would take him to his bedroom and “take down my pants” He remembers going to the
monastery to view the Cup Final between Leeds and Sunderland; He then went on to talk
about further abuse. “Brother Carlito lay on the bed and placed me on his belly. I got
frightened and so did he, I think.”
4.131 The man told Br Hilario that he did not want to report the matter to the Gardaı́. He did not see
any benefit in putting an old man in gaol – that would not be any good to him. When asked how
he felt the Presentation Brothers could be of help to him, he replied ‘compensation, I suppose’.
4.132 A representative of the Congregation met Br Carlito subsequently in relation to this complaint, and
recorded the outcome of the meeting in a note prepared for the Congregation’s legal
representatives. He told Br Carlito of the allegation:
He did not interrupt or comment while I was relating the story. When I finished he said
“This is terrible just when I was recovering this pushes me back down again.” ... I told him
the Gardai were not approached.
4.133 Br Carlito recalled the man as a pupil, although he had not taught him. He said that he had been
good to him and that he couldn’t remember any abuse taking place.
4.134 Br Carlito continued:

I am very surprised as I was extra good to him. I even gave him money now and then ...
I gave him £2 or £3 pounds now and then. I even sent him money after I left ... but I have
not seen or heard from him since. Why did he wait so long? I cannot remember interfering
with him.
4.135 When it was explained to him that such a time lapse in coming forward was common, that people
felt ashamed and guilty about what had happened, and that it took a lot of courage to tell their
story, Br Carlito said ‘If I did it to him I must be inclined to do it to others’.
4.136 When asked whether he remembered feeling attracted to do this with boys, he replied ‘I can’t
remember this attraction’.
4.137 He said that the boy could have been in his room, but not for that purpose. Br Carlito said that he
was ‘flabbergasted and dumbfounded. This knocks me back altogether. There is nothing for me
now but Ahadoe [graveyard] and the sooner the better. I can now understand how easy suicide is’.
4.138 Br Hilario met with Br Carlito a few days later, when Br Carlito made a statement maintaining:
I am not saying it did not take place but I have no recollection of it happening. I think it is
better for all concerned if I don’t deny it completely.
The late 1970s

4.139 In 1978, the parent of a child at a national school made a complaint that Br Carlito had interfered
with her child. Br Carlito was working as an assistant teacher in the School at the time. The
Committee has not seen any documentary material in relation to this complaint. However, it is
clear from the Synopsis of his Service History provided by the Department of Education that Br
Carlito remained in the School until he was transferred in 1979.
The mid-1990s
4.140 In the mid-1990s, the Gardaı́ questioned Br Carlito in relation to an allegation that he had sexually
interfered with a three-and-a-half-year-old boy on a number of different occasions.
4.141 The child’s mother said that she took her son to a doctor as a result of the abuse.
4.142 Br Carlito made a statement to the Gardaı́ and told his superiors of the allegation. The matter was
immediately reported to the Provincial, Br Amador,31 who dispatched the Chairman of the Advisory
Committee on Child Sexual Abuse, Br Manuel,32 to interview Br Carlito. Br Manuel reported:
He denied all the allegations and declared that there was no truth in any of them. He had
no recollection of the child ever been in the house but he was certain that he never
sexually interfered with him or any other child or youth who may have entered the house
for the purpose of receiving musical tuition from him. He had always been careful to give
tuition to groups and never to individuals and his students were always in the older age
group of 10–14 years. He could not comprehend how anyone could accuse him of the
offence and he knew of no one who would want to frame him.
4.143 The Provincial’s diary states:

Later that evening I phoned Br Manuel to inquire of his findings and he felt there may be
some grounds for concern but had serious doubts.
4.144 The Provincial consulted a member of the Conference of Religious in Ireland and decided to move
Br Carlito ‘lest his presence ... further aggravate any possible hurt to the alleged victim and family’.
4.145 Br Amador’s diary referred to a meeting with the Gardaı́:

I have only one note of that meeting which is a comment by Sgt. ... to the effect that a
‘child of three and a half does not concoct such stories’. He asked if there were any other
such allegations against Br Carlito and I said I was not aware of any as otherwise I would
not have posted him [to the School].
4.146 The Presentation Brothers engaged solicitors to act for Br Carlito. One month later, the principal
in the firm wrote to Br Amador informing him of recent developments:
Three children from the locality have alleged that they have been sexually interfered with.
All three have been medically examined and two of the three have been physically
interfered with – they have been buggered. One of these two children ... has identified Br
Carlito as having interfered with him ...
Brother Carlito is not known personally to me. His denials of the matter appear totally
genuine. I very much doubt if, at 79 years of age, he should suddenly develop tendencies
of this nature ...
4.147 Br Carlito was not prosecuted. However, it is clear from the above that neither the Gardaı́ nor Br
Carlito’s solicitor were aware of the previous allegations which had been made against Br Carlito
in Greenmount and which had led to his resignation from the School.
4.148 • It is not clear that the investigation in 1955 established that the Brothers were guilty
of the charges made against them. The two Brothers protested their innocence, and
surviving documents do not reveal the results of the investigations. What is clear is
that the bishop and his senior clerical investigator believed that Brs Carlito and Garcia
had engaged in sexual abuse of boys. Nevertheless, the two men were permitted to
move on to new positions dealing with children. There was no question of reporting
them to the Gardaı́.
• While it is impossible to be sure from the documents, the probability is that these
complaints about sexual abuse came to light because boys felt able to confide in the
31
32

young volunteer priest who visited the School. This would conform with a pattern
that was seen in other institutions, whereby children were able to report abuse to a
sympathetic adult when a suitable opportunity presented.
• The involvement of the Bishop ensured that the complaints were taken seriously and
investigated.
• Further allegations of sexual abuse dogged Br Carlito’s subsequent career. When the
Gardaı́ were investigating one set of complaints of sexual abuse in the mid-1990s, the
information supplied by a senior member of the Congregation was seriously
misleading.
4.149 One complainant, Michael,33 gave evidence of being abused by Br Garcia. He had been in
Greenmount in the late 1940s and was discharged in the early 1950s. Michael said that he was
about 12 when the abuse started, and that Br Garcia anally raped him about four or five times.
He said that he ran away from the School and went with a friend to the local Chief Superintendent
in Cork, Superintendent Caffrey,34 because his father worked for him and he knew him. Michael
told the superintendent about the abuse.
4.150 Michael had faith in the Superintendent because he was such a senior figure in Cork, but did not
tell his parents what was happening because he did not think it was proper to speak to his mother
and father like that.
4.151 Michael recalled his meeting with the superintendent:

So, he said "what's wrong?" I said "there is a Brother and he's interfering with all the lads
in Greenmount". Right? He said to me "Michael", he said to me "they don't do that". Well,
I says, "Superintendent Caffrey, it is happening". So he said "I can only bring you up to
Bishop Cohalan".
4.152 He brought Michael and his friend to see the bishop:

... he brought me in a police car ... he was in the front and myself and [my friend] were in
the back and ... he drove up there anyway. The bishop was there anyway and
Superintendent Caffrey went in. He said "there is two lads here from Greenmount". That's
what I presume he said to the bishop ... He went in first and he left us to wait. Then
whatever conversation they had he called me and [my friend] in. He said "tell the bishop
what's happening?" So we told him that we can't go to sleep at night, that this man is
tormenting us, we can't go to the toilets or anything. Because Br. Garcia was in charge
of the dormitory, right. That was his – he was in charge. So, Bishop Cohalan said "the
Christian Brothers (sic) don't do these things at all". He said "you are two devils". He said
"I am going to get ye excommunicated". We were more frightened than anything. So we
came back out with Superintendent Caffrey ... and the sergeant drove us up to the School
... the next morning then we got a flogging.
4.153 Bishop Cohalan was in his nineties when this allegation was made to him.
4.154 In their statement in response to Michael’s allegations against Br Garcia, the Presentation Brothers
made no mention of the canonical inquiry of the mid-1950s. Br Minehane who, in his direct
evidence to the Investigation Committee, acknowledged that he was aware of the canonical
inquiry, signed the statement on behalf of the Presentation Brothers and stated:
33
34

The Complainant makes the most appalling allegations against Br. Garcia ... It seems
likely that the Complainant was taught by Br. Garcia. Br. Garcia is now [real name]. He
strongly denies all of the Complainant’s allegations.
4.155 In the course of the hearing, counsel for the Congregation stated:
Our difficulty in relation to this is that we don't have records in relation to this particular
aspect of matters and unfortunately the persons who would have been in a position to
say exactly what went on at the time are deceased or unavailable.
4.156 Br Garcia was represented at the hearing and denied the allegations made against him.
4.157 Another witness recalled events surrounding Br Garcia’s departure. He told the Committee:
Some of the boys were getting taken out of bed and they would go to the Brother's room
at night ... I was in a very good position to see it happening ... My bed was right opposite
the door ... [The Brothers] had a room annexed to the dormitory itself ... [He] used to
come in, tap the bed, walk up the dormitory, walk back down and he'd walk out first.
4.158 He explained there were ‘four or five’ beds the Brother would choose from. He would walk in, tap
the bed, ‘Go back out and then that lad would get up and go out’. The boy would come back
‘maybe an hour afterwards’. He named the Brother as Br Garcia.
4.159 The witness explained, ‘I knew two of the lads personally’. One of them ‘used have cigarettes all
the time and I used say "where did you get them?” He told him they had been given to him by Br
Garcia. Recalling the circumstances of Br Garcia’s leaving, he said:
... after Br Garcia and Br Carlito left everyone was talking about it ... It happened so
sudden ... He was there one day and he was gone the next. It went around the School
then that he was gone, him and the Superior. Obviously, Br Carlito was the Superior, the
head Brother, so everyone noticed him gone.
4.160 Another witness who was in Greenmount in the early 1950s described being physically and
sexually abused by a Brother who he described as being a fat man. He stated that this abuse
occurred in an office which was identified by the Congregation as being the Superior’s office. In
their responding statement to the witness’s statement of complaint, the Congregation said:
During the complainant’s time at Greenmount there were three Superiors. None of them
matches the complainant’s description as a “big fat” man.
Peer abuse
4.161 Nine former residents of Greenmount were prosecuted and sentenced for offences of indecency
in the mid-1930s. A further three former residents of Upton Industrial School were also sentenced
for similar offences. All of the young men who had spent time in Greenmount ranged from 15 to
19 years of age.
4.162 The Department of Education received an anonymous letter from the parent of one of the
convicted youths after sentence was handed down. The letter stated that the boy had spent eight
years in Greenmount, despite an application made by his parent to have him released. It alleged
that such sexual conduct had been prevalent in Greenmount for the previous nine years, and
named a particular teacher who was complicit in such activity. The Gardaı́ were seeking him. The
whole thing was ‘the talk of Cork City’. The writer requested that the Department requisition all of
these cases from the court office or the Gardaı́ so that the full extent of the problem could be
exposed, as ‘the Monks of the school was trying to keep this Case Dark’. It added, ‘my boy was
8 years going in to the school ... so he got his lesson in the school. Any child is safer at Home’.
The letter ended, ‘the school should be closed down’.
4.163 The Department Inspector, in an internal memorandum, noted that the Medical Inspector had
heard certain rumours about the School and suggested that the local chief superintendent be
contacted for a full report. Around the same time, the Attorney General’s office made contact with
the Department of Education, furnishing copies of the depositions in the 12 cases. Many of the
defendants had asserted that their misconduct stemmed from their time in industrial schools. The
Attorney General was of the view that closer supervision of the older boys would discourage such
‘unfortunate habits’, and furnished the Department with the information ‘in the hope that the
Minister in collaboration with the School Authorities may be able to devise some means of keeping
the number of such cases in future at the lowest possible level’. An extract from the prosecuting
counsel’s report was also furnished, which stated ominously, ‘... the revelations about Upton and
Greenmount at this sittings have given me furiously to think about Industrial Schools and Religious
Orders ...’.
4.164 The Department arranged for a special Inspection of the two schools in question to take place.
An Industrial Schools Inspector and the Deputy Chief Inspector of the Primary Branch were
nominated to conduct the Inspections. Their general brief was to ‘... enquire into the supervision
exercised over the boys, and the measures taken to prevent or put an end to the occurrences,
which gave rise to the recent cases before the Cork Courts’. The Department decided against
bringing the matter specifically to the attention of the bishop, on the basis that it had to be assumed
that he was already aware of the matter.
4.165 The Inspectors conducted their Inspections over two days. They noted that the children were
supervised by teachers during school and trades training, and by the Brothers during recreation.
Night watchmen patrolled the dormitories at night time.
4.166 The Resident Manager, who appeared to have been very much affected by the incidents, stated
he had no intention of concealing them from the Department but that the worry of the cases
caused him to overlook reporting the matter.
4.167 He confirmed that both the Gardaı́ and an ISPCC Inspector had questioned the children as part
of their enquiries. The Manager assured them that stricter controls were in place to ensure that
any such misconduct did not occur, and he was satisfied that the problem had been eradicated
in the School. The Department of Education Inspectors concluded that:
... consistent with the normal freedom of the children the supervision exercised in both
schools is adequate in ordinary circumstances and the recent occurrences will tend to
keep the school authorities on the alert: from what we have learned, however, there is an
ever present danger of these cases arising no matter how well planned the supervision
and this danger is aggravated when, as in the case of Greenmount, a member of the staff
is known to have been implicated. The problem, as we understand it, is for obvious
reasons a most difficult one to deal with and we consider the only action that can be taken
is to impress on the Manager (verbally for preference) of each boys’ school the possibility
of such cases occurring and the necessity for close and constant supervision of the boys,
especially the senior boys, i.e. boys over 14 years of age, in all their activities.
4.168 The Minister for Education approved this recommendation, and the Department’s enquiry into the
matter was closed.
4.169 The Inspectors do not appear to have spoken to the children as part of their enquiry, and seem
to have accepted the assurances of the Resident Manager that sexual activity was no longer a
problem in the School.
4.170 There is further reference to sexual activity among boys contained in the reports of the Provincial
to the General Council of the Presentation Brothers in the mid-1950s. Despite the Provincial being
assured by the Resident Manager, Br Carlito, that the boys were at all times well supervised, he
received a report shortly after visiting the School from a member of another Community that the
boys in Greenmount were engaging in ‘immoral practices’. When this allegation was put to the
Resident Manager, he accepted that he was aware of the problem and had taken steps to deal
with the issue, which involved separating the culprits in the dormitories and requesting the night
watchman to be particularly vigilant. No advice or direction given by the Provincial is recorded,
and the issue does not arise in subsequent reports.
4.171 The difficulty of trying to control sexual behaviour among the boys emerged from the evidence of
a former resident who was transferred to Daingean because he was twice caught engaging in
sexual activity with his peers. He was admitted to Greenmount in the early 1950s when he was
eight years old. He said he learnt about sex from the older boys, and added ‘it was going on with
all the boys’. He would masturbate the older boys and sometimes had anal intercourse. He said:
It is a very powerful thing, you may shy away from it to start. You see, I see the sexual
business as a disease, but once you start getting the feel for it it is like wanting sugar.
4.172 As time went on, he began to engage in sexual activity with younger boys. He pondered the irony
of it all:
I became an abuser myself of a form, that is the way it goes. So because I was put in,
locked up in the first place for committing no crime I ended up committing some kind of
crime in the second place ...
4.173 When asked whether there was any awareness by the adults in charge in Greenmount of the
sexual activity amongst the boys, he said ‘I can only assume that they must have had some idea’.
4.174 • Sexual activity between boys and peer abuse were serious problems in Greenmount.
Despite assurances that it would be dealt with the problem persisted.
Emotional abuse
4.175 In their Opening Statement on Greenmount, the Presentation Brothers expressed the view that
industrial schools were ‘a flawed model’, doomed to failure. They wrote:
Up until the 1960s there was a popularly held belief in Ireland that industrial schools were
an institutional response to cope with the problem of petty crime and delinquency by
young people. This was a misconception. Children convicted of minor criminal offences
were often admitted to industrial schools, But that was usually because they had strayed
into breaking the law due to the absence of parental supervision and neglect. Children
were also admitted for non-attendance at school. That was, again, usually a consequence
of difficult family circumstances. Where one parent had died or departed, an older child
might be required to remain at home in order to rear the other children in the family. The
consequences of social and economic deprivation were addressed by breaking up whole
families, the boys being sent to the Brothers and girls to the nuns.
It is clear that, in hindsight, the industrial school system was not, and could never be, a
success. It was based on a flawed model. No one today would seriously argue that an
institution operating on then approved lines, such as Greenmount, represented an
adequate response to serious social problems suffered by some of the most vulnerable
elements in society. No one would tolerate the Courts regularly making orders having the
effect of separating so many children from their families for up to 8 years. No one would
suggest that a child could be raised on the modern equivalent of 22 shillings a week:
indeed it appears that that task was beyond the Presentation Brothers at that time. (the
Presentation Brothers informed the then Minister for Education, Mr Jack Lynch T. D., that
it was not possible to feed and clothe boys on 22/6 per week in the late 1950s). No one
would suggest that neglected and abandoned children should be housed and cared for
together with, and in the same fashion as, young offenders. No one would consider
lodging such a large number of children of varying ages in single institution with so few
carers.
4.176 They went on to point out that many of the flaws in the system were apparent in 1936, when the
Cussen Commission reported but Cussen’s recommended reforms were not implemented, and ‘a
further 34 years passed before Ireland was prepared to abandon the industrial school as a means
of child care’.
4.177 The Presentation Brothers make several important observations:

1. Most of the children were not criminals but were disturbed because they had
experienced death, or family upheaval, neglect and poverty.
2. The court orders removing them from their families for periods of up to eight years
made matters worse.
3. Separating siblings further broke up the family and thereby caused more distress.
4. The prison-like containment of these children in large secure buildings was
inappropriate and further isolated them from society.
5. It was detrimental to lodge neglected and abandoned children with hardened
delinquents.
6. The number of carers was inadequate, and the funds needed to educate and
rehabilitate the disadvantaged children were far short of what was needed.
4.178 The Statement suggests these flaws became apparent only ‘with hindsight’. Moreover, the
Presentation Brothers blame the failures of the industrial school system on the acceptance of
such a model by society. The report prepared by Professor Keogh ends with the conclusion:
In the public debate in the 1990s on the running of Irish industrial schools attention has
correctly focussed on the manner in which the religious performed their duties. It is
necessary, however, to subject the role of the state to scrutiny. After all, it had the ultimate
responsibility for the running of those institutions ... It is a harsh but nevertheless valid
verdict on the performance of the Irish state in such a central and sensitive social policy
area it arrived with unjustifiable, glacial-like slowness at the conclusion only in 1970 that
the industrial school system was outdated, outmoded and obsolete.
4.179 The question arises as to why so many of the conclusions that were obvious after 1970 were not
evident much earlier.
4.180 One witness, who was in Greenmount for a year in the mid-1940s, was the second eldest of
seven children. His father worked in England during the war, and the family were regularly
summonsed for non-attendance at school. He told the Committee:
When we were sentenced we went with a guard ... There was me, [my two brothers, the
Garda], and my Mam we were taken to the industrial school. We were taken in. My Mam
was crying and we were crying. Then my Mam came out, the guard came out and we
were there, that was our sentence, we were there then for four years, whatever we were
sentenced to.
4.181 While he was in Greenmount, his older brother died from tubercular meningitis. He recalled this
event:
when we went to the infirmary, me and [my younger brother], like I said, we were so close,
we asked to see him but we were not allowed to see him ... He went into the infirmary
and then they moved him out through – we used call it the union, which was the hospital
in Cork, and the next time I saw my brother ... was when he was in the death house,
when he was laid out. That's the only time I seen him ... when I found out how he was
dead, we came from school and we were in the playground, or the yard, or whatever you
call it, and we were going into the dinner and we went into dinner and the boy next to me
said " [your brother] is dead". That's how I found out. It just came like that ... I went spare.
There was such a shock, even when he was in hospital we didn't know what he was there
for. When we were in the infirmary we asked to see him but we weren't allowed to see him.
4.182 He also talked about the difficulty they had in relation to contact with their mother:
She used come to visit us but she weren't let in. So I didn't have difficulty contacting her,
I wasn't allowed ... She told us she was turned away. Even if we seen her there was
nothing we could do about it, she was turned away. Br Arrio used say no, she's not coming
in because she used to bring us food parcels ... she was turned away. Sometimes we
used get them.
4.183 Another witness, who was there in the 1950s, recounted how he found out, when he was about
13, that his mother was alive. He had been admitted into Greenmount from another institution
where he had been since a baby. He told the Committee how he made this discovery:
I never knew [my] father, no, or my mother ... I didn't know anything about her at all ... It
came about because people in the School used to write home, if they had parents they
were allowed to write home once a month their parents and if you didn't write home you
went to the back of the class. I think it [was] Br. Allente, I think that's his name, names
are hard to come by now. He said, "Don't you write to anybody?" I said, "No, I don't."
About three months later as I went into the classroom, on a blackboard on an easel which
[a woman’s name and address] and I was told write to that person. That's your mother ...
I did write to her under duress at that time. [She wrote back] and she told me I had two
stepsisters ... I never had contact with her other than writing ... I have tried various times
to contact her but the advice given by the local police and by the local parish priest was
that it is best left alone after all those years.
On one visit to Ireland, my son was eight at the time, I actually drove up from Cork ... and
parked outside the assumed address and just parked and then drove away again.
Because one didn't want to go and knock on a door and say, "I'm your son", because the
mother has feelings as well, she has had her life since I have not been there so I didn't
want to interrupt.
It has impacted very much so, because when I went to England you don't have anybody
to relate to, so you are always worrying – I don't know, it is hard to explain but if your
parents are missing, if you don't know where they are – or who your parents are your
peace of mind is even to go there at the end – if I come over this year or next year to
Ireland, even if she has passed away, it would be to see the grave and say that's laid to
rest now and there is no further gain to be got. But it has impacted. It impacts throughout
your whole life because when you have your own family you have no role models, you
have nothing to bring up your family.
4.184 The Brother in this case noticed the loneliness of this boy who knew nothing of his parents. He
did his best to help the son contact his mother. This witness remembered him as the Brother who
found his mother for him.
4.185 This same witness spoke well of a system, set up by the Presentation Brothers, where boys were
sent to visit families in Cork on a regular basis. He said:
Say for argument’s sake, every first Sunday of the month, I think it was every first Sunday
of the month, one of the families in Cork would take one of the orphans out to their home
and you would spend a day in their home. At the end of the day they might give you
lemon sweets or something to take back, a little bag of sweets.
4.186 The importance of this regular contact with a family emerged when he disclosed to them that an
older boy was bullying him. He explained the circumstances:
I think what actually triggered it off, because I didn’t confide in them, you didn’t have a lot
to say to people actually, you were just taken and if they said “Get in the car” you got in
the car. If they said “dinner was ready” you ate your dinner. You didn’t confide in them in
so much as what school was about, you actually didn’t. It came about when she made
this awful red and white coat, or red and black coat for me that made me look like – it
was a sort of girl’s outfit and I started to cry and it just happened from there on. So sort
of one thing led to another and it was an emotion that was coming out. I didn’t specifically
go and say, “I have been beaten up”. So it sort of came out from that particular incident.
I wouldn’t wear the coat.
4.187 He learned later, when he was going to work and calling back to visit this family from time to time,
that they had complained to Greenmount on his behalf. His attachment to this family, the first he
had known because he was raised in institutions, revealed the importance of such relationships
to a maturing child.
4.188 By arranging such weekends, the Presentation Brothers were showing their awareness that the
children needed more than the Institution could provide. The warning in the 1901 Visitation Report
remained part of the culture:
Familiarities with the boys should be most cautiously guarded against, being most hurtful
to boys and Brothers ... there should always be maintained a reserve that would keep
them at a proper distance and enable them to have for the Brothers that respect due to
their position.
4.189 Many Brothers remained remote figures, who kept control, but who did not show warmth or
sympathy and, in their turn, the children learned not to show their feelings. An injury was done to
both parties by this unnatural suppression of feelings.
4.190 Without an adult as a protector and confidante, the orphans clung to each other and formed a
bond. One witness told the Committee:
... we used to confide in each [other] quite a bit, and more so the people who didn’t have
families outside were more vulnerable because we didn’t have anybody to complain to
and we always sort of knitted together, if you didn’t have a mother and father you sort of
knitted with people of that ilk, because you – the others were different. They were actually
different from us, the boys from outside, they had a different way of doing things, different
outlook because they always saw something on the outside, we never saw anything on
the outside ...
4.191 These boys were not just cut off from the outside world: they were cut off from people who knew
the outside world.

Contact with families
4.192 Greenmount had a major advantage being in Cork city, and so contact with families was easily
arranged. Boys from Cork city were allowed home visits on the first Sunday of every month. Boys
whose families lived further away were allowed home on summer holidays. In the 1940 annual
report from the Brothers to the Department of Education, the Resident Manager noted:
I believe the Home Leave and Sunday outings have a very beneficial effect – the Boys
being kept in touch with their relations and friends, and they grow up having some
knowledge of the outside world as well as breaking up the monotony of every day
school life.
4.193 As illustrated above, those who had no families to go home to were sometimes sent to a
sponsoring family on Sundays and for summer holidays. Many boys benefited from this regular
contact with family life. When Bishop Lucey visited the School in 1955, he expressed the view
that the boys should be let out ‘as much as possible so as by the time they would be finished
here, they would have some idea of outside world’.
4.194 Boys who were placed in orphanages from their very early childhood suffered from being totally
ignorant of their family roots. One witness told the Committee of how his mother left him in
Rathdrum when he was six, visited him on the day of his admission, and ‘that was it’. He never
saw her again. Subsequently, he made contact with his maternal uncle by chance:
When I joined the army in Cork the recruiting sergeant asked me my name and he said,
“Did your uncle work here?” or “Was your uncle in the army?” I says, “I don’t know if I
have any uncle.” That’s how I found out he was in the army.
4.195 He met his uncle, but they were unable to find his mother. He never knew if she was alive or dead.
4.196 He spent a total of nine years and three months in institutions. That still rankled with him. He said,
simply, ‘My childhood was taken away’.
Neglect
Department of Education – General Inspection Reports

4.197 The main source of contemporary evidence about conditions in Greenmount is Inspection Reports
of Dr Anna McCabe, who was appointed Medical Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools
on 3rd April 1939. She held the post until 8th March 1965. She also carried out general inspections
of the schools.
4.198 Her first impression in 1939 was positive, and she could not find fault with any aspect of the
School. However, her report in 1943 was critical of the patched and tattered appearance of the
children’s clothes. It was only in the late 1940s that she expressed satisfaction with the quality of
the children’s clothing.
4.199 During this period, she also expressed dissatisfaction with the children’s diet. On consulting weight
charts, she noticed that a number of children had not increased in weight. Added to this concern
was the fact that there had been several cases of TB in the School. She recommended that the
Department write to the Resident Manager, advising that the rations of milk and butter given to
each child be increased to ensure that each child received at least a pint of milk a day. They did
this and also advised that each child receive a quarter pound of meat at each meal at which
meat was served. The Resident Manager responded, confirming that they would use their best
endeavours to increase rations despite ‘our crushing debt’.
4.200 With regard to the outbreak of TB, Dr McCabe met with the School’s medical officer, who was
anxious that the entire School be investigated, and Dr McCabe made representations to the local
TB Officer in Cork. He did not share the same anxieties, but agreed to carry out an investigation
of the School if further cases emerged.
4.201 In 1947, Dr McCabe noted that the food and diet had much improved and that the children looked
healthy and well.
4.202 Dr McCabe was absent due to illness for periods in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is a
note that she inspected the School in 1951, but a record of this report is not available. The next
report of note is dated November 1953. Br Domingo35 had recently taken over the position of
Resident Manager. She noted in her report that, by his own admission, he did not have any
experience of running an industrial school. She made a number of suggestions for improvements,
including the instalment of up-to-date kitchen equipment, and improved clothing and diet. She
also discovered, on visiting the bakery, that the ventilation system was not working and that fumes
were being released inside. The Department followed up this latter issue by writing to the Resident
Manager, requesting confirmation that the matter had been attended to, and a reply was received
by return confirming that measures had been taken to ensure that the problem did not arise again.
4.203 When she visited the School next, almost a year later, Br Carlito had taken over as Resident
Manager. He also informed her that he had little in the way of experience in running an industrial
school. She noted the School had recently been redecorated but was in need of modernisation in
many respects.
4.204 Three months later, Dr McCabe was requested to carry out another Inspection of the School, after
the mother of a resident complained to the Department that her son had head lice. In general
terms, she noted a decline in the standards at the School, which she suggested may have had
something to do with the inexperience of the new Resident Manager. She inspected each child’s
head and was dismayed to find ‘35 boys with nits in their heads and 12 verminous. I consider a
shocking state of affairs’. Br Carlito attempted to apportion blame to the School nurse, who he
said insisted that her remit extended only to treating sick children. Dr McCabe noted that the
majority of the boys who had contracted head lice were in the age group 8 to 12 years, and she
felt that the problem stemmed from a lack of supervision of the boys’ personal hygiene. She
suggested that the nurse’s salary be increased, in return for her agreement to supervise the boys
in the dressing room to ensure that they washed properly.
4.205 The following year, Dr McCabe observed many improvements. The redecorating of the School
continued, new equipment had been introduced to the kitchen, the children’s health was very
good, and their clothing had improved. Br Carlito indicated to her that he was concerned about
falling numbers in the School.
4.206 When Dr McCabe next visited the School in November 1956, Br Santiago had taken over the post
of Resident Manager. She described him as ‘a great improvement on the previous man’, although
she had not expressed reservations about the Resident Manager in her previous year’s report.
While she noted that the School was well run, the boys’ clothing once again came in for criticism.
She noticed that many of the shirts had no buttons. She also highlighted the need for each boy
to be given a toothbrush and to ensure that they used them.
4.207 The 1957 report is again critical of many aspects of the School. Even though efforts at redecoration
had been made, she stated that ‘so much needs to be done to make this School bright and
attractive’. The play hall was ‘dank and unattractive’. Despite the improvements in the kitchen, the
35

cooking methods used were still very antiquated. Clothing had slightly improved, in that the boys
were given waistcoats, but there was still much room for improvement. The Resident Manager
put these deficiencies down to a lack of funds. On a more positive note, Dr McCabe emphasised
that the supervision and medical care of the boys was very good.
4.208 Dr McCabe’s final Inspection of Greenmount took place on 29th October 1958. She stated that Br
Santiago and the nurse were both attentive and kind to the boys. She noted a slight improvement
in the boys’ clothing. She recommended several improvements, that Br Santiago seemed to take
on board. She emphasised the need to brighten up the School by further redecoration.
4.209 In 1949, a Fine Gael Councillor wrote to the Department of Education regarding complaints he
had received in relation to conditions in Greenmount. His letter was in response to the most recent
complaint he had received from a mother of a boy in Greenmount. Her 11-year-old boy had been
sent to Greenmount because she and her husband were being treated for TB, and they had no
option but to have their young family committed to industrial schools.
4.210 She made representations to the Councillor to assist her in having her son released into the care
of her father, after she discovered that he was not well cared for in Greenmount. She had found
his clothes crawling with vermin. The Councillor wrote:
For some time past this Executive has been receiving complaints regarding the treatment
given to the boys at Greenmount. The boys are made get up at 7a.m. and have to wash
portion of the dormitories before breakfast which consists of a cup of black coffee and a
couple of slices of dry bread. After this they go to school until 2.30p.m. when they get
their next meal, which, on one day last week consisted of potatoes and lemonade. Besides
this we have received at last four complaints regarding the verminous state of the
children’s clothes, and I have myself verified one case ... These complaints have become
so numerous that we were considering whether to report it to the City Health Authorities
and the Minister for Health. It is of no use making any official enquiries.
The only way to get at the root of all these complaints is to have some of the Health and
Education Authorities visit the place without warning.
We don’t like having to report things like this, as they only create trouble but the time has
come when something has to be done about them.
4.211 The Minister asked Dr Anna McCabe, the Department’s Medical Inspector, to investigate the
matter and report her findings directly to him.
4.212 Also at this time, a Garda from Union Quay Station wrote to the Department of Education
requesting that, the next time an Inspector was in Cork, they call him regarding a matter which he
did not wish to commit to paper. He wrote again some weeks later, after a telephone conversation
with an official from the Department of Education, and this time the Garda set out his concerns:
For some time past I have been receiving complaint from parents having children in
Greenmount Ind Schools, these complaints are in respect of clothing and food. One
mother complained that a child of hers is in School 12 months and he has the same pair
of boots on him as he took in with him, that he has colds continually from neglect. I have
got several complaints recently about footwear from parents having children in this School.
A number of complaints have also been received about food which appears to be of poor
quality. One complaint was that soup supplied to the children is a week old and sour when
given to them. No tea and no sugar or coffee or cocoa, bread very scant supply with no
butter only margarine.
I am not relying on all the complaints received, to be genuine but I have the word of a
lady Cook who worked there and has no reason for confirming the complaints I have
received for some time. I have all called to the School myself and in my opinion they
children are not near as healthy or as well fed looking ... They look cold and miserable
looking. The lady who was cook there says some of the food given to the children [was]
not fit for dogs and that she says was one of the reasons for leaving.
Now I am a particular friend of the Bros’ in Greenmount and has no wish to do any injury
to them and their good work; which is at times difficult but I consider I owe a duty towards
these children owing to the position I hold and as a representative of the Dept. of
Education.
I do hope this matter will be treated in confidence as I do not wish it to be known that it
was I brought this matter to notice.
4.213 Dr McCabe was unable to investigate the matter immediately as she was on sick leave from the
Department. However, she did visit the office and was asked by a Department official for her view
on the allegations contained in the Councillor’s letter. He made the following note:
Dr McCabe said that she considered, from her experience, that Greenmount was a very
well conducted Industrial School. On all occasions on which she visited the school, the
food for the children was of a very good quality, and she could find no evidence to justify
the present complaint with regard to the care taken of the children from the point of view
of their personal cleanliness. Her visits were frequently without previous notification, so
that it could not be suggested, in her opinion, that conditions as she found them were
designed specially because of her visit.
4.214 Dr McCabe visited Greenmount in September 1949 to investigate the complaints made. She
interviewed the Garda who had made the complaint, and also the cook who had worked in
Greenmount and was now employed in the Garda station. She was not impressed by the account
given by the cook, who alleged that ‘the boys were taken out into the courtyard and were stripped
and beaten with leashes – that they were ill-fed and never got sugar or tea, and that the little boys
who helped her in her kitchen ... were always ravenous for food’. She then visited the School and
had each boy undressed. She could not see any signs of injury or ill-treatment.
4.215 She stated that she was present when several meals were served to the boys and that they were
‘always ample and inviting’. Sugar was put into the boilers rather than into bowls on the table, as
was the practice in many schools, to avoid waste. She observed that coffee was served to the
boys at one meal, and requested that tea be served instead. The Resident Manager explained
that this practice had started during the Emergency, when tea was in poor supply, and agreed
that it would desist. She found all areas of the School well kept and clean. She also found that all
of the boys had boots which were in good condition, and that repairs were carried out when
necessary. She did discover that four boys were verminous and, on enquiring, she was told that
these boys had been home for holidays and that the School had difficulty cleaning them up on
their return. She suggested plentiful use of DDT and more frequent bathing.
4.216 She surmised that the woman who had complained to the Garda about the School bore a grudge
because she was summarily dismissed after a short time working there: ‘most of her evidence
was conjecture as she had never been in the boys refectory and I do not think anyone would
believe her story about the public beatings in the court yard’. She noted that the Medical Officer
and nurse always spoke highly of the School, and was satisfied that, if any unkindness was
displayed towards the children, they would have informed her in the best interests of the children.
In conclusion, she found that the allegations made were without foundation ‘and that the school
continues to be as well run as usual’.
4.217 The Department accepted these conclusions and that was the end of the matter.
4.218 Dr McCabe appears to have disregarded the eyewitness accounts of neglect at Greenmount. She
seems to have taken a dislike to the lay person who made some of the allegations, and dismissed
all of the complaints on that basis. Garda Bracken37 stated that he had received several complaints
from parents regarding food and clothing. He himself had called to the School and was of the
opinion that the children were not healthy. He went as far as to describe them as cold and
miserable looking. The parent who complained to the local Councillor was so troubled by the
condition in which she found her son that she refused to go to the sanatorium for vital treatment
for TB until her son was removed from the Institution. The Councillor felt compelled to write to the
Department, setting out his concerns regarding conditions in Greenmount, as his office had
received numerous complaints of neglect. Dr McCabe made no mention of these complaints in
her report. She also dismissed too easily the allegation that boys were stripped and beaten in
the courtyard.
4.219 Dr McCabe had been critical of food and clothing in Greenmount in the mid-1940s. It was not until
1947 that she noted that food and diet had ‘improved’. She did not make another official Inspection
until 1951, but that report has not survived. Her next report was in 1953, and she had a number
of suggestions to make regarding the running of Greenmount.
Evidence on conditions from the Presentation Brothers’ annals and records

4.220 The annals of 1955 record that the boys were bought new boots ‘as their ordinary everyday boots
made noise like that of an army on parade’, new raincoats that ‘should last for at least five years’,
and ‘good warm jackets instead of jerseys ... for the winter months’. The profit from a concert of
£50 ‘helped to pay off some of the bill for the overcoats’. Dr McCabe had criticised the clothing
several times in the 1950s, and an effort was being made to respond to her comments.
4.221 The Provincial Report to the General Council in 1957 noted that the boys appeared ‘ragged and
unkempt’. It went on to say:
I am convinced that all the uplift which we – a religious body should give – is not being
given. We should be able to do something for them and make something out of them and
do more than merely keep them. All my suggestions to this, and in fact to any matter,
were turned down by the Superior as Utopian, impractical, and impossible.
4.222 This pessimism about being able to do more for the boys caused Professor Keogh to conclude,
‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that demoralisation had set in within the community as a
consequence of the inquiry’. It was, of course, at this time that two Brothers were removed from
their posts after a canonical inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children. The report certainly
makes it clear that food, clothing and hygiene often fell below acceptable standards. The quality
of care varied according to the quality of the Resident Manager, and internal controls did not seem
to exist.
Department of Education – Medical Inspection Reports

4.223 Dr McCabe also reported on medical matters affecting the School. Generally, her reports were
very positive.
4.224 She noted in her report of November 1943 that there were five cases of scabies in the School
which required treatment. One boy required treatment for syphilis.
4.225 The next medical report which warrants comment is from the early 1950s. Dr McCabe made
reference to the inadequacy of the boys’ diet, and made suggestions for improvement to the newly
37

appointed Resident Manager, Br Domingo. She reiterated these concerns the following year to
his successor, Br Carlito, and also suggested that new cooking equipment should be purchased.
4.226 In December 1954, Dr McCabe was asked to investigate an outbreak of head lice at the School,
already referred to above. Her comments regarding the nurse had, up to this point, been very
complimentary. In this report, she was critical of the inflexible approach taken by the nurse to only
attend to sick children, and suggested an increase in her salary to correspond with a widening of
her duties. She once again expressed concern at the children’s diet and the antiquated cooking
equipment.
4.227 She also registered her unease at the presence of two boys whose parents were in a TB
sanatorium. The boys had tested negative for TB, but she felt that they posed a risk and should
not be in the School. They were also very delicate and unfit for industrial training. The Department
subsequently wrote to the School, requesting that the boys be transferred to a more suitable
institution. The boys underwent further x-rays, and it was revealed that one of the boys was in
fact suffering from TB. He was released on supervision certificate to a children’s hospital, and his
brother was permitted to stay until his father was in a position to take him home.
4.228 The following year, the nurse was praised for having ‘much improved and taken a greater interest
in the school as a whole’.
4.229 The report of November 1956 is in the same vein, and Dr McCabe noted improvement in the
general hygiene of the children who were now very well supervised. She emphasised, once again,
the necessity for each boy to have his own toothbrush and to use it regularly.
4.230 The last two Medical Inspection Reports both focus on the inadequacy of the cooking facilities,
which had repercussions for the quality of the boys’ diet. The Resident Manager, Br Santos,37 was
singled out for praise as being kind and attentive to the boys.
Aftercare
4.231 The annual reports furnished by the School to the Department of Education stated that children
released on supervision certificate were supervised by the School by means of visits and
correspondence. They also stated that former pupils returned to the School for visits and also
corresponded with the Brothers. No details were provided to the Investigation Committee
regarding aftercare provided to boys discharged from the School.
Closure of Greenmount
4.232 The first indication that the Presentation Brothers were considering closing Greenmount was noted
in Dr McCabe’s Inspection Report dated November 1952. She stated that the Manager had
indicated to her that, once numbers fell below 150, the School would resign the certificate because
it would cease to be economically practicable. The following year, numbers did drop to just below
150, and, apart from a slight increase in 1954, numbers remained below 150.
4.233 In March 1959, the Chief Inspector of Industrial Schools at the Department of Education wrote:
Bro. Goyo38 of the General Council of the Presentation Brothers, Mount St. Joseph Cork
called in to the office about six weeks ago and told me in strict confidence that his order
was considering closing Greenmount Industrial School. He enquired what the procedure
should be. I told him that under Section 48 of the Children's Act 1908 the Managers may
on giving six months notice in writing to the Minister for Education resign the Certificate.
37
38

He was anxious to know whether the six months interval between the giving of the notice
and the evacuating of the school would be insisted on and I informed him that we would
do our best to arrange for the transfer of the boys in Greenmount to some other school
or schools as quickly as possible.
Bro. Goyo rang me on the 17th Feb. and said his Provincial and he with the Res. Manager
of Greenmount were anxious to meet me to discuss matters bearing on the closing of the
Greenmount School. I met the three of them in the School on the 26th Feb. I pointed out
to them that before considering the transfer of Greenmount school boys elsewhere we
should contact the Res. Manager of Upton School to ascertain how many boys from
Greenmount he would be prepared to accept. The great majority of the Greenmount Boys
are from Cork City and County. We (the provincial and Res. Manager and I) arranged to
meet [the] Res. Manager of Upton School and we told him in confidence that Greenmount
school was to be closed and we asked him how many boys from that school he could
accept on transfer into his school. [The Resident Manager of Upton] promised to consider
the matter and let us know as soon as possible. He notified us on the 3rd instant that his
school could accommodate 105 of the Greenmount boys. I further discussed with the Res.
Manager of Greenmount the distribution of the boys and asked him on the 11th instant to
furnish lists of the proposed transfer. He has contacted the Resident Managers of Upton,
Artane, Tralee & Glin Schools and has recommended the transfer of the boys as follows
Upton 98, Artane 9, Tralee 4, Glin 3.
The General Council of the Presentation Brothers is very anxious that Greenmount as an
Industrial School be closed as from the 31st March, 1959 and the Resident Manager of
Upton is anxious to have a decision on the matter as early as possible in order to arrange
for the appointment of two extra teachers.
Schedules of the proposed transfers are attached for the Minister's signature.
4.234 Written in manuscript at the end of the letter is the note, ‘Greenmount Arrangements will be made
for the transfer of the boys on 31/3/59’. The six months’ notice in writing required under the Act
was being waived.
4.235 By contrast, the Department attempted to enforce the six-month rule on Newtownforbes when the
Sisters of Mercy withdrew in 1969.
4.236 On 16th February 1959, the Resident Manager, Br Ernesto,39 wrote to the Chief Inspector:
Dear Sir.
The General Council of the Presentation Brothers has decided to close Greenmount as
an Industrial School. I, accordingly wish to know:
(i) If the boys at present in this school can be suitably accommodated in the other
Industrial Schools of the country.
(ii) If so, when may we hope that the evacuation can be conveniently carried out.
While I realize that the statutory period of notice for closing is six months, the General
Council is anxious to effect the closing as quickly as possible.
I hope to hear from you as early as possible, as we wish to arrange at an early date for
the renovation of the building for other purposes.
For various reasons, I should like to have this matter treated in strict confidence.
39

4.237 There is no written explanation of what was meant by ‘the renovation of the building for other
purposes’, nor was an explanation given as to why there was a need for such haste. Again, the
Chief Inspector is exhorted to treat the matter in ‘strict confidence’.
4.238 The Chief Inspector replied, asking for the particulars of the boys to be transferred and asked for
the following to be done:
(1) The local authorities liable under the Children Acts to be informed.
(2) The five boys detained under the Health Act, 1953 to be transferred to Tralee by
arrangement with the local authorities.
(3) Boys committed but whose period of detention was soon to expire to be released on
supervision certificates.
4.239 He ended with the caution that no action was to be taken without the approval of the Minister for
Education. In this otherwise thorough and methodical letter, no mention was made about informing
the parents of the boys who were to be moved.
4.240 On 12th March, the Resident Manager duly provided the data needed. The schools at Upton,
Artane, Glin and Tralee had been contacted and had agreed to the transfer of boys to their
respective institutions. The letter ended:
Regarding the notification of Transfer to be sent to the Local Authorities, can I presume
that the transfers will be put into effect on 31st March and mention that date to them?
4.241 The local authorities were, in effect, to be presented with a fait accompli.
4.242 On 23rd March 1959, the Department wrote to the Resident Manager that the Minister had
sanctioned the transfer of the boys under detention as follows:
Release – term expired 1

Release – supervision certificate 12
Transferred to Upton 98
Transferred to Artane 9
Transferred to Tralee 4
Transferred to Glin 3
Total 127
4.243 With one small change (one extra boy was discharged and 97 went to Upton), the transfers took
place on the agreed date. On 31st March, the Resident Manager wrote the following letter to the
Chief Inspector:
I wish to inform you that all the boys have been disposed of to-day as arranged by
previous discussion and correspondence with the exception of six boys, victims of
influenza, whom we have detained in the school until recovery and three boys who are in
hospital. We will arrange for the transport of these boys to their different schools when
they are fit to travel.
I would like to take this opportunity of expressing sincere thanks on my own behalf and
on behalf of the Superior General, for having treated this whole matter of disposing of the
boys so expeditiously.
4.244 The matter was not finished here, however. The decision to close the School was initially made
without consultation with the Bishop. The Superior General visited the bishop on 16th January 1959
to inform him of the fact that the Brothers intended closing the School and opening a Juniorate for
aspiring Brothers. The Bishop sought expert opinion on canon law on the subject, and wrote the
following letter to the Superior General:
Dear Brother Jose,
I got your letter of. Jan 29th and, in view of your having told me (a) that you had already
made arrangements with the Department about closing down Greenmount as an Industrial
School and (b) that my permission was not necessary for your doing this and using the
building as an extension to your Juniorate, I took expert opinion in Canon Law. That
opinion is that my permission is required by Canon 497. There is question of closing down
an Industrial School and opening an additional Juniorate. Can. 497 allows only changes
pertaining to the internal management, etc to be made without referring to the Ordinary,
whereas arrangements about your Juniorate may be regarded as pertaining to the
internum regimen, the change from or concerning the Industrial School cannot be
regarded as an internal one. As well there is the possibility that it was precisely in order
to have this school there that you got the foundation at Greenmount originally.
In the circumstances, therefore, I have to inform you that Canon 497 has to be complied
with and I have formally to register a protest at your having made arrangements with
public authority to close down this schola or hospitium without first acquainting, much less
having the permission of ecclesiastical authority; namely the Ordinarius Bishop of Cork.
That I am quite agreeable to such change, when duly arranged, is another matter.
4.245 The Bishop was correct in his surmise that ‘it was precisely in order to have this school there that
you got the foundation at Greenmount originally’. There was at least an ethical difficulty about
taking property given at a peppercorn rent to provide a home for boys ‘untrained, steeped in
misery, and with no means of support’ and to use it for an entirely different purpose. The Superior
General replied as follows:
In your letter to-day you state that you would like us to put before you the reasons for the
proposed change. Those reasons are as follows:—
1. Over a period of years, the constant decline in numbers has made the working of
the establishment uneconomic, and consequently difficult to cater adequately for
the temporal needs of the boys. We believe that if the temporal needs of the boys
are not sufficiently catered for, their spiritual and moral well-being will suffer, and
the Institution will fail to achieve its purpose.
2. We are satisfied that the public good and the good of the boys will not suffer as a
result of the closing of the school. We understand that there is ample
accommodation in other Industrial Schools in Munster for all the boys who are
now in Greenmount. Consequently we feel that the need for Greenmount as an
Industrial School no longer exists.
3. Because of the difficulty of providing suitably trained Brothers to staff such an
Institution – Greenmount being the only school of its kind which we have in Ireland.
4. If we cannot use Greenmount as an extra Juniorate, we must build now, and at
short notice, an extension to Douglas Juniorate, or provide alternative
accommodation.
These are the reasons, my Lord, which we believe justify us in applying to you now for
the necessary permission to effect the proposed change. I am sorry that this has been
the cause of so much worry and trouble to you.
With dutiful respects [etc].
4.246 On 11th February, the Bishop replied that, as the boys had suitable alternative accommodation,
and as the Presentation Brothers were going to give up their holding in Passage parish, he was
going to agree to the plan.
4.247 The fourth reason was the only pressing one. The other three had been problems over the
preceding years, and they did not need to be addressed with such urgency.
4.248 An unexpected question arose soon after the closure of the School, when the Minister for
Education, Mr Jack Lynch, was asked if there was any proposal to re-form the band of
Greenmount in any other local institute in the Cork area. In the notes prepared for the Minister’s
reply, to be given on 9th April 1959, the following statement was made:
In arranging for the dispersal of the boys every care was taken to ensure that the transfers
would cause the least possible inconvenience to the boys’ parents or guardians.
4.249 However, the document went on to add:

The boys’ parents/guardians were not advised of the intention to close Greenmount until
the day the boys travelled to their new schools. This information was deliberately withheld
for reasons of school discipline and lest it would create an unsettling effect in the minds
of the boys.
Thirty two boys were allowed home on Easter Sunday and had they known of the
proposed arrangements it is quite likely many of them would not have returned to school.
Should a supplementary question be asked, the Minister might say that: “It is considered
that earlier notification to the parents might result in unsettling or upsetting the boys
concerned in advance of their transfer”.
Of the 29 boys in the school from the Dublin area Artane were prepared to receive only
those committed for non-indictable offences, i.e. a total of 9 boys. The remaining 20 boys
would have been discontented had they known beforehand that they were being sent to
Upton and not to Artane.
4.250 The Dáil debate for 9th April records that Mr Stephen Barrett T.D. first asked the Minister about
the band, and then asked if the Minister would ‘state the circumstances under which it became
necessary to close down Greenmount ... details of the average number of boys in the institute for
each of the three years prior to the close down, and the number on 31st March, 1959; and details
of the manner in which the boys were dispersed upon the closing down and the manner in which
Cork City and County will be catered for in this respect in future’.
4.251 The Minister gave his replies and indicated he had no choice in the matter of the closure. He said,
‘The conductors of this institution desired to resign the Certificate under which it was recognised
as an Industrial School and I had no option but to accede to their request’. He did not state that
the closure could have been delayed legally for six months.
4.252 Mr Barrett then asked:

Is the Minister aware that these children were dispersed without any prior discussion with
their parents and that, in fact, the parents were not aware that the children had been
removed from the industrial school to other industrial schools until after the dispersal had
taken place?
4.253 The Minister’s reply was:

I understand that is the situation but that the conductors of the school did so for what they
considered good and sufficient reason and that there was no intention whatever to ignore
parental rights or to disregard their interests. They did so in the best interests of the
management and conduct of the school.

4.254 Mr Barrett then asked:
Is the Minister aware that, in fact, the interests of the parents were ignored and that the
promoters of this industrial school knew that they were ignoring the rights of the parents
and, without any prior discussion or notice to them, removed the children and does he
approve of that?
4.255 Mr J Lynch replied:

I think it ought to be made clear that they acted strictly within their rights and within the
terms of the Children Act, 1908, which governs the conduct of industrial schools.
4.256 Mr Barrett pressed the matter further. He asked:

Does the Minister agree that it is a very bad precedent in such matters and would he
indicate that if any further industrial schools are being dispersed this precedent should
not be followed?
4.257 An Ceann Comhairle protested, ‘That seems to be a separate matter’, but Mr Lynch went on to
reply, ignoring his Department’s brief. He said, ‘It is very unlikely to arise again, I am sure’. This
assurance from the Minister, that the way in which Greenmount closed was a precedent that
would not be repeated, was as close as he came to expressing disapproval of the way the closure
was handled.
Conclusions
4.258 • The secrecy surrounding the closure of Greenmount meant that the rights of the
parents, and the emotional needs of the boys, were both ignored. It was carried out in
a way that suited ‘the best interests of the management and conduct of the school’
without any regard for the right of parents to know where their children were being
taken, or concern for the boys, who were suddenly transferred without any time to
prepare themselves for the move. Parents were clearly upset, because they asked their
TD to raise the matter in the Dáil.
• The documents concerning the closure show no compassion or concern for the boys’
emotions. The boys were kept in ignorance of the fact they were going to be moved
from an institution they had lived in for months and, in many cases, years. To many,
it was their home. Only at the last moment were they told where they were going to be
taken. To many, this news must have been a shock causing much distress.
On the changing nature of the boys in Greenmount

4.259 The letter to the Bishop of Cork from the Superior General had cited ‘the difficulty of providing
suitably trained Brothers to staff such an Institution’ as one of the four reasons for closing. During
Phase III, Br Minehane expanded on this problem. He explained that, in the 1950s, ‘Boys were
assigned to Greenmount from the Dublin area and that created further problems’. The problems
were related to discipline. The Dublin boys were more challenging of authority. They were
hardened and street-wise. Br Minehane said, ‘we were dealing with a new and more difficult client,
and ... training and expertise was required’. While the numbers of Brothers dealing with the pupils
in Greenmount was about the same all the time, the management and care of the new kind of
boy required an expertise and training that was not available to the Presentation Brothers.
4.260 Professor Keogh concluded his report for the Presentation Brothers as follows:
This was the central point made in the report of the 1934–6 commission of inquiry –
children in industrial schools were not ‘children apart’; however, they were still being
criminalised in the public mind without any justification ... Industrial school children ought,
accordingly, to have been treated and cherished as children and as citizens of the Irish
state with rights under the constitution. But it seems that in Ireland in the 1930s, 40s and
50s the ‘old idea’ of treating such children as ‘a class apart’ had not yet ceased to be part
of the mind-set of a society that was all-too-willing to seek an answer for complex social
problems behind the closed doors of state-funded under-resourced institutions. It was
tidier that way.
General conclusions
4.261 1. A harsh regime with excessive corporal punishment was implemented by one Resident
Manager, who continued to serve as a senior Brother after his period of office, and
would accordingly have influenced the policy of the School, but there was evidence
of a softening of the regime in subsequent years. No formal record was kept, as
required by the regulations.
2. The Congregation and the Department of Education failed to supervise properly and
were insufficiently objective. They placed too much reliance on the Resident Manager
for information on how the boys were cared for and did not have independent
investigation. Evidence of mistreatment was ignored.
3. The 1955 investigations into sexual abuse revealed grave failures on the part of the
Congregation and the Diocese, and let two persons who were believed to be guilty of
sexual abuse to continue careers dealing with children.
4. The interests of the Congregation were prioritised in the manner in which Greenmount
was closed, and the lack of information to the parents and the boys themselves, by
both the Congregation and the Department of Education, showed an indifference to
the people most affected by the closure.

Chapter 5
Our Lady of Good Counsel, Lota,

Glanmire, County Cork (‘Lota’),
1939–1999
Introduction
5.01 Our Lady of Good Counsel, Lota was founded in 1938 as a school catering for children with
learning disabilities. It continues to be managed by the Brothers of Charity. Among its other
services, the Congregation also operates a similar facility located at Holy Family School
Woodlands, Renmore, County Galway.
5.02 There have been six separate investigations by An Garda Sı́ochána into allegations of sexual
abuse of the residents by members of staff of Lota.
5.03 Two Brothers of the Congregation were convicted of crimes of sexual abuse of children resident
in Lota in the period 1952 to 1984.
5.04 In 2002, evidence was taken from three complainant witnesses and three respondents, two of
whom had been convicted of sexual abuse offences and a third Brother of Charity respondent
who admitted a single incident of sexual abuse while working in Lota. This chapter is based on
evidence from those hearings and an analysis of discovered documents.
History
5.05 The Congregation of the Brothers of Charity was founded in Ghent, Belgium on 28th December
1807 by Canon Joseph Peter Triest, with the purpose of taking care of elderly men at the Byloke
Hospital in that city. After three years of setbacks, the Novitiate started in 1810, and the first
Brothers of Charity took their vows on 26th November 1811. Within a decade, Canon Triest and
his Brothers had set up several charitable services that they would develop worldwide. The special
aim of this Congregation was the sanctification of its members in the religious state by the exercise
of works of charity, which, in the spirit of its founder, embraced every phase of moral and physical
suffering and want. They tended the sick, sheltered the poor, cared for the aged, provided for
those with learning disability, and raised orphan children. They opened their first service in Ireland
in 1883 to provide for mental health needs.
5.06 In the beginning of 1938, the Chief Inspector of Mental Hospitals announced his retirement, and
before he left office he expressed his wish that the Brothers of Charity would open a second
centre in Ireland for the treatment of educationally disabled juveniles with special educational
needs. The Central Administration of the Brothers of Charity, who were already operating a
psychiatric hospital in Belmont Park, Waterford, were initially reluctant to become involved
because they were already overburdened with debt through subsidising a number of their houses
in Ireland and the UK. Pressure was brought to bear on the authorities, who eventually agreed to
give permission to start the work, provided the cost was borne by the Province in Ireland.
5.07 It was decided to base the centre in the diocese of Cork, and, after initial reluctance, the Bishop
of Cork agreed to allow the Brothers to enter the Diocese. Suitable premises in Glanmire were
identified, and the Brothers formally took possession of the buildings on 19th November 1938. It
was officially opened in December 1938 and the first Superior was installed. He named the
foundation ‘House of Our Lady of Good Counsel’. The houses needed a considerable amount of
work, and it was not until March 1939 that the Minister for Local Government and Public Health
approved the Institution. The first patient was admitted on 11th April 1939 and, by the end of the
year, they had 18 patients in residence.
5.08 The services of the Congregation of the Brothers of Charity for people with learning disability and
their families have grown steadily over the years, and today the Congregation is the largest
provider of services for people with learning disability in Ireland.
5.09 The motto of the Brothers of Charity is ‘Deus caritas est’, God is Love. Their mission is ‘caring for
people whose human dignity is threatened through disability, age, poverty etc’.
The vows taken by the Brothers

5.10 When a Brother of Charity is professed, he takes the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
5.11 In a document published in 1948 entitled ‘Practices and Customs’, the Congregation set out the
aims, objects and works of the Congregation. In the section ‘Education of Youth’, it set out the
Constitution, and then detailed what was expected of the Brothers involved in the education of
children. It is clear that the danger of Brothers becoming inappropriately involved with their pupils
was present in the minds of the authorities:
38. Though we must love our pupils we must not become too attached to them. We must
never let our affection degenerate into particular friendship for one or more children;
never must we allow ourselves to be led into dangerous intimacies. The moment such
preferences becomes apparent to the other children they will at once feel slighted and
neglected. It is certainly permissible to give praise where praise is due, but external
marks of tenderness are unbecoming in a religious. He ought always to remember
the gravity and modesty which befit his state and never allow a child to touch him
familiarly or caress him.
5.12 In 1957, the 1922 Constitution of the Brothers of Charity was revised, following the agreement of
the General Chapter. Chapter 20 deals with the vow of chastity:
215. By their vow of chastity the Brothers forego marriage and every satisfaction contrary
to the virtue of chastity.
216. With the help of God’s grace, they shall be most careful in preserving unsullied the
beautiful virtue of chastity.
217. To that end, far from admitting in their conduct anything likely to bring suspicion upon
themselves in this matter, they shall carefully guard against harbouring in their minds
any thoughts contrary to this eminent virtue.
218. They shall observe sobriety in eating and drinking, for intemperance leads to
sensuality.
219. Everywhere, but principally in going through the streets, they must prudently guard
their eyes, knowing that it is often through these windows, that the enemy carries death
into the soul.
220. Let them earnestly study to avoid in their manner all forwardness and levity, observing
in their whole conduct the rules of christian modesty, since, according to the holy
Fathers, modesty is the guardian of purity.
221. Therefore, all familiarity, all particular friendship between Brothers, novices or
postulants, is strictly forbidden. For the same reason, they must never jostle, wrestle,
indulge in horse-play or in any action whatsoever likely to take away or lessen the
mutual respect due to each other, for the proverb says: If you would be respected,
begin by respecting yourself.
222. A great circumspection and discretion should be observed in their conversation, be it
at recreation or elsewhere, to avoid anything that might cause disedification.
223. This circumspection, indispensable among the Brothers, is a thousand times more so
when they are with strangers or with persons confided to their care, such as old men,
sick and insane persons, and principally children. He who should be unfaithful to this
regulation and not fear to be the subject of scandal, is unworthy of the religious garb.
224. For this reason, it is strictly forbidden to play with a child in too free or familiar a
manner, to be alone with a single child in a lonely place or in a room with closed doors,
even with the view of giving him instruction, reprimand, punishment etc.
225. The Brothers, inspired by a wholesome fear, will ever be on their guard against the
attractiveness of children, their cajolery and flattery, being fully persuaded that in this
matter, the best children are the most dangerous.
226. They shall very carefully avoid giving the impression of having among their pupils what
are called pets or spoiled children.
227. The Brothers are strictly forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on any of their
subordinates, whether children or others, without the express permission of the
Superior
228. As regards the bodily care or medical treatment which they may be obliged to
administer to children or other persons under their care, the Brothers shall do nothing
before consulting their Superior, who will judge whether such attentions or treatment
had not better be entrusted to the physician or surgeon.
5.13 In the material discovered to the Investigation Committee are documents entitled ‘Regular
Visitation’ in the houses of St Joseph’s Province. The impression is given that an annual visitation
was carried out in Lota. However, the paucity of records has made it impossible to establish
whether in fact such visitations occurred annually. There are very few documents relating to
management of the School and the living conditions within it. What records are available focus on
matters of finance, building development and the like. A fuller discussion of these Visitation
Reports is given below.
The Lota campus

5.14 In the early years, there was a mixture of children and adults residing in Lota and, although there
was a school, it was not officially recognised by the Department of Education. Some qualified
teachers were recruited in the early 1950s in order to obtain recognition from the Department, and
this was granted in 1955.
5.15 Between 1951 and 1953, there was a rapid expansion in numbers, and new buildings, considered
to be innovative at that time, were constructed. They comprised three large, detached, single-
storey buildings known as pavilions. They were quite a distance apart and separate from the main
building. They each housed approximately 60 boys.
5.16 The boys slept in dormitories, and there were two rooms at each end where the Brothers slept.
Although there was accommodation for four Brothers in the pavilion known as Sancta Maria, the
evidence suggested that there were times when not all of the four rooms were occupied.
5.17 The school classrooms were scattered between the main building, reconstructed farmyard
buildings and portakabins.
5.18 The children were allocated to these buildings by both age and degree of learning disability. One
pavilion was used for boys with more severe disability. The other two pavilions were used for
children between approximately 10 and 14, and 14 to 18 years of age, with mild learning disability.
Br Dieter1 explained the system as it operated in the late 1950s:
I should give you the names of the three pavilions. One was Sancta Maria for eleven-
year-olds plus who were mildly handicapped, and unfortunately among those there were
some normal boys, as well, as discovered as time went on. Then in St Patrick’s, the older
age group of those boys, 14 to 16-year-olds, were catered for, and then the younger
children who were coming in at that time, as well, they were four-year-olds. The Blessed
Martin pavilion, which was designated for the very severely handicapped children, it was
decided then to divide that up into two sections, and one section was used for the mildly
handicapped boys that were coming in, they were four-year-olds plus.
5.19 There were two dormitories at either end of these pavilions, each with 30 beds. The residential
part of the building was completely separate from the classrooms.
5.20 The boys went to school in the original main building, where the younger children in Lota also
resided.
5.21 After the Kennedy Report recommended that large institutions should be split up into group
homes, these large pavilions became obsolete, but it was not until 1985 that the first of these
pavilions was demolished, and 30 boys were moved into three bungalows, housing 10 boys in
each. By 1988, all the boys were housed in bungalows in a more family-style setting.
5.22 The Investigation Committee received the following photograph and plan of Lota:
Source: Brothers of Charity

1

Source: Brothers of Charity
The children in Lota

5.23 In theory, all the children in Lota had special educational needs. Unlike the industrial school
system, which segregated the children according to their ages, with separate classes provided for
younger children, the age profile of children in Lota was wide ranging and was based on different
criteria. They were segregated according to their level of learning disability.
5.24 Children could be sent to the School at a very early age, some from the age of two years. A high
percentage of the complainants were orphans who had been transferred from other institutions.
5.25 From 1956 to the early 1970s, there was an average of 240 boys in the School and they were
cared for by 16 Brothers, who worked an 18-hour day. Some of the older residents helped with
the younger ones, but this practice became less common as work became available for them
outside the Institution.
5.26 During the course of his evidence, Br Dieter stated that some boys had been sent to Lota, even
though they did not have special needs. He said:
One was the Sancta Maria for eleven year old boys who were mildly handicapped, and
unfortunately among those there were some normal boys, as well, as discovered as time
went on.
5.27 The Investigation Committee asked the Brothers of Charity to clarify Br Dieter’s statement, and
further requested if the Brothers of Charity had assessed the boys to ascertain this fact.
5.28 The legal representatives on behalf of the Brothers of Charity wrote the following:
Most of the children at Lota suffered from a learning disability. Our client believes that
Brother Dieter’s reference to some boys being normal was intended as a reference to the
fact that a small number of the boys at Lota came from different circumstances. For
example, whilst our client believes that it could not occur now, some boys were sent to
Lota because there was no other institution better – suited to their needs available to
them. Other boys were there because they were born outside of marriage, some boys
were orphans, while others were placed for other social reasons – such as their family
not being able to cope.
5.29 It was a school designed to cater for boys with mild to severe learning disability, yet boys without
a learning disability were sent there and kept in the School for years. Even when it became known
to staff in the School that these boys did not have a learning problem, no provision was made for
them to be educated at a level appropriate to their needs. Not surprisingly, they resented their
placement and retention in Lota, and their lives were blighted by the inadequate education they
received.
5.30 One witness told the Investigation Committee that he believed he was sent to Lota for no other
reason than that he had been truanting from school. He stated
As I say, I believe I am quite intelligent. I can pick up things, 99% of things. If I learn about
something I will know about it forever. I am very interested in science for instance. I have
done a lot of study into science, into space travel and stuff like that. I am very interested
in a lot of that. I have done a lot of study into that and I am interested in that but I do not
think I had the education good enough to have been able to follow it up, which I would
have loved to do.
5.31 When asked if he felt that he was in any way educationally handicapped, he replied ‘No’. He was
asked if he felt he was inappropriately placed in Lota, and he replied:
Maybe it was my own imagination but I felt that I was not mentally handicapped. That if I
was given an opportunity, I could learn properly ... I was able to pick things up a lot
quicker. When something was told to me I could understand it much easier than some
people you know. I do not know why I could do it but that is the way it was with me.
Complaints regarding Lota

5.32 There were 12 complainants in respect of Lota. Three of these complainants were heard by the
Commission in 2002.
The duty of care

5.33 A high duty of care is owed to children who are less able to look after themselves, by reason of
physical or mental incapacity. The children in Lota fell into this vulnerable category.
5.34 Children with learning disabilities rely heavily on adults to help them cope with everyday life.
Whether raised at home or in institutions, they are more vulnerable because they are less exposed
to the normal risks of life, and their lack of experience can leave them unable to assess risks
in general.
5.35 In addition, children wiith learning disabilities may be less aware of social rules that govern
everyday behaviour. They can be led into situations posing dangers that would have been avoided
by children who had had the opportunity and ability to learn how to assess risks realistically.
Learning disabled children, particularly those raised in institutions, often fail to see any risk at all.
They may be unaware of what is socially and morally unacceptable, and as a result they are
vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
5.36 If children with a learning disability are harmed or abused, their disability and inexperience leaves
them even more uncertain than other children as to what to do about it. If the person who is there
to protect them is also the person perpetrating the abuse, then their confusion is complete.
5.37 Bearing these issues in mind, the Investigation Committee had to do more than assess whether
abuse occurred in Lota. It had to assess whether the management structures and care
arrangements were such that they could provide the additional level of care owed to the vulnerable
population entrusted to the Brothers of Charity.
The dearth of documentary evidence
The supervisory bodies

5.38 Two Government Departments, The Department of Health and the Department of Education, were
responsible for supervising services in Lota. The Department of Education inspected the education
provided in Lota. They officially recognised the National School in Lota in 1955.
5.39 The Department of Health also inspected the premises, but only in relation to direct funding of
capital development projects. The Investigation Committee asked the Department of Health about
their inspection regime for institutions for persons with intellectual disabilities between the period
1939 and 1990, and they replied:
From enquiries made both within the Department and the H.S.E2 (S.H.B3. area as Lota is
based there) this division is not aware of any inspections having being carried out by the
Department or then Health Board staff on institutions for persons with intellectual
difficulties between the period 1939 and 1990.
5.40 The Department was also asked specifically if it had carried out any inspections in Our Lady of
Good Counsel, Lota during the period 1939 to 1990. The Department replied:
From enquiries made both within the Department and the H.S.E (S.H.B. area) this division
is not aware of any inspections having being carried out by Department in Our Lady of
Good Counsel during this period.
5.41 The Department of Health stated that the ‘only inspections carried out and on behalf of The
Department of Health and Children during the period 1939 to 1990 were in respect of children in
Care in Foster Homes’.
5.42 Lota did not come within the scope of the Inspector for Reformatories and Industrial Schools
either. Dr Anna McCabe, who inspected these schools, did not visit Lota, and no Department of
Education inspection of the residential facilities took place either. The industrial schools were
inspected and the Medical Inspector’s reports left contemporary evidence about diet, and living
conditions. No such documentation exists for Lota.
5.43 Neither Government Department saw itself as responsible for overseeing the conditions and
quality of care in the School. The witnesses who appeared before the Committee said very little
about the diet and clothing of the residents, as their chief concern was to relate what had been
done to them.
5.44 With no external supervision, the management of the Brothers of Charity alone assessed the
quality of the care they provided and the suitability of the staff entrusted with the care of children
with learning disability.
2
Health Service Executive.
3
Southern Health Board.

Visitation Reports
5.45 The Investigation Committee received from the Brothers of Charity a limited number of Visitation
Reports. They were written by Brothers delegated by the Congregation to conduct Visitations of
the School.
5.46 The Brothers of Charity conducted two kinds of Visitation. One was a general inspection of St.
Joseph’s Province, with the Visitor reporting on every school within it. The second kind was a
specific Visitation of Lota, which usually lasted a number of days. It reviewed how the School was
being run and the extent to which the Congregation’s Rules were being observed.
5.47 The Visitation Reports reveal certain preoccupations. The first concern was ensuring that the
Rules of the Brothers of Charity were being observed by the Community. For example, the 1955
Report noted:
There are no serious abuses to chronicle, but in closing the Visitation I drew attention of
the Brothers to the following points: 1) Morning Rising and spiritual exercises in general;
2) Fraternal Charity; 3) Spirit of Poverty; 4) Care of the Patients. I also urged them to pray
earnestly for good vocations and for the beatification for our holy Founder.
5.48 The Visitation Report of 1961 made various observations regarding the School. The Visitor
remarked that, in relation to chastity, ‘There appears to be no cause for complaint; the Brothers
are attentive and careful in their dealings with the children and circumspect when they come in
contact with outsiders’. He also noted that ‘SPIRITUAL EXERCISES. These are well and regularly
attended. There is a weakness at the midday exercises when a number of Brothers come late’.
He was also critical of the way the Brothers said their prayers. He wrote, ‘In respect of the Office,
it is said somewhat on the fast side and too loudly – the superior is one of the worst offenders’.
5.49 The second preoccupation was the School finances. The Visitor in 1961 reviewed the financial
situation of the School and found it in a healthy state and contributing its quota to the Province.
At the conclusion of his Visitation, the Visitor wrote:

1. As religious, we must give to God at least what we vowed – the generous soul seeks
ways and means of giving more. Be generous with God.
2. The morning rising needs attention – it is the first sacrifice of the day, Generosity
towards God.
3. It is unbecoming and irreverent for Brothers to constantly come late to H. Mass.
4. Pray daily for one another, the works of your house, the Province, the Congregation –
especially for vocations.
5.50 This Visitor’s report does not indicate that at any stage he spoke to any of the resident boys in
the School, or to any Brothers in relation to the boys in the School. His priority was to observe
the religious life of the community.
5.51 The Report of the Regular Visitation in 1975 is a typical example. It was a very brief, one-page
report and listed each of the Brothers present in the Community, noting the position the Brother
held in the School and his religious qualities, as well as an assessment of his contentment with
religious life. The Visitor makes no reference to the boys in his report.
5.52 In brief, there is no contemporary comment on the condition of the boys and the premises. Even
if everything was satisfactory, some comment to that effect should have been made. The existing
records do not tell us whether all the conditions that were needed to ensure that a quality service
was being provided to the children in the Institution were in fact present. Indeed, there is no
evidence that such matters were ever the concern of the Visitor.
Physical abuse
5.53 For the most part, it would seem that the children in Lota did not need to be controlled by a regime
of frequent corporal punishment. From the limited evidence available to the Committee it would
appear that they were seldom, if ever, challenging or confrontational.
5.54 One witness, Frank,4 told the Committee:

The only form of punishment I did receive during these years was being slapped with a
ruler during school hours. This type of punishment was normal practice ...
5.55 However, Br John O’Shea, who is the Regional Leader of the Brothers of Charity in Ireland and
Britain, talked of the ‘authoritarian atmosphere’ prevalent in schools at the time, and went on to
explain what he meant. He said:
In a general sense, and I will go back to my own school days or whatever, that there was
a very different perception of people in authority. I suppose we had all kinds of sayings
like "children were to be seen and not heard", and the sense of maybe rights of children
would in some way not be seen as being equal to the rights of adults. Maybe that is not
correct, but in a general sense that children didn't have the same standing.
5.56 One respondent witness, Br Guthrie,5 who said he was known as a strict teacher, said that he did
not need corporal punishment. He regretted the only time he did strike a boy. He told the
Committee:
during the 32 years I was there I struck one boy on the face with my open hand, once,
and I have always regretted it. That was in 1983. I remember that. I felt like falling on my
back when I had done it. I was cross about some remark he had made or something, and
there were no beatings. I had no weapon for beating like has been described, whips or
sticks or rulers or anything like that.
5.57 His size and his formal appearance in his cassock were enough to instil fear and obedience.
He explained:
I presume that, first of all, as you say, it was the size and then my position in regard to
them. They had to come and go and stand up and sit down and everything like that when
I told them.
5.58 He had no difficulty getting the children to respond to his every command. Because of their
vulnerability, and their dependence on adults to help them cope with everyday life, they were
powerless to resist authority.
5.59 In addition, many of these boys, because of their disability, were fragile and easily frightened. One
witness, Graham,6 described the fear he felt at just the threat of violence:
Br Helmut7 he had a stick on the other side of him and he picked up the stick and he
shaked it at me, so I sensed there was physical abuse and I was completely – I was
dumbfounded because these guys had the upper hand ... they had the same aim and the
same approach towards me in that their aim was to frighten you, terrify you, get you to
4
5
6
7

be submissive to them, let them do what they want with you, which I wasn't able to escape
from their hands.
5.60 He also recounted a punishment he received because a Brother believed he had attacked a
female teacher. In fact, he had become curious about a bun upon her head. He had never seen
anyone with her hair tied back in a bun and had approached her to explore the nature of the object.
When contact was made, the Brother maintained he was attacking the teacher, and subjected him
to a cold shower ‘for a whole half hour’. He went on:
I was in the shower for between 20 minutes and a half an hour and by the time he asked
me to get out of it I was freezing cold. He asked me to get up to bed, up to my bed and I
got up to my bed and I was there for the rest of the day and while I was up in bed I was
freezing. I was very very cold and I was not really in any humour for anything or even
food and I think the same Brother came up and asked did I want anything and I said, no.
I just waited until the next morning to get some food in me while I was a good bit of the
day without food.
5.61 The evidence heard in respect of this Institution focused mainly on sexual abuse, and Br O’Shea
was not questioned in detail about the Congregation’s policy with regard to corporal punishment.
It is clear from his evidence that the authoritarian atmosphere in Lota was sufficient to prevent
children from speaking up about sexual abuse perpetrated by staff. It would also appear from Br
O’Shea’s evidence, and from the evidence of witnesses, that corporal punishment was an
accepted method of ensuring obedience and control. It would not be credible for a Brother to carry
a stick about with him if he never used it.
5.62 The Committee did not hear evidence of excessive corporal punishment, except what is outlined
above, and there are no records of allegations or investigations into physical abuse of children
in Lota.
Sexual abuse
5.63 The three witnesses gave evidence about the sexual abuse they alleged occurred while they were
in Lota.
5.64 Conall8 entered Lota at the age of about eight, in the late 1950s. He told the Committee he was
sexually abused by two different Brothers. One Brother abused him when he was younger and,
when he stopped, the other Brother seemed to take over.
5.65 When he first arrived in Lota, he was pleased to have been removed from his National School,
where the fact that he wrote with his left hand had led to his being frequently punished and made
to stand against a wall for hours. He began playing truant and was sent to Lota. He said, ‘I think
I felt relief maybe at the beginning, maybe somebody was taking care of me at long last’. He
recalled many good times, such as the cycling trips organised by Br Guthrie, and the football
and gymnastics.
5.66 Br Guthrie, the first Brother to sexually abuse him, was, he said, ‘nice to me at the beginning’.
Then, he said, ‘It changed one day ... I cannot remember dates or anything so you will have to
forgive me there’. He could not recall the first time, but incidents began to follow a predictable
pattern. He described the scene:
There was a room between – there was a place where you could wash yourself, shave,
wash basins and there was a room – there was actually doors and a kind of a little small
corridor between the two and he took me in there.
8

5.67 The activity that took place was mutual masturbation.
5.68 This activity then took place regularly over the next three years or so in various parts of the
premises where there were secluded nooks. He said that Br Guthrie never tried to do more than
these acts of masturbation.
5.69 When this evidence was put to him, Br Guthrie agreed that the witness had described the types
of activity he had perpetrated over his 32 years in Lota. It was always, he said, ‘To do with the
hands’. He had various hiding places from which there was always an alternative means of
escape. ‘There had to be a hiding place’, he said, ‘the danger of discovery was ever present’. He
explained, ‘you cannot stay too long in the one place. Somebody could come in or pass by or
open the door or whatever'.
5.70 His hiding places were chosen with every eventuality entering into his calculation. He would not
choose the cellar, he said, because:
there was no way out except the way you went in. I think finding a suitable place is
finding a way out rather than the way you came in, in case somebody comes along. The
secretiveness was part of my operation, that we mustn't be seen or found out or caught
or whatever the word is. I wouldn't pick out a dead end.
5.71 He also admitted that, in the dormitory he was in charge of, he would visit ‘beds without removing
the child from the bed, that was at night time’.
5.72 He added, ‘I cannot deny that I did these things to boys’.
5.73 He also spoke about the kind of boy who attracted him. He preferred boys aged ‘11 to 13 or 14’.
He was asked if older children attracted him, and he replied:
I do not know. Sometimes it could go on for years, you know occasional and now and
again there was a sixteen year old but I probably done something to him 2 or 3 years
previously. I would not pick out a 16 year old or a 17 year old, not knowing whether they
would accept my advances or what. It never occurred to me. I would say my preferred
range was 11 to 13 or 14 and it would also have been those that were fairly bright in their
eyes and their speech and that kind of thing.
5.74 Conall then said that, towards the end of the three years, there was a brief period when both Br
Guthrie and Br Dieter were abusing him. He said, ‘At night time I used to be taken into Br Dieter’s
room and sometimes during the day I would be with Br Guthrie as well’.
5.75 He described the first night that Br Dieter sexually abused him:
the dormitory I was in was Br Dieter’s dormitory, room. There was some rooms – There
was two dormitories upstairs and there was one I know that did not have a room onto it.
That was in the main house now. My bed, there was actually three rows of beds in this
dormitory. I remember the first night he came to my bed. As I say, I had been sexually
abused by Br Guthrie but I thought maybe the same thing was going to happen here but
it was much different altogether. I had oral sex ...
5.76 He then went into more detail:

I was taken from my bedroom to his room and we were more or less naked ... we did not
wear pyjamas. We just wore ... Night shirt ... My shirt was off ... it was taken off me ... it
was more or less oral sex that night ... It was not just quick bang and all it is over. It
seemed to last a long time. There was a lot of foreplay, if I put it that way, before it got to
that point.
5.77 After that night, the sexual abuse became regular until Br Dieter left Lota.
5.78 When asked what he had to say about the allegations made by this witness, Br Dieter replied:
I pleaded guilty except that I have to honestly say that I do not remember Conall and it
was because Conall was so insistent that I did abuse him, I then pleaded guilty because
I felt, well then, I must have done since Conall was so consistent with his accusations.
5.79 The consistency he mentioned was examined in detail during the hearing. The statement made
to the Garda Sı́ochána was read out and tested for discrepancies:
I remember the first night Br Dieter came to me. I can take you back to the bed I slept in.
I was asleep in bed, he woke me and took me into his room which was a nice distance
away. He took me into the bedroom, locked the door and stripped me naked. I was
completely naked. He then took all his clothes off. I was now terrified ...
5.80 The Garda statement went on to explicitly describe acts of gross sexual assault on the boy.
It concluded:
He washed me and put me back into bed and told me not to say anything. The warning
was stronger than that but I can't remember the exact words. This abuse continued on
for a number of years and it was always the exact same. He would come to my bed, bring
me to his room and play with me like a doll for 2 or 3 hours.
5.81 The witness underwent rigorous cross-examination but held firm. He said, ‘What I have said is
what I have said. I cannot expand on it or detract from it in any way’.
5.82 A second witness, Graham, also described the sexual abuse perpetrated on him by Br Dieter. He
described the first time:
I was subjected to his oral sex. I was subjected to it ... It happened in his room off one of
the dormitories ... Br Dieter asked me to – “he said come up, come up to my room and
he also said if anybody sees you, tell them that you are cleaning my room out”. So I went
up the stairs and nobody saw me going up, and I went into Br Dieter's room and he said
“if anybody sees you going up and they ask you where you are going, tell them you are
going to clean Br Dieter's room for him”. Obviously, it wasn't really to clean his room. I
was a very very sad, timid, young boy and I didn't really have anyone to go to or to say
that I have experienced this oral sex or evil that I would call it ... When Br Dieter called
me up and he said after the oral sex, he said “don't say anything about this”. Then a few
seconds went and he said to me “if you say anything about this, you are for it”. I was
really caught in two corners. I had nowhere to run. I had no mother and father to come
and rescue me.
5.83 He was about seven years old when this incident happened. It continued until he was about 10.
He said:
... between the age of seven and ten that I was subjected to abuse, oral sex abuse. I was
subjected to it and as a young boy, sure, I had no choice of either yes or no ... It was
very very frequent. There wasn't a week that it didn't happen. But I do remember Br Dieter
coming down the stairs, and I was doing a rug and I was content and happy in doing it,
but he called me up to his room and the sad thing is that he got the upper hand over a
young, innocent boy.
5.84 He recalled another incident when Br Dieter took him under his cassock when they were out for
a walk:
Yes, that's right. He brought all of us, all of the boys up for a walk and we were a good
bit up the laneway away from the building and that we were on our way – our walk led us
right into the farmyard. When we were a good bit up the lane he called me back and he
put me under his habit, his black habit and he pressed me up against his lower body. I
was a young boy, I was wondering what was he doing here and why was he doing it. I
had not a clue but I assumed afterwards that he was probably just doing it for his own
pleasure or for his own good and that all the other boys were completely gone and Br
Dieter had me with him and we were just up the lane a bit. He had me completely
subjected to him so I could not do anything ... When that incident happened I would have
been between 11 and 12 when that incident happened just up the lane, a good bit up
the lane.
5.85 His bitterness about the abuse he endured was only too perceptible. He said:
As a young boy I would be wondering why they would be going on like that ... they took
advantage of me. They took the liberty of doing things, and the things they have done
were an awful lot of evil things ... I was only a young, innocent boy, and I went through
evil things that I didn’t want to go through. I went through their devilish hands ... I was
only dirt.
5.86 Graham’s anger emerged in a tirade against Br Dieter’s defence that he couldn’t remember:
The only sad thing I don’t like is that if a religious Brother or a priest or a nun and they
know very well they have done something, why don’t admit to it, admit to the damage that
they have done to me while I was in Lota because I didn’t ask anyone to send me to Lota.
I would have been better off in someone’s family rather than putting up with all the oral
sex and all the abuse that I was subjected to ... if he is not willing to tell the truth, I suggest
go back to him and ask him face to face did he do this because I was very very annoyed
when he said he doesn’t remember ... Now, Graham who is here today remembers what
happened. I’m not making up a story. I’m not making up a fairy tale. I’m not making up
lies. I am telling the truth.
... Who has the right to take a mother away from you? Who has the right to take a child
away from his mother? And who’s idea was it to grab children and fill their schools up
with children, not knowing what was going on? The devil was in my school. The devil was
working through different Brothers ... I would ask him to come forward and admit his
mistakes, admit his abuse, and admit that he had done it because if he doesn’t admit to
it down here, let me tell you when he goes to meet his maker, Jesus is going to say,
“What have you done to my Graham? What have you done to him?”
5.87 When Br Dieter gave evidence, he again said he had no memory of the witness as a boy and he
denied the oral sex, but he accepted that sexual abuse must have happened. He said:
I sincerely apologised to him for the dreadful unhappiness I have caused him and I realise
the seriousness of my abusive behaviour ... I know that because of his insistence that I
did abuse them, then I know that must be true and I have accepted responsibility for that ...
One thing that is true is that I did invite some of the adolescent boys individually to tidy
my rooms, usually on a Saturday morning, so that would fit into what Graham has been
saying.
5.88 He was then asked if that was as a prelude to abusing them, and he replied, ‘Yes, yes. Not in all
cases, but that has been the case, yes’.

5.89 He was asked to describe his pattern of abuse, and he replied:
My pattern of abuse was touching the boys and in some cases masturbating them and
generally petting them, that sort of thing ... Not always masturbating, just touching them
and, an expression that seems to be quite common now, fondling them.
5.90 He added:
I felt sorry for what I had done, but it became a kind of addiction, if you like, at that
particular time for me, and it was a great source of stress and worry for me.
5.91 Apart from luring them to his bedroom, he also abused boys in their own beds. He would abuse
them while they were asleep in the dormitory. Because he would be under observation in the
dormitory, Br Dieter never went beyond surreptitious touching. But in his bedroom, he admitted,
there was a chance for more extensive activity, ‘I tended to touch them inappropriately and be
more affectionate towards them and that’.
5.92 He was asked to reconsider his denial of oral sex taking place, and he said:
Well, I will put it this way, it is possible that I have done so and if I have done so, I
sincerely apologise to him, from the bottom of my heart I apologise. I have no recollection
of doing it, but I apologise to Graham ... and I hope he forgives me.
5.93 The third witness to give evidence to the Committee, Frank, also described being abused by Br
Dieter. He told the Committee:
I can recall very clearly when I was thirteen years of age in the Sancta Maria pavilion, I
was bending down cleaning a bathroom when Br Dieter approached me from behind. He
locked the bathroom door behind him and took out his penis and said to me "let me see
yours". I said to him "no". He then said to me "if you don't, I will give you a good hiding".
5.94 The witness went on to describe an act of masturbation perpetrated by the Brother:
He then let down his habit and told me to say nothing about what had happened to
anybody. This type of abuse of I having to rub Br Dieter's penis happened on quite a
number of occasions over the next number of years until I reached 15 years approx. This
took place in the Sancta Maria pavilion, his own bedroom and also in the bathroom. When
he took me to his bedroom it was usually in the night time. He would wake me from the
dormitory where I slept with the rest of the lads and in single beds. Each dormitory had 36
beds. I slept about seven beds from the door of his bedroom which was off the dormitory.
5.95 The witness recalled other specific acts of gross sexual assault, one of which occurred on
Christmas Day. He said Br Dieter engaged in oral sex and anal rape. In respect of the latter,
he stated:
I could not understand why this was going on and this type of abuse happened to me by
Br Dieter on at least four different occasions. I can remember one day Br Dieter brought
me to his bedroom and tried the same sort of abuse ... and I said "no" and I used the
word "f*** it, no more, finished" as this was very very sore I said to him. He got very mad
with me and I got a beating from him.
5.96 The abuse began in a bathroom, when he claimed anal intercourse took place. Thereafter, it
occurred ‘A right few times, make about six months, maybe a year. I don't know for sure, about a
year’. It took place ‘Twice or three times a month or something like that’.

5.97 Br Dieter then gave evidence. He said he had a good recollection of the witness. Again, he began
with an apology:
The first statement I would like to make is that I feel very sad and sorry for Frank’s
experiences and I regret very much the unhappiness I have caused him. In relation to
today's evidence, I am sad that he should accuse me of physical violence of beating him
up and that sort of thing, because that is not the sort of person that I am. When I was
accused by Frank and appeared before [A Garda Sergeant], I think it was around the end
of 1995 and perhaps the beginning of 1996, I pleaded guilty, but I told [the Sergeant] and
the other Gardaı́ that were there at the time present when this allegation from Frank was
made that, yes, I did abuse Frank but that I didn't accept and denied the allegations of
anal and oral abuse, also I denied the beatings. That is what I have to say.
5.98 He then spelt out what he accepted he was guilty of doing:

I know I am guilty of sexually abusing Frank by touch. He also mentions that he touched
me and I encouraged him to do so, that could possibly have been the case, but I think
that most of my abuse was by showing my attention for Frank, because I was very
sympathetically disposed towards him. As I said in my statement, he was a lonely person
and I was tended to look on him as I was myself when I was a young person and I tried
to show him affection in an inappropriate way by my behaviour towards him that way ... I
had a very genuine affection for Frank, yes, I had ... There was a sexual attraction as well
that went with that, yes, unhappily, yes ... I have no recollection of how frequently, but at
the same time I don't think in this particular case that the incidents were frequent.
... They took place, to the best of my knowledge, in Sancta Maria pavilion, where I lived.
I have no clear recollection of the locations, but they could have taken place in my room
in the Sancta Maria pavilion and they could also possibly have taken place in my
classroom after school hours, but I am not certain about this because it is a long time ago
and because of that I have no clear recollection of the locations of my sexual abuse.
5.99 The sexual abuse stopped, he said, because the witness was moved from the dormitory over
which he had control. He told the Committee:
my recollection is that Frank ... wasn't very long in Sancta Maria pavilion because he
eventually was changed and I can't remember when that took place, he was changed to
St Patrick's. So my association with him would have terminated because both pavilions
were physically quite a distance apart.
The position of the Brothers of Charity on whether sexual abuse took place in
Lota
5.100 Senior counsel for the Brothers of Charity, at the end of the hearings, made clear the position
adopted by the Brothers of Charity on the question of whether sexual abuse took place in Lota.
He said:
I represent the current community of the Brothers of Charity, not all of those who were
ever there historically, it is not a body corporate. I represent those who are now members
of the Community which happen to include some people who have been abusers, and
the Brothers of Charity have made no bones about that, we admit that abuse has taken
place, of that there is absolutely no doubt, by our members and by many of our members.
In terms of this Committee's function in determining whether a particular abuse took place
with a particular complainant and by a particular Brother, that is something I can have
very little to do with and have avoided getting involved in whether that is true in any
particular case or not. That clearly cannot be my function.
... It is perfectly clear that in all three of these cases sexual abuse took place in the
most appalling nature and must be condemned and is condemned by this Community
wholeheartedly and unreservedly. Whether individual acts of sexual abuse took place or
not is not a matter for me, with great respect.
5.101 Following the appearance in court of a Brother on 21 September 1999, Br Alfred Hassett, the
Provincial Superior, issued the following apology:
We deeply regret any abuse which may have taken place and we offer our apology to
any person who may have been the victim of such abuse. Our first concern is for the
victims of abuse, whatever the source of that abuse ...
As an organisation involved with people with learning disability we have in place specialist
counselling teams, one of them in the Cork area, with back-up support from a national
counselling co-ordinator. This team is ready to help any person with a learning disability
who may have been the victim of abuse and this help can be offered on a totally
confidential basis.
I would encourage anyone wishing to make an allegation to go directly to the Gardaı́.
5.102 The fact that abuse took place is not in dispute. What this apology fails to address is the
Congregational responsibility for what happened in their schools. The question that arises is the
extent of the abuse, and whether it was systemic.
The Brothers of Charity on the emergence of sexual abuse

5.103 Br John O’Shea, leader of the region that incorporates both Britain and Ireland, gave an account
of how sexual abuse emerged as a serious issue for the Congregation. He told the Committee:
I suppose it became a very significant issue in 1995, at late 1995 we were informed that
somebody had gone to the Garda Station and had made allegations that they had been
abused during that time.
5.104 Prior to 1995, he said that allegations were regarded as individual incidents:
The position prior to that is that there would have been a number of individual allegations,
I think they would have been seen as isolated incidents and they would have been broadly
dealt with as isolated incidents, that there wasn't the sense in which we had after 1995,
that this was a bigger issue than we had imagined. I suppose prior to that, there wouldn't
have been the kind of awareness of the impact that it had on the people who were abused.
5.105 He went on to state:

I feel for us that 1995 was the watershed in the sense of our awareness that we had a
fairly significant issue with abuse ... It was quite a shock to us really because it wasn't
something we were prepared for, and certainly the individual incidents we would have
known of previously didn't add up to a comprehensive picture, if you like, of widescale
abuse.
5.106 In the written statement prepared by Br John O’Shea for the Emergence Hearings and received
by the Commission on 23rd June 2004, he wrote:
Prior to 1995, there were a few isolated allegations of abuse which were dealt with as
deemed appropriate at the time. However, it was not until late 1995 that there was an
awareness of more widespread abuse or the damage it had caused.
5.107 He admitted, however, that their record keeping was poor. He explained:
Yes, I suppose one of the things is many of our files have a limited amount of information
in them. We would have some sense, again, that where allegations would be reported, I
would feel that maybe they necessarily wouldn't be committed to writing. Yes, I think
maybe our broader culture or even the wider culture wouldn't have been as it is now
where every allegation would be documented, there would be less kept on files.
5.108 When asked what procedures were in place for managing reported sexual abuse before 1995,
he replied:
I divide them between lay people and Brothers. Each of the centres that I have mentioned,
Cork, Galway, Waterford and so on, would have their own administrative structure and
there would have been a Director of Services and in those days it would have been a
Brother, who would be broadly responsible for the administration of the centre. The
Brothers would be responsible to the Provincial at the time and I think particularly if
incidents related to Brothers, that it would entail the involvement of the Provincial. Where
they involved lay people, I think the structure, as I say, my sense is that legal advice
would have been involved and that we would have acted on that. I suppose in regard to
Brothers, depending on the time it was, if it was the early 1990s because we would be
more aware of the kind of Department guidelines and so on and there was a broad
awareness, that people would be withdrawn from contact with service users. I feel that
possibly in all cases Gardaı́ may not have been notified, because I think our awareness
of that would maybe be stronger at a later time, but essentially that people would have
been withdrawn. Again, I think the awareness of the level of allegation, if you like, in the
sense that now if we speak of an allegation, we have a whole lot of accumulated
knowledge as to what an allegation can entail or what it is likely to entail, and I feel back
then that there wasn't the same thing when you speak of an allegation. I would feel people
didn't have a clear-cut idea of just what the allegation entailed maybe or put it down, if
you like, people who were behaving inappropriately at various levels, that it might be seen
somewhat differently to how we would now view it and with the knowledge that we have
of the impact that allegations or abuse did have on people.
5.109 He was asked where the records from that period were kept, and he replied:
I suppose where they happened in locations and involved lay people, there would be
records. The records would be kept at the location where the Centre was administered.
5.110 Complaints about abuse by lay people were recorded and kept. The situation was different for
Brothers who had been reported for sexual abuse. He told the Committee:
In regard to Brothers, certainly later allegations would be documented. I suppose I have

a sense again that it is only now that it is coming to light that certain allegations were
made that there wasn't an awareness of until quite recently. I suppose our files in regard
to Brothers tended not to have a lot of documentation on them, and I would have some
sense again that, I suppose, the earlier allegations would have happened, the less
likelihood there is that there would be something on file. I would also be aware of a
particular situation that now with the knowledge I have, I can fairly definitely say it was an
allegation of sexual abuse, but the document on the file doesn't specify that it was abuse.
5.111 Complaints against Brothers were either not written down at all or were in codified language
designed to obscure the nature of the offence. They were dealt with, said Br O’Shea, ‘in sort of a
hushed way’. Despite this fact, enough records have survived to allow an examination of Br
O’Shea’s claim that prior to 1995 there were ‘a few isolated allegations of abuse’, and no
‘awareness of more widespread abuse’.

The convicted sexual abusers: Br Guthrie
5.112 Br Guthrie gave evidence to the Investigation Committee on 21st March 2002 and again on 14th
March 2002.
5.113 Born in the South East of Ireland in the early 1900s, he was the eldest of three children. He was
recruited into the Brothers at the age of 13, and is still a member of the Congregation. He was
educated in Belgium and England, and qualified as a primary teacher in the 1930s.
5.114 He told the Investigation Committee he taught in a school in the UK until 1951 or 1952, when he
was brought back to Ireland to work in Lota, where he stayed for 32 years until 1984.
5.115 In the early 1950s, the Congregation were setting up a Special School in Lota and there was a
need for trained teachers to enable the Department of Education to recognise the School officially.
The Department gave recognition to the School in 1955, and Br Guthrie was made Principal of
the School from the start until 1974, when a lay principal was employed and he took over as
school manager and then Chairman of the Board of Management. He held this latter post until
1984, when he was removed from the School because of complaints made against him.
5.116 He was prosecuted for sexual offences in December 1995. He spent seven months in 1996 in
Our Lady of Victory, a treatment centre in Stroud in the UK run by the Order of the Holy Paraclete
for religious with psychological and behavioural problems. He returned in December 1996 to
answer the charges in court. He pleaded guilty to sample charges in December 1996, and was
sentenced on 14th February 1997 to four years’ imprisonment, reduced to one year. He now
resides under supervision.
5.117 He accepted the description of himself as a paedophile, someone whose sexual preference was
for children, in his case teenage boys. He said he had no sexual attraction to them until they were
aged 11 upwards to about 14, and he was most attracted to 11- to 14-year-old boys with bright
eyes and good speech. He admitted to mutual masturbation but denied ever going any further
with the children. His sexual activities started in 1937, when he was around 22 years old, and
continued until 1983 when he was 69 years old with, according to himself, ‘prolonged intervals’
of abstinence.
5.118 His modus operandi varied, but it usually involved isolating a child in a secluded part of the
building. Aware of the ever-present danger of discovery, he found various hiding places where
the abuse could take place. These nooks always had a well-planned escape route. He also
admitted visiting the children’s beds at night in the dormitory where he was the supervisor.
5.119 He did not think the other Brothers or members of staff were aware of what he was doing. On
one or two occasions, he did hear talk among the boys. He recalled his reaction to one particular
occasion when he heard there was talk:
I brought them into a classroom and I sat them down and I said to them, people are
saying this about me. Any of you that like to come with me now, we will go to the Brother
Superior and talk to him about it, and, of course, that shut them up for good. Nobody took
me up on it.
5.120 He said that, if any boy resisted his advances, he would leave him alone, and denied ever
threatening, coaxing or forcing anyone.
5.121 Despite his remarkable memory for dates and time and place, he could not recall the number of
boys he abused over the 32-year period. However, on the first occasion when he gave evidence
to the Commission, when asked why he could not remember individuals that he abused, he
answered as follows:
For one reason the lapse of time and the others, I suppose a fair number. I have no idea
how many but there was a good number ... Over 32 years.
5.122 He was asked if the number would be in the hundreds, and he replied:
I might stop around a hundred, but it could have been more, it could have been less even.
5.123 By way of explanation, rather than excuse, he said he believed that the separation from his parents
in his early years and the loneliness and isolation of the life of a Brother was the reason why he
developed in the way he did.
Institutional responsibility
5.124 Br John O’Shea, outlined in the statement prepared for the Emergence Hearings, held in June/July
of 2004, the reasons why the Brothers of Charity have issued apologies in respect of child abuse:
When allegations of abuse by two named Bothers were first brought to our attention in
December, 1995, the two named Brothers confirmed that they had been involved in the
sexual abuse of children in our care. The two named Brothers later admitted in court that
they were guilty of perpetrating sexual abuse on children in our care and received
custodial sentences in respect of this abuse.
5.125 The statement went on to give details of the sentences imposed on these two Brothers and a third
Brother who was also found guilty of sexual abuse.
5.126 At paragraph 5 of the statement, the Regional Leader explained that, when the allegations were
first brought to the attention of the Congregation, the two Brothers against whom the allegations
were made were immediately removed from locations where they would be in contact with ‘service
users’ and were placed under strict supervision. They had also both attended a seven-month
therapeutic programme for sexual abusers.
5.127 The difficulty with Br O’Shea’s statement is that December 1995 was not the first time the
Congregation of the Brothers of Charity had become aware of sexual abuse perpetrated by Br
Guthrie.
5.128 Br Guthrie started his teaching career in a primary school in the UK, run by the Brothers of Charity,
in 1936. By his own admission, he started to sexually abuse children in 1937.
5.129 Br Guthrie’s activities first came to the attention of the Congregation authorities in 1951.
5.130 In a letter dated 31st July 1951 from Fr Harvey9 to Fr Gordon,10 who would appear to be a senior
member of the Congregation, it was stated:
Dear Father Gordon,
A very serious situation has arisen at Broadgreen. Bro. Guthrie has been accused of
serious offences against boys, and the matter has been placed in the hands of the police;
so I expect they will begin their investigation as soon as possible. Br Gerhard11 will
probably also be brought into it. Whether anyone else will be accused, I don’t know.
I saw Br Guthrie this morning and he has no defence; I have told him I shall report to the
Superior General, and he will probably be dismissed. Hence, I believe he will cross to
9
10
11

Ireland to-day. I have told him what he does or where he goes is no concern of mine, but
I have not transferred him to Belmont Park. I told him, however, that I will communicate
to you any instructions, etc. that I receive from Fr. General.
I have sent Bro. Rory12 this morning to Moffat to inform Bro. Gerhard of the situation, and
he will probably do like Br Guthrie.
You should receive their clerical suits if they offer them, and also help them with clothing,
and in any other way, at least for the time being.
Whatever these fellows do, is on their own initiative. They are not to remain at Belmont
Park. You would, however, do well to know where they stay, at least for the time being.
But I do not want to know.
As you see, I am in a very difficult situation, and am trying to act for the good of the
Congregation.
I am now just going to ... with Messrs. [Solicitors], to interview a K.C.13 on the matter. I
will then perhaps see things much clearer and will write you again as soon as possible.
In the meantime, please aid me with your prayers.
Greetings in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Yours devotedly ... in JC
5.131 The letter accepted that Br Guthrie had ‘no defence’ to the allegation that he had committed
‘serious offences against boys’, and prepared the ground for his probable dismissal.
5.132 Fr Harvey wrote again on 1st August 1951, following his meeting with the legal team. The mood
had changed, because with the two Brothers out of the way he had been given some assurances
that the matter would ‘fizzle out’. He wrote:
Dear Father Gordon,
Further to my letter of yesterday, I think I can say that things are somewhat better, and
we are hoping there will be no publicity in the matter.
[The Solicitors] have helped very considerably; they took me yesterday to interview
Counsel in ... and as a result I feel more at ease. Afterwards, I went directly to the Camp
at Fleetwood and saw each of the Brothers privately. None of them has anything to fear
if the police make their enquiries, so with Gerhard and Br Guthrie out of the way, we are
hoping the matter will fizzle out.
Now with regard to Br Guthrie and Gerhard. Before I went to see Counsel, I got them
away quickly, and told them to keep away from our Houses but to get in touch with you
eventually, as I would communicate to you any further orders or directions regarding
them.
My rights and duties have now been made clear to me as the result of my visit to Counsel.
I have written again to Fr. General this morning suggesting that Br Guthrie be dismissed
and that Gerhard be allowed to remain. As you know, Gerhard has been doing well at
Moffat since January, and it is only as a result of Br Guthrie’s irregularities that his case
has now become known.
I would be glad if you will get in touch with Gerhard and Br Guthrie immediately; they
should both be sent to Lota and await till I arrive there next week. The sooner you get
hold of them both, the better, as both were given a considerable sum of money, and you
require an account of it. I will discuss with you next week the future of these two men. If
you think it better to separate them by keeping one at Belmont for the time being, then I
have no objection, but you should warn them against ‘talking’.
Greetings in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Yours devotedly in J.C.
P.S. I am anxious to know if both are safe in Ireland. When you are sure of this will you
please send me a telegram, “Everything all right”.
12
13
King’s Counsel.

5.133 The opinion had shifted, in that it was felt that Br Guthrie could now continue his holy vocation.
The next letter was apparently dated 6th August 1951, from a priest in Mount Mellary Abbey,
Cappoquin, County Waterford to the Rev. Brother:
Dear Rev Brother,
Br Guthrie has consulted me about his vocation.
Considering his dispositions, other circumstances notwithstanding, it is my humble opinion
that there is no reason why he should not remain faithful to his holy vocation, ordinary
prudence being used in the assignment of employments to him.
Asking a share in your prayers.
I am
Very Sincerely yours,
5.134 Fr Harvey wrote again to Fr Gordon on 17th September 1951:

Dear Father Gordon,
I am afraid the Broadgreen affair has taken a very serious turn; they phone me that
proceedings will have to be taken. However, I have asked for Counsel’s advice, and am
now awaiting a message from him.
The police are coming again to see me on Wednesday afternoon; they are very
sympathetic and will do all they can to help; but the matter seems to be out of their hands.
However, you must do nothing until you hear from me. I will let you know immediately
what transpires on Wednesday. If I get any special instructions from Counsel today, I will
write again to you, even today.
In the meantime, we can only re double our prayers.
Greetings in the SS.HH of Jesus and Mary,
Yours devotedly in J. C.
5.135 Ten days later, in a letter to Fr Gordon, concerning the behaviour of another Brother, Br Johann,14
Fr Harvey mentioned that he was still very occupied with the Broadgreen affair and was meeting
the Chief Superintendent of Police in a last-ditch effort to put things right. Br Johann had been
physically abusive to staff and boys, and the authorities appear to have been in no doubt at all
that this conduct deserved expulsion from the Congregation.
5.136 The meeting took place and on the same day, 27th September 1951, Fr Harvey again wrote:
Dear Father Gordon,
I have done all I possibly could; but there is no other way. The two Brothers must come
back and stand their trial. I have promised the police they will come back on their own. If
they do not, a warrant will be issued and that will make matters worse for them.
Hence, I think they had better come back at once. At the moment, I do not know if the
strike has been settled, so I cannot say if the [boat/train] service is running. They should
travel back next Monday night; so that they can come back to Runshaw. If you can find
time to come with them I would be glad to talk matters over with you and Fr.Jan.15 I
realize, however, that you will probably not want to be away from home, particularly as I
have asked you to see to this matter of Br Johann. However, you might consider if it is
wise to let the two fellows come over by themselves. What about sending [an escort]
with them?
14
15

To-morrow I am meeting [the Solicitors] and probably we shall go also to see the Counsel
in ...
I am feeling the strain very much, and I know I must be very careful or I shall have
a collapse.
Please help me still more with your prayers.
Greetings in the SS.HH of Jesus and Mary,
Yours devotedly in J. C
5.137 Following his meeting with counsel, it was agreed that Fr Harvey would defend the two Brothers
and, in a further letter to Fr Gordon, he stated that ‘Everything possible will be done to keep down
the publicity of the affair’.
5.138 There is no record in the discovery of the outcome of the case in the UK, but it is clear from the
Minutes of the Provincial Council Meeting, held on 2nd October 1951, that the case was to proceed
before the courts within a couple of weeks of that date. The Minutes note:
Everything has been done to provide for their defence; Advocate and Solicitors have been
engaged who will see to the interests of the Congregation. The Vicar General of the
Diocese has been informed and he is very sympathetic.
5.139 The details of this case are still not known to the Investigation Committee despite extensive
inquiries.
5.140 By March of the following year, it was clear from a letter from Fr Harvey to Fr Gordon that Br
Guthrie had been transferred to Lota, and he was still contemplating where to send Br Gerhard.
Fr Gordon, by letter dated 18th March 1952, confirmed that he was sending Br Guthrie to Lota, as
suggested by Fr Harvey:
If you think the other can be made better use of elsewhere it is alright with me. I have
found both of them very willing and useful and I am sure the poor fellows will make well.
The both admit that they have a better outlook regarding Spiritual matters. Lack of prayer
was the cause of their trouble in the past.
5.141 Br Guthrie immediately took up a teaching post in Lota, and as previously stated he taught 11 to
14-year-old, mild to moderately learning disabled boys. By 1955, he was Principal of the School,
a position he held until 1974 when a layman took over. Br Guthrie became School Manager and
then Chairman of the Board of Management. He told the Committee that, from 1973 to 1984, he
did ‘other jobs’ and ‘what you call recreational activities with the boys’.
5.142 In 1984, he was ‘taken out of it altogether. I have not been with children since’. He was removed,
he said, ‘because of the complaints about me’.
5.143 Just why he was removed from the post of Principal was not made explicit, but it may have been
related to the concerns expressed in a letter that was sent by the Provincial Superior to Br Finn.16
It said:
21st May, 1975
Dear Brother Finn,
Brother Guthrie
In reference to the above named I am writing to confirm that it is absolutely imperative
that he accept the necessary psychiatric treatment that his case requires. For the
16

implementation of this treatment I hereby request that you make arrangements for him to
transfer to Belmont Park where [a doctor] will interview him and prescribe the necessary
medication.
As this matter is most urgent would you please see Brother Eric17 [Superior of Lota] and
explain the urgency of the matter and then, without delay, fix the day for him to travel to
Waterford. The sooner he receives treatment the better as the matter could easily pass
outside our control and this would be tragic.
I shall see Br Guthrie myself the next time I am in Waterford.
With every best wish,
Sincerely in J.C.
Provincial Superior
5.144 There is no evidence that the problem identified in 1975 was ever addressed, or that he was
transferred to Belmont Park for psychiatric treatment. His transfer records show no break in his
service in Lota between 1952 and 1984.
5.145 In 1984, Br Guthrie was removed from his post as Chairman of the Board of Management in Lota
because of complaints made against him. He told the Committee:
I was changed to another house altogether and I did housekeeping and various odd jobs
around the house but it was not a place for children. It was a place for grown-ups.
5.146 In a statement made to Gardaı́, Br Guthrie stated:

The abuse was happening from 1952 to 1984 ... I can recall coming back from Lourdes
after Easter in 1984, after spending three to four weeks there. Brother Bert18 who was
Provincial Superior at the time, requested me to Dublin. He informed me of certain
accusations being made against me, namely having sexually abused a child. I was not
told whether it was one or more. I was kept in Dublin for nine months and then transferred
to Limerick and I was given no more contact with children.
5.147 A Senior Child Psychologist on 19th January 1996 made a statement to the Gardaı́, in which she
recalled commencing work in Lota in early 1984, and having attended combined clinic meetings
and having a considerable amount of interaction with professional staff. During that year, she
became aware that a Brother was engaging in behaviour of a sexual nature with boys in residence,
and this activity was giving cause for concern. A number of boys were interviewed by a Consultant
Child Psychiatrist, for the purpose of validating the sexual abuse in which Br Guthrie was involved.
A report was prepared and, as a result of the investigations, Br Guthrie was moved. The full
account of the events of 1984 is given below.
5.148 The author of the statement said that her information about Br Guthrie’s behaviour came from
listening to the concerns of other professional staff and from information given to her by the
Principal Psychologist in Bawnmore, Limerick, a residential care centre for adults with learning
disability, to which many of the boys from Lota graduated. This psychologist said that the male
clients that came from the Lota service had been a source of difficulty in Bawnmore because of
their unacceptable sexual behaviour.
5.149 She had uncovered the sexual abuse within months of starting work, and the information emerged
in the normal course of her duties. The sexual activities of Br Guthrie were not so secret that
probing and sleuthing were needed to uncover them.
17
18

The events of 1984
5.150 Between March and May, two psychiatrists had seen an adolescent boy, Paraic,19 who had
become depressed and anxious about his sexual activity with another boy and about his
masturbation. In April, he disclosed to his headmaster the fact that Br Guthrie had been abusing
him. His words were reported in the psychiatric report:
“I told [the headmaster] that I would let Bro. Guthrie interfere with me” “The last time was
in Wexford just the two of us” – “We used to tickle each other in the privates” “I would
have my clothes off” “Sometimes white stuff came out of him” “He pushed his privates
into my privates – not very often” “He told me not to tell anyone” “I was in tents often with
him, sometimes he would tickle my privates and I tickled his.”
5.151 In April 1984, Dr Noble,20 a Consultant Psychiatrist, wrote a letter to a number of people, including
Br Eric the Superior of Lota in which he referred to an interview with Paraic during which ‘disturbing
evidence’ came to his notice. He wrote:
Paraic went on to tell me that he was very distressed and upset about incidents that
happened on cycling trips. He described how he stayed with Bro. Guthrie on a number of
occasions when on these cycling trips both in tents, and also in the same room, and
sometimes in the same bed in a house when they would stop on the cycling trips. He told
me that he had voluntarily told [the headmaster] about how Bro Guthrie interfered with
him during their trips. He told [the headmaster] yesterday and felt much better over talking
to him. He said that these incidents had happened on and off over the past three years
in trips to [the South of Ireland]. He said the last time was in [the South East]. On that
occasion he had travelled alone to [the South East] with Bro. Guthrie. He described in
detail how he and Bro. Guthrie had engaged in mutual masturbation on these occasions.
He also said that he was warned by Bro. Guthrie not to tell anyone that these homosexual
incidents had occurred ...
In view of the above history I feel this boy should not go on any further cycling trips or
should go on any cycling trips until further notice.
November 1984
5.152 A memorandum was sent from Dr Noble on 8th November 1984 to Br Eric, [the Hospital
Administrator] and [the Medical Director] outlining the allegations so far, and how Br Guthrie had
not stopped contact. He had telephoned Paraic’s house and once again visited Paraic’s parents
to get permission to take Paraic on another trip. No abuse occurred on this trip but it was a strain
on Paraic. Paraic did not want his parents informed of the situation. He stated that immediate
steps should be taken so that this could not happen again, and a meeting should be set up with
all professional persons involved to make sure that Br Guthrie could not have any contact with
any pupils, past or present. He also questioned whether Br Guthrie should be in any way involved
with disabled residents of any institution, and whether it would be better if he were removed to an
administrative capacity elsewhere:
Memo.
To: —
Bro. Eric, Superior,
[Hospital Administrator]
[Clinical Director]
From: Dr. Noble
Child & Family Clinic
19
20

8th November, 1984
Lota, Glanmire,
Cork
Telephone [redacted]
On the 11th April, 1984 I wrote to the above regarding allegations made by a resident in
[named school], Paraic. Paraic is an adolescent boy who is a resident in ... School. Paraic
at that time was interviewed by Dr. Price and also by [the headmaster] who referred him
on to me. Paraic told me that he had been interfered sexually on a number of occasions
on cycling trips by Bro. Guthrie. He described these incidents in detail and they are
documented in the report of 11th April, '84.... Because of this very serious situation at that
time the above people had to be notified that such allegations be investigated and if there
was any suspicion they were to be discontinued.
In l9.9.'84 I sent a second Memo regarding Bro. Guthrie and how despite being told by
the Superior that he was not to go on any further cycling trips with the boys from [named
school] he did so. This fact was reported to me by [the headmaster], who had been
informed that some of the pupils had brought photos of a trip showing that Bro. Guthrie
had resumed his cycling trips with [named school], even though he had left the Brothers
of Charity Services in Cork at that time and was resident in Bawnmore, Limerick. I again
wrote to the Superior, the Administrator and to the Clinical Director regarding my deep
concern about what was going on. All the people involved and myself strongly felt at that
time the situation could not be allowed to continue. Our views were communicated to Bro.
Bert, Provincial Superior and we were told that all contact between Bro. Guthrie and the
children and adolescents both past and present who were in the Brothers of Charity would
cease immediately.
Unfortunately this did not occur. I interviewed Paraic on 19.9.84. He told me that Bro.
Guthrie had phoned him at home and had asked him how the cycling had gone on when
he was not present. He asked Paraic to phone him and to let him know a second cycling
trip that he would not be participating in went on. Paraic did this and Bro. Guthrie informed
Paraic that he was coming to see his parents. Bro.Br Guthrie arrived on 31.10.'84. He
talked to Paraic’s parents and he and Paraic went on a cycling trip. They stayed overnight
in the house belonging to a Mr. Byron.21 Both slept in the same room in two separate
beds. Paraic said, “It was a strain on me if anything went on”. However, he stated that
Bro. Guthrie did not touch him on this occasion as he had in the past. Thus, apparently
there was no sexual contact between Bro. Guthrie and the boy on this occasion.
Again Paraic told me that he did not want parents to know anything about what had
happened previously. He said that if they felt that this had happened that they would be
very upset ....Paraic again repeated to me that he did not want his parents to be told
about what had happened in the past as he felt that because of their age that they could
not take it, and it would upset them and possibly kill them ...
I am absolutely appalled that this situation has recurred again,...... Paraic told me that he
would be quite happy to go on cycling trips provided Bro. Guthrie was not there. In view
of what has happened I feel that immediate steps will have to be taken by the Superior
of the Brothers of Charity in Lota and the Provincial Superior that this can never happen
again. I also feel that there should be immediately a meeting between the professional
people involved to make it absolutely impossible for Bro. Guthrie ever again to have any
dealing whatsoever with any of the pupils either past or present from the Brothers of
Charity Services in Cork. I feel that the Superior in Bawnmore should be made known of
all the facts and that he should know of Bro. Guthrie's whereabouts at all times. I am also
very doubtful if Bro. Guthrie should be in a unit such as Bawnmore, I feel that he should
21

perhaps be in an administrative position far removed from residents in any mentally
handicapped service.
Dr. Noble.
Consultant Psychiatrist.
December 1984
5.153 Dr Noble wrote a further letter to Br Bert, the Superior of Triest House in Dublin, informing him of
the situation. He was appalled that Br Guthrie was still in contact, and had even written to Paraic’s
mother asking her to get Paraic to phone him at Triest House. Dr Noble wanted to know what
action the Congregation were pursuing in relation to the matter:
Bro. Bert
Provincial Superior
Re: Paraic
Dear Br Bert
... I visited [named school] on 27.11.84 and interviewed Paraic. He told me Bro. Guthrie
had written to his mother on the previous weekend asking her to have her son, Paraic,
phone him at a number in Dublin over the weekend. Paraic was able to tell me the
telephone number,... the phone number of Triest House. Paraic said this message did not
affect him, but went on to say that “It doesn’t affect me much unless he takes me on a
trip”. He went on to say he does not want to go on cycling trips with Br Guthrie or to meet
him. He said he would like to go on cycling trips if Br Guthrie was not present.
... However, I am appalled to find now, despite the seriousness of the matter that led to
Br Guthrie’s removal from the Brothers of Charity Services in Cork, that he is still
continuing to visit and harass this boy.
I want to re-iterate my concern for the mental welfare of Paraic and out of deference to
his wishes (as stated above), I have not discussed this matter with his parents.
Following my discussion with you in [named school] on 27.11.’84 I wish to state that I am
not alone in my concern about the lack of progress in this case. This is a great source of
concern to the professional members of the staff and Community mentioned above, and,
also to [the Head Master] and his staff who are aware of this problem.
As I feel that the mental welfare of this boy is at risk, I would appreciate it if you would
write to me as soon as possible, and let me know what course of action you and the
Congregation are pursuing so that I and the staff can be assured that Paraic will no longer,
ever again, be subjected to stress by contact from Bro. Guthrie.
Thank you for your help in this very serious matter,
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Noble
January 1985
5.154 Br Bert replied on 17th January 1985, in which he noted that he had talked to Br Guthrie and
issued him with a stern warning, and that Br Guthrie had given him a written undertaking to end
his relationship with Paraic:
Dear Doctor Noble,
I thank you for your letter which I received by hand recently.
Since receiving it I have had two further very serious talks with Brother Guthrie, following
which I issued a stern warning to him. I feel that now there will be a complete end to his
relationship with the lad concerned. Further, Brother has given a written undertaking to
that effect to me.
I thank you most sincerely for your concern and solicitude in this whole matter.
Kindest regards and every good wish.
Yours sincerely
Bro. Bert
Provincial Superior
5.155 On 11th June 1985, Dr Noble once again wrote to Br Bert. He noted that, although Br Guthrie had
not been in touch with Paraic or his family again, Paraic was living in absolute fear of him
contacting him again and was, as a result, seriously depressed. Dr Noble felt that he had no
option but to inform his parents of the situation and this was done.
5.156 On 25th October 1989, the Principal of [named school], wrote a memorandum about a further
telephone contact from Paraic’s mother:
[Paraic’s mother] telephoned [school] today (around mid-day) expressing deep concern
that her son Paraic, a past pupil [now residing elsewhere], was told by another past-pupil
... that Br Guthrie was visiting her home today and would also be calling [to Paraic’s
house] ... [Paraic’s mother] was most upset to hear this from Paraic and stated neither
she nor Paraic wished to meet with or talk to Br Guthrie ever again and Paraic was very
upset at the prospect of meeting him anywhere.
I consulted Dr. Noble at his home by telephone at lunch time and later telephoned
[Paraic’s mother] (as arranged) to advise and confirm what I had already told her on the
telephone earlier.
1. Paraic should not meet with or talk to Bro. Guthrie if he does not wish to – no matter
where he may see him.
2. Bro. Guthrie should not be invited into the family home if he visited if that was [Paraic’s
mother’s] wish and should be told politely but firmly that he was not welcome in their
household.
I also made [Paraic’s mother] aware of Dr Noble’s offer of an immediate appointment
should Paraic or his mother wish to meet with him and that Dr. Noble also wished to be
informed if Bro. Guthrie made any contact with Paraic or the family against their wishes.
[Paraic’s mother] apologised for contacting the school again about Paraic and was
thankful for the support offered.
5.157 The persistence of Br Guthrie in pursuing this young teenager contradicts his testimony to the
Investigation Committee. He was asked if he had ever fallen in love or had become strongly
attracted to an individual, and he replied:
I would not say so, no. I never even had what people would call a pal. When I was moved
from one house to another, for example, I never worried about the people I left behind ...
anyone that is acquainted with religious life knows that there were two mortal sins when
you joined religion. The first was not to get up at the right time in the morning and the
other was to have a particular friend. They were strictly taboo in those days.
5.158 His relentless pursuit of this young boy suggested more than a passing sexual interest: he
appeared to be planning an enduring relationship. The remarkable control he exercised over these
vulnerable children is well illustrated by this case.
5.159 Prior to 1995, Br Guthrie presented the Congregation with several incidents of sexual abuse. He
was known to be a serial sex abuser. His deeds were not isolated incidents. Br Guthrie sexually
abused children under his care over a period of more than 45 years. Thirty-two of those years
were spent in Lota, where he taught mild to moderately learning disabled young boys. He was
sent to Lota by the authorities in the Congregation, in the full knowledge that he was a paedophile
who had faced conviction in England. There is evidence in 1975 that something was amiss, and
Br Guthrie himself told the Gardaı́ that he was ‘caught out a few times’. He subjected so many
boys in Lota to sexual assaults that he cannot remember the numbers, despite having an excellent
memory in respect of every other aspect of his life. Despite the dearth of information kept on the
Brothers by the Congregation, there is clear and unequivocal documented evidence that the risk
Br Guthrie posed to young boys was known.
5.160 In spite of his known abusive behaviour, Br Guthrie was made Principal of the School from 1955
to 1974, and then in 1974 he was made School Manager and, in 1981, Chairman of the Board of
Management. He was given these positions of power and authority, with control over staff and
boys, without the possible consequences being considered. As a result, by his own admission, a
hundred or so vulnerable boys were abused.
5.161 The case against him was so overwhelming in 1951 it defies belief that the authorities could have
seen fit to place him in a residential school for vulnerable young boys. Yet, this is precisely what
they did, in the hope that ‘Br Guthrie will be all right in Lota’. On 1st August 1951, when Br Guthrie
was in trouble with the police in England, Father Harvey wrote:
p.s. I am anxious to know if both are safe in Ireland. When you are sure of this will you
please send me a telegram, “Everything all right”.
5.162 Br Guthrie was stowed ‘safe’ in Lota, with no regard for the safety and welfare of the boys residing
there. That decision can only be seen as one taken to protect the Brothers of Charity from scandal
and prosecution.
5.163 Br O’Shea in his Opening Statement, made two assertions about sexual abuse prior to 1995:
Prior to 1995, there were a few isolated allegations of abuse which were dealt with as
deemed appropriate at the time. However, it was not until late 1995 that there was an
awareness of more widespread abuse or the damage it had caused.
5.164 He also stated that there was no awareness before 1995 of the damage that sexual abuse could
cause. This is not borne out by the documented evidence. The serious effects of sex abuse were
made abundantly clear to the Congregation in the series of reports written by child psychiatrists
in 1984.
5.165 The victims of Br Guthrie were sexually abused so frequently that it became part of their daily
lives. As they had no power to do otherwise, they obeyed his demands, and it was only years
later that they were strong enough to come forward and report what had been done to them. In
the course of his Garda statement, one of the complainants said:
What was happening between the Brother and myself I thought were the rules of the
school. I was told when I went to the school first, that the Brothers were to be obeyed at
all times and anything they ask you to do you were to do it.

The convicted sexual abusers: Br Dieter
Conviction: UK (September 1998)

5.166 In September 1998, Br Dieter received his first criminal conviction in the UK on the complaint of
George,22 a resident in a residential home and sheltered accommodation for vulnerable adults run
by the Brothers of Charity in the UK. Br Dieter had been transferred there in 1970, after the
disclosure of sexual abuse in Galway; described below. The abuse took place between 1971 and
1973. He was placed on probation for three years, on condition that he attended a sexual
offenders course run by the probation service in the UK.
Conviction: Cork Circuit Criminal Court (November 1999)

5.167 In November 1999, Br Dieter received one of the most severe sentences ever imposed in this
country for crimes of child sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty to 18 sample counts of child abuse of
young boys in Lota. Br Dieter received two years’ imprisonment in respect of each count (36
years) with a review in 18 months. This review was heard in June 2001 and the remainder of his
sentence was suspended.
Conviction: Galway Circuit Court (November 2000)

5.168 Br Dieter pleaded guilty to 22 counts of child sexual abuse of boys in Renmore at Galway Circuit
Court in November 2000. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, with the condition that
the three-year sentence run from the same date as the Cork sentence received in 1999.
Conviction: Cork Circuit Criminal Court (February 2002)

5.169 In 2002, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, with four years suspended, after pleading
guilty to two sample counts of sexually abusing boys in Lota. Some 75 other charges were taken
into account.
Br Dieter’s background
5.170 Br Dieter was born in the 1920s. He was the second youngest in a family of five children. His
father died when he was young, and the following year he was recruited into the Brothers of
Charity and was sent to the Juniorate in Preston in the UK. His mother died of cancer during his
first year in the Juniorate and he was not allowed home for her funeral. He told the Committee
that he was sexually abused once during his time in the Juniorate by a boy four years older than
himself. He never reported the incident because he hero-worshipped the other boy.
5.171 He was in the Juniorate from the age of 11 until he was professed when he was 18. When he
was a postulant, on an annual retreat, a priest had invited him to his room and had made sexual
advances. He resisted them ‘and felt very angry about what had happened’.
5.172 Initially, he wanted to become a teacher, but his Irish language skills were poor, so he could not
train as one. Instead, he began work as a carer in Belmont Park Psychiatric Hospital, a private
hospital run by the Brothers of Charity. In 1945, when he was 20 years old, he was transferred to
Lota to work as a nurse with severely disabled children. They were ‘confined to bed, and they
needed spoon feeding and they needed to be individually sort of encouraged to use the toilet’. He
did this arduous work for six years. He lost weight and became quite ill. During this time, the
Superior made sexual advances to him, and he began to have thoughts that he might be
homosexual. He recalled years later, to the psychologist at Stroud, that a relative (his sister) used
to visit him on a Sunday. While she was there, the Superior invited her up to his room for a coffee.
She accepted. He was approached by the Superior early in the morning and was told that she
22

had stayed the night, and he asked him to take her home before any of the Brothers found out.
Br Dieter was ‘very upset by this discovery’. Again, he was afraid to say anything about it.
5.173 Br Dieter was struggling with his sexual orientation, and trying to control his sexual urges, yet his
early experience in the Brothers of Charity was that the vow of celibacy was being regularly broken
by religious men of standing and authority.
5.174 In or around 1953/1954, he attended a training course in Belgium. When he returned to Lota in
1955, Our Lady of Good Counsel School had obtained official recognition as a Special School. Br
Dieter described the new position he held within the School as a teacher ‘under inspection’. In
1957, the Department of Education recognised him as a teacher because of his experience. He
was given the post of Assistant Teacher.
5.175 Following a period of teaching in Cork, he returned to Lota in 1961, and remained there until 1965.
5.176 In July 1965, Br Dieter was moved to Renmore, Galway, where the Brothers of Charity were
managing a School. At his oral hearing before the Committee in March 2002, he explained:
At that particular time then there was a very prominent, a very dominant association in
Galway for mentally handicapped who were anxious to start a centre in Galway City, as
a kind of residential day school for handicapped children and they approached the
Brothers about the possibility of a Brother going there to start this. I was appointed to go
there and I asked if I could be dispensed from it because of my – I felt totally inadequate
for the position but they told me that they had confidence in me and they were totally
unaware of my sexual abuse behaviour. They were totally ignorant of that and it was for
that reason I was reluctant to be transferred to Galway. I was in Galway from 1965 to
April 1969 when abusive behaviour was reported to the Superior ... and from there then I
was transferred to our psychiatric hospital in Waterford.
5.177 In cross-examination, Br Dieter noted that the abuse was not reported by a pupil but by a member
of staff, although he was unable to recall whether the member of staff involved was a fellow
Brother or a lay member of staff. A full account of these events is given below.
5.178 As a result of this complaint, Br Dieter was removed from Renmore to Belmont Park, the Brothers’
psychiatric hospital in Waterford. He testified that he remained in the hospital until January 1970.
However, he claimed he was not there to receive professional help and counselling, but rather to
help out in the hospital. He held the post of Acting Secretary I.N.C.A. (Irish National Council
on Alcoholism).
5.179 He was then transferred, in 1972, to a residential school in the UK for adults with learning
disabilities. He became involved with a resident in the school and sexually abused him. This led
to his conviction in 1998.
5.180 He attended two courses in the UK, the first was a course in special education in Preston, and
then a course at a polytechnic attached to Leeds University where he obtained his certificate in
education. With this qualification and recognition as a trained teacher, he began teaching in 1974
in a junior school for children aged 7 to 11 years, where he remained for 15 years. He claimed
that he had not abused anyone since 1973. He retired in 1989 and lived with his Community in
the UK until 1995, helping out in the working of the house, doing voluntary driving, and visiting
the elderly in a home.
5.181 In a psychological report prepared for his trial in the UK, a clinical and counselling psychologist
concluded that, following his treatment in Stroud and in view of his decision to withdraw from
sexual relationships and recommit himself to celibate life, a decision he took in 1973, Br Dieter
constituted a low risk in terms of re-offending.
5.182 The trial judge in the case in the UK took into account his plea of guilty, his age (73) and the fact
the he was ‘a man of hitherto unblemished character’ and placed him on probation for three years
on each count concurrently, on condition he attend a sexual offenders’ programme run by the
Probation Office in England.
5.183 The judge appeared to have had no idea of the reason for Br Dieter’s transfer to the UK; it would
appear that Br Dieter did not disclose his history of sexual abuse in Ireland to the psychologist.
5.184 The sentencing judge referred to Br Dieter’s upbringing and background:

Yours is a very sad story indeed. It is a Dickensian story. I do not want to say more than
is necessary to justify the sentence I am passing but you have a wretchedly sad childhood,
characterized by the untimely death of devoted parents, then your recruitment and
placement in the hands of an entirely different religious order where you yourself, as a
young child, had a desperately sad time of it. Then, as a postulant and as a novice in this
order, the abuse that you yourself suffered from those above you and in turn, of course,
as is often the case, you abuse someone else.
Yours is a very sad background, indeed. It is no excuse but it is an explanation for the
wretched life you have had, particularly as a young man. Quite frankly the general public
have, in recent years come to realize the lamentable criteria of recruitment that were
applied 50 years ago or so by religious orders in recruiting very young men, children, to
boost their numbers and the methods that were adopted. When I say, “the methods that
were adopted” the encouragement, the enticement of people like you who were 11 years
of age. That has all changed, and let it be said that it has all changed.
It was asking for trouble, it was sowing the seeds for disaster and you have to then battle
within that confined claustrophobic religious organization with your own puzzling sexuality
and so you did and this is how this happened: opportunity, privacy and power in a small
way.
5.185 When Br Dieter appeared before the Investigation Committee, his standard response to most
questions asking for details of the abuse he had perpetrated in Lota was to say that he could not
remember. He was precise and prompt in recalling other matters, such as the dates of his transfers
between schools, and the names of his colleagues. He was asked, for example, to estimate how
many boys he had abused in Lota, and he replied:
I can’t remember really. I can’t remember ... I couldn’t possibly give you a figure ... It is
an approximation. It is a long time ago ... I would say about 20 ...
5.186 Br Dieter was in Lota for 20 years, from 1945 to 1965, and this estimate of about 20 boys clashes
with some of his other evidence. In another part of his testimony, he admitted he had a frequent
compulsion to go to a boy for sex. This compulsion would occur ‘weekly’. He explained:
It was well planned in the sense if I needed the boy or felt the need of a boy I would, for
example, in a classroom situation, I would ask him if he would come back after class.
5.187 While he said he could not remember specifics, Br Dieter did outline how he set about the
grooming process to win a boy over. He explained:
I tended to attach myself to one boy and, as I learned afterwards in Stroud, it was a form
of – they have a name for it – grooming, I think was the word, the terminology that was
used, in order to get the affection of the boy ... it was an activity that I was ashamed of
and at the same time, it is what happened. I became attracted to the boy, and then I
became more familiar with him and tried to gain his trust by being kind to him and that
sort of thing.
5.188 He admitted these attractions could lead to a ‘love relationship’ with the boy. He said, ‘I was very
attached to one or two of the boys, yes. That's true’. These loving ‘relationships’ could last a long
time, and he believed it was rewarding for the boy as well.
5.189 He was asked whether he talked to the boy, and if the grooming continued, while he was having
sexual relations with a boy. He replied, ‘It was a silent act ... It was basically touching the boys’
private parts’.
5.190 It could lead to mutual touching that sometimes, but not always, ended in ejaculation. He went on:
It took place mostly during the day ... It would be, as far as I can remember, in the
classroom, after school hours in the classroom in my room, and I can't remember where
else just at the moment ... it would be asking them perhaps to clean the classroom for
me after school hours ... It happened sometimes at night, yes ... in that particular case, I
would go to the boy's bed and sit there for a while with them and chat with them and then
invite them into my room ... he would go back to his bed then.
I saw it as a mortal sin, and I was very troubled about it. I was genuinely very troubled ...
I went to confession regularly about it ... I realise it is a crime, of course, yes, now ... I
think that was my way of thinking, that it was a moral lapse.
5.191 Once he had formed a ‘relationship’ with the boy, and he felt he ‘could trust the boy concerned’,
the sexual activity began. In many cases, it became an enduring ‘relationship’.
5.192 He was asked if he maintained contact when the boy had left the School, and he replied, ‘In some
cases, I did, yes, yes ... through correspondence’. He admitted in some cases he arranged to
meet them, and in reply to the question where he would meet them, he replied:
It was usually – well, on one occasion I arranged to meet one person in Cork ... I met this
particular person in Cork on one occasion and in Dublin on another occasion.
5.193 When asked if these assignations were made in order to pursue a sexual relationship, he replied
simply, ‘yes, it was, yes’. He was then asked if sex had taken place, and he replied, ‘Not
particularly ... It is a long time ago so I cannot remember. I am sure that is the case’.
The circumstances surrounding the departure of Br Dieter from Renmore in Galway

5.194 There are different accounts of how Br Dieter came to be removed from his post as principal of
the School in Renmore in 1969. The Department of Education version of events is different to the
one given by the Brothers of Charity.
5.195 The Department of Education’s version of events is described below.
5.196 Mr Parter23 was the District Inspector of Schools, with responsibility for all Special Education
Services in Connaught and Donegal. In 1969, he visited the School in Renmore on a routine
inspection.
5.197 In a statement made to the Gardaı́ on 13th January 1998, and furnished to the Investigation
Committee in the Department of Education discovery, he confirmed that in 1969 he visited the
School. During the visit, a boy of around 15 years of age approached him in the school yard and
complained that he had been sexually assaulted by the Principal of the School, Br Dieter. He
23

questioned the boy, and was satisfied that the boy was making a very serious complaint, and that
he would have to report the matter to the School authorities and to his own Department. He then
consulted with his superior in Dublin and informed the Provincial of the Brothers of Charity (Br
Baldwin).24 He also discussed the complaint with the Manager of the School, Br Kurt,25 (now
deceased) who assured him he would investigate the complaint as a matter of urgency.
5.198 Within a couple of days, Br Kurt telephoned him and said Br Dieter had been confronted and,
after initial denials, had admitted the sexual abuse of the boy. Br Kurt informed him that Br Dieter
had been transferred to Belmont Psychiatric Hospital in Waterford.
5.199 At the request of his superior, (the then Assistant Chief Inspector with responsibility for Special
Education), Mr Parter made a written report on the matter to him. The report is missing.
5.200 In their affidavit of discovery to the Investigation Committee, the Department of Education said
that this report was last in the possession of the Department in approximately 1989 when it was
seen by a now retired inspector. The Department of Education say it is impossible to say at what
time since 1989 this report went missing.
5.201 The Brothers of Charity provided another version of events which is described below.
5.202 Br Baldwin subsequently left the Brothers of Charity. He had joined the Brothers in the late 1940s,
and remained there until the early 1970s. The Brothers retained his services in an advisory
capacity for a year after he left the Congregation.
5.203 On 16th April 1998, he gave a statement to the Gardaı́ in which he described his recollections of the
details surrounding the events in Renmore concerning Br Dieter as hazy. He did recall receiving an
anonymous phone call in his office in Dublin one night in 1969 to the effect that ‘Brother Dieter
will be visited by the Gardaı́’.
5.204 He travelled by car the next morning to Renmore and met with Br Kurt, the local Manager/Superior,
and spoke with Br Dieter. He recalled that he immediately took Br Dieter with him to Dublin, and
transferred him to the service in the UK. He said that Br Kurt managed the local situation and co-
operated fully with the subsequent enquiries.
5.205 Br Baldwin met with a member of the legal team for the Investigation Committee in 2002, and he
explained that, in recent times, he had been in touch with the Brothers of Charity and they had
made some records available to him which would indicate that Br Dieter did not transfer
immediately to the UK, but had instead spent some months in Belmont, County Waterford and he
must have been mistaken in his earlier account given to the Gardaı́.
5.206 Br Baldwin was unable to be of any further assistance to the Committee as to the identity of the
anonymous caller. He confirmed that he, as the Provincial of the Congregation at the time, had
not initiated any internal investigation into the allegations, but had preferred to leave it to the
Gardaı́. He confirmed that he did not contact the Gardaı́ directly himself and was not contacted
by them, nor was he aware of the outcome, if any, of the Garda investigation.
5.207 He was certain in his recollection that Br Dieter did not deny the veracity of the allegation and,
because of this fact, he decided to remove Br Dieter forthwith from Renmore and transfer him to
a position that did not bring him into contact with children. He stated that Br Dieter was moved
immediately. He confirmed that a unit in the UK was a suitable location for the transfer of Br
Dieter, as it was a facility for the adult learning disabled, and no children attended this facility.
24
25

5.208 The records reveal the following:
(1) In the “Historical Report” (The School Annal/Diary) for Renmore written in December
1970, the following is noted:
21st January Mr Parter, Inspector of Schools, spent all day in school
6th April, Mr Parter, Inspector of Schools, visited the school today.
3rd June Mr Parter, Inspector of Schools examined Br Alvin26 for Diploma,
Brother passed.
12th June Brother Br Dieter transferred to Belmont Park.
1st September Mr Walman27 took up duties as Headmaster.
(2) Records from the Brothers of Charity record the transfer of Br Dieter from Holy Family
School in Galway to Belmont Park in Waterford on 14th June 1970. There are two
separate records confirming this date.
(3) A Report of the Provincial Council Meetings held at Dominican Retreat House in Cork
from 13th to 16th April 1971 records at item 4 that Br Dieter was to be changed from
Belmont Park to the UK, on 24th April 1971 (Br Baldwin chaired the meeting which
was attended by Brs Kurt, Eric, Bruno28 and Carl).29
(4) Another report of the Provincial Council Meeting held at Triest House on 29th May
1971 records again at item 5 that Br Dieter is in the UK and is happily settled there
(Again, Br Baldwin chaired this meeting attended by Brs Eric, Bruno, Claus30 and
Franz31 with Brs Kurt and Carl absent).
(5) Br Dieter appears on the annual report of the residential centre in the UK on 23rd April
1971: ‘We welcomed Bro. Br Dieter as teacher for our proposed new special school’.
(6) 24th May 1971: special school opened – 5 pupils, Teacher and Headmaster –
Brother Dieter.
(7) List of Brothers and their functions – 31/12/1971 – Brother Dieter – Teacher.
(8) The annual report for the year ending 31st December 1972 shows Brother Dieter as
a Student.
(9) The annual report for the year ending 1974 records:
(a) Brother Dieter, Certificate in Education Leeds University, April, 1st 1974,
Department of Education Science.
(b) Brother Dieter – Teaching out (the job was in St. Michaels Primary school and
he was there until he retired in 1989).
The Western Health Board Inquiry

5.209 In response to the emerging allegations of sexual abuse in Renmore School in Galway, the
Western Health Board set up an inquiry in 1999.
5.210 In response to several written queries from the Chairman/Members of the inquiry team, the
Brothers of Charity have consistently told the inquiry that the Provincial Superior at the time
recollects that Br Dieter was removed from the Holy Family School in 1969. Br Dieter’s recollection
was that he left the Holy Family School in 1969, and the meagre records available indicate this.
26
27
28
29
30
31

5.211 These letters from the Brothers of Charity in general have been signed by either the Provincial or
the Director of Services in Renmore.
5.212 For example, Br John O’Shea, Regional Leader for Ireland and Britain, wrote on 19th July 2004 to
the Western Health Board inquiry as follows:
As I understand it Brother Dieter was moved from Holy Family School Renmore to
Waterford in 1970 as a result of an anonymous phone call to the Provincial at the time
Brother Baldwin. It seems to me that there was no follow-up on this incident between
1970 and the emergence of allegations in 1995 and the following years. Brother Kurt, RIP
was the Superior in the Holy Family School at that time and my speculation would be that
knowledge of the reason for this move could well be confined to Brother Kurt, R.I.P. and
Brother Baldwin. I would consider it unlikely that there was any awareness in [the UK],
either inside or outside the Congregation, of the reason why Brother Dieter was moved
from Holy Family School between 1970 and 1995.
Given the above, there was no consideration given to carrying out a risk assessment in
relation to Brother Dieter’s teaching between 1971 and 1989. Likewise, there was no
consideration given to withdrawing him from his teaching duties/contact with children.
Neither was there any consideration given to notifying the UK Police, the Gardaı́ or the
relevant Health Authorities.
Other documented cases of child sexual abuse by Brothers of Charity

5.213 While Brs Dieter and Guthrie were the only staff members of Lota to be convicted of sexual
offences, other members of the Congregation were convicted of sexual offences in other Services
managed by the Brothers of Charity.
5.214 Br Roland32 received a two-year sentence in relation to offences in Belmont Park, Waterford in
July 1999.
5.215 Br Herman33 received a sentence of three years in Waterford for the sexual abuse of young people
in Belmont Park on 28th October 2004.
Incident in Lota in November 1989

5.216 The following is a report by Mr Admas, Qualified Childcare Worker, dated Monday 13th
November 1989:
Report of Incident on Friday 10th November 1989
I acted on a report from one of our residents, (name redacted) at 5.15 p.m. (approx) that
the “New Priest” was “interfering with” Robert.34 Robert is 20 years of age and operates
in the low moderate/severe range of mental handicap. Robert comes from ...
Not knowing what [name redacted] meant by the “New Priest” I went to the Activation Unit
expecting to have been sent on a “wild goose chase”. But to my complete amazement, at
the end of the Activation Unit I witnessed Robert sitting down on a seat with Brother
Alaric35 sitting on his lap in a movement of “going up and down”. Robert’s trousers was
half down around his buttocks, but this could have been as a result of the clasp being
missing from it.
My first reaction was one of being completely dumbfounded, and on seeing me Brother
Alaric promptly got up and made some comment to the effect that Robert was his best
32
33
34
35

friend in Lota. I then, straight away, told Robert to come up for his tea, leaving Brother
Alaric in the Activation Unit.
Some time afterwards, 15 minutes (approx) Brother Alaric came into the Unit during tea
and started asking questions regarding the level of handicap of the boys etc. He left
promptly after receiving a cool reception.
P.S. [name redacted] who operates in the high moderate/low mild range of mental
handicap, claimed that Brother Alaric was “feeling Robert” something which I did not
witness.
The initial report from [name redacted], which I acted upon, was witnessed by two other
members of staff.
Mr Admas
Qualified Childcare Worker
13th November 1989
5.217 In a letter dated 15th November 1989 from Br Eric (Manager) to the Provincial Superior, Br Eric
said the following:
Dear [Provincial Superior],
It is with deep regret that I feel obliged to send you the enclosed report.
I first was made aware of this incident by [the Clinical Director] when he came to my office
at noon on Monday last, 13th November. Subsequently that day [the Hospital
Administrator] gave me further details re the sequence of events and of how [name
redacted] initially reported the matter to him and, at that stage, also handed me a
preliminary unsigned report of the incident. The enclosed signed report was handed to
me to-day Wednesday 15th November.
You will doubtless comprehend that we are faced with a matter of extreme urgency – a
matter patently calling for immediate psychiatric attention. I’m sure you will deal with this
as a matter of urgency as it is obvious that Bro. Alaric needs urgent attention for his
problem in an appropriate setting.
With kindest regards and sincere regret to be burdening you with this unfortunate problem.
Yours Sincerely
Bro. Eric
P.S. This incident occurred in a completely public area – anyone could have witnessed it.
Fortunately, Mr Admas was the only staff member who went to the Activation Unit at that
time, as far as I can ascertain. [He] is one of our more experienced and loyal employees
who has been in the service of the Brothers of Charity for [many years] and whose loyalty
and commitment is without question ... It is some consolation that he was the sole witness
and I am fully confident that his loyalty to the Brothers will prevail in this matter.
Bro. Eric.
5.218 The following is a report of a discussion between the Provincial and an unknown author (in the
absence of Br Eric due to illness) which took place on 3rd January 1990:
Topic: Alleged incident involving Bro Alaric.
On the occasion of [the Provincial Superior’s] visit to Lota on the 3rd January, 1990, and
in the absence of Bro Eric (Superior) due to illness, I asked him if any decision had been
taken regarding the reported incident involving Bro Alaric and one of the residents. I said
there was concern at all levels that some urgent action be taken to resolve the matter.
A summary of the points made by [the Provincial Superior] are as follows:
1. Bro Alaric is a very old man, and, if not already senile is bordering on senility.
2. It is often the case that senility brings on an increased sexual awareness and activity.
3. The alleged incident has been viewed with the greatest concern and Br Provincial has
had a lengthy discussion with Bro Alaric expressing this concern. The Provincial now
believed that there will be no further incidents of this nature.
4. He has considered the options available to him: should he transfer Bro Alaric to an old
people’s home or – given that he believes there will be no recurrence of the alleged
incident – leave him in Lota where Bro has requested to stay.
5. He has decided that, for the immediate future anyway, to leave Bro Alaric in Lota. He
will keep himself informed of progress and assess the situation on an on-going basis.
6. He anticipated that Bro Eric would be returning to Lota in the next week or so.
5.219 The transfer record of Br Alaric would indicate that he remained in Lota where he had been
Superior in charge of the Sancta Maria Pavilion for a number of years in the 1960s.
Br Eric
5.220 Br Eric was in charge of the Sancta Maria unit in Lota from 1954 to 1963, along with Br Guthrie
and Br Dieter. Sancta Maria unit had 60 boys, divided into two dormitories with 30 boys in each.
Their ages ranged between 13 and 18 years. The dormitories were divided in terms of age, Br
Guthrie was in charge of one and Br Dieter was in charge of the other.
5.221 Br Eric admitted to an allegation contained in a Statement of Claim in High Court proceedings
from a boy, resident in Lota from the mid 1950s. His counsel asked ‘Did you ever sexually abuse
[this boy]’, to which Br Eric replied ‘Yes’. He was then asked to explain to the Committee the
circumstances:
1953 was the year, September 1953, and Cork had won the all Ireland hurling final that
year and the captain of the team ... about a fortnight after the match ... rang me and he
said, "We would like to bring up the cup and have a bit of a party and a celebration for
the boys" and I said very good. So, they came up, big number of the local team called
Sarsfields, they were the Glanmire area. So they brought the cup up and we had a party
and there was whiskey poured in, in plenty, into the cup and we had a good few drinks
of the whiskey and the boys then were sent to bed after the party. It was about 10.30. It
was much later than the boys would normally go to bed and I was in my room and I left
my door slightly open because the switches for the lights were on the wall outside and
the boys were a bit excited, you know, being up late for this party. So I got ready for bed
myself and just as I put on my pyjamas this boy ran into my room and he was naked
apart from the – he had the top half of his pyjamas on him, so he started jumping up and
down in front of me. I wasn't used to drinking whiskey at the time, as I said it was 1953
and I pressed myself against him and then he went out.
5.222 When asked by his counsel, ‘is that the extent of what happened with [the boy]’, Br Eric replied
‘That was the extent of it yes’.

5.223 1. Br Guthrie perpetrated sexual abuse for 32 years with at least 100 victims. Br Dieter,
who had a room at the other end of the Sancta Maria dormitory from Br Guthrie, was
in Lota for 20 years, with a few short breaks, and then was in Renmore for four years,
when he was removed and sent to finish his teaching career in England. Between
them, these two sexual abusers operated in schools run by the Brothers of Charity in
Ireland for 58 years. Both were promoted to Principal, and one of them to Chairman of
the Board. Several of their colleagues were also accused of sexually abusing children.
The crucial questions are, ‘how did this disturbing history of sexual abuse come
about?’ and ‘what allowed it to continue for so long?’.
2. Lota was an enclosed and inward-looking Institution, and the pavilion system created
three enclosed worlds within an enclosed world. The Brothers in charge had complete
autonomy and acted without fear of repercussion.
3. The children with learning disabilities were treated as ‘different’, with fewer rights than
children outside the Institution. Their near-total dependency on adults to care for them
and protect them made them very vulnerable.
4. There was no training provided and no internal structure within the Congregation for
reviewing the performance of individual Brothers. Once Brothers were appointed to
Lota, they could remain there for decades, even if their performance was unacceptable
and unprofessional and their behaviour fell below ethical and moral standards. With
no system of inspection and no external supervision, sexual abusers were able to
operate with little fear of detection.
5. When sexual abuse was discovered, management failed to take action. They chose to
protect the Institution and the reputation of the Congregation, rather than the children.
It was the failure of leadership to manage the problem, and remove the abusers, that
allowed the sexual abuse to become systemic and pervasive within the Institution.
Emotional abuse and neglect

5.224 As a result of their learning disability, the children of Lota were more dependent and vulnerable
than children in general. They required additional attention and help from their care-givers. This
need for someone to look after them emerged from the evidence heard at the hearings. Graham
told the Committee:
My first memory of Lota would be I made friends with the women teachers there ... Yes,
they were nice to me. They were kind to me, and I felt more at home with them, an awful
lot more so because there was only one reason I can say about these teachers, these
women teachers, is that like my own mother, my own mother would have been motherly
to me up to, maybe, the time she had me, you know. I realised afterwards that I was
privileged to have a mother, even though I didn't know what kind of a mother she was,
but I was glad to have her.
5.225 After leaving Lota, he could not praise enough the kindness that ‘other people’s mothers’ had
shown to him. He said:
But apart from that, I have experienced other mothers' care with me, and I found loving
mothers that I met up with, other people's mothers.
5.226 He then added:

even though I said that with the women teachers I felt at home with them, but still I couldn't
say anything to them because it would get back to the Brothers about what I said. So
even though I appreciated the women teachers, I appreciate them as schoolteachers and
that they have never done any harm on me, but it takes big giant 6 foot men to upset you,
to do what they like with you because the public out there did not know what was going
on in that bloody industrial school.
5.227 The happiest day of his life was when, after the deprivations of his childhood, he finally found a
family through marriage:
It was one of the most nicest and wonderful day I ever had because a family were
accepting me into their family and especially my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law to be,
and then ... my wife to be. These few days were wonderful days in my adulthood. I saw
that there were people there who cared.
5.228 The irony about Lota was that the Brothers who provided the care and the good times were also
the sexual abusers. Conall told the Committee:
Yes, there was happy times too. I cannot deny that. A lot of people say there was not but
there is. There was, of course, it was not all doom and gloom, let us be honest about it.
There was good times as well ... The bikes ... The football, I was interested a lot in sports,
gymnastics and things ... Even the plays, things we did ... I have to say, I thought Br
Guthrie was nice to me at the beginning.
5.229 The emotional state of learning disabled children in the residential schools was seldom given
much consideration by the Brothers of Charity. Putting children through the school system was
the priority, not whether they were contented and happy. Children with learning disability had a
greater need in this regard and they were frequently not regarded as experiencing the full range
of human emotions.
General conclusions
5.230 1. The Congregation kept records about sexual abuse allegations concerning lay people,
and routinely involved the Gardaı́. The situation was different for Brothers. The
allegations were dealt with internally, and no records were kept, or else were kept in
codified language. For this reason, factual information about the true extent of sexual
abuse did not exist, and abusers were left free to abuse again.
2. The Brothers of Charity failed in their duty of care to the children in Lota, in that they
placed a known sexual abuser, unsupervised, in a school with the most vulnerable
and at-risk children. They ought to have known that he would commit similar offences.
3. By placing a known abuser in Lota, to avoid the intervention of the English police who
were investigating him for sexual abuse offences, the Order showed total disregard
for the safety of children in their care.
4. The Brothers of Charity put the reputation of the Congregation over and above the
safety and care of children who were among the most vulnerable in the State.
5. The inadequate system of vetting and monitoring staff allowed abusive Brothers to be
placed in managerial positions, with direct responsibility for and control over the entire
School, staff and boys. Their position of authority within the School made detection
an even more remote possibility.
6. When Br Guthrie was removed from his duties in 1984, supervision of him was so
inadequate that he still took children from another school on camping trips, and made
persistent and unwelcome contact with a boy he had been abusing, to the point of
taking him away on further excursions.
7. The Brothers of Charity, despite knowing of his sexually abusive behaviour, removed
Br Dieter to an institution in the UK where he abused again.
8. The management of the Brothers of Charity consistently failed to provide a safe
environment for the children in their care.
9. When sexual abuse was disclosed, the Brothers of Charity did not conduct any proper
investigation into the extent of the abuse. They simply removed the abusers and
continued working as before.
10. The Department of Education and the Department of Health did not undertake any
regular inspections of either the School, or boys in the care of the School, which
could have identified problems occurring in the School. The residents were placed
in a School where the Congregation who was charged with their care was reckless
and negligent.
11. The additional duty of care owed to these children was not provided by the Brothers
or by the State, who delegated this responsibility without provision to ensure that the
necessary quality of care was provided.
12. It is incorrect for the Congregation to claim that it only appreciated the extent of the
problem of sexual abuse after 1995, when the Gardaı́ became involved. The limited
documentation that has survived clearly indicated that those in positions of authority
within the Congregation were aware that children in their care were at risk of sexual
abuse, and were in fact being sexually abused.
13. In its Emergence Statement to this Commission, the Congregation did not examine
its own management failures that led to the appalling situation in Lota. The extent of
the sexual abuse which was perpetrated in Lota on dependant and vulnerable children
was not solely a result of the actions of predatory sexual abusers, but was also due
to the extraordinary ambivalence of the Congregation to sexual abuse when
committed by one of its own members.

Chapter 6
The Sisters of Mercy
Introduction
6.01 This chapter deals with topics that are of general application to the industrial schools run by the
Sisters of Mercy. It begins with a brief history of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, and
then discusses various topics, including the organisational structure of the Congregation, the way
in which their religious vows impacted on the nature and quality of the care they provided, and
the response of the Congregation to allegations of abuse in their institutions.
Foundation and mission of the Sisters of Mercy

6.02 The Sisters of Mercy date their foundation as a Congregation to 12th December 1831, when
Catherine McAuley and two companions made their religious professions at the Presentation
Convent, George’s Hill, Dublin and adopted and modified the rules of the Presentation Order as
their Rule and Constitutions. In 1835, Pope Gregory XVI gave his approval and blessing to the
Congregation for its dedication to the work of ‘helping the poor, relieving the sick in every possible
way, and safeguarding, by the exercise of charity, women who find themselves in circumstances
dangerous to virtue’. The Holy See approved the Rule and Constitutions of the Congregation in
1841. Later that same year, Catherine McAuley died after 10 years of service as Superior of
the Congregation. She founded 10 convents in Ireland and two in England. After her death, the
Congregation spread to six continents, with communities in North America (1842), Australia
(1846), South America (1856), Africa (1896), Asia (1953) and Europe. It was recognised as an
Institute of Pontifical Right in 1926.
6.03 In their Submission to the Commission, the Sisters of Mercy described the system of organisation
that developed as the Congregation expanded:
While there was one original foundation at Baggot St., Dublin, each individual convent,
as it was founded, was established as an autonomous unit with its own governance
structure and its own responsibility for attracting new members. Any new foundation thus
had a limited pool of Sisters at any given time. One might almost regard each group of
Sisters in a local Convent as a self-contained small Congregation.
6.04 Thus, each convent was autonomous, and evolved through local, diocesan and provincial
arrangements, but they all shared the common values set out by Catherine McAuley, and the
Congregation says that these values ‘must have influenced the way in which the schools were run’.
6.05 The mission of the Sisters is to provide for the relief, education and protection of the poor. This
mission has been expressed in different language over the years. The 1926 edition of the Rule
and Constitutions of the Sisters of Mercy, which was applicable for most of the relevant period of
the Inquiry, sets it out as follows:

Of the Object of the Congregation
The Sisters admitted to this Religious Congregation, besides attending particularly to their
own perfection, which is the principal end of all Religious Institutes, should also have in
view what is the peculiar characteristic of this Congregation: i.e., the most assiduous
application to the Education of poor Girls, the Visitation of the Sick and the Protection of
poor Women of good character.
In undertaking this arduous but meritorious duty of instructing the Poor, the Sisters whom
God has vouchsafed to call to this state of perfection should animate their zeal and fervour
by the example of their Divine Master, Jesus Christ, who has testified on all occasions a
tender love for the Poor, and has declared that he would consider as done to Himself
whatever should be done unto them.
Organisation
6.06 Despite sharing a mission and Rule and Constitutions, the Sisters of Mercy continued to develop
as separate units. They were not a unitary Congregation and did not have any central authority
in the period from 1936 to 1994. Unlike the Christian Brothers and other Congregations, which
were organised along provincial lines, with Provincial Councils and, above them, a unitary central
Supreme Council with a Superior General, the Sisters of Mercy were organisationally a large
number of separate Communities that were united only by their adherence to the same discipline
and Rule.
6.07 Most of the Sisters of Mercy houses were individual Communities, usually consisting of a single
convent, whose members worked in the local area operating a school or some other charitable
function, but the Community could also consist of a small number of separate convents controlled
by a Mother House. An exception to this arrangement occurred in Dublin, in which the Carysfort
Community was the Mother House for all the separate convents in the Archdiocese. This included,
for example, the Mater Hospital, many primary and secondary schools, the convent at
Goldenbridge, whose members operated both the Industrial School and the national school, and
also worked in the local community, and Rathdrum. Carysfort was the closest parallel to a
provincial structure because it had a large number of satellite Communities. The more usual
situation was for a convent to stand alone or to have just one or two offshoots. For example, in
the case of Clifden, there was one such subsidiary house at Carna. In Cappoquin, the convent
was self-contained and controlled the Industrial School, which later became group homes. It also
operated a secondary school. It stood separate from the other convents in the Diocese of
Waterford and Lismore. Newtownforbes and Dundalk were also separate entities and thus
independent Communities.
6.08 During the Emergence hearings, Sr Breege O’Neill, then Congregation Leader of the Sisters of
Mercy, outlined the organisational structure of the Congregation:
At that time [1831] she [Catherine McAuley] was very clear that for us to be able to be
about that work it was important that we would be locally based, and that we would not
be constrained by central Government ... It emerged within 20 years of her founding the
first house of the Order in Baggot Street. There were convents established in each of the
26 diocese in Ireland ... In some there might have been eight or nine convents ... These
convents were autonomous. They were totally, completely and entirely responsible for
their own affairs really. There was little central or there was not a coordinating structure
among the convents ... there was not a sort of a central Government that established
these, but they were established in each locality according to the need of the locality at
the time.
6.09 In his evidence, Dr Eoin O’Sullivan ascribed the popularity of the Sisters of Mercy with the bishops,
and their pre-eminence in the industrial school system, to the organisational structure of the
Congregation:
... Bishops throughout the country were looking to have industrial schools in their diocese.
They had difficulties with some of the Congregations, particularly the Christian Brothers
and the Irish Sisters of Charity on the basis that the Bishop did not have a rule over these
Congregations, effectively they took their rule from their provincial leader which probably
was based in Dublin. So the Christian Brothers, while they had a working relationship with
the Bishop, they ultimately took their rule from their Provincial. Whereas, the Sisters of
Mercy, to the best of my knowledge, took their rule from the local Bishop. Bishops far
preferred Sisters of Mercy than other Congregations, they were easier to control.
6.10 All this changed following the Second Vatican Council, when the Sisters of Mercy agreed that
there would be a central jurisdiction in each diocese, but there was still no hierarchy of power as
between one diocesan central authority and another. The process of amalgamation into diocesan
central organisations began in the 1960s, but was not completed in the State as a whole until the
1980s. During the period of this development, a further centralising process was undertaken
whereby the Sisters now agreed to adopt a central organisation for all Sisters of Mercy members
and institutions. This overall centralising movement was completed in 1994, and so the two
processes were moving in parallel for a period of time. Sr Breege O’Neill described this process
as follows:
... our structure changed over the years. In that while we had that autonomous sort of
way in the beginning after Vatican Council there was a move to amalgamate the houses
in each diocese. That really came out of the sort of the thinking of Vatican II. We set
about that and for the next 20 years, from the 60s to the mid 80s that process of
amalgamation happened in the 26 diocese. So by the mid 80s we were now diocesan
based with a leadership structure in each diocese ... When we had that in place we
decided that it would be good to bring the 26 individual units together in another
amalgamation. That was because at that time in the mid 80s our numbers were declining.
We had a huge spread of ministries throughout the country and we were looking at how
could we rationalise, how could we pool our resources so that we could be more effective
in the work we were doing ... So by 1994 we formed an amalgamation of those 26 units,
together with the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy in South Africa, because they had
a connection with Ireland. That is our present structure, which has four provincial units in
Ireland. In 1994 we were almost 4,000 people. At the moment in Ireland we have 2,620
Sisters residing in 392 local community houses throughout Ireland.
6.11 Prior to 1983, all Sisters of Mercy Communities, regardless of their size, were subject to the
authority and jurisdiction of the local bishop. Under the 1926 Rule and Constitutions, he was the
Principal Superior of the Congregation after the Holy See. All Sisters were instructed to ‘respect
and obey him’. The bishop was given the power to nominate a priest to attend to the regulation
and good order of the Community, both in terms of spiritual and worldly matters. The importance
of this priest’s role in the running of individual convents was clear from the following provision:
He shall watch over the exact observance of the Constitutions, for the purpose of
maintaining good order, peace and charity, and he shall assist the Mother Superior with
his counsel and advice, in all important affairs. She shall not undertake any matter of
importance relating to the Monastery or the Community, without the Bishop’s consent.
6.12 The bishop as Principal Superior, after the Holy See, was required to visit the convent at least
once every three years. The Superior, or the priest he nominated, was in addition obliged to
undertake an annual Visitation, during which he met with each Sister separately. If such Visitations
took place, they do not appear to have been recorded, because no records of them were
discovered to the Commission.
6.13 Each Community had a similar organisation. The Mother Superior was elected for a term of three
years by the Chapter and was eligible for re-election for a further term. The Chapter was
composed of all Sisters who had a vote. The Mother Superior selected her assistants and
proposed them for election. Where the convent did not contain a quorum, i.e. seven Sisters, the
bishop nominated the Mother Superior.
6.14 The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of Dublin was the largest Community of Sisters of Mercy
in Ireland. Its structure was set out in the Rule and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Sisters
of Mercy of Dublin.1 This document did not alter the position of the bishop as the Principal
Superior, or his nominated priest, but it did change the way the Sisters governed themselves.
Supreme authority was ordinarily vested in the Superior General and her Council, and
extraordinarily vested in the General Chapter. The General Chapter elected the Superior General
and her Council. The Superior General and her Council had the right to transfer Sisters from one
house to another. The Council also appointed the local Superiors.
6.15 Isolation from other Sisters of Mercy institutions was not a necessary feature of life in
Goldenbridge Industrial School, because it was part of the family of institutions under the central
authority of Carysfort. The Superior General of Carysfort appointed the Resident Managers and
selected the Sisters who were sent to Goldenbridge. Goldenbridge was under the direct control
of Carysfort in all matters concerning finance and other related matters. This arrangement would
have been expected to give rise to regular exchanges of personnel and a flow of communication,
but the reality was otherwise. There are no records of meetings or correspondence or any other
documentation between the Resident Manager of Goldenbridge and the Superior in Carysfort. In
their Opening Statement of 15th March 2005, the Sisters of Mercy made the following remark in
respect of the reporting structure that operated between the Mother House and the Goldenbridge
branch house at that time:
Reporting relationships were not very formal and probably depended very much on the
personalities and expectations of the Superior in Carysfort and the local superior or
resident manager in Goldenbridge.
6.16 The result was that Goldenbridge was, for a different reason, left in much the same isolated
situation as that which prevailed in smaller Communities of the Sisters of Mercy. The Community
in Dundalk, for example, would not have expected any Visitation, inspection or supervision by any
other Sister serving as a Sister of Mercy. A nun in Dundalk did not have any prospect or possibility
of being transferred. By joining that Community, she became a member of a stand-alone
Congregation and, unless she resigned or was dismissed, she would remain there during her
entire lifetime. This immobility came about by necessity in smaller convents. Goldenbridge, despite
its proximity to Carysfort and other houses, remained in relative isolation. Nuns there also served
for very long terms in the one post and were left to carry on their work without outside interference
or inspection.
6.17 A consequence of the autonomous convent system was that there was a smaller pool of Sisters
available for work in an industrial school. Thus, Sr Margaret Casey, Provincial Leader of the
Western Province, in her evidence at the Phase I hearing in respect of Newtownforbes, said:
The Sisters also would have been drawn from the small local pool of the Sisters in the
convent there in Newtownforbes and there was no expert or back up service really
available to them.
1
1954 (these Constitutions were revised in 1969, 1972, and 1985).

6.18 This limitation of choice was particularly significant in relation to the position of Resident Manager.
6.19 In 1953, the Resident Manager of Goldenbridge, Sr Bianca,2 delivered a lecture to a conference
on childcare management at Carysfort College, in which she spoke about the role of Resident
Manager:
The efficient and satisfactory running of every Home depends largely on the person in
charge. Experience shows that, where the person in charge is kind but firm; sympathetic
but impartial; efficient without being over-bearing; determined but open to suggestion;
approachable without being too free; the other members of the staff will take their cue
from her, and the result will be content and harmony in the entire Home.
6.20 She stated that a successful Manager should have:

... sufficient skill and judgment to settle each difficulty as it arises; have a sympathetic
interest in both children and staff; have a strong personality, without being overbearing or
dictatorial, be enthusiastic and enterprising; and above all, she must be strictly impartial.
6.21 These observations echoed what the Cussen Commission had said in its report in 19363 about
the importance of the quality of the Manager to the proper care of the children in industrial schools.
6.22 The smaller the Congregation, the less easy it was to find a person with these necessary skills.
6.23 In addition, Sisters were less able to secure a change of employment. In her Statement of Intended
Evidence to the Committee in respect of Dundalk, Sr Ann-Marie McQuaid, Provincial Leader of
the Northern Province, noted:
The three Sisters who held these positions during the period under review remained in
this position for most of their lives and right into old age.
6.24 The Mother Superior of the Community was generally the Resident Manager of the Industrial
School, and so had complete control over the funding and administrative duties of the School, in
particular its relationship with the Department of Education. However, she had little to do with the
day-to-day running of the School, which was vested in the Sister in Charge who acted as de facto
Manager. The rationale for this division of responsibility seems to lie in the hierarchical
organisation of the Sisters. The Mother Superior was in charge of the convent and, in that capacity,
she was in charge of every activity carried out by the nuns of her convent, including the
Industrial School.
6.25 The number of Sisters available for work in an industrial school depended on the size of the
Community. During the Emergence hearings, Sr Breege O’Neill discussed staffing levels:
I think that remained constant in the years between 1935 and 1965. In each of our
industrial schools there would have been between 100 and 150 children in the schools.
There would have been two or three Sisters, one of whom would have been the resident
manager, and maybe another one who would have been working full-time in the school
or in some other area. They may have had one or two lay staff ... The people with
responsibility for the care of the children would have been four or five people. They would
have been on duty seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I know of Sisters who told me of
having six little cots around her bed at night of children who needed feeding during the
night. That would have been a practice. So they were caring for the children over the
whole course of the day.
2
3
The Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System, which was required to report to the
Minister for Education on the Reformatory and Industrial School System, began its work in 1934, and furnished a
report to the Minister in 1936. It was under the Chairmanship of District Justice Cussen.

6.26 She was asked how the staffing level of four staff to about 120 residents evolved. She replied,
‘My understanding was that that was probably informed by the understanding of the time’.
6.27 Her comments were borne out by the evidence. In Goldenbridge, there were usually only two
Sisters involved in the Industrial School: the Sister in Charge and the Assistant Sister. The other
nuns from the convent would assist in particular activities, but did not play a large role in the day-
to-day operation of the School. In Cappoquin, up to four Sisters worked full-time in the Industrial
School and, in Newtownforbes, only two Sisters worked full-time in the School from the mid-1940s
to the 1960s. In Dundalk, two Sisters worked full-time in the School and were assisted by a third
Sister when numbers were high.
6.28 Industrial schools run by the Sisters of Mercy were heavily reliant on assistance from senior girls
and lay staff. Former pupils of the Industrial School were retained after their periods of detention,
and they carried out various supervisory duties, either in a paid or unpaid capacity. In
Goldenbridge, some of these girls were offered employment in the School only because they were
unable to work outside the convent.
6.29 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.
6.30 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.
6.31 In the Clifden hearings, Sr Olivia6 told the Committee that the only training that she ever received
was ‘in 1974, 1975. We did an in service course in Dublin and we would go up every Friday
evening and come down Saturday evening’.
6.32 The Congregation identified lack of training as one of the features of the industrial school system
which contributed to the suffering of children in their care, but attempted to mitigate this by pointing
out that there was no course in childcare training in Ireland until the 1970s. They also noted that
most of the individual Sisters of Mercy who worked in the industrial schools run by the
4
5
6

Congregation had a secondary school education, and others went on to train as nurses, primary
school teachers or secondary school teachers.
6.33 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.
6.34 In her 1953 lecture on childcare management mentioned above, the Resident Manager of
Goldenbridge, Sr Bianca, made important points about the needs of children in care. She said
that children coming from underprivileged backgrounds should be met with sympathy and
gentleness. ‘Drastic remedies’ for head lice, such as cutting off hair, should not be necessary,
particularly when there were remedies on the market at a very reasonable price. Children should
be divided into small groups, including at meal times, to promote an intimate family atmosphere.
She added that ‘formal marshalling and regimentation must be avoided’. Whilst there should be
an emphasis on domestic training, there was no reason why girls should not follow a commercial
or other career path if they had the necessary talent.
6.35 She proposed that every child should help with small jobs and chores about the home. They
should be encouraged to be creative, and arts and crafts teachers deployed. Dressing the children
uniformly should be discouraged. There was no reason why they could not be sensibly and
attractively dressed.
6.36 She advised that children should be allowed a considerable amount of supervised freedom. They
should be allowed to go to the local shop, and older girls permitted to go into town on the bus to
run errands.
6.37 In addition, she considered that a large playground and hall were a necessity. A field for sports
should be made available. Senior girls should have their own sitting room. She felt that music
should be encouraged, both playing instruments and singing as well as listening to music on
the radio. Dancing should be also encouraged. Caring for pets was another useful occupation
for children.
6.38 Sr Bianca also felt that the Manager should possess skill and judgement, ‘have a strong
personality, without being overbearing or dictatorial ... and above all, she must be strictly impartial’.
Furthermore, those charged with the care of such children should have a keen interest in their
work and possess the requisite experience and knowledge of psychology.
6.39 The fact that Sr Bianca was asked to deliver the lecture is evidence that she was highly regarded
as a childcare expert, and the lecture expressed an enlightened and progressive view of childcare
in the 1950s. Sr Bianca knew how a good institution should be run, and her lecture provides a
standard against which Goldenbridge and other Sisters of Mercy industrial schools may be judged.
Moreover, these progressive views demonstrated the principles that could have been inculcated
in generations of carers, if training had been provided, with potentially dramatic consequences for
children in care.

Impact of vows on institutional care
6.40 In May 2006, the Sisters of Mercy submitted a document entitled ‘The Influence of Religious
Values and/or Religious Life of the Sisters of Mercy on the Management of Industrial Schools and
on Aspects of the Care of the Children’. In this document, the Sisters explored the ways in which
their religious vows affected the care they gave to children in their institutions, and it arose out of
testimony at the oral hearings, particularly relating to the way in which individual Sisters interacted
with the hierarchy in the Congregation and with the children in care.
6.41 The Congregation accepted that these religious values and ways of life ‘must have influenced the
way in which the schools were run’.
6.42 Sisters of Mercy take the three vows common to most religious communities – of poverty, chastity
and obedience – and they also take a fourth: to serve the poor, sick, and uneducated. In addition
to these formal obligations, other aspects of religious life that were highly valued included prayer,
routine, simplicity, silence and work. The Congregation gave examples of how these religious
values might have had a negative impact on the way industrial schools were run:
• The strict routine of prayer followed by Sisters meant that during regular identifiable
periods, the children were exclusively in the care of lay staff and it also had the
consequence of a regime of strict religious observance being imposed on the children.
The importance of routine also manifested itself in everyday activities with Sisters
following a strict daily routine. ‘The daily routine of adherence to times for prayer,
meals, work or recreation was sacrosanct’. Sisters would have expected the children
to follow the same routine, with early rising, Mass, chores, special times for meals and
recreation and the Congregation accepted that this ‘could have been experienced as
harsh and demanding’.
• The emphasis on silence as a means of focusing attention on ‘God and the things of
God’ had a significant impact on the manner in which individual Sisters interacted
with each other and with the children. This could have had the effect of reducing the
communication of information about children between Sisters, or Sisters and staff, to
a ‘strictly “need to know” basis’.
• Work played a large role in religious observance:
Working hard was viewed as generous, obedient and self-giving. The underpinning
theology of the time held that grace would supply for what nature failed to offer. It
was not expected or customary that a Sister would complain in any way about the
task to which she had been assigned. To do so would be seen as not merely a sign
of personal failing, but of inability to cope with the challenges of religious life.
6.43 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.
6.44 It also said that ‘A life of simplicity and sometimes frugality was valued as an outward expression
of the vow of Poverty’. All Sisters pooled their salaries, and they were ‘directed in the main towards
the works of mercy engaged in by the Sisters’.
6.45 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.
6.46 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.
6.47 Many Sisters spoke about the impact of the vow of obedience.
6.48 Chapter VII of the 1926 edition of the Rule and Constitutions dealt with the vow of obedience.
It provided:
28. The Sisters are always to bear in mind, that by the Vow of Obedience they have
forever renounced their own will, and resigned it to the direction of their Superiors. They
are to obey the Mother Superior, as holding her authority from God, rather through love
than from servile fear. They shall love and respect her as their mother. Without her
permission they shall not perform public penances.
29. They are to execute, without hesitation, all the directions of the Mother Superior;
whether in matters of great or little moment, agreeable or disagreeable. They shall never
murmur, but with humility and spiritual joy carry the sweet yoke of Jesus Christ. They
shall not absent themselves from the Common Exercises without her leave, except in a
case of pressing urgency and if they cannot then have access to her, they shall make
known to her the reason of their absence at the earliest opportunity. They shall obey the
call of the bell as the voice of God.
6.49 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.
6.50 One Sister expressed her dissatisfaction with the hierarchical nature of Newtownforbes. She said
that the junior Sisters had no say in the Community. ‘It was ruled, it was governed from the top,
just a select few, that's all’, and the junior Sisters were required to follow ‘blindly and dumbly’. She
was unhappy with this situation because the people who were governing the Industrial School,
the Mother Superior, the Mother Assistant, the Bursar and the Novice Mistress, had little to do
with the Industrial School. ‘They were the elite. You had the elite and you had the everyday
folk’. This management structure inhibited her ability to speak out about the deficiencies she saw
around her.
The Cussen Report

6.51 When the Cussen Report was published in 1936, the Sisters of Mercy had responsibility for 26
industrial schools, 22 of them for girls, three for junior boys, and one was a mixed school for junior
boys and girls. The leading position held by the Congregation in the Irish industrial school system
is illustrated by comparison with the Christian Brothers, who had six industrial schools, the Sisters
of the Good Shepherd and the Sisters of Charity who each had five schools, the Presentation
Sisters who had two schools, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge and the Sisters of
St Louis who had one each.
6.52 Despite their importance in the industrial school system, the Sisters of Mercy were not consulted
by the Cussen Commission in the course of its work. Unlike the Christian Brothers or the Oblate
Fathers, they were not issued a special invitation by the Commission to give evidence; and the
absence of any member of the Congregation from the list of witnesses at Appendix A of the Report
implies that they did not respond to the advertisement of the Commission requesting assistance
in its work.
6.53 It is not known why such a large and influential body in this area did not make a submission to
the Cussen Commission. Although there was no overall authority for the Congregation at that
time, the Sisters of Mercy had in Carysfort a teacher training college that was attended by Sisters
of Mercy from all over Ireland. The Sisters of Mercy could, accordingly, have made a contribution
to the work of the Commission.
Impact of Medical Inspector

6.54 The Cussen Report made a number of important recommendations, one of which was the
appointment of a Medical and General Inspector for Industrial Schools by the Department of
Education. Dr Anna McCabe was appointed in 1936, and was extremely critical of the conditions
she found in the Sisters of Mercy schools.
6.55 A 1944 Department of Education memorandum commented on Dr McCabe’s report on Cappoquin

Industrial School, and condemned the conditions in the nuns’ schools generally:
This is another school run by the Sisters of Mercy which has a long record of semi-
starvation. Dr. McCabe's report following her inspection last November disclosed such an
appalling state of affairs that we went over the head of the resident manager and issued
an ultimatum to the Manager. Dr. McCabe's latest report shows how far we have got. Out
of 75 boys, 61 are under the normal weight for their age-height groups by from 3 lbs. to
21 lbs. The butter ration is exactly the same as it was in November, 1943 – 7 lbs. (At 6
ozs. per head it should be 28 lbs.) The boys continue to look pinched, wizened and
wretched and look lamentably different from normal children.
It is abundantly clear that the only hope of the required improvement lies in drastic action.
The first and most obvious step is the removal of the present resident manager. She is
63 and 5/12 years of age and has held office uninterruptedly since June, 1927. Dr.
McCabe informs me that she is a ruthless domineering person who resents any criticism
and challenges advice. Her explanation of the children's failure to gain weight – their
"activity" – rival Marie Antoinette's "why don't they eat cake?" She has bedded down long
since into a groove out of which she cannot be shifted by some annual criticism, and it
seems clear that she holds the manager in the hollow of her hand. I can see no hope of
improvement while she continues in office.
The state of affairs existing in this school is so deplorable and indefensible that I think
further strong action is required. I suggest that payment of the state grant be suspended
for three months and, that the manager be informed that there will be a special inspection
say, early next December. If that inspection shows that the underfeeding has ceased and
that the weights generally are on the increase and tending towards normality, payment
will be resumed. If not, consideration must be given to the withdrawal of the certificate.
I might mention that Dr. McCabe's account of the nuns' schools generally is most
alarming. Underfeeding is widespread. In fact, she tells me that in only one school –
Kinsale – is she completely satisfied with the diet. The general rule is what she describes
as a bare "maintenance diet" – sufficient to keep children from losing weight but not
enough to enable them to put on weight at anything approaching the normal rate. A third
junior boys' school run by the Sisters of Mercy – Passage West – is in the same category
as Rathdrum and Cappoquin, and she proposes to visit it again shortly. She is strongly of
opinion that we must hit the schools in their purses by threatening to stop grants – and
stopping them if necessary in one or two of the worst cases – If we are to effect an
improvement.
6.56 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.
6.57 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.
6.58 She was also highly critical of the general conditions in the School.
6.59 Although not directly alluded to by Dr McCabe, the situation in Goldenbridge was so bad that the
School had to be closed down for two weeks in 1942.
6.60 What emerged was a situation of serious neglect which had been allowed to develop in the late
1930s and into the 1940s. Dr McCabe’s comments in the Departmental memorandum quoted
above would indicate that this was much more widespread than the schools looked at in detail by
the Investigation Committee. Dr McCabe brought about considerable changes to those schools
run by the Sisters of Mercy, and often in the face of opposition and obduracy on the part of
the Sisters.
6.61 The Sisters have acknowledged the criticisms of individual schools, but have not addressed the
question of why these schools were so uniformly bad in the standard of physical care provided.
Although the Sisters have accepted that the religious vows they took had an impact on the way
in which they cared for children in institutions, they do not explain the level of neglect that was
found in the 1940s.
Possibility of change
6.62 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.
6.63 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.
6.64 By the time of the Kennedy Report in 1970, numbers in the institutions had reduced to such an
extent that the old system based on capitation was unworkable. Schools had either to close down
or adapt. Change came slowly, and it was not until the mid-1980s that the old institutional care
system was fully replaced by the Sisters of Mercy with group homes.
6.65 In contrast, the Sisters of Charity, who were also engaged in the institutional care of children,
recognised the need for change, and attended childcare courses in England in the late 1940s.
These courses changed the way the Sisters looked at institutional childcare in Ireland. They
recognised that the existing nature of institutional care could not provide for the psychological or
emotional needs of vulnerable children. They introduced the group home system to St Joseph’s,
Kilkenny between 1951 and 1954. The success of this innovation was recognised almost
immediately by Dr Anna McCabe, who saw that the children were happier in the new system.
6.66 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.
6.67 The extent of the Congregation’s involvement in residential care was reflected in the number of
complaints received by the Investigation Committee from former residents of their institutions. The
Investigation Committee conducted full investigative hearings into five of the largest institutions,
namely Goldenbridge, Newtownforbes, Clifden, Cappoquin and Dundalk. Every witness who
wished to participate in the investigation into these industrial schools was invited to do so. In
respect of other schools, each complainant was invited for interview.
Name Open Certification Original Invited for Attended

number of hearing hearing
complainants
St Vincent’s, 1880–1983 185 77 52 43

Goldenbridge
Lady of 1869–1969 145 6 6 5

Succour,
Newtownforbes
St Joseph’s, 1872–1983 140 33 20 10

Clifden
St Michael’s, 1877–1999 75 26 17 9
Cappoquin
St Joseph’s, 1881–1983 100 21 10 3

Dundalk

Response to allegations of abuse
6.68 During the Investigation Committee’s Emergence hearings, Sr Breege O’Neill, then Congregation
Leader of the Sisters of Mercy, outlined the response of the Congregation to the issue of child
abuse in Ireland.
6.69 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.
6.70 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.
6.71 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.
6.72 The Sisters of Mercy became aware of allegations of abuse in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sr
O’Neill stated:
It was at that time that we became aware of the pain that some people who had been in
our institutions were still carrying in their adult life as a result of their time there. That we
became aware of mainly through the public domain. Through books that had been
published. I refer to the book "The God Squad" in the late 80s and "You May Talk Now"
by Mary Phil Drennan. They were people whose stories related to institutions that were
run by our Congregation.
6.73 Ms Christine Buckley had made serious allegations of abuse arising out of her time in
Goldenbridge on the Gay Byrne radio programme on 8th November 1992, but it was the ‘Dear
Daughter’ programme in February 1996 that represented a turning point for the Congregation.
Although earlier books had been published and interviews broadcast, they were relevant only to
particular convents or Diocesan Congregations, whereas the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme was the
first to confront the Congregation as a whole:
It actually was the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme in 1996. Because earlier those two books
would have probably come to the attention of the particular convent connected to the
orphanage in which their experiences were recounted but in 1996 we had come together
as a Congregation and the impact of the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme on us is hard to
describe really because the impact of the story and of the coverage in the media following
that, it was like a tidal wave that came over us for which we were not prepared either
structurally or in terms of how we understood the past at that time.
6.74 The programme had an enormous impact on the way that the Congregation viewed itself:
The impact was enormous on the Congregation. One of the reasons was because we
had held a particular picture ourselves of our involvement in the care of children and that
particular programme certainly shattered all of that. We had within the Congregation
many, many Sisters who had no experience of industrial schools. They wouldn't have ever
been attached to a convent where there was an industrial school. They were never
involved in them themselves. They wouldn't have them in their memory. Suddenly there
were all of these allegations coming to us and we really didn't know how to deal with them
at the time. I think we went through the shock and denial and that whole sense of could
this be true ... We didn't have a base of knowledge ourselves to check it out against. So
our initial response was that kind of dismay. Huge hurt within the Congregation for the
people who were coming forward with their stories. All of that had a huge impact on the
morale of the Congregation. I say that because it was in an effort to try to create some
understanding of that, that we engaged in the process I spoke about earlier, that kind of
self-reflection process around how could this have happened? How did we contribute to
creating situations where this could have happened? It was a very painful time. Then we
had Sisters within the Congregation who were extremely pained by somehow now seeing
their life's work being cast in a totally different light. These would be the very elderly
Sisters. That was very difficult for them.
6.75 Sr O’Neill stated that there was enormous pressure on the Leadership Team at the time:
... it was the tension of holding all of those pieces and trying to support everybody involved
at that time. I am talking particularly in the years '96, '97, '98.
6.76 The Sisters of Mercy were aware of ‘Dear Daughter’ before it was aired. When it was being
made, the Congregation commissioned Mr Gerard Crowley, a childcare specialist, to carry out an
investigation into Goldenbridge Industrial School, in an effort to provide the Congregation with an
independent view of what happened there, and to give the Congregation some assistance in
deciding how to respond to the allegations that were being made. Mr Crowley’s report is
considered in detail in the chapter on Goldenbridge: for present purposes, it is sufficient to note
that it reached a preliminary view that the allegations were broadly credible. In her evidence to the
Investigation Committee in the Phase I hearing into Goldenbridge, Sr Helena O’Donoghue stated:
The approach gave us, if you like, some understanding initially of how we might view our
situation at the time and we out of that made our apology. We took the main conclusions
from it that the regime was harsh and insensitive to the needs of children, that it was
inadequate and did not meet their basic needs.
6.77 Following ‘Dear Daughter’, the Sisters announced the setting-up of a helpline and a counselling
service. Also, in an effort to build up its level of understanding, the Leadership met with every
Sister in Ireland who had worked in childcare. It also met with every Community which had had
an industrial school attached to it in the past:
We learnt a number of things. We learnt that their understanding of their time spent in
childcare in these industrial schools, their understanding was that they had done well
under very difficult circumstances ... They would acknowledge that the atmosphere in
those institutions was certainly not conducive or helpful to addressing the emotional needs
of children. They talked about the lack of funding. They talked about the lack of resources
in terms of help. They talked about an ... institutional sort of daily set up that wasn't
conducive to either attending to children's individual emotional needs ... Or to developing
to the degree that they would now want with the individuality of children. They would
recognise there was harshness ... But they wouldn't accept the more serious allegations
that have been made against them.
6.78 Sr Breege O’Neill stated that the relationship that individual Sisters had with former residents might
have clouded their view or led to a ‘rose-tinted’ picture of what life was like in the industrial schools:
... what complicates the whole piece for us is that those Sisters continued to have ongoing
contact and friendly relationships with many who were in our institutions and who to this
day come back and they visit. They stay for weekends in the summertime in those
Communities. So in some way that sort of tradition maybe informed our picture of what
we thought the relationship was. People would attend weddings and christenings of
children and all of that, and letters would be exchanged. I suppose one of the things we
learnt from going around talking to the Sisters was the huge affection they have for those
who were children in the institutions and with whom they have that ongoing contact. We
try to hold that side by side with the huge pain that many people who were in our
institutions speak about. That has been a real dilemma and tension point for us as a
Congregation.
6.79 In addition to these interviews, the Congregation:

... engaged ... in a very intense process of reflection throughout the whole Congregation.
Just trying to understand what structures of ours brought about a situation where the
stories that were emerging in the 90s could have happened. We have enlisted the help
of historians and psychologist, theologians to help us with that reflection. To try to
understand the context of the time, but also our own structures and anything within those
that might have led to that.
6.80 After the broadcast of ‘Dear Daughter’, the Sisters of Mercy issued their first public apology, in
February 1996. This stated:
In the light of recent revelations regarding the mistreatment of children in our institutions
we the Mercy Sisters wish to take this opportunity to sincerely and unreservedly express
our deep regret to those men and women who at any time or place in our care were hurt
or harshly treated. The fact that most complaints relate to many years ago is not offered as
an excuse. As a Congregation we fully acknowledge our failures and ask for forgiveness.
Aware of the painful and lasting effect of such experiences we would like to hear from
those who have suffered and we are putting in place an independent and confidential help
line. This help line will be staffed by competent and professional counsellors who will
listen sympathetically and who will be in the position to offer further help if required. In
this way we would hope to redress the pain insofar as that is possible so that those who
have suffered might experience some peace, healing and dignity.
Life in Ireland in the 40s and 50s was in general harsh for many people. This was reflected
in orphanages, which were under funded, under staffed and under resourced. It was in
this climate that many Sisters gave years of generous service to the education and care
of children. However, we made mistakes and irrespective of the passage of time as a
Congregation we now openly acknowledge our failures and ask for forgiveness.
Regretfully we cannot change the past. As we continue our work of caring and education
today we will constantly review and monitor our procedures, our personnel and our
facilities. Working in close cooperation with other voluntary and statutory agencies we are
committed to doing all in our power to ensure that people in our care have a protective
and supportive environment.
We were founded to alleviate pain, want and misery. We have tried to do this through our
work in health care, education, child care, social and pastoral work. Despite our evident
failures which we deeply regret we are committed to continuing that work in partnership
with many others in the years ahead.
6.81 Sr O’Neill described the Congregation’s thinking and objective in publishing that apology as
follows:
Our hope was that it would ease the pain and trauma of the many people who had been
former residents in our institutions, and that it might help to restore the relationship
between them and the congregation. Because at that early stage the breaking of that
relationship was hugely painful for the Sisters who worked in the industrial schools and
for the wider Congregation. We thought that if people could hear that we were truly sorry
that might help to restore the relationship. That was the intention at the time.
6.82 However, the Sisters concluded that the apology was not successful:
I don't think it was successful. Because as time went on we learnt that people heard that
apology as conditional. They heard it as incomplete. It didn't seem to have the intent that
we had thought it would. Or what we had hoped would happen didn't happen at that time
as a result of that apology. In some ways I think people who heard it as conditional were
more hurt by that sense that we were not listening to them in the present.
6.83 The Sisters considered that the initiation of legal proceedings against the Congregation altered
the way that they sought to engage with former residents:
Shortly after that began the issuing of litigation. Many litigation cases against us as a
Congregation by former residents. That sort of changed the relationship and put its own
sort of limitations on our ability to continue to try to connect with our former residents. We
respected the right of people to take court proceedings against us and we did not want to
influence them in any way in doing that.
6.84 The Congregation also highlighted other tensions:

One tension has been, the one I mentioned earlier, where we have Sisters who would
acknowledge some but not all of the allegations against them, and who because of the
way the Commission was set up would be or could be named as abusers at its conclusion
we had a responsibility to provide those Sisters with all of the legal and other supports
they needed, and to have testimonies tested. That was also a tension for us, because all
of those processes in some way were creating more of a wedge in the relationship
between us and them. That is how it was for us.
6.85 The Congregation decided to publish a second apology, which it did on 5th May 2004. Sr O’Neill
informed the Committee why it decided to do this:
When Justice Laffoy resigned and the Commission went into abeyance for some time and
we began to think that the Commission was going to probably go on for a number of
years, and certainly the High Court litigation cases would go on for years and we just at
that point said we have got to do something to try in the short term to reach out to the
people whose lives were still damaged by their experiences and see if there was any way
we could begin to build a process of reconciliation. That was the reason we issued the
second apology. Because we began with one to one contact with individual former
residents or with representatives of former residents groups and the feedback was that
apology was just so unhelpful to them, that original one. They would have told us that
their ability to get on with their lives was in some way blocked by our inability to hear them.
When that awareness became clear to us we decided to one more time and this time to
try to find the words that would reflect our desire to indicate that that apology was
unconditional and unreserved. That was the second apology we issued with that intent.
6.86 The second apology was as follows:

On behalf of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy we the central leadership team
wish to say to all those who as children lived in our orphanages and industrial schools we
accept unreservedly that many of you who spent your childhoods in orphanages and
industrial schools run by our congregation were hurt and damaged while in our care. We
believe that you suffered physical and emotional trauma.
We have in the past publicly apologised to you. We know that you heard our apology then
as conditional and less than complete. Now without reservation we apologise
unconditionally to each one of you for the suffering we have caused. We express our
heartfelt sorrow and ask your forgiveness. We ask forgiveness for our failure to care for
you and to protect you in the past, and for our failure to hear you in the present.
We are distressed by our failures. We have been earnestly searching to find a way to
bring about healing and we need your help to do this. We recognise that this statement
may be considered too little too late. We make it in the hope that it will be a further step
in the long process of healing the pain that we as a Congregation have caused.
Finally, we failed those Sisters in our Congregation whom we put in the situation of caring
for you without adequate supports or resources. For that too we apologise and take
responsibility.
6.87 In her evidence on behalf of the Congregation at the commencement of the hearings into
Goldenbridge, Sr Helena O’Donoghue discussed the negative aspects of the industrial school
system and of Goldenbridge in particular. She stated:
The most basic features of the industrial school illustrate how children almost inevitably
suffered in this system. The large size of the Institution and the number of children
contained in it compared with small group units that we have today. Goldenbridge housed
up to 185 children at any one time during the period under review. The size gave little
prospect that the replication of love and nurture of family could occur within its walls.
Nowadays, children taken into residential care live in homes of groups of six to eight at
the maximum.
A second basic feature was really the ratio of staff to children within the Institution and as
far as we can ascertain there appears to have been approximately one member of staff,
and I include that to be either a teacher or a carer, one member of staff to about 30 or
more children around the clock.
Thirdly, the absence of training for sisters and lay staff in the sense of what now would
be called childcare training. Some Sisters, particularly those in charge, were trained as
teachers; however, no formal childcare training had existed in Ireland until the late 60s
and early 70s. Then the capitation system of funding, together with the level of funding,
led to difficult financial constraints and choices.
6.88 She also accepted that the institutional nature of the residential setting led, in turn, to other
undesirable conditions of daily life. She described these as follows:
The regimental nature of the Institution where there was restriction on freedom of
movement well beyond school hours, where the lack of privacy inherent in institutional life
was something, particularly in the early years, which would have been unhappy. The
emphasis on conformity rather than on creativity and choice, and the very limited
opportunities of forming personal one to one adult/child relationships, and I suppose in
particular the reliance on corporal punishment as a feature in the maintenance of discipline
and good order.
6.89 She also mentioned:

A failure to properly understand the level of trauma being suffered by each children as a
result of being placed in the School and separated from family, sometimes in
circumstances where this placement followed a death of a parent.
A failure to properly respond to the individual emotional needs of the children in a school,
including how lonely and frightened they must have been in being taken from family and
placed in a large institution with children of all ages.
A failure to recognise the special emotional and educational needs of children who had
come from troubled backgrounds.
A failure to keep children informed about their families and family events, such as births,
marriages, and deaths.
A failure to assess the individual needs of each child, either on admission or on an
ongoing basis.
A failure to meet the comprehensive educational needs of children and the very
inadequacy of the educational process itself relative to their needs.
6.90 She pointed out that these failures were common to all industrial schools, but accepted that:
It does raise, if you like, a deep question for us as a Congregation and Sisters of Mercy
just that we as agents of the State worked through this system and perhaps were not alert
to the ways in which the failures contributed to the very real pain that has been
experienced by children who were in industrial schools.
6.91 These further concessions as to the negative aspects of institutional life are relevant in the
investigations into the different schools, not only those run by the Sisters of Mercy. They are also
material to the assessment of the system as a whole. The question has to be considered whether,
and to what extent, detention in an industrial school meant that a child was doomed to suffer ill-
treatment or neglect amounting to abuse of some kind. Whatever the answers to those questions,
it does seem that Sr Bianca’s lecture in 1953 touched on many of the issues identified by the
Sisters in their list of negative features, and contained advice on how to remedy them. At least
some of the negative features mentioned could have been dealt with by the approach proposed
by Sr Bianca, which stressed the need for individual care and sympathetic treatment. The same
can be said about the comments and recommendations made by the Cussen Commission.

6.92 Speaking for the Congregation on the more specific issue of whether abuse occurred in their
schools, Sr Breege O’Neill in her evidence during the Emergence hearings said that individual
Sisters ‘wouldn't accept the more serious allegations that have been made against them’.
6.93 Sr Breege stated that the records available to the Congregation did not provide any evidence of
‘ongoing systematic physical ... abuse of children’.
6.94 In her evidence at the commencement of the Goldenbridge investigation (Phase I), Sr Helena
O’Donoghue was asked what her position was in relation to allegations of physical abuse. She
stated:
It will be a matter for the Commission to really in some way examine elements of that
nature which at this distance we are not in a position to be able to say definitively that
they happened or didn't happen. What we will be saying is that corporal punishment which
was of the very severe and very cruel nature is denied by the Sisters who are accused of
it ... Severe beatings are a matter that we would be having a different view on than is
shared by many of the complainants and we would be looking to the Commission to
determine on something which is very, very difficult to determine, but those who are alive
and who are present at the time vehemently deny that they ever used punishment to the
degree that was cruel and excessively abusive.
6.95 In their Submissions to the Investigation Committee at the conclusion of the private hearings into
Goldenbridge, the Sisters of Mercy stated that:
Corporal punishment was routine ... But ... we say that there has not been established
that there was:—
(a) Serious or extreme violence, whether leading to children’s deaths or not;
(b) Daily unjustified physical abuse; ...
6.96 During her evidence to the Committee at the Phase III hearing into Goldenbridge, Sr
O’Donoghue stated:
At the Phase I hearing I said very clearly that we were not in a position to accept as
factually correct the allegations of serious physical abuse or injury to any child. And that
would cover those points.
6.97 She continued that, having attended all of the private hearings, she would be of the same view:
Yes, we would, following the hearings we would be of the same view.
6.98 Having given that evidence, Sr O’Donoghue was asked why the Sisters had apologised. She
replied:
I think that, perhaps, an examination of the apology, both apologies, may be revealing in
some way. I think that we have always acknowledged that we recognise that children
suffered pain and hurt while in our institutions. We know that those institutions, as any
other institutions, were systems. We regret deeply that suffering continued for the children
through the years that they were there. We deeply do feel that and want in some way to
both acknowledge and to work, as I have already said, for some kind of recovery.
Where specific allegations of a serious nature have been made, the apology couldn't, until
these matters would be completed, specify what the outcome of specific allegations were.
In relation to Goldenbridge, our conviction is that, like anywhere else, children would have
suffered in Goldenbridge pain and hurt one way or another that was not adverted to. At
the same time we have seen and believe that there is ample evidence to say that the
Institution was a reasonably effective and caring institution, according to the standards of
the time.
6.99 Sr O’Donoghue was referred to the portion of the apology which dealt with hurt and damage, and
she was asked what caused the children hurt or damage. She replied:
I believe that I couldn't summarise that in a sentence, it is a very complex situation. But
there were large numbers, there was lack of understanding, there was a regimental way
of life, there was corporal punishment, and factors like that which would have been
unfriendly, to put it at its mildest, to the needs of children who were hurt already and who
had experienced loss.
6.100 Later she stated:

We certainly accept that corporal punishment was part and parcel of the life and was
routine. We don't know and can't be definite about it, but that it may not have been
reserved to the Manager only. But we do not accept that there was punishment that would
have led to any kind of serious, or that was serious and caused injury.
6.101 During the Phase I hearing into Dundalk, Sr Ann-Marie McQuaid was asked to comment generally
on the complaints, by former residents of the School, that certain lay members of staff and some
nuns did treat them harshly. She stated:
I suppose knowing human nature and knowing the length of the period of time and the
number of children I think it would be unrealistic to say that there weren't times when a
child could have been treated harshly. We deeply regret it if we caused it and we deeply
regret it if we didn't notice it.
6.102 She described the Congregation’s general attitude to the issue of corporal punishment as follows:
In hindsight we regret that and that's what I would have had said. We deeply regret it,
particularly with children who were vulnerable and who were carrying so much inner pain
themselves, it made life more difficult for them.
6.103 During the Phase I hearing into Clifden, Sr Margaret Casey stated:
Again I would wish to say that corporal punishment as a practice is something that we
would deeply regret and the individual Sisters who administered it would have deep
regrets because we do realise and recognise that these children were vulnerable children
and in that particular setting it was particularly hard on them because of their vulnerability.
6.104 At the Phase III hearing into Clifden, Sr Casey stated:

I am aware that there is again a direct conflict of evidence in the whole area of corporal
punishment and in due course the Commission will no doubt adjudicate on that. I do
acknowledge and have acknowledged that corporal punishment was a feature in the
school life, as it was in most primary schools in the 1960s, and that slapping was the
primary form of punishment and I did acknowledge and apologise if children were hurt or
damaged by excessive use of corporal punishment while in Clifden.
6.105 During the Phase III hearing into Newtownforbes, Sr Casey stated:
I can't say that the children were slapped every morning for bed-wetting because I don't
know that, I wasn't there at the time, I did inquire and the Sister who was there is in her
90's and wasn't able to furnish me with any information to help me in an understanding
of how often is the punishment or how severe, so I honestly don't know. All I know is that
– and they would have acknowledged that in the School, that there was punishment for
bed-wetting but the extent of it, the regularity of it, the severity of it, I don't know.

Corporal punishment
Rules and regulations governing corporal punishment

6.106 The extent to which corporal punishment crossed the line into abuse is examined in the chapters
dealing with each individual school. What is clear, however, is that the punishment administered
in all schools examined by the Committee often exceeded that permitted by the 1933 Rules and
Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools in Ireland. These rules imposed limits on the use
of corporal punishment. These limits were more restrictive for girls, particularly those over the age
of 15. The issue of discipline was dealt with in Regulation 12:
DISCIPLINE.
The Manager or his Deputy shall be authorised to punish the Children detained in the
School in case of misconduct. All serious misconduct, and the Punishments inflicted for
it, shall be entered in a book to be kept for that purpose, which shall be laid before the
Inspector when he visits. The Manager must, however, remember that the more closely
the School is modelled on a principle of judicious family government the more salutary
will be its discipline, and the fewer occasions will arise for resort to punishment.
6.107 Regulation 13 stated that the punishments should consist of:

(a) Forfeiture of awards and privileges, or degradation from rank, previously obtained by
good conduct.
(b) Moderate childish punishment with the hand.
(c) Chastisement with the cane, strap, or birch.
6.108 The Regulation went on:

Referring to (c) personal chastisement may be inflicted by the Manager, or, in his
presence, by an Officer specially authorised by him, and in no case may it be inflicted
upon girls over 15 years of age. In the case of girls under 15, it shall not be inflicted
except in cases of urgent necessity, each of which must be at once fully reported to the
Inspector. Caning on the hand is forbidden. No punishment not mentioned above shall
be inflicted.
6.109 The 1946 Rules and Regulations for National Schools applied to the internal national school within
the industrial schools:
Instructions in regard to the infliction of Corporal Punishment in National Schools.
96. (1) Corporal Punishment should be administered only for grave transgression. In no
circumstances should corporal punishment be administered for mere failure at lessons.
(2) Only the principal teacher, or such other member of the staff as may be duly
authorised by the manager for the purpose, should inflict corporal punishment.
(3) Only a light cane or rod may be used for the purpose of corporal punishment which
should be inflicted only on the open hand. The boxing of children’s ears, the pulling of
their hair or similar ill-treatment is absolutely forbidden and will be visited with severe
penalties.
(4) No teacher should carry about a cane or other instrument of punishment.
(5) Frequent recourse to corporal punishment will be considered by the Minister as
indicating bad tone and ineffective discipline.
6.110 This rule did not permit the use of the leather strap in the classroom.
6.111 In addition, the Department of Education issued many circulars and guidelines to Industrial School
Managers, indicating that corporal punishment must always be kept within the bounds set down
by the Regulations and must never be used excessively. Circular 11/1946 stated:
Corporal punishment should be resorted to only where other forms of punishment have
been found unsuccessful as a means of correction. It should be administered only for
grave transgressions, and in no circumstances for mere failure at school lessons or
industrial training.
6.112 The Circular went on to state that punishment should be confined to slapping on the hand with a
light cane or strap, and that this should only be administered by the Resident Manager or by a
member of staff specifically authorised by him. It added that ‘any form of corporal punishment not
in accordance with the terms of this circular is strictly prohibited’.
Punishment book
6.113 Only one punishment book from the Sisters of Mercy schools under investigation has been seen
by the Committee.
6.114 The Sisters of Mercy say that the general prevalence of corporal punishment in schools during
this period is a factor which should be taken into account when determining whether corporal
punishment was excessive or abusive. To an extent they are correct, but the Regulations quoted
above were drawn up at a time when corporal punishment was even more prevalent, and yet the
authorities recognised the necessity of treating children in residential schools with particular care.
The Regulations recognise that children in industrial schools are not only in their school but also
in their home, and the standard that is applied is not that of the average national school but that
of the average home. The reminder to Managers in the Rules and Regulations that ‘the more
closely the School is modelled on a principle of judicious family government the more salutary will
be its discipline, and the fewer occasions will arise for resort to punishment’ is central to the way
a residential school should be judged.
Sexual abuse
6.115 The issue of sexual abuse did not feature as prominently in the evidence in relation to schools
run by the Sisters of Mercy as it did in relation to schools run by other religious communities.
There were, however, some very serious incidents of sexual abuse perpetrated by lay staff in
some schools, which are dealt with in the individual chapters. During the Emergence hearings, Sr
Breege O’Neill stated that the Congregation became aware of a small number of complaints from
the Leadership’s discussions with Sisters who were involved in the industrial schools. She stated:
I am aware of, I think, three, if not four ... Let me mention that there were three instances
where the Resident Manager in a particular institution became aware of a concern that
sexual abuse might have occurred in relation to a child. I am talking about an instance in
1960, one in the mid 60s and one in 1969. They were instances where that came to the
attention of the Resident Manager and the individual Manager took action herself in
relation to each of those three cases that we are aware of. One was in relation to
somebody who was visiting the Institution and she barred that person. She mentioned it
subsequently to a Department official. The other one was in relation to somebody who
was working in a maintenance capacity. Again the Sister had that man removed. The third
one was a volunteer coming in and when the Sister heard the complaint she sent for him
but he never came back to the Institution. That would be from the recollection of the
Sisters themselves ... Some of that, the dismissal, we have found some records that
substantiate that.
6.116 She informed the Committee that she was not aware that there was anything specific done to
help any of those children deal with the trauma of sexual abuse:
The picture I get is that this was at a time when sexual abuse was not talked about. It
came to somebody's attention, they dealt with it. Whether they would have been aware
of the impact on the child or whether they would have known how to deal with it I am not
sure. But I am not aware that any action was taken.
6.117 During the Phase I hearing into Goldenbridge, Sr Helena O’Donoghue provided some detail on
the allegations of sexual abuse in that Institution:
A small number of complaints have been made of sexual abuse associated with
Goldenbridge. However, the only definite knowledge that we have about sexual abuse in
the School relates to 1962. At that time a pupil accused a male caretaker or groundsman
of assaulting her and she reported the matter to the Resident Manager, Sr Alida, who
went to the Gardaı́ immediately. The offender was prosecuted and dismissed from
employment in the School.
6.118 During the Phase III hearing into Goldenbridge, Sr Helena O’Donoghue stated that she was unable
to comment as to whether any steps were taken to avoid any indecent touching of children, or
improper approaches from individuals visiting the School:
I am not in a position to comment. I, myself, was not ever there, but I would believe that
would be something that is in the mists of time, that we are not in a position to be clear on.
6.119 She also accepted that there was no system of vetting outsiders who took children at the
weekends and during the holidays:
There certainly wasn't a vetting process that you might expect today, but mostly the
families who took children from Goldenbridge were families known to the Sisters, either
through having come maybe for entertainment times or for various activities, mostly.
Because at one stage I think they did advertise for some people to take them.
6.120 The discussion of these topics, by way of introduction to the detailed investigations into abuse in
the Sisters of Mercy institutions, is largely based on documents, submissions and evidence of the
Sisters of Mercy which were presented by them without being challenged or contradicted.
6.121 The system of discrete Congregations created some difficulties and exacerbated others, and
generally made the task of each Community more demanding. The Sisters’ vows and religious
obligations contributed to the experience of harshness, distance and other deficiencies of care in
the institutions.
6.122 It is, however, noteworthy that one senior member of the Dublin Community made no reference
to these obstacles in 1953, when addressing the needs of good management. Any such
impairment of the capacity of the Sisters in their temporal work by reason of spiritual commitments
called into question the fitness of the Congregation to undertake work requiring sensitivity and
understanding of the needs of others.

Chapter 7
St Vincent’s Industrial School,

Goldenbridge (‘Goldenbridge’),
1880–1983
Introduction
7.01 Goldenbridge was the subject of television and radio programmes and of a great deal of media
coverage generally. Experiences of ex-residents of Goldenbridge featured in a number of
publications, and some ex-residents were prominent in the campaign for redress. The programme
‘Dear Daughter’ was a dramatised documentary that featured this Institution, and Goldenbridge
was also referred to in the television series ‘States of Fear’. The screening of the third and last
programme of that series provoked a huge public reaction and was followed by the Taoiseach’s
apology. Measures were announced that included the establishment of this Commission.
7.02 Public meetings that were intended to generate support for the campaign for recognition and
redress provided occasions for former residents to come together and share experiences. The
Sisters of Mercy expressed concern at the possibility that people were being influenced by what
was said at these meetings.
The hearings
7.03 The Investigation Committee held both public and private hearings in respect of Goldenbridge. Sr
Helena O’Donoghue, Provincial Leader of the South Central Province, gave evidence to the
Committee in a public session on 15th March 2005. Her evidence was based on a detailed Opening
Statement submitted in advance of the hearing.
7.04 Evidence was heard from witnesses in private hearings from 18th March until 28th April 2005. A
total of 40 complainants gave evidence at this time. A further four former residents gave evidence,
at the request of the Sisters of Mercy, to provide positive accounts of their experiences of growing
up in Goldenbridge. All complainants who wished to give evidence did so; in addition, four
respondents and two expert witnesses gave evidence.
7.05 The Committee had heard evidence from three complainants and two respondents in March 2002.
7.06 In the third stage of the inquiry into Goldenbridge (Phase III), a public hearing was convened on
15th May 2006 at the Herbert Park Hotel, Ballsbridge, and Sr Helena O’Donoghue once again
gave evidence on behalf of the Congregation. This session focused on issues that arose as a
result of the private hearings and the documentary material produced to the Committee.
7.07 Documentation was furnished as part of the discovery process from a number of sources, namely
the Sisters of Mercy, the Department of Education and Science, An Garda Sı́ochána, the Director
of Public Prosecutions, the Archbishop of Dublin, and the medical records of some complainants.
7.08 The Sisters of Mercy furnished Submissions on 20th June 2005. These Submissions were made
in the aftermath of the evidence heard at oral hearings and the documentary evidence which
emerged during the course of the inquiry.
Establishment of Goldenbridge
The Sisters of Mercy were founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin in 1831.
7.09 In 1855, Cardinal Cullen invited the Sisters of Mercy to provide a rehabilitation service to women
who had been incarcerated in Mountjoy jail, by educating them and preparing them for final
release. Cardinal Cullen originally rented the premises at Goldenbridge and paid the rent for a
five-year period. The convict refuge was opened in 1856. The Sisters continued with this work
until 1883.
7.10 In 1858, within two years of commencing this mission, the Sisters of Mercy had established a
convent, a national school for the poor of the area, and a commercial laundry on the premises
originally acquired by Cardinal Cullen, as well as the rehabilitation service for prisoners. These
projects were funded by the mother house, which was then in Baggot Street, Dublin.
7.11 In 1880, a building within the complex was certified as an industrial school for girls, with a
certification for 50. It was called St Vincent’s Industrial School and it opened with an initial intake
of 30 girls.
7.12 In 1883, the convict refuge was converted into the Industrial School. Dormitories, a dining hall,
workrooms and extra accommodation were added over the subsequent two years, at a cost of
some £2,000. Within five years, the School had increased its certification from 50 to 150.
7.13 From 1885, the number of children accommodated in the School remained steady, although there
was a significant increase over the 1950s and 1960s, up to a high of 193 in 1964. At the time of
its closure in 1983, there were 46 pupils in Goldenbridge.
Organisational structure
7.14 There were 10 Resident Managers in Goldenbridge Industrial School during the period under
review (1936–1983). These Managers were appointed by the Superior General in Carysfort in
Dublin. Goldenbridge convent, to which the Industrial School was attached, was a branch house
of the Carysfort house, which was the mother house of all the Dublin Mercy Communities.
7.15 The Superior General of Carysfort appointed the Reverend Mother and assigned Sisters to
Goldenbridge convent. From the records, it appears that the Reverend Mother also officially held
the title of Resident Manager of the Industrial School. In reality, the Reverend Mother had very
little involvement with the day-to-day running of the School. Her role consisted of interacting with
the Department of Education. The actual management of the Industrial School was left to two
nuns – the Sister-in-Charge and, from 1942 onwards, her assistant.
7.16 Only two of the 10 Resident Managers fulfilled the role of Sister-in-Charge and had direct
involvement in the day-to-day management of the Industrial School. One such Resident Manager
was Sr Bianca,1 who held the position from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s. The other was Sr
Venetia,2 and her term of office ran from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s.
7.17 Two of the five nuns who were closely involved with the running of the Industrial School are
alive today.
1
2

7.18 In the Congregation’s Opening Statement, for Goldenbridge, it was stated:
The Sisters chosen for responsibility in Goldenbridge were women of ability, sound
common sense and normal home background.
7.19 There appears to have been no formal structure of communication between Carysfort and
Goldenbridge. According to the Opening Statement:
Reporting relationships were not very formal and probably depended very much on the
personalities and expectations of the Superior in Carysfort and the local superior or
resident manager in Goldenbridge.
7.20 There are no records of meetings or correspondence or any other documentation between the
Resident Manager of Goldenbridge and the Superior General in Carysfort.
7.21 Sr Helena O’Donoghue stated that at one time Goldenbridge paid an annual levy to Carysfort
and, at another period in time, all income went to Carysfort and an agreed budget was returned.
Goldenbridge management
7.22 The convent at Goldenbridge housed approximately 30 Sisters who were engaged in work
throughout the local community. The Sisters ran a large national school in the Goldenbridge
complex and also had a laundry that was a separate commercial enterprise. The laundry was
closed in the mid-1950s, to facilitate the development of the secondary school. In addition, prior
to 1954, there was what was known as a secondary top, which was an extension of the national
school for children up to the age of 14.
7.23 The Industrial School in Goldenbridge was a large institution but very few Sisters worked in it.
Prior to 1942, the Reverend Mother of the convent was always the Resident Manager of
Goldenbridge. Although there were four different Resident Managers notified to the Department
of Education between 1936 and 1942, these Sisters had very little contact with the daily
administration in the School or with the children who were committed to it. The testimony of Sr
Alida,3 who came to Goldenbridge as a young nun in the early 1940s, was that administration in
the school and management were delegated to one nun, Sr Pietrina,4 who was elderly and diabetic
when Sr Alida was appointed.
7.24 Sr Alida had no recollection of any other nun in the Community being involved in the running of
the Institution other than Sr Pietrina. She said that, apart from visiting the Industrial School to
watch films or concerts, there was no contact between the Industrial School and the convent, and
the nuns in the convent would not have known the children in the Industrial School.
7.25 The day-to-day operation of the School and the care of the children were left to two lay teachers,
Ms Dempsey5 and Ms Kearney.6 After classes, these teachers supervised the children and put
them to bed. They were assisted by four care workers, one in the kitchen, one in the laundry and
two generally in the house. In the evening, Sr Pietrina returned to the convent, and the two lay
teachers looked after the children until the next day. There were 150 children in Goldenbridge at
that time.
3
4
5
6

7.26 Before Sr Bianca was appointed to Goldenbridge, Sr Vincenza7 of Carysfort had appointed Sr
Divina8 as Resident Manager in the early 1940s, which prompted the Assistant Secretary of the
Department of Education to protest. He wrote:
I am desired by the Minister for Education to call your attention to the fact that the new
Resident Manager whom you have appointed in St. Vincent’s Industrial School,
Goldenbridge, is 79 years of age. The Minister feels that the management of an Industrial
School would constitute a very heavy burden and responsibility on a lady of this advanced
age. The supervision of the feeding, clothing, education and health of about 150 children,
together with the keeping of the many accounts, records etc., which are required and, in
addition, the fulfilment of her duties as Reverend Mother of the community would, in the
Minister’s opinion, constitute a heavy burden on a much younger and more active person.
The Minister would accordingly be glad if you would reconsider this appointment with a
view to appointing a much younger Sister who has had experience of children and on
whom the complex duties of management would not be so burdensome.
7.27 Sr Vincenza replied immediately to the Assistant Secretary:

In reply to your letter of 29th September regarding the appointment of an aged Sister as
Manager of Golden Bridge Industrial School, I have this day appointed as Manager one
of the Staff – Sr. Bianca– to that position.
When appointing the Manager on the 12th September I sent an extra Sister to the Ind.
School, who holds very high qualifications and certificates for Domestic Economy,
Cookery, Needlework and Household Knowledge, to help with the management with the
household work and management of the children, so that Sr. Bianca could be free to
devote some time to the duties that the Manager would have to undertake.
The appointment made today leaves Mother Pia9 free to devote herself to the Community
in Golden Bridge Convent.
7.28 That, however, was not the end of the matter; the Department immediately replied, seeking
clarification:
Please state whether it is your intention to authorise Sister Bianca to exercise all the
powers, functions and duties of the Managers in accordance with the provisions of the
Children Acts, 1908 to 1941.
7.29 The Department of Education wanted to ensure that the actual day-to-day running of the Institution
would be in the hands of a young, energetic, qualified Sister. Sr Bianca was appointed as Sister-
in-Charge of the Industrial School in the early 1940s, and was appointed Resident Manager the
following year. At the same time Sr Alida, who was a young newly professed Sister, in her mid-20s,
was appointed as her assistant. Sr Bianca continued as Resident Manager until the mid-1950s.
7.30 According to Sr Alida, when Sr Bianca took over ‘she was a very powerful personality, controlling
person. She went to her major Superior in Carysfort and said she would take the running of the
school ... provided she got the handling of the finance’.
7.31 Sr Alida said that this gave her ‘great ease of conscience’ because it meant that nobody could
ever question that the money given to the Industrial School was spent by the convent in any other
way. She explained:
7
8
9

there were lots of allegations at that time made, rightly or wrongly, that school money
went to the convent. That was the system. Sr Bianca ended that system and the money
was – she had the cheque book, Pietrina never had a cheque book, and paid the bills.
7.32 Sr Alida maintained that only a person as powerful as Sr Bianca could have succeeded in having
this change made to the management structure of Goldenbridge. She said that, before Sr Bianca’s
intervention, the money came into the convent to the Superior and was lodged to the bank:
I know we used to say that it wasn’t all totally honestly done, I have absolutely nothing to
say about that. I am not saying that. What I am saying was that the person running the
school, Sr. Pietrina, would have said to me one day, and she was a long time in the school,
“all the money I ever handled while I was in the School was the money for the dripping”.
7.33 Sr Alida described Sr Bianca as a woman with a forceful personality:

I am saying it now with gratitude in my heart to her, she was a very controlling person, she
could achieve things that I would never have done. I would have started in Goldenbridge if
I were in her shoes doing a very different thing. I would have started looking for money
to buy knickers and vests for the children. She saw the bigger facilities. They matched
her personality. She got the walk-in fridge, she got two big steamers, the hotels wouldn’t
have them at that time, the kind she got.
She had massive immediate improvements in the School, massive. She didn’t see the
need for changing the blankets or changing their homemade knickers. The School
wouldn’t have advanced as much as they did only for the power she had.
7.34 Sr Alida spoke at length about the changes that Sr Bianca introduced into Goldenbridge Industrial
School immediately upon her appointment. In many ways, these changes speak more of the
regime that existed before Sr Bianca’s appointment than anything else. They point to a
management which had been so poor and so negligent that the children could not possibly have
received even a minimum standard of care.
7.35 The two areas which Sr Bianca tackled immediately were (i) the medical care of the children, and
(ii) the standard of education.
7.36 The issue of the medical care in Goldenbridge is dealt with later. As will be shown, the condition
of the children was so bad that the School had to be closed down for two weeks whilst the
problems of scabies and ringworm were tackled. Bedding had to be removed and disinfected by
Dublin Corporation, and all the children’s clothing had to be boil-washed.
7.37 Sr Alida vividly described the problem tackled by Sr Bianca which had reached crisis proportions
at the time of her appointment. The Institution had been allowed to deteriorate into an appalling
condition and Sr Bianca tackled these problems energetically.
7.38 Similarly, the provision of education was extraordinarily poor at that time. Sr Bianca had to get
basic equipment for the schoolroom. There were only two untrained lay teachers, and they were
there in the dual capacity of carers and teachers. Sr Alida said:
... I never asked and I have no idea how they taught the 150 children of a school going
age or how schooling was managed, but there was a programme for industrial school girls
over 13 years of age. Everyday, five days a week, they had domestic training, cooking,
laundry and dressmaking after 12.30, after the lunch hour.
7.39 Sr Alida described a lack of any facilities in the classroom. Only two of the four classrooms in
Goldenbridge appeared to be in use. This led her to believe that no other Sister from the convent
was actively engaged in teaching in Goldenbridge in the years prior to her arrival with Sr Bianca.
She confirmed that Sr Pietrina did not teach.
7.40 For the first few weeks of her time in Goldenbridge, the efforts of both Sr Alida and Sr Bianca
were concentrated on the children’s health and dealing with the medical conditions that they found
there. Once these medical problems had been brought under control, schooling was resumed.
7.41 Sr Bianca ordered playground equipment from England at this time, including a number of swings
and a merry-go-round and a drinking fountain for the playground.
7.42 Sr Alida went on to describe the extremely primitive conditions in the Industrial School generally.
It appeared that the only washing machines were so old and ineffective that they were not used,
and all the washing for the 150 children was done by hand. She said the machines were eventually
re-serviced and brought into use, but that they were always ineffective and it took a long time to
wash the clothes.
7.43 The cooking facilities in the kitchen were also primitive, and Sr Bianca acquired two large steamers
that she used to prepare vast quantities of food. Conditions were difficult on other levels: it was
very difficult to heat the Institution, and very difficult to get basic provisions for the children; all
the clothing was handmade on the premises by the older children under the supervision of a
lay worker.
7.44 Sr Alida said that the older girls did all the domestic chores in the house.
7.45 When Sr Bianca left Goldenbridge in June 1954, Sr Laurella10 took over as Resident Manager,
although Sr Alida, who arrived in Goldenbridge on the same day as Sr Bianca, was the effective
Manager of the Industrial School from 1954 until she left in 1963.
7.46 The first former resident who gave evidence had been in Goldenbridge from 1949, and the
Committee has relied on oral testimony to establish conditions after that time. Very little
documentary evidence is in existence for conditions in the 1930s and 1940s.
7.47 The Department of Education Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, inspected the premises and
from time to time made suggestions regarding the care of the children. Her first two inspections
were significant, because they coincided with the appalling conditions described by Sr Alida. The
first was in 1939 and the second was in 1941. Nothing in these reports would indicate the level
of neglect encountered by Sr Alida.
7.48 At some time in the early 1950s or even the late 1940s, Sr Alida was approached by a
businessman who suggested that the Institution could become involved in making rosary beads.
Thus, the bead-making industry in Goldenbridge was introduced into the daily routine of the pupils,
and it continued until the mid-1960s.
7.49 In the early 1950s, Sr Bianca made the decision to acquire a holiday home for Goldenbridge in
Rathdrum, County Wicklow. In 1954, a large house was bought for £3,000. According to Sr Alida,
the money earned from the bead-making contributed £1,000 of this purchase price. According to
the Opening Statement:
... it enabled everyone to have a summer holiday away from the institution. All children
would spend some time in the summer at the holiday house and those who could not go
home for a holiday spent the entire summer holidays there.
10

Although some former residents did not enjoy going to Rathdrum during the holidays,
for most of them it represented a welcome respite from school and, in particular, from
bead-making.
7.50 Ms Kearney, a teacher in the Institution, gave evidence that, prior to the purchase of the house
in Rathdrum, children went on holidays to other Sisters of Mercy homes that were in the
countryside or beside the sea. To spend £3,000 on a house that was only used for a few weeks
every year, at a time when food and clothing and basic educational equipment were lacking, does
not appear to be the most appropriate allocation of scarce resources.
7.51 In 1954, when Sr Alida took over the management of the Industrial School, Sr Venetia joined her
as a full-time assistant. She was a qualified primary teacher. Ms Dempsey and Ms Kearney were
still the two lay teachers in Goldenbridge at that time, and there was also a small number of other
lay staff employed by the Institution. In addition to the lay staff and the two Sisters, the running of
Goldenbridge was also entrusted to the care of what were known as ‘care workers’. These care
workers were girls who had grown up in Goldenbridge and were unable to get work outside
the Institution.
7.52 The template for the day-to-day running of the Institution had been established by Sr Bianca. Sr
Alida said that she continued the methods and systems introduced by Sr Bianca although she
did, as might be expected, make some improvements along the way.
7.53 Sr Alida left Goldenbridge in 1963. She told the Inquiry about the circumstances of her departure.
She had asked her Superior in Carysfort if she could be relieved from teaching duties, so as to
be able to devote herself entirely to the administrative and caring side of her work. The response
from Carysfort was to remove her entirely from Goldenbridge. Sr Alida was clearly unhappy at the
manner of her removal, and she was in no doubt that it was because she had complained of
overwork to her Superiors.
7.54 Sr Alida was succeeded by Sr Simona11 for a short period, after which, in mid-1963, the
management of Goldenbridge was taken over by Sr Venetia. Sr Venetia was responsible for many
of the positive changes that occurred in the School throughout the 1970s. She was the person
who steered through the change from institutional care to the group home arrangements that were
introduced in the 1980s, and she ultimately oversaw the closure of Goldenbridge.
Numbers
7.55 The Department of Education reports revealed that the numbers of children detained in industrial
schools increased until 1930, after which there began a steady decline. This decline was not
experienced in Goldenbridge: in contrast, the numbers there continued to increase and, in 1962,
the Resident Manager reported to the Department of Education that the School housed 193 pupils.
According to Department of Education reports, there were 46 children in the Institution on its
closure in 1983.
7.56 In 1938, the accommodation and certified limits stood at 130 children. In February 1938, the
Resident Manager applied to increase the accommodation limit to 150. An increase to 140 children
was granted by the Department of Education on foot of this application.
7.57 A further increase in the accommodation limit was granted in 1941, which brought the figure up
to 150 children, but the certification limit remained the same at 130.
11

7.58 On 7th May 1943, the Resident Manager wrote to the Department, seeking an increase in the
accommodation limit from 150 to 160 children, which was acceded to. However, on 22nd July 1943,
Dr Anna McCabe wrote to the Department Inspector, following a visit to the School, expressing her
disapproval of this increase. She stated that the School was ‘absolutely crammed to capacity’ and
that the infirmary had been converted into a dormitory without any alternative put in place.
Accordingly, on 14th August the Department wrote to the Resident Manager and stated that the
accommodation limit would revert to 150 children. The certified limit was changed to 140 on 1st
April 1943.
7.59 Another application was made on 19th October 1951 to the Department, by Sr Bianca, to increase
the accommodation limit from 150 to 160 children. In support of this application, she stated that
various improvements and additions had been made to the premises, including the acquisition of
another house. The Department requested Dr McCabe to inspect the School with a view to making
a recommendation in this regard. She carried out an inspection and recommended that, in view
of the improvements made, an increase in the accommodation limit to 160 children could be
sanctioned. The application was formally acceded to and took effect from 9th November 1951.
7.60 In December 1954, the Resident Manager applied for and obtained certification for the admission
of 15 infant boys. This was done at the request of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr McQuaid, in order
to provide relief to mothers who needed hospital care and who required care for their children on
a temporary basis. According to the Resident Manager, it would allow siblings to be kept together.
The Department accordingly increased the accommodation limit to 165 children.
7.61 On 17th May 1962, the Resident Manager made another application to the Department for an
increase in the accommodation limit, to 200 children. In support of her application, she stated that
a new 220ft wing had been built, with a capacity to sleep up to 60 children. She accepted that the
accommodation limit of 165 had been exceeded in the past year or more, and that they had at
that time 193 children. The Department carried out an inspection of the premises and agreed to
an increase in the accommodation limit to 185 children on 27th April 1963.
Conclusions
7.62 • Sr Alida and a lay teacher depicted Goldenbridge as a grim institution in the 1940s,
when children were seriously neglected and when inadequate staffing deprived them
of proper care.
• 150 children were left in the care of two unqualified teachers and an ill, elderly Sister.
The person with statutory responsibility, the Resident Manager, took no active part in
running the Institution.
• Defects in the management of the School were not observed by official inspectors.
Emergence of allegations of abuse in Goldenbridge

7.63 The allegations of abuse in Goldenbridge first entered the public domain with the broadcast by
RTE Radio 1 of an interview with an ex-resident, Ms Christine Buckley, on the Gay Byrne morning
radio show. This was broadcast on 8th November 1992.
7.64 It was the quest for her parents, and in particular for her father, which she undertook in her 30s,
that brought Christine Buckley to the Gay Byrne show, but during the interview she was asked
about her experience of growing up in Goldenbridge in Dublin. She described abuses that she
and others suffered while resident there. Immediately, phone calls came in to RTE from women
and men who had had similar experiences and who wished to extend their good wishes and
sympathy to her. Meetings were set up with ex-residents, and the story was picked up by most of
the national media.
7.65 Stories about institutional abuse, and in particular about Goldenbridge Industrial School, continued
to appear sporadically in newspapers for the following couple of years, but it was not until 1996,
when the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme was broadcast, that Goldenbridge was once again the
subject of intense media coverage and speculation.
7.66 Shortly after the airing of ‘Dear Daughter’, Sr Alida was interviewed on the current affairs
programme, Prime Time. In the course of that interview, she admitted that she had been harsh at
times, but denied that children were abused in the horrific way described in many of the headlines.
According to Sr Helena O’Donoghue, ‘This denial would appear to have been almost completely
ignored in the public domain and it would appear that judgment had been given’.
7.67 Shortly before the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme was broadcast on RTE, the Sisters of Mercy
commissioned a professional childcare expert to write a report to assess the allegations which
were being made by former residents in Goldenbridge. The Crowley Report offered little comfort
to the Sisters who had commissioned it.
7.68 Mr Crowley interviewed both Sr Alida and Sr Venetia. In his report he stated:
Sr. Venetia confirmed that the general atmosphere was excessively and consistently cruel
even relative to standards of the time. She confirmed that fear of and actual physical
beatings and verbal abuse was a matter of routine and that the general account of
children, for example, waiting on the landings was accurate. Wetting was defined as a
crime and, therefore, punishable through humiliation and physical beatings. Sr. Venetia
confirmed the allegations in relation to the tumble dryer and drinking from the toilet cistern.
She also confirmed the bead making and that failure to obey rules were normally
punishable by physical beatings.
7.69 He said of Sr Alida:

She was trained by Sr Bianca, whom she describes as a very large powerful woman with
a harsh aggressive and unpredictable personality.
On reflection Sr Alida perceives the policies and practices of the 50s and 60s as being
based on ignorance and failing to understand or care appropriately for the children.
7.70 In conclusion, Mr Crowley stated:

The unsafe world of Goldenbridge developed a very particular culture which could not
meet the needs of children. Very powerless people had enormous and immediate power
over troubled and troublesome children. The abuse of the power and powerlessness was
almost inevitable.
Almost any kind of abusive incidents could have occurred.
‘Dear Daughter’ programme

7.71 The ‘Dear Daughter’ programme contained a number of very serious allegations against
Goldenbridge and the Sisters of Mercy, and most of these are dealt with in the sections following
on physical and emotional abuse.
7.72 After the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme was broadcast, newspaper coverage of the allegations was
intensive and almost exclusively condemnatory of the Sisters of Mercy and Sr Alida. Headlines
such as ‘Unmerciful Nun’s Tale’, ‘Hell on Earth for the Sin of Being Born’, and ‘Nightmarish Abuse
by Sisters of Mercy’ appeared in newspapers. Former residents gave interviews on local and
national radio, and allegations were recounted without any effective challenge.
7.73 Following the broadcast of the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme, a Garda investigation was undertaken,
to establish whether criminal charges could be brought. There were no prosecutions, but the
Garda files have been made available to this Inquiry.
7.74 On 1st July 2004, Sr Breege O’Neill, Leader of the Congregation, gave evidence to the
Investigation Committee held in public on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy dealing with the
emergence of allegations of child abuse in the Sisters of Mercy institutions. She spoke of the great
hurt felt by the Community at the allegations that were being made, and also spoke of the
enormous sacrifice made by Sisters throughout the years in aiding the poor and needy in this
country. She asked that a proper and balanced investigation should take place into this whole
matter.
7.75 On 15th March 2005, Sr Helena O’Donoghue made an Opening Statement at the public Phase I
hearing in relation to Goldenbridge. Whilst she admitted that there was undoubtedly a regime that,
by today’s standards, would be described as harsh and severe, the Sisters were not satisfied that
it was an abusive regime or that children were wilfully neglected whilst in their care.
7.76 The Sisters of Mercy would not accept that the regime was cruel, abusive or neglectful. Whilst
they admit that corporal punishment was the accepted means of imposing discipline, they say it
was not done in an excessively harsh or extreme manner. They say that the extraordinary
dedication and sacrifice of the Sisters, in caring for the poorest and most needy children in Dublin,
must be taken into account when assessing the value of the work done in Goldenbridge. In
particular, the Congregation does not accept the statements of Sr Venetia or Sr Alida, as quoted
by Mr Crowley, as being accurate or fair.
7.77 The complainants, on the other hand, state that the regime that they were subjected to was cruel,
abusive and neglectful. They say that it left them ill-equipped to deal with life when they left the
Institution, and that the damage inflicted on them, either neglectfully or deliberately, has scarred
them in every aspect of their lives. Complainants acknowledged the physical provision made for
them by the Sisters of Mercy, but it is their evidence that the abuse, degradation and neglect that
they suffered far outweighed whatever benefits they might have received by virtue of having been
resident in Goldenbridge.
Physical abuse
Corporal punishment
7.78 Most complaints about physical abuse related to the administration of corporal punishment: there
were allegations that it was excessive, pervasive, often undeserved, and even capricious, with the
result that, in Goldenbridge, corporal punishment became the norm, and the children lived in a
climate of fear. The Sisters of Mercy deny these allegations and, while they accept corporal
punishment was used, submit that its use was normal by the standards of the day.
7.79 The Rules and Regulations for the Certified Industrial Schools in Ireland imposed limits on the
use of corporal punishment. These limits were very restrictive for girls under 15 years, and even
more so for older girls. The issue of discipline was dealt with in Regulation 12:
DISCIPLINE: The Manager or his Deputy shall be authorised to punish the Children
detained in the School in case of misconduct. All serious misconduct, and the
Punishments inflicted for it, shall be entered in a book to be kept for that purpose, which
shall be laid before the Inspector when he visits. The Manager must, however, remember
that the more closely the School is modelled on a principle of judicious family government
the more salutary will be its discipline, and the fewer occasions will arise for resort to
punishment.
7.80 Regulation 13 stated that the punishments should consist of:
(a) Forfeiture of rewards and privileges, or degradation from rank, previously attained by
good conduct.
(b) Moderate childish punishment with the hand.
(c) Chastisement with the cane, strap, or birch.
7.81 The Regulation continued:

Referring to (c), personal chastisement may be inflicted by the Manager, or, in his
presence, by an Officer specially authorised by him, and in no case may it be inflicted
upon girls over 15 years of age. In the case of girls under 15, it shall not be inflicted
except in cases of urgent necessity, each of which must be at once fully reported to the
Inspector. Caning on the hand is forbidden.
No punishment not mentioned above shall be inflicted.
7.82 In addition, the Department of Education issued circulars and guidelines to Industrial School
Managers, indicating that corporal punishment must always be kept within the bounds set down
by the Regulations and must never be used excessively. Circular 11/1946 stated:
Corporal punishment should be resorted to only where other forms of punishment have
been found unsuccessful as a means of correction. It should be administered only for
grave transgressions, and in no circumstances for mere failure at school lessons or
7.83 The Circular went on to state that punishment should be confined to slapping on the hand with a
light cane or strap, and that this should only be administered by the Resident Manager or by a
member of staff specifically authorised by him. It added that ‘any form of corporal punishment not
in accordance with the terms of this circular is strictly prohibited’.
7.84 The Sisters of Mercy say that the general prevalence of corporal punishment in schools during
this period is a factor which should be taken into account when determining whether corporal
punishment was excessive or abusive. The regulations quoted above were drawn up at a time
when corporal punishment was even more prevalent and yet the authorities recognised the need
to make rules to protect children in care.
Punishment book
7.85 The regulations required that a punishment book be maintained and ‘laid before the inspector
when he visits.’
7.86 The Investigation Committee has seen no evidence of any punishment book in Goldenbridge.
There is no reference to it in any of the documentation furnished to the Investigation Committee,
nor is any reference made to it by the Department of Education inspector who visited Goldenbridge
on regular occasions.
Allegations of physical punishment heard by the Investigation Committee

7.87 The evidence heard by the Investigation Committee broadly grouped the complaints about
physical punishment under three headings. They were:
• Formal beatings, where the children who had been singled out for punishment were
lined up and beaten with a stick. This usually took place late at night, on a landing
outside the nuns’ rooms or cells.
• Beatings given for specific ‘offences’ such as bed-wetting, or failure to work fast enough
at making rosary beads. These also were usually administered on the landing.
• Informal beatings, where lay staff and nuns administered corporal punishment on the
spot for trivial reasons or even for no reason.
The formal beatings: the implement used

7.88 The formal beatings were administered with an implement that Sr Alida called ‘a slapper’ and the
girls called a stick. Several witnesses gave a description of it. One witness, who was in
Goldenbridge in the 1950s and early 1960s, told the Committee that it was a stick that a carpenter
had made for Sr Alida. She described it as a flat stick, rounded off at the end, and varnished.
7.89 Another complainant described the stick used by Sr Alida in some detail:
The stick, in my opinion, was about a foot and a half long, about that length (indicating),
it had rounding sort of ends, it was about an inch and a half thick and the width of it was
about two inches. It was dark brown in colour ... It often reminds me of what I perceived
to see as a hurl now with rounding ends but a bit thicker.
7.90 Sr Alida also gave a detailed description of it:

I used a slapper. I have never used a cane, there was never a cane used in the School
in my time, neither was there a leather strap. The slapper I had, there was only one in
the house and I don’t think anybody else used it except myself, it was made of polished
wood and it was about 15 inches long. It was rolled at the end and was about half an inch
thick in the middle, maybe less. I calculated that it never marked or cut anybody but I
would agree that it hurt because I got it on the knuckles myself, when if a child pulled her
hand away it came down on my hands; so I know what it was like. I wish I’d never had to
use it or I wish I was never in that situation with any child, but that’s the situation I was in.
7.91 She added that she never saw anybody else use her slapper except for Sr Venetia. She said,
‘Lay people could give a clout with their hand but that would be the most that I would see them
doing’. She said that no lay person ever beat the children, as far as she knew, but left it for her
to do.
7.92 Sr Alida was inconsistent in her recollection of beating children on the landing. Initially, she
recalled children being left on the landing for punishment, although not in relation to bed-wetting
or bead-making. Later, when questioned by counsel for some complainants, she said that this
was more a feature of Sr Bianca’s time, and that she had no real memory of that being a feature
of her time there. She said that, although she could remember chastising a child on the landing,
it was not on a regular basis.
The formal beatings on the landing

7.93 Many complainants spoke of the ordeal of being sent to the landing outside the nuns’ rooms for
punishment. The system was initiated by Sr Bianca, and was also a feature of life during Sr Alida’s
time. Children who had done something that the staff deemed to be wrong were told they were to
be punished that evening. They had to line up on the landing at bedtime, after they had changed
into their nightclothes, and wait to be beaten. The landing was cold and dark. A witness described
the location:
... where we used to have to wait was off Sacred Heart dormitory and there was steps
down and there was a big gap and there was a statue. The nuns used to sleep in kind of
an alcove off the landing and the nun would come up and hit us, hit me.
7.94 Many complainants told the Committee how they stood sometimes for hours in the cold with bare
feet. They were not permitted to sit down. Some of them described this waiting as worse than the
beating itself.
7.95 One complainant in Goldenbridge from 1950s to the early 1960s said that, after Sr Alida became
Resident Manager:
... she took over and you were put on the landing when you wet the bed or when you did
anything else bold, but mainly for wetting the bed. I was all the time one of those people.
She would leave you on the landing until she was ready to come up and smack you, and
you could be there for a long time.
7.96 She explained:

To me, I think we waited two or three hours sometimes. We were just there, it really got
late and we were falling asleep, and pushing one another when we heard her coming.
You heard her coming eventually, but it wasn’t only an hour or a half an hour, she would
never come too soon it was always like you were there for ever, it seemed like forever ...
it wasn’t in her office, we were hit on the landing, smacked on the landing ... just her stick,
the one she had everywhere with her. She just used to just bash you, just literally turn
you around and wallop you. Sometimes she would hold out your hand, it depended.
7.97 Another complainant from the 1950s recalled being punished on the landing quite a few times,
although she did not know why she was there. She said Sr Alida would sometimes smack them
on the landing, but sometimes forget about them and leave them standing there for a very long
time. She said she was frightened of the landing.
7.98 When cross-examined on the issue, she insisted that she was, on occasion, left all night on the
landing. She said that Sr Alida would find her when she got up early the next morning and then
sent her to bed, but that would be at about 6.00am.
7.99 Another witness from the 1950s told a similar story of waiting for hours for Sr Alida to come to
bed. It was cold and dark, and they were not permitted to sit down. When she came up, she would
not question them on what they had done wrong. She would proceed to punish with a stick, which
she kept on a ledge on the landing. She would hit them on the hands and buttocks, usually 10 to
12 times. Sometimes, she used her hand rather than the stick. If it was very late when she came
up to bed, she would tell them she would see them in the morning. The next day, she would beat
them in front of her class. Waiting on the landing in anticipation of the punishment was, according
to this complainant, worse than the actual beatings.
7.100 A complainant from the 1950s and early 1960s said that she was very frequently sent to wait on
the landing. She said that she could not recall specific reasons. She added:
They seemed to be very very menial things, like maybe you stole a slice of bread or you
ate out of the rabbit’s cage or you drank water out of the toilet ... There wouldn’t have been
anything, except my dress tore one time and that was another thing that I remembered.
7.101 There could be up to six or seven girls waiting on the landing when she was there, and she said
that the bigger girls would push the smaller ones in front of them. She could not explain why:
Why would anyone push someone in front, we knew we were going to be beaten anyway.
Who wants to be beaten first? We would do that. Then she would, in rotation, she would
beat us all.
7.102 When asked what she disliked most about waiting on the landing, she replied it was the fear and
the cold. She said that they knew when Sr Alida was coming because they would hear a knock
on a hatch at the bottom of the stairs, and someone opening it to give her water for her hot
water bottle:
We would hear her. As soon as we heard the knock on the hatch we knew that was her
that was coming. We would all jump up and push the smaller ones in front of us.
7.103 She described how they tried to cope with the cold while waiting:
We would be down on our hunkers trying to keep ourselves warm with our nightdress and
try to rub our hands together so that they would get warm so that the slaps wouldn’t – for
some reason we thought the slaps wouldn’t hurt if our hands were warm.
7.104 A witness from the 1950s and 1960s used to wet the bed, and so was sent to the landing from a
very early age. She said:
When you wet the bed you had to wait on the landing. I don't know how many times I
waited on the landing, I don't know whether it was every night or once a week or twice a
week. You were hit for wetting the bed. I was a very young child, it might have been 10
minutes, to me it seemed like hours. I don't know the length of time I waited on the landing.
You did get hit and you used to have to protect yourself.
7.105 She continued:

I was scared. You had to stand still, it was a very boring place to be. I just can't – I think
the older ones – I probably did the same when I got older, the older ones pushed us to
the front so the person that was hitting us her anger would be gone by the time she got
to the bigger people ... I remember being shoved up to the top to get hit.
7.106 This explanation for pushing the younger children to the front, so that it was they who took the
hardest hits, was put forward by another witness from the 1960s. She described the line of girls
on the landing:
You would be weak, terrified, anxious, shivering and shaking, and trying not to lean
against the wall ... because you would be afraid, you weren’t supposed to do that, you
weren’t supposed to rest, it was punishment. You wouldn’t sit down. You wouldn’t risk
falling asleep. There you stood.

When you knew for sure she was arriving, there would be pushing and shoving about
who was going first. Honest to God this is terrible, there would be younger children than
you and you would be pushing them to get them to take the beating first. You didn’t want
to be the one to get the first of the strength. I am sorry, it was horrible, you had to do
what you had to do. The screaming of children, the screaming of children will stay with
me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven’t recovered from
that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never never stopped for years
in that place.
7.108 Girls were affected by what was happening to others:

Whatever way they were going to be treated was no concern of mine but it did personally
affect me ... I watched [a girl] sit on that landing on many occasions waiting for her
beatings and I heard her screams and her shouting.
7.109 One witness, from the 1960s, described the distress she felt at seeing others being beaten:
The fact that I had to witness all those beatings, I had to stand there, they would be in
my group, for example, and they were beaten. I would see them being slapped. There
was a cross on the wall with INRI on the wall above the crucifix. I don’t know how I learned
to do this, but I would look at INRI and make up words, so that I wasn’t there, so that I
didn’t soak up what was going on ... We were helpless people and the helpless ones were
the ones that were not bright. I met one or two of them in the survivors’ meetings in
London and I stopped going to the survivors’ meetings because it was too traumatic
for me.
7.110 The anguish of those to be punished was increased by long periods of anticipation and by
witnessing other girls’ suffering. The landing became associated with fear. This system of
punishment was cruel and abusive and it contravened regulations.
Bed-wetting or enuresis
7.111 Bed-wetting was a problem in Goldenbridge, as it was in other residential institutions. It was not
confined to industrial schools, nor has it ceased to be a problem in residential homes for children.
Children wet beds at night for a variety of reasons. It was probably more common in industrial
schools because of the particular circumstances of the children sent there: they had to endure the
stresses and strains associated with separation from their families and the anxieties of institutional
life. The problem usually disappeared as children matured, but it left behind feelings of anxiety
and resentment.
7.112 The practical problems were formidable. Bedclothes were made of materials such as calico and
wool that were difficult to wash and dry quickly. Laundry facilities that might have been stretched
in normal circumstances had to handle an increased volume of soiled bed linen. It has to be
acknowledged, therefore, that bed-wetting constituted a major challenge to the facilities in an
industrial school.
7.113 During Sr Alida’s time, a child who wet her bed in Goldenbridge had to sleep in a particular
dormitory where all the bed-wetters were gathered. In this dormitory, children were woken up at
night and taken out to the toilet. Their bedding was inspected daily. Children who wet the bed had
to take their sheets to be inspected, and they were punished, usually by being beaten.
7.114 Bed-wetters had their consumption of water restricted in an attempt to reduce the likelihood of an
accident at night. Girls were thirsty as a result, and sought sources of water. This included drinking
out of cisterns of toilets located near the dormitories. Some gave evidence that children drank out
of the pan of the toilet. The attempt to prevent the intake of fluid proved to be largely unsuccessful.
7.115 Bed-wetting was not considered to be a difficulty that children occasionally experienced, but was
instead seen as a failure of discipline.
7.116 In a report by Dr Moira Maguire and Professor Seamus O Cinneide, entitled ‘Report for
Newtownforbes Module’, submitted by the Sisters of Mercy in respect of Newtownforbes Industrial
School, the authors refer to medical knowledge that was available in the 1930s. The two
references12 used by the authors show that bed-wetting was recognised as a psychological
problem as far back as the 1930s, with major causes being unhappiness and nervous strain.
Treating the problem with harshness exacerbated it, according to the British texts:
In these cases ... the only cure is the removal of the cause of unhappiness – that is, not
by treating the physical symptoms but by treating the child psychologically. Success, not
failure, should always be stressed.
7.117 The Irish article recognised the lack of child guidance practice in Ireland, but advised that children
who wet the bed should be encouraged with rewards rather than punished.
7.118 In Goldenbridge, bed-wetting was viewed as a punishable offence. The method of punishment
and the place of the punishments varied. One witness recalled the punishment that was inflicted
on her by Sr Bianca for wetting the bed:
When I wet the bed which was nearly every night, she would bring you into this room, it’s
called the linen room, it was a high room and a narrow room. She just proceeded to put
me on the floor on my stomach, she put her left knee on my back, this was the punishment
12
Irish Journal of Medical Science 1939, and 1938 textbooks on the care of young children published in Britain.

I was getting by the way for wetting the bed, and a big girl, just a big girl ... again, to me
she was about 15 or 16 ... she had to hold my legs down, pull down my pants and Mother
Bianca pulled up my top and proceeded to smack me really hard for a while on the bum.
7.119 Sr Bianca used a stick, and the witness recalled she was punished in this manner two or three
times a week. When she first arrived in Goldenbridge, in the early 1950s, that was the regime.
7.120 She said that, when Sr Alida took over the running of the School in the mid-1950s, bed-wetters
were sent to the landing to await their punishment. The witness also pointed out that children who
were bed-wetters were not allowed to have a drink after 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
7.121 Another witness who was resident in the 1950s recalled the punishment she was given for wetting
the bed. She was lined up in St Patrick’s classroom, along with other bed-wetters, and slapped
on the hand by Sr Alida. She also recalled her hair being pulled and her face being pushed into
the wet sheets.
7.122 A complainant who persistently wet the bed recalled being beaten every morning. She also
described the humiliation of sometimes having to parade her wet sheet in front of everyone:
Then there were other times I remember there was a recreation hall and those of us who
had wet the bed on some occasions we had to go into the front hall and stand there and
people were coming in and out. On other occasions we had to go into the recreation hall,
again with the wet sheets, and the other children were encouraged to walk around and
jeer us. They would call us wet-the-beds.
7.123 One complainant said that, after Sr Alida became Manager:

She took over and you were put on the landing when you wet the bed or when you did
anything else bold but mainly for wetting the bed. I was all the time one of those people.
She would leave you on the landing until she was ready to come up and smack you, and
you could be there for a long time.
7.124 One witness, who was resident in the School in the 1960s and who regularly wet the bed until
she was 14, stated that she was sent to the landing to await punishment and that she would be
punished in the yard:
I was afraid to go to the toilet and that’s why I wet the bed. I think when I look back I
thought it was every night I was hit, I don’t know how many times a week I was hit but I
was hit for bed-wetting ... if it was discovered after a certain time you got hit down in the
yard that was off the rec, you got hit there. I was either on the landing or in the rec, as
we called it.
7.125 She stated that the beds of children who wet the bed were checked during the night time by one
of the older girls and, if the bed was wet, the child would be woken up and put standing on
the landing.
7.126 Another witness remembered:

I can remember praying every night that I wouldn’t wet the bed because I knew that the
next morning I would be severely beaten, reprimanded and I remember feeling very cold
and standing naked and just the shame, just the absolute shame of it.
7.127 A complainant who continued to suffer from nocturnal enuresis for some years after she left the
School recalled being beaten by Sr Alida in the classroom. She was also beaten on the landing
and she continued to be punished for bed-wetting until she left Goldenbridge at the age of 16.
7.128 A woman described how, in the 1960s, her younger siblings were hit by the lay staff for wetting
the bed. As the eldest child, she could not bear to hear them being slapped, because she ‘felt
every slap they got’. As a result, she took preventive measures:
I found it very difficult because they were chastised in the mornings if they wet the beds.
I couldn’t bear that so I ended up waking up during the night and crawling under the beds
up to the top beds to take the dry sheets off the other kids and bring them down to ...
take the wet sheets off and just throw the dry sheets beside my brothers.
7.129 This complainant was approximately 10 years old when she was resorting to such measures to
defend her siblings from being punished. For a child of such tender years, it was a very stressful
experience for her. She told the Committee, ‘I didn’t get much sleep in the early days in the good
few years while they wet the bed. I never really slept that well’.
7.130 A male witness who was resident in Goldenbridge in the 1970s recalled being beaten on one
occasion for wetting the bed. He had tried to conceal the wet sheets, but a nun came into the
dormitory and discovered them and ‘she did kind of batter me’. This nun then threw him and the
sheets into a bath. He conceded that this was not a regular event. The worst aspect of this incident
was the humiliation and fear of wetting the bed: ‘just the whole humiliation of the whole lot’. Even
to this day, he said he had a fear of wetting the bed: ‘I would still have that fear. I would wake up
during the night just in case because sometimes you would feel like I was going to the toilet’.
7.131 Bed-wetting was an indication of emotional disturbance, yet the Sisters of Mercy used punishment
relentlessly as a policy to deal with it, rather than analysing the reasons for the problem. The
Sisters of Mercy acknowledge that it was not dealt with appropriately. They stated in their
Opening Statement:
Unfortunately, one of the methods of trying to deal with the problem in the earlier part of
the period under review was to try to jolt the child out of the habit by punishment.
7.132 They also conceded that older girls were punished for bed-wetting. They said that two of the
tactics used with the younger children was to deprive them of fluids in the late evening and waking
them during the night to take them to the toilet.
7.133 They acknowledged that the children who wet the bed would have suffered humiliation by ‘the
very reason of having to bring soiled sheets to the laundry basket’. Furthermore, they apologised
for any hurt and pain caused by them in response to the issue of bed-wetting:
We further particularly regret the use of any form of punishment, including corporal
punishment, in respect of children who suffered from a bedwetting problem. At the time it
was thought that punishment would provide a deterrent in the erroneous belief that the
child was able to control his or her bedwetting. In retrospect, we recognize that
punishment for bedwetting must have been particularly traumatic, and that children who
suffered from bedwetting, and punishment for bedwetting, had a particularly difficult time.
7.134 In their written Submissions, too, they accepted that corporal punishment and shaming tactics,
such as making children parade their wet sheets in front of the other children, were used, but that
it was likely from the evidence heard that such practices ceased after a certain point.
7.135 Sr Alida stated that bed-wetting was a huge problem during her early days in Goldenbridge. She
asserted that they tried every possible means to counteract this problem, including waking children
at 2am to go to the toilet. She stated that each child who had a persistent bed-wetting problem
was sent to Dr. Steevens’ Hospital for investigation. She also recalled that she received medical
advice, around 1954, to cease the practice of waking children during the night.
7.136 Sr Alida denied beating any child for bed-wetting:
... For bed-wetting, I cannot account, I cannot account for bed-wetting, I didn’t beat for
bed-wetting. I beat for lots of other things.
7.137 She added that none of the lay staff had authority to deal with the problem of bed-wetting amongst
the children and, in particular, they were not permitted to punish the children:
[The staff] had never any authority to punish children for bed-wetting that I know of, I
never gave it to anybody. I don’t remember myself taking anybody in the line, beating
them for bed-wetting ... I have no recollection of ever having children on the landing for
bed-wetting.
7.138 However, under cross-examination she conceded that she had in fact slapped children for bed-
wetting. When asked whether she accepted that she had slapped children for bed-wetting, she
responded, ‘I suppose I have to. I slapped a lot more than I am happy to be thinking of these days’.
7.139 She continued to deny that she lined up bed-wetters in St Patrick’s classroom for punishment, or
that children were made to parade with their wet sheets.
7.140 • Corporal punishment was used as punishment for bed-wetting long after the 1950s,
contrary to what was asserted by Sr Alida and the Congregation. Witnesses who were
in Goldenbridge in the 1960s, and even the 1970s, gave evidence of being beaten for
wetting the bed at night.
• The methods of dealing with bed-wetting proved to be wholly unsuccessful, but they
were continued over many years and under different Managers. If the management
had sought to create conditions in which it was probable that children would wet their
beds, the steps adopted could scarcely have been chosen with more effect. They set
up a cycle of behaviour by the children and by the authorities which, instead of tending
to eradicate the problem, actually exacerbated it. The combination of measures
resulted in more extensive bed-wetting and for longer periods in the child’s life than
would otherwise have been the case. The pattern of identification, exposure,
segregation, differential treatment, embarrassment and humiliation was completed by
punishment when the predictable and almost inevitable result came about.
Informal punishments
7.141 Witnesses spoke of other ways in which corporal punishment was administered unfairly and
undeservedly. They claimed it was used so commonly that it was impossible to avoid it. One
witness, who was in Goldenbridge in the 1940s from seven years of age, told the Committee:
I would stand there and when you hear the noise and the shouting, the roaring and the
screaming, then what did I used to do I used to stand there with urine running down my
legs with the fear of knowing that whatever you were going to do, whatever you were
going to say ... you couldn’t say anything, if you looked at them you got clattered. If you
looked away you got clattered. If you put your head down you got clattered. So what could
you do? I used to try and disappear into the ether ... You knew that you could never get
away from the cruelty. You couldn’t escape and take yourself off.
7.142 Many witnesses testified that there was no way that they could avoid being slapped, whether for
behaviour regarded as seriously wrong or for something trivial, or indeed for no apparent reason.
When punishment was administered, there was no necessary correlation between the seriousness
of the infraction and the severity of the beating.

7.143 There was no body of rules governing the occasions or the circumstances in which punishment
would be administered. There was no punishment book. Records were not kept as to the
punishments imposed. Staff were not instructed as to what was permissible.
7.144 The absence of any obligation to record punishment meant that the infliction of punishment was,
in practice, unregulated. There is general acceptance that punishment happened too often and
too severely and in an unrecorded and unregulated manner.
7.145 The absence of rules meant that the children did not know how to avoid punishment. Without a
clear system in place to make punishment predictable and avoidable, the children lived in fear,
and those in authority became indifferent to good order and discipline in themselves. The adults
were given so much autonomy that they alone decided whether to give punishment or not, and
they alone decided what warranted it. They decided how much punishment was given and in what
manner it was administered.
7.146 It should have been the case that the Manager, or somebody deputed on her behalf for that
purpose, administer the punishment and then record it. The actuality was different. The nun in
charge of the girls or her assistant regularly and frequently administered punishment with a stick.
The respondent evidence was that it was confined to slapping on the hands and then in moderate
quantity. There was, however, a preponderance of persuasive evidence to the contrary, that
slapping was not confined in that way. Instead, it could happen that a child would be struck on
the hand or arm, or indeed on the legs or some other part of the body.
7.147 Children were sometimes punished by being locked into a room, described as the furnace, and
one witness described a particularly terrifying experience when she had offended one of the care
workers and found herself locked in. She could not remember how long she was there, but
screamed all the time. Care assistants also punished the children. These workers had grown up
in Goldenbridge and knew no other method of coping with children. They were scarcely more than
children themselves, and their moral responsibility for what they were doing was slight by
comparison with others in higher positions in the ladder of authority.
7.148 A former teacher, now of advanced years, gave compelling evidence of the environment generally
and the state of the children in Goldenbridge during her years. On the issue of punishment, she
said that she used a ruler for most of her time in preference to a leather strap, which she had
been given at the beginning of her career but which she had rejected when she accidentally
discovered how painful it was. When she was asked whether she used the flat of the ruler or the
edge of it, as some witnesses had testified, she candidly acknowledged that sometimes she used
the edge, when children had particularly annoyed her.
Climate of fear
7.149 Many complainants gave evidence of living in a perpetual state of fear in Goldenbridge. Children
were punished for trivial misdemeanours.
7.150 A complainant who spent the 1950s in Goldenbridge recalled that ‘the beatings were constant’.
This witness gave evidence of one occasion when she was the only child on the landing waiting
for punishment. Sr Alida took her into her cell and called Sr Venetia to join them. The complainant
was told to take off her nightdress, and she was then beaten by both nuns. Sr Venetia used her
hand, but Sr Alida beat her with the stick across the buttocks and on the hands. She said it was
a more severe punishment than usual and that she did not know what she had done to merit it.
7.151 A further complainant, who was resident in Goldenbridge from 1954 until 1966, recalled being
punished by Sr Alida:
... If you were walking say down the thing, she would say, “what are you doing here?”
And she would lash out at you. “You dirty article”, she would just give you a lash out. Like
being on the wet-the-bed line. I was always so frightened of her. When I used to see her
I used to shiver inside.
7.152 A complainant, who spent the 1960s in Goldenbridge, remembered Sr Alida as being particularly
severe:
Sr Alida was extremely cruel. She beat children, she had us standing on landings where
she beat us. She beat us down in St. Patrick’s for having wet sheets. We were beaten in
the yard for having wet sheets, for wetting the bed. You couldn’t pass her, you were just
terrified passing her. The swish of her. You would see her coming.
7.153 A complainant, who spent a number of years in Goldenbridge, gave evidence of the fear induced
by Sr Venetia:
There was one person you were frightened to look at with her blue eyes and her pale skin
... She had a dreadful habit, I don't know why she did it, you had to stand in a half circle
with you. She would come behind you, her presence, as she passed, you always thought
you were going to get a whack on the legs. She had a dreadful habit of (indicating) "who
can I smell?" We all knew we smelled. Is she going to pick us?
7.154 This complainant recalled being punished on a regular basis by Sr Venetia. She said that Sr
Venetia would beat children for wetting the bed, and she also recalled being beaten by her on the
legs during Irish Dancing classes, for not raising her legs high enough:
Sr Venetia had a way that you had to stand a distance from her. She never got close to
you. She stood so far and you stood and your hands at all times had to be out straight ...
If you bent your elbows she would come close to you then and she would just whack
those elbows. In the end, you just held your arms out. Sometimes you would just think to
yourself “when is she going to stop?” She had this way of looking at you, I don’t know.
She seemed to get redder and redder as somebody who was hitting you, whereas she
was quite a pale person any other time. She seemed to get into this frenzied type look.
She was a very cruel woman.
7.155 Another resident from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s, recalled a high level of physical abuse
in Goldenbridge. On a regular basis, she was slapped with a cane, even as a very small child.
She later said:
Physical abuse was part and parcel of everyday life in Goldenbridge. Sr Venetia would
have many, many times abused me physically and verbally. It didn’t have to be for
anything specific. It could be your laces weren’t tied or it could be your hair was untidy. It
could be that she didn’t like the look of you that particular day.
7.156 A complainant who was in Goldenbridge for 10 years from the mid-1960s stated that her initial
memories of Goldenbridge were of hitting, taunting and name-calling, and that she was constantly
in front of Sr Venetia, who slapped her with a hand brush for minor misdemeanours. She recalled
being beaten on one occasion because she had a button missing from her nightdress. This
complainant asserted that Sr Venetia called her names, either that she was dirty or that she was
‘man mad’.
7.157 On one occasion, this complainant, who was only seven years of age at the time, suffered from
diarrhoea during the night. She had an accident on her way to the bathroom, and the next morning,
when questioned, she denied being responsible. Nevertheless, she was sent to Sr Venetia and
was identified as the culprit. Sr Venetia slapped her with the hand brush, and she was slapped
by everybody who had any dealings with the situation at all, including the lay workers on the
dormitory.
7.158 One witness from the 1950s and 1960s said that occasionally you would get a smack across the
face from Sr Venetia when she checked the rosary beads in the evening, but on the whole she
did not have any complaint about Sr Venetia. She later said:
She never actually hurt me. I am here for myself. She never actually hurt me ... she would
slap but she wasn’t cruel. What I mean by a slap, I never saw her giving anybody a hiding.
7.159 She contrasted Sr Venetia to some of the lay workers who were there, whom she described as
very cruel.
7.160 This complainant, as with so many other complainants, was able to make the distinction between
the corporal punishment administered by Sr Venetia and that administered by the lay care workers
and by Sr Alida. Sr Venetia was not perceived as being unfair, cruel or brutal. She was singled
out as having taken action when complaints by the girls were made to her about the treatment
meted out to one of the younger children by the lay workers.
7.161 Another unusual complaint was that children were put into the large, industrial-sized tumble dryers.
Complainants named lay staff, other children and, in one instance, Sr Alida as being responsible.
The dryer was not turned on when the children were put into it, but they found it a very
frightening experience.
7.162 One complainant recalled being put into the tumble dryer by some of the older girls:
There was a dryer on the right-hand side, quite a rounded looking thing, not like what you
would see a dryer today and it was quite a lot off the floor. One of them picked me up
and put me in there and they shut the door. I can see one of their faces now looking in that.
7.163 In the Crowley Report, Sr Venetia confirmed the allegations in respect of the tumble dryer. Sr
Alida acknowledged to Mr Crowley about being confronted by a parent for threatening to place
her daughter in the tumble dryer. In evidence, she said that a person had come to her to tell her
that her child was afraid of the tumble dryer and advised her about it.
Allegations of abuse perpetrated by lay workers

7.164 The Investigation Committee heard a number of allegations against lay workers who were
employed in the Institution. There were three different categories of lay worker in Goldenbridge.
7.165 There were four teachers in the internal primary school, two of whom were nuns, together with
two lay teachers.
7.166 The second category of lay worker was the staff who looked after kitchens and dormitories and
who were, to a very large extent, the people at the centre of childcare in Goldenbridge. These lay
workers were responsible for the day-to-day running of the Institution, but were of course subject
to the authority of the Resident Manager and her Assistant Sister at the time. Their task was
mainly to assist with the supervision of the children before and after school hours. They worked
in shifts, two on and two off. The lay staff were not trained in any aspects of childcare.
7.167 In the third category were former pupils who were retained as helpers, at the expiry of their
detention orders at the age of 16. Sr Alida stated that there were only three former pupils towards
the end of her tenure in Goldenbridge who were retained as helpers, although this number was
greater in the earlier years. She said:
There were two or three girls who had no motivation to leave, had difficulty of their own;
one was severely handicapped mentally and incapable of making her own way in the
world, the other had a very serious speech defect and I cannot put down exactly, obesity
I suppose I would say for the third, which we tried to get treated and it didn’t change. They
would be the only three past pupils that were working in the school that I can remember in
my time.
7.168 Sr Alida’s description of the former pupils who were retained to look after the other children and
work in the Industrial School would suggest they were entirely unsuitable to work with children.
7.169 One complainant, who was in Goldenbridge between from the early 1950s to the late 1960s,
spoke at length about the care workers who were there. She described many of them as very
cruel. She described one incident where she was being administered cod liver oil by a care worker,
and when it was her turn she said, ‘Thank you, Ms Rafter’,13 with a smile on her face. She said
that this infuriated the care worker, who dragged her into a linen room, threw her on a table and
took off her underpants. She hit her from head to toe with a hand brush, and then put a nappy
on her.
7.170 She said that, on another occasion, she was beaten for making a comment while she was
watching television. She ran away as a result of this, but was brought back. She told Sr Venetia
that she had run away because she was sick of being hit. She said she doesn’t believe her
complaint had any impact on Sr Venetia, but that, on a subsequent occasion, one of the smaller
children had come up to her and her friends with no clothes on and full of bruises. When they
asked her what was wrong, she said that Ms Rafter had hit her because she had worn her knickers
in bed. This complainant and her friends went to Sr Venetia and said that they would go to the
Evening Press or the Herald if the beatings didn’t stop and ‘all those kind of, what we classed as
carers now, they were gone in two weeks. They were cruel’.
7.171 This complainant named four care workers, who were all removed very shortly after the complaints
had been made to Sr Venetia. This complainant said that Goldenbridge did improve after that had
occurred, although it still was not a nice place.
7.172 Another complainant, who was in Goldenbridge between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s, said
that one carer, who looked after the babies, stood out in her mind as being very kind to the
children. She said that she was one of the inmates of the Institution who had been kept on and
given a job there. Another former resident, who remained in the School to work as a carer, stood
out in her memory: she described her as a product of the system. She often woke the children up
in the morning, and she would sometimes lift a mattress and throw it onto the floor with the child
on it. This complainant said that Ms Thornton14 was ‘a very very aggressive woman’.
7.173 This complainant had a certain amount of compassion and understanding for Ms Thornton, and
said: ‘She never knew any different, she grew up in the system. When I think now in retrospect I
kind of feel sorry for her’.
7.174 This witness recalls another staff member, who was a woman of very, very low intellect, who used
to put her hands up the children’s skirts if they were carrying anything into the kitchen or washing
dishes. Again, the complainant had compassion and understanding and did not blame this person.
7.175 She talked about a third incident, where a minder threw her into a swimming pool when they were
on holidays in Rathdrum. She said that this minder used to treat her badly if there was a nun
13
14

around to witness it, ‘She done that to get attention from the nun that was approaching. It was
just a case of silly behaviour’.
7.176 What clearly emerged from the evidence of this witness is that, although she was subjected to
abuse herself, she does not hold the lay workers responsible because they were either so
damaged by the system themselves or they were intellectually incapable of understanding what
they were doing. In many ways, this is a view that is reflected by a number of complainants, and
it is more a reflection on the authorities in Goldenbridge, who employed these unfortunate women
and left them in charge of children, than on the women themselves.
7.177 A complainant, who was in Goldenbridge from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, also spoke at
some length about the lay staff. She mentioned a lay member of staff and said that she was worse
than Sr Alida: ‘She was allowed to run riot. She brutalised the children’. She said that these people
were not teachers, but were carers and supervised the children. She said that the older inmates
in the Institution did all the work like washing, bead making and looking after the children, but
these carers supervised all of that. This complainant also spoke about being a personal maid to
one of the care staff. She said that she cleaned her room, put on her hot water bottle, made her
bed, cleaned her floor, ironed her clothes and generally looked after her.
7.178 The witnesses who attended Goldenbridge in the late 1950s and 1960s were vocal in their criticism
of the care workers who were in the Institution at that time. The main criticism is that these young
girls, who had themselves come through Goldenbridge, were unsupervised and uncontrolled by
the authorities in Goldenbridge. This does not seem to have been as big a complaint while Sr
Alida was the nun in charge of the day-to-day running of the Institution but when Sr Venetia took
over the day-to-day management, this did emerge as a major issue.
7.179 A witness complained of being badly beaten by Ms Rafter, who was the subject of an earlier
complaint to Sr Venetia and was finally removed by her in the late 1960s. This complainant also
identified Ms Thornton who she said beat a girl in the dining hall, ‘Ms Thornton was violent, she
was a very violent person. She was another one that you were frightened to look at’.
7.180 This complainant again made the point that, at this stage, Goldenbridge was being run and looked
after by lay staff and older girls. She said that, although the nuns were there and Sr Venetia was
in charge, the real running of the Institution was left to lay staff.
7.181 Another complainant spoke about her experience in Goldenbridge and was quite frank about the
impact her experience had on her own personal development. She said that a lot of the actions
taken in Goldenbridge were done deliberately to embarrass and humiliate the children. She said
‘I’ll put it like this, I find a lot of the women who looked after us, including Sr Venetia, I find a lot
of them in me. I will do things to embarrass people if I don’t like them. I try not to’.
7.182 Another complainant singled out Ms Thornton as being particularly cruel. She said that she had a
grudge against an awful lot of people. She said that, on one occasion, when she tried to intervene
because Ms Thornton was hitting her brother, Ms Thornton twisted her arm and actually broke it.
She said that she was too terrified of Ms Thornton to tell Sr Venetia what had happened, and so
she told her that she had hurt it in the washing machine. She was afraid that, if she had told on
Ms Thornton, her little brother would have been victimised by her.
7.183 She said that Ms Thornton was particularly cruel to the little boys, and that she told other girls
about this, and eventually it got back to Sr Venetia, but she only got beaten and had her head
shaved by a member of the lay staff as a result.
7.184 One complainant who was in Goldenbridge in the 1960s was one of the most condemnatory of
the lay staff in Goldenbridge. She described a regime where the unqualified and largely ill-
educated lay staff were effectively out of control and administering severe physical punishment.
7.185 Abuse by lay staff became a major feature of life in Goldenbridge in the 1950s and 1960s and
continued until, eventually in 1966, Sr Venetia removed four particularly abusive lay staff
members, and conditions improved thereafter.
7.186 This complainant’s recollection is of one of those staff members who was finally complained about
to Sr Venetia, and she describes her as ‘an absolute demon’. She recalls her dragging her off a
bed in the dormitory, pulling off her clothes and beating her in front of other girls. She said that
she boxed her, kicked her and threw her to the floor. She was left in a very bad state, and that
night woke up screaming in her sleep. Somebody went and got Sr Venetia, who was told what
had happened to her, but as far as she knew that was the end of the matter. This complainant
says that, some time later, another child received a similar beating from Ms Rafter. She said:
I was finished, I was shattered, I couldn’t fight any more, I was finished. I just felt utterly
hopeless, it was over, I could have died, I didn’t care. She broke my spirit completely and
I had plenty of it but she broke it and it has taken me years and years and years to recover
any of it and I still will never get over that woman.
7.187 This complainant said that this lay staff worker was often in charge of the recreation hall. She said
that this was a huge room, and was used for recreation if the weather prevented the children from
going outside. She said:
We used to go into that room and you would have to sit like this (indicating) your finger
on your lip (indicating) and you dare not move and I mean move or display any body
language. If you looked and caught your friend’s eye across the other side of the room or
if you winked or blinked or anything there was this orgy of violence that followed. Nothing
short of an orgy of violence.
7.188 The complainant said that the nuns were never present during any of this, that they were always
in the convent. She said that these lay workers, not just Ms Rafter, but others whom she named,
kicked the children, pulled off their clothes, pulled them by their hair, beat them and battered them.
She said she would never forget those fights as long as she lived, and that she has had to live
with it almost every day of her life. She said she recalls one little girl getting an appalling beating
because she asked one of the carers ‘Is your name Ms Rafter?’. She said that those carers should
have been named as respondents and been forced to answer for what they did. She said this was
something that happened every day, especially in the wintertime, but she said it was not just in
the recreation hall, it also happened in the dormitories after the nun had gone back to the convent.
7.189 Another complainant, who was in Goldenbridge in the 1960s, also spoke about the bullying that
went on in the School. Again, this is a complaint that was not seen in the 1940s and 1950s, when
there appeared to be a great deal more control over the School. By the 1960s, undoubtedly the
issue of bullying had arisen. This complainant said that there were a lot of bullies in the School,
and that it was survival of the fittest. She said that this bullying was conducted by members of the
staff and that, as a child, she found that these people did not care. She said that they were doing
their job, but that there was a great deal of punishment. She said that these lay people had a
great deal of power and they inflicted severe beatings.
7.190 Another complainant who was in Goldenbridge in the early 1960s was a small boy when admitted.
He remembers getting beatings, particularly for bed-wetting. He said:
You had girls in charge. You had nuns, then you had outsiders, you had elder girls put in
charge of the younger ones, they used to give as nearly as much beatings as what the
nuns did for certain things. After being out of there and you think back, these girls were
brought up with that sort of treatment and they portrayed that on younger kids. They were
in there for years so that is all they knew, but you were underneath these people ‘cos
they were bigger and stronger and there longer, so you were getting it at every angle.
7.191 Sr Alida in her evidence stated that lay staff were not authorised to slap children and that, as far
as she knew, they did not do so. She said that, as far as she was aware, she and Sr Bianca, or
later she and Sr Venetia, were the only persons who administered corporal punishment in the
School, and the lay staff left any problems for them to deal with.
7.192 She also said that she believed that the two lay workers who were left in charge while she and
Sr Venetia went over to the convent in the evenings had a difficult task maintaining discipline, and
that was why there would be children waiting for her on the landing.
Discrimination
7.193 Witnesses complained that children were not all treated alike in Goldenbridge. They were
protected to some extent if they had a relative who visited them regularly. Favouritism was a
complaint made particularly by witnesses who were in Goldenbridge during the 1960s.
7.194 A complainant, who was aged nine in the early 1960s, described the difference in the way that
children were treated. This witness and her siblings were placed in care on the death of their
mother, and she noticed particularly how two members of another family were treated so differently
that it came as a shock to her to realise they were sisters. Whereas one girl was favoured as
a pet, the other was treated with extreme cruelty and was often seen waiting on the landing
for punishment.
7.195 Another complainant, objecting to favouritism, remarked that the very fact that the nuns and lay
staff were capable of forming attachments with certain children demonstrated that they knew how
to treat children properly and show them love and affection:
It was wrong there was no need for it, why couldn’t they treat us all like pets, why not?
That’s a choice they exercised.
7.196 A witness, who was five years old when he was committed to Goldenbridge, gave evidence. He
was transferred to Artane when he was nine years old. He stated that, before he was committed
to institutional care:
I was a happy, young little kid and I believe I was turned into a nervous wreck in these
places.
7.197 He was emotionally upset by the death of his mother and was a regular bed-wetter. He was left-
handed and was constantly beaten for it in class. This vulnerability made him an obvious target
for bullies. He summed up his situation as follows:
I remember just constantly getting beaten. Even in the classroom being nervous, and left
handed, you weren’t allowed to do things left handed, the devil was in you, you were told
... From constant beatings I had a stutter and I had a turn in my eye as well, and I used
to get an awful time off the rest of the kids.
7.198 The Sisters of Mercy in their Submission accepted that this complainant’s circumstances made
him more vulnerable.
A change in atmosphere
7.199 Many complainants gave evidence that the atmosphere in the School improved under Sr Venetia’s
management. She did not resort to physical punishment to the same extent as her predecessor.
One complainant described her relief when Sr Alida left in the early 1960s:
I was relieved when she left. I was relieved to the extent that I knew Sr Venetia had done
some things, but she was still never on a par with Sr Alida, where bullying and beatings
and things were concerned ... I got some beatings from Sr Venetia, but she would never
have – let’s face it when somebody is beating you they are not happy and smiling. She
would never have had that harshness in her face or in her voice that Alida had, that
horrible horrible venom that was dished out for me by Sr Alida.
7.200 Another complainant described the relief after Sr Alida left, and stated that the children were
happier:
I felt personally that there was an air of lightness in the place ... it just seemed that there
was something – there was a little bit of fear gone ... We didn’t have to see that big figure
coming down the hall, and if you were running or anything like that, and getting a slap on
the head. That’s the way I used to be afraid, you would see the big black figure.
7.201 At the same time, the witness added that Sr Venetia was moody, which could create a tense,
uncertain environment:
Sometimes I found her alright. I think it depended on her mood. She did punish severely
as well.
7.202 Another difference between the two nuns was that Sr Venetia was verbally cruel and sarcastic,
and witnesses spoke about how they were hurt by her comments. One witness recalled how Sr
Venetia deliberately ridiculed her because her mother had spent time in a psychiatric hospital:
She used the term “cracked like your mother” many, many times. I used to live in fear of
her coming into my view because – I was terrified that she would say these words.
7.203 Sr Alida stated in evidence that, during most of her time in Goldenbridge, there were 150 children
and four staff members. In order to maintain discipline, she had to be very controlling. Given the
nature of the work and the constraints under which the staff operated, she stated that it was very
possible that staff were bad tempered.
7.204 It was the system that obliged her to use corporal punishment as often as she did. She explained:
Today I would hate to think of the things I had to do or the things I did, but in the system
as it was I don’t know what resolution there was to it. Maybe it was a too easy situation
to get rid of a problem, instead of sitting down to talk or to advise you slapped and that
was the end of the problem.
7.205 She asserted that she never saw anybody else use a slapper except for Sr Venetia. She said,
‘Lay people could give a clout with their hand but that would be the most that I would see them
doing’. She said that no lay person ever beat the children, as far as she knew, nor did they have
authority to punish the children in any manner.
7.206 Sr Alida had a clear memory of children being on the landing during Sr Bianca’s time, but she
had no real memory of that being a feature of her time there. Although she could remember
chastising a child on the landing, it was not on a regular basis. She also said that lay staff did not
chastise children but left it for her to deal with.
7.207 Sr Alida maintained that she and Sr Venetia were the only persons who administered corporal
punishment in the School: the lay staff were not authorised to slap children and, as far as she
was aware, they did not do so.
7.208 Ms Garvin,15 formerly a Sister of Mercy who had worked as an assistant teacher in Goldenbridge
from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, was adamant that, while there was corporal punishment,
it was not excessive.
7.209 Sr Gianna16 gave evidence to the Investigation Committee. She worked as an assistant in the
School from 1960 until she took her final vows as a Sister of Mercy a few years later. She stated
that, although Sr Alida used a stick for corporal punishment, it would cause no more than
temporary discomfort to a child. She agreed that it could leave bruising on a child’s body, but she
said she never witnessed such injuries.
7.210 Both the above witnesses said that they believed the atmosphere was very good in Goldenbridge
and that the children were happy there.
The Crowley Report

7.211 Among the discovered documents was a report commissioned by the Sisters of Mercy in 1996 on
the conditions of life in Goldenbridge. It was commissioned to prepare the Congregation for the
television programme ‘Dear Daughter’ and its aftermath.
7.212 The ‘Dear Daughter’ programme was shown on RTE in February 1996, and it produced a massive
response from the media and the public. Complaints were made to the Gardaı́ and an investigation
followed, but there were no prosecutions. The Congregation was aware that the programme was
being planned and that serious allegations would be made about how children had been treated
in Goldenbridge. In advance of the screening of the programme, the Congregation decided to find
out what it could about conditions in the Institution. One of the first things that it did was to
commission a professional childcare expert to give an initial assessment of the allegations, and
that inquiry gave rise to the first apology that the Sisters of Mercy issued in February 1996,
following the screening of the programme.
7.213 The preliminary inquiry was undertaken by a senior social worker with the Western Health Board.
His brief was to develop an assessment of the allegations being made regarding the care received
by children in Goldenbridge in the 1950s and 1960s. Mr Crowley gathered information from the
following sources:
• Transcript of the Gay Byrne interview with Ms Christine Buckley in 1993.
• A meeting with Mr Louis Lentin, the producer of the programme that was going to
shown on RTE.
• A meeting with a former resident of Goldenbridge.
• Meeting with Sr Alida.
• Meeting with Sr Venetia.
• Report and feedback from Sr Bettina17 on her interviews with former residents.
7.214 Mr Crowley approached his task in two ways. Firstly, he sought to establish and clarify the broad
nature and patterns of the allegations being made. Secondly, he examined the information and
carried out interviews, with a view to forming an independent professional assessment of the
general nature of the care provided in Goldenbridge in the context of the allegations.
15
16
17

7.215 He identified four areas of complaint which were interrelated. They were physical abuse, emotional
abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect of children’s basic needs. Mr Crowley compiled a summary of
allegations that were made about the regime:
Physical Abuse
1. A constant pattern of physical abuse.
2. Severe beatings resulting in children being physically marked was the dominant
form of discipline.
3. The beatings were carried out by a number of lay staff but most especially by Sr
Alida. Beatings were so routine that they were witnessed by and colluded with by
all members of staff.
4. Children were deprived of food.
5. Children were kept awake late into the evenings while awaiting physical
punishments and were thus deprived of sleep.
6. Children were deprived of heating and warmth.
7. Children were routinely involved in inappropriate physical tasks connected with
maintaining the establishment.
8. Some of the severe punishments were inflicted in circumstances in which there
were sexual and humiliating elements including, for example, public and forceful
removal of clothes before physical punishment.
9. Children were not clear as to why they were being beaten.
10. Children lived in constant fear of experiencing and witnessing physical abuse.
Emotional Abuse
11. Routine derogatory references to the children’s background and to their parent’s
behaviour.
12. Verbal abuse which combined with other interactions had the effect of reinforcing
negative self images and damaging self confidence and feelings of worth.
13. Denial of appropriate recreation.
14. Imposing onerous responsibilities on children who were too young to carry them
out, such as taking responsibility for the care of other children.
15. Public humiliation of children suffering from bed-wetting and soiling and making
them display wet and soiled sheets publicly to other children.
16. Children were constantly in fear.
17. Children’s emotional needs were neither understood nor responded to.
18. Favouritism.
19. Deprivation was made worse for children when they saw some others being
treated as pets and getting better treatment.
Sexual Abuse
20. Children were exposed to sexually abusive experiences by befriending families
and employers with whom they were placed.
21. No proper assessment or supervision or aftercare arrangements were made to
prevent these abuses.
22. Some care practices reflected insensitivity to adolescent sexuality.
23. Two former residents alleged cases of specific sexual abuse, one by a male
member of staff and one by two female members of staff.
Neglect of Children’s Basic Needs
24. The total organisation of the children’s daily routine was contrary to their
developing needs.
25. There was a failure at all levels to understand or meet their needs.
26. The general climate and regime were excessively harsh and abusive even by the
standards of the time.
27. Expectations about children, for example, in relation to the length of time they
were expected to concentrate or to stay silent or to work were not normal.
28. Particular forms of punishment, such as being left alone for hours in the furnace
room, were particularly frightening for children who had experienced traumatic
separations.
29. Generally, there was an absence of consistent and positive adults to whom
supportive attachment could develop.
7.216 He interviewed Sr Alida and Sr Venetia, and put these allegations to them and noted their
responses. The statements made by these two nuns are of real importance in the Inquiry because
they come from people who worked in Goldenbridge over a combined period from 1942 until 1972.
7.217 Mr Crowley formed the impression that Sr Alida was well prepared for the interview, and that she
energetically attempted to direct the focus and pace of the discussion. Whilst she regularly stated
that she could not remember events, this memory lapse was not consistent across the range of
topics covered: it appeared to relate principally to material that was critical of her.
7.218 She presented as a ‘committed and energetic person, who appeared well defended
psychologically’. Mr Crowley found her very controlling in her interaction, ‘but this may be related
to her evident need to control her feelings’.
7.219 Mr Crowley reported as follows on his interview with Sr Alida:

Sr Alida described her initiation to Goldenbridge as being told not to talk or take the
attitude of Sr Felisa,18 who had been working with the children in care and had been
critical of the service.
Sr Alida recalls her early years in religious life as being dominated by fear. On reflection
she cannot understand how she accepted so many demands and pressures without
protest.
She was trained by Sr Bianca, whom she describes as a very large powerful woman with
a harsh aggressive and unpredictable personality.
On reflection Sr Alida perceived the policies and practices of the 1950s and 1960s as
being based on ignorance and failing to understand or care appropriately for the children.
The use of former residents as staff was influenced by limited finance and tended to be
limited to those who could not survive in aftercare. These were probably the most
unsuitable people to care for vulnerable children. Older residents also cared for younger
children in a semi formal system. She described much of the care as being “gang care”.
Sr Alida identified Ms O’Shea19 as being one former resident who she understood was
physically abusive.
18
19

Sr Alida, in effect, acknowledged that she continuously shouted and beat children “too
much and too long” and used a stick routinely. She tended to go to bed very late and this
led to children being kept on the landing.
Sr Alida acknowledges being confronted by a parent for threatening to place her daughter
in the tumble dryer, she confirmed children’s involvement in activities such as grass cutting
with their hands but minimised the impact on children.
Hunger and humiliation were acknowledged with regret, when discussed in general terms,
however specific allegations tended to be met with long silences and eventual comments
such as “It could have happened accidentally”.
Sr Alida did not in effect reject the substance of the allegations.
7.220 Sr Venetia worked in Goldenbridge for many years and became Resident Manager in the 1960s.
7.221 Mr Crowley conducted a lengthy interview with Sr Venetia. She was in some physical pain and
discomfort because of her medical condition during the course of the interview, but she had no
obvious difficulties with memory. Mr Crowley observed that the allegations were weighing heavily
on Sr Venetia and she presented as resigned to the process of being interviewed. It was evident
to Mr Crowley that she wished to be honest and forthright, but this was complicated somewhat by
ambivalence and conflicting loyalties. Mr Crowley was satisfied that she made every effort to be
honest, but it was clear to him that she had some difficulty in discussing issues such as sexual
abuse and, in general, she did not volunteer new information. He said ‘Sr Venetia communicated
generally as being a somewhat fearful and isolated person.’
7.222 Mr. Crowley reported:

Sr Venetia described the care system and organisational structure as having been
established by Sr Bianca who died.... She initially described Sr Bianca as a hard and rigid
woman but over the course of the interview it emerged that she viewed Sr Bianca as a
paranoid schizophrenic who she considered was grossly insulting to adults and children
and who in effect established a reign of terror.
Sr Venetia communicated that subsequent managers maintained many of the features of
the system as established, without substantial reflection but gradually modified and
improved the care arrangements.
Sr Venetia confirmed that the general atmosphere was excessively and consistently cruel
even relative to standards of the time. She confirmed that fear of and actual physical
beatings and verbal abuse was a matter of routine and that the general account of
children, for example, waiting on the landings was accurate. Wetting was defined as a
crime and, therefore, punishable through humiliation and physical beatings. Sr Venetia
confirmed the allegations in relation to the tumble dryer and drinking from the toilet cistern.
She also confirmed the bead making and that failure to obey rules was normally
punishable by physical beatings.
Sr Venetia made particular reference to one member of the lay staff, who was employed
by Sr Bianca and subsequently fired. It was very evident that Sr Venetia was very afraid
of this staff member and that the children were terrified of this person. Sr Venetia was
quite fearful and reluctant in any discussion of sexual abuse.
Essentially Sr Venetia confirmed that the essential elements of the allegations were
correct and it was clear that she was of the view that almost anything could have occurred
in a very unsafe environment.
7.223 Mr Crowley was guarded in his report. He cautioned that the sample of former pupils from whom
he had obtained information was not randomly drawn, and he said that it could be expected that
other women might have different experiences in relation to Goldenbridge. He warned that caution
would have to be exercised about any particular allegation that arose from early childhood
experience, especially in regard to the identity of the perpetrator, and that there was a particular
danger of confusion occurring between Sr Bianca and Sr Alida. He made clear that the allegations
of the former residents had been listened to without challenge or cross-examination, and that his
interviews with the Sisters were structured to maximise participation and effective communication,
and that he consciously did not structure inquiries in a manner that might have been experienced
as interrogatory or pressurising. He noted that Sr Alida initially requested, but subsequently
cancelled, a second interview. He also advised that substantial information would continue to
emerge as more former residents were interviewed. But, having set out all these cautions, Mr
Crowley was satisfied that it was possible to establish a broad picture of the care practices in
Goldenbridge during the period.
7.224 Mr Crowley ended his report with comments expressed as a ‘Conclusion’, followed by
observations headed ‘General Commentary’:
Conclusion
Clear and consistent patterns can be identified in the allegations. The various accounts
are consistent with each individual recalling personal experiences which reinforce the
overall picture. The accounts are accompanied with appropriate feeling and a richness of
detail. The accounts of subsequent life stories and relationship issues are consistent with
the childhood experiences as described.
Those former residents who have been interviewed have been experienced as credible.
Some of the care practices may be understood by reference to the harsh historical
context. Some actions experienced as abusive may not have had such intent, but were
experienced as such due to insensitivity, ignorance and a failure to communicate. Other
actions, such as forbidding liquids to bed wetters, may have had unintended
consequences, such as children drinking from toilets at night.
However, the broad nature and pattern of the allegations, which have in effect been
confirmed by the sisters with management responsibility, namely physical and emotional
abuse, are clearly accurate descriptions of the experiences of children in Goldenbridge.
The care arrangements did not meet children’s basic needs. Children experienced
physical and emotional abuse and were almost certainly exposed to sexual abuse.
A number of the particular incidents described were violent and sadistic. The entire regime
was unsafe and was characterised by a pervasive controlling of children through fear.
General Commentary
The children cared for in Goldenbridge had, prior to their reception into care, experienced
gross neglect, deprivation and multiple trauma. They were often rejected by their
immediate and extended family and by the broader society. They were admitted in large
numbers to a service which could not even begin to provide an appropriate level of care.
The physical environment was totally unstable and did not facilitate either supervision or
privacy. The financial resources were grossly inadequate and determined the availability
of personnel and material necessities.
The Care System and culture was created by a dominant and dysfunctional personality.
The religious sisters who subsequently held management responsibility lived in a tightly
controlled and authoritarian world. Questioning was defined as arrogance and led to
blaming of the individual. The most extreme example of this was Sr Alida’s account of
how her request to be released from teaching to concentrate on care was responded to
by a decision to immediately transfer her to Co. Wicklow.

No distinction appears to have been made between being a ‘good’ religious and being a
‘good’ childcare worker. The characteristics that were valued appear to have been
obedience and dedication.
No professional training was available to provide understanding or direction to service
organisation or therapeutic interventions. Consequently the only available models were
adopted with the corporal punishment in school becoming the beatings in the care centre
and the daily routine and practices of religious life determining the day to day life of
young children.
Religious sisters and lay staff operated under constant pressure and clearly worked hard
at an impossible task.
The unsafe world of Goldenbridge developed a very particular culture which could not
meet the needs of children. Very powerless people had enormous and immediate power
over troubled and troublesome children. The abuse of the power and powerlessness was
almost inevitable.
Almost any kind of abusive incidents could have occurred.
7.225 Mr Crowley’s views and conclusions are not part of the investigation process undertaken by the
Committee. The apology issued by the Sisters of Mercy following the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme
was issued because Mr Crowley had advised in the way that he did. His report and his conclusions
are, therefore, a part of the background to the investigation and to the positions taken by the
Sisters of Mercy at different stages. However, the statements made by Sr Venetia and Sr Alida to
Mr Crowley are different from the rest of the report because they have direct relevance to the
investigation. They are records of the recollections and responses of persons who participated in
the running of the Institution over a period of 30 years, and one of whom is now deceased.
7.226 Mr Crowley completed his report in February 1996 and he stated that it was evident that a
comprehensive inquiry by a multi-disciplinary team would be necessary which would be dependent
on cooperation from both former residents and staff. The Sisters of Mercy explain in their Opening
Statement that such an inquiry was impossible, as at that stage legal proceedings had been
instituted by a number of former residents.
7.227 The Congregation have asked the Investigation Committee to note the limitations of the Crowley
report, which they identify as being four-fold:
(1) The report was based on interviews with a small number of complainants; with Srs
Alida and Venetia; and with Louis Lentin (producer of ‘Dear Daughter’).
(2) There was little, if any, questioning of the complainants on the details of complaints.
(3) There are no notes, transcripts or tapes of the interviews and there is therefore some
difficulty in assessing precisely what was said. ‘For example, Sr Alida explained to the
Committee that she had always had problems with the account in the report of
what she had said’ (emphasis added). [This is factually incorrect. Sr Alida did not
allege that she was misquoted by Mr Crowley but did make a comment about the
report as a whole:
I have to say that......from the very beginning I was quite unhappy with Mr Crowley’s
report.]
Sr Venetia never had an opportunity to give evidence to the Investigation
Committee either in general or specifically in relation to the Crowley Report.
(4) The information-gathering exercise was conducted very quickly and the conclusions
were intended to be preliminary in nature. The exercise was intended to be a first step
in a process, rather than a final conclusion.
7.228 The Sisters of Mercy note that the issues which were the subject matter of the Crowley Report
are precisely those which fall within the Commission’s remit and given the substantial bank of
both oral and documentary material which the Investigation Committee has at its disposal they
submit that it would be inappropriate for the Investigation Committee to place excessive reliance
on the earlier preliminary report.
7.229 Sr Alida has never challenged the accuracy of the statements attributed to her in the report. Had
she done so, it would have been necessary for him to give evidence to the Committee. However,
because the accuracy of Mr Crowley’s recording of statements was not an issue, such evidence
did not become necessary.
7.230 The nature and circumstances of the Crowley report must be taken into account. The description
of Sr Bianca given by both Sr Venetia and Sr Alida is consistent with accounts given by former
residents and with the atmosphere described as pervading the institution during her time as
resident manager. The comments quoted by Mr Crowley are also relevant to subsequent
conditions about which the sisters spoke to him and tend to corroborate much of the oral
testimony.
7.231 Mr Crowley placed much of the blame for the conditions that pertained in Goldenbridge on
ignorance, insensitivity and a failure to communicate. In this regard, it is interesting to look at the
lecture entitled ‘Institutional Management’ which was delivered by Sr Bianca in February 1953.
This lecture indicates awareness of the special requirements of institutionalised children. The
preparation for this lecture was done in consultation with Dr Anna McCabe, who in her Visitation
Report of 1953 referred to regular meetings with Sr Bianca to discuss this lecture.

7.232 1. Overall, there was a high level of severe corporal punishment in Goldenbridge,
resulting in a pervasive climate of fear in the Institution.
2. Beatings on the landing were a particularly cruel feature of the regime.
3. A parallel, unofficial system of punishment permitted every member of staff to use
corporal punishment, which was often excessive. Some former residents, who were
unsuited for outside employment, were retained as helpers and often administered
severe punishment.
4. Children were beaten and humiliated for bed-wetting by both nuns and lay staff.
5. There is no evidence that a punishment book was kept in Goldenbridge, as was
required by the regulations, and the absence of this important record should have
been noticed and reported by the Department Inspector.
Rosary bead making

7.233 A particular feature of Goldenbridge was rosary bead making. Sometime in the mid-1940s, Sr
Alida was approached by a businessman with the proposition that she might get the children to
make rosary beads in return for payment. She saw this as a wonderful opportunity to acquire
much-needed funds. In addition, she thought that it would keep the children occupied. So began
an enterprise that was to continue until the 1960s.
7.234 After school, at about 3.30pm, the children had something to eat and then went to the beads
class. The location was Ms Dempsey’s classroom. The children were required to make decades
of the rosary by putting the beads on lengths of wire. After each bead was positioned, the wire
had to be looped and cut using pliers, and each bead then had to be attached to the next bead
until all 10 beads were completed.
7.235 The children each had a quota of 60 decades per day and 90 on a Saturday. This meant that, in
the two hours of the weekday afternoon allocated for this work, 30 decades an hour had to be
made by each child. Not surprisingly, few children reached their quota in the afternoon, and they
had to return to the beads class in the evening and remain there until their 60 decades were
completed.
7.236 There is some controversy over the age at which children began to make beads, but it appears
that, after they made their First Holy Communion, that is around seven years of age, children
were expected to do this work. There were younger children in the room, who helped by picking
up beads or by stringing the beads to leave them ready for the older girls to make the decade.
7.237 Skill and dexterity were required. It would have taken some time to develop expertise. It was also
painful, and witnesses described cuts and calluses on their hands as they tried to learn the work.
A child starting would be slow at first, and might never acquire the necessary skill to be able to
do it quickly.
7.238 Sometimes, an older girl would help out a younger who was having difficulty in reaching the quota.
Similarly, friends might help each other. In this way, the great majority of the children between
seven and 16 years were occupied every day from Monday to Friday. For a variety of reasons,
some children would not have to do beads, but the vast majority of children between the ages
mentioned had to attend for this work. On Saturdays, the quota was 90 decades, and there were,
of course, other chores (called charges) to be completed.
7.239 Sr Alida conceded that it was difficult work:

... it wasn’t soft work to be working with the pliers, it was not like needle work, you had to
use energy to bend the wire.
7.240 When Sr Alida first attempted to make a decade of beads that the representative from the bead
making company had given her, she admitted it took her an entire Saturday to make one decade.
She also conceded that she ‘had so much hardship making them’. But thereafter, she said, it was
like knitting.
7.241 Different types of beads were used, and this made the task of stringing decades more difficult,
depending on the type of bead. Horn beads and plastic beads posed no problem, but glass beads
tended to break, and the mother of pearl beads were very difficult to string through.
7.242 Bead making was supervised by one of the care staff or, more likely, by one of the care assistants,
and it was often Ms Thornton. A child who had the necessary skill could complete her quota by
teatime but not much before that. Others found difficulty in completing their assigned task. The
work was inspected by the person in charge and sent back to be redone if it was not found
satisfactory for one reason or another. Some beads were easier to work with than others, even
for people who were good at the work. If the quota was not reached, the child was in trouble. It
might happen that, even after going back to beads work after tea and staying there until perhaps
9pm or 9.30pm (some witnesses said even later), the quota would still not be achieved. In those
circumstances, the evidence was that the child would be punished by being beaten. If the work
was found unsatisfactory, the result was punishment at the hands of the person in charge of the
beads room.
7.243 It happened occasionally, when a dispatch was due to go to the factory, that some of the children
had to stay as late as 10pm to complete an order and ensure that it met the required standard.
7.244 In the Opening Statement delivered by Sr Helena O’Donoghue, the bead making work was
characterised as a pleasant activity to while away the time, which was enjoyed by the children
and often done to music from the radio. A picture was painted of a busy workroom, where happy
children chatted as they carried out this routine work. It is apparent that this description is based
on information from Sr Alida.
7.245 This description of bead making by Sr Helena was inaccurate. The work was hard. The hours
were long. While some girls were well capable of doing the work once they had got used to it, for
many others it was difficult to master the dexterity required. There was pressure to achieve the
quota and to keep to the required standard of work. The work could fail in a variety of ways,
including obvious ones like not having the right number of beads in a decade. Less obvious and
more difficult to avoid were errors such as having inconsistent-sized loops of wire joining the
beads. The atmosphere was not the pleasant group activity imagined by Sr Helena and
remembered by Sr Alida. The essential requirement was of quietly, if not silently, getting on with
the work; the children did converse but mostly in whispers, and the radio was turned on only
occasionally while this work was being done.
7.246 The fact that punishment hung over the activity, for failure to achieve either quality or quantity,
inevitably affected the atmosphere. The work was relentless, with demanding quotas. This was
hard work over long hours during six days a week, for children obliged to do the work with no
reference to their capacity to manage it.
7.247 Sr Venetia in her interview with Mr Crowley confirmed that:

the bead making and that failure to obey rules were normally punishable by physical
beatings.
7.248 The money made from bead making was considerable. Sr Alida gave evidence of being able to
produce £1,000 to contribute to the sum of £3,000 in the 1950s for the purchase of the holiday
house at Rathdrum. The best estimates as to the earnings are that an income of approximately
£50 per week was achieved by this activity.
7.249 Management saw this work as a practical and useful occupation that kept the girls out of trouble
during many hours of the week, when they would otherwise have needed amusement or diversion
or other occupation. Instead, it conditioned them to drudgery, with the added threat of being
beaten for failure.
7.250 The authorities lost all sense of importance about bead making. It became a relentless production
line. Sr Alida’s enthusiasm became obsession. Occupation became drudgery. The pursuit of extra
money by way of profit from the bead making became exploitation. All this was carried out under
the threat of being beaten for failure.
Evidence of complainants
7.251 Over half of the complainants who testified spoke of the hardship associated with stringing
decades of beads. From their evidence, it was an activity they clearly did not enjoy and, instead,
viewed it as a chore. The daily quota system of each child having to make 60 decades each
evening was, according to many of the witnesses, a source of stress and pressure. They said that
assembling the beads into decades was hard work, which resulted in calluses, welts and cuts on
their hands from the use of the pliers and the steel wire.
7.252 Some of the complainants recalled that they commenced this activity at the age of seven, after
their First Communion. Initially, they were involved in stringing the beads on a wire for the older
girls, before progressing to making the decades. One witness recounted her introduction to bead
making as follows:
The beads class was something that you were introduced to after Communion. In the
early stages the younger children would be asked to pick the beads up off the floor or
maybe wire, anything that had fallen. You would also be asked to string beads for the
older girls. This allowed them to move quickly to reach their quota, which was 60 decades
per evening.
7.253 Some witnesses spoke of the difficulty in reaching their daily quota and being punished for not
attaining it. The punishment could take the form of a slap there and then, by whoever was
supervising the class, or sometimes they would be sent to the landing to await their punishment.
Ms Thornton and Ms O’Shea at different times took charge of supervising the class, and both
were considered to be violent individuals. A witness described it as follows:
... you had little pliers and wire and the wire was constantly digging into your skin and you
just couldn’t work fast enough to reach the quota every day. We were lined up every night,
those who hadn’t reached the quota and beaten.
7.254 This witness was regularly punished for not reaching her quota, and eventually, when the pressure
became too much for her, on one occasion, she resorted to stealing another girl’s beads to avoid
another beating. The other girl was punished instead of her. She said:
... I had been beaten every night for not making enough ... On one occasion ... I just
couldn’t stand it anymore so I stole a handful of beads from the girl across the aisle when
she was out of the room. When the nun came round she said, “I did them, I did them,
somebody stole them”, the nun wouldn’t believe her, took her to the front of the room and
beat her. It has haunted me all my life ...
7.255 A common complaint referred to by many of the witnesses was the tense atmosphere of the beads
room, which was generated by the pressure they were placed under to reach their daily quota.
The tension resulted in the work being carried out in silence. A witness described the tense
atmosphere as follows:
... There was always somebody ready to shout at you and come down and hit you ... you
weren’t really meant to talk to one another, you did of course, you whispered, but it was
all the time you were sort of watching your back.
7.256 Again and again, the witnesses spoke of the silence in the room. One witness said:
We all sat down and made our rosary beads. We had a little box and we made our rosary
beads. It was work. We weren’t allowed to talk, we didn’t talk. We only talked when she
left the room. Whoever, was there in that room, when they left, we talked. When they
came back we stopped. We had to work because we had a quota to do, we had so many
to do.
7.257 Another witness said:

... there was a radio in it and PJ O’Connor used to tell a story once a week on a
Wednesday. Most times the radio wasn’t on and you had to do it in silence.
7.258 Two of the witnesses, who came forward at the request of the Sisters of Mercy to give evidence
of their time in Goldenbridge, also spoke of the silence and tension in the room. One such
witness said:
The beads class, I don’t know why I always felt everything was sort of so quiet. I don’t
remember really much chat in the beads class. We probably whispered to one another
but I don’t remember conversations with anybody ... I think we were too busy, I took all
my time to make them anyway, we were so busy making them so I wouldn’t have had
that much time to do anything.
7.259 The second positive witness said that she could get into trouble for talking loudly in beads class
but she could talk to the person beside her as long as it was done quietly.
7.260 Sr Alida described the beads room as ‘a room of relaxation rather than pressure’. She said that
there was a radio or record player that was played in the room, and the children sang along and
chatted amongst themselves. She did not consider the work difficult, and stated that ‘it didn’t take
a lot of stress doing the work’ and she felt that the work was comparable to a knitting class.
7.261 Sr Alida denied that children were beaten for not reaching their quota and claimed ‘that there was
no difficulty in making the quota in the beads class’. She admitted that it was her responsibility to
check the quality and quantity of the decades of beads before they were returned to the factory.
If the beads were not properly completed, they would be sent back and ‘it was nasty, to get them
back to be repaired, very nasty’. This, she said, resulted in her staying up ‘odd nights’ with children
helping her to finish the work to go back to the factory.
7.262 Sr Alida began the beads class with the permission of the Resident Manager, Sr Bianca. She
explained that it was important for the children to have something to do:
My chief problem was that the children had nothing in the world to do after they left school
in the evening, there was no occupation of any kind. They went to the play hall and they
shouted and roared and pulled each other around from 3.30 until 5.45, we were in the
convent at that time.
7.263 Sr Alida also viewed the bead making as a means of generating extra income for the School. At
the time when she was approached to assemble decades of rosaries, she said Goldenbridge ‘was
subject to considerable financial restraint’, and she saw the bead making as an opportunity to
increase their financial income:
... I viewed this offer as an opportunity to increase the income of the home for the benefit
of the children. I believed that this could provide us with a source of income to improve
the welfare of the children and to provide them with little luxuries which were not available
to us at that time.
7.264 Sr Alida said that the money from the beads was used to pay for Irish dancing classes, old-time
dancing, dancing shoes and costumes for the children, sweets, yearly trips to Butlins, and day
trips to Portmarnock during the summer. She also said that the children were given pocket money
out of the proceeds of the bead money. These were the ‘luxuries’ that were provided by the beads
money, and ‘everything that the children had as extras’ came from that money.
7.265 The bead making became a very profitable enterprise, generating a weekly income of at least £50
for the School. Sr Alida opened a Post Office savings account for the proceeds from the bead
making, which she controlled, and Sr Bianca never queried what she did with it. The money made
from the beads over a 20-year period was considerable. Sr Alida asserted that the money earned
was spent on the children:
... All those things did not come from the allowance the Government paid for the children,
it came from the children’s own hands ... the beads bought those things for them.
7.266 The money from the beads provided one-third of the cost of the purchase of a holiday home for the
children in Rathdrum in 1954. The entire cost of the holiday home was £3,000. The Investigation
Committee instructed Mazars, Financial Consultants to review the accounts of Goldenbridge. They
confirmed the figure of at least £50 per week.
7.267 Prior to introducing bead making, Sr Alida had a knitting class where girls made their own jumpers.
This work was superseded by bead making, although a very small number of bigger girls continued
to do knitting.
7.268 Sr Gianna recalled that Ms Thornton, a former resident of the Institution, often supervised the
beads class. Although she was of the view that Ms Thornton was kind to the children, she
conceded that she had a bad temper and that she heard her shouting and roaring at the children
in the class.
7.269 Ms Garvin remembered Ms O’Shea, another lay worker and former resident, supervising the
beads class. During her time in Goldenbridge from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, she went to
the beads class most days before teatime, where she remembered seeing the girls chatting to
each other and that music was playing. She insisted that the atmosphere in the beads room was
pleasant, and she never saw a child being beaten in the beads room. There was, however,
evidence that Ms O’Shea was violent and irascible.
The Congregation’s position

7.270 In contrast to the reminiscence of some of the Sisters that the bead making was a pleasurable
activity, the Congregation recognised that learning the skill of bead making:
... could have caused fingers to be tender or skin broken initially, and trying to finish a
“quota” must at times also have put unfair pressure on some children. We recognise that
this activity is remembered with particular bitterness by some former residents and we
deeply regret that something which was intended to be helpful was experienced as
harmful and unhappy.
7.271 In its written Submissions, it accepted that it was not an enjoyable activity, as there was a lot of
pressure to get the work done:
For those who were engaged in the process, the activity was undoubtedly experienced
as a compulsory activity which was not enjoyable and had to be, at best, endured. While
there was the radio to listen to, talking was muted and the main aim was to get one’s
work done. There was clearly a pressure to get the work done; work was on occasion
rejected as falling short of standards and there was a requirement to complete a quota.
7.272 The Congregation stated that the purpose of bead making was twofold: firstly, to provide useful
occupation for the children after school; and, secondly, to provide extra funds for ‘pocket money,
recreational activities and equipment for the children’. But they recognised that ‘there was too
much emphasis on occupation as a means of management and control of the children’.
Conclusions on bead making

7.273 1. Bead making became an industrial activity that was pursued obsessively; the work
was difficult and uncomfortable and it was painful for children especially those who
lacked dexterity and speed.
2. The quota system made the work onerous and pressurised and a source of stress
and anxiety.
3. Supervision by lay workers or nuns to ensure quantity and quality on pain of
punishment created work conditions that would not have been tolerated in factories.
4. Using the children for this work deprived them of normal childhood recreation that
was necessary for emotional, social and psychological development.

Sexual abuse
Allegations against a caretaker and others in the School

7.274 There is only one documented case of a child having been sexually abused in Goldenbridge. The
incident occurred in 1962, when a caretaker in the School was convicted of indecently assaulting
a girl.
7.275 The girl who had been sexually assaulted by the caretaker reported the matter to Sr Alida, who
immediately informed the Gardaı́. The caretaker was dismissed from his employment and was
subsequently prosecuted and convicted. He received a three-month suspended sentence.
7.276 The Sisters of Mercy confirmed that ‘the only definite knowledge’ they had regarding sexual abuse
in Goldenbridge related to the 1962 incident.
7.277 However, the Investigation Committee heard other complaints against this man. One complainant
alleged that she had been raped by him. She alleged that the rape had taken place around 1960,
when she was 11 years old, and two years before he was reported to the Gardaı́. She said she
did not report this incident to anyone in Goldenbridge, as she was afraid of being sent to a
reformatory. The alleged incident occurred in a room off a dormitory where he was fixing a sash
window and she was sent to assist him.
7.278 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.
7.279 A small number of other complaints related to sexual interference by older girls on younger girls
and by persons to whose care the children were entrusted at weekends.
Allegations against foster families

7.280 One witness spoke of being abused by a member of a family to whom she was sent out to at the
weekend. This family, she felt, was not vetted. She says she was ‘fondled by an outsider’.
7.281 Another witness also spoke of being abused by a man in a family she was sent out to for a
weekend. She did not want to go to this family again and, when she tried to explain to the nun in
charge, she ‘boxed the face off her’.
7.282 Another witness said she was abused by an uncle of a family she was sent to. She alleged that
this occurred in the garden of the family’s home. She also referred to an incident of attempted
rape by the son of another family she was sent out to in Dublin. She was left alone in the house
with him, and he came into her bedroom and threw her on the bed and attempted to rape her.
Allegations of sexual abuse on young boys

7.283 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.
7.284 He went on to describe that the nature of the play was sexual.
20

7.285 He felt that he could not tell anyone about what was happening to him.
7.286 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.

7.287 1. Sexual abuse was not a significant issue in the investigation of Goldenbridge, but
there was an incident in 1962 which was dealt with promptly.
2. Management did not consider the risk of sexual abuse when sending children to
foster families.
Emotional abuse
7.288 It is instructive to look at the topic of emotional abuse, using a contemporary source outlining the
informed opinion at the time. In 1953, Sr Bianca, the Resident Manager of Goldenbridge, delivered
a lecture to a conference on childcare management run by the Archbishop of Dublin. She was
regarded as somewhat of an expert, having at that stage managed Goldenbridge Industrial School
for 11 years. Sr Bianca collaborated with the Department of Education’s Medical Inspector, Dr
McCabe, in preparing for the lecture. Her lecture indicated an enlightened and progressive
approach to institutional management, in particular she made the following points:
(a) Children from underprivileged backgrounds should be met with sympathy and
gentleness.
(b) Drastic remedies for head lice such as shaving children’s heads should not be
necessary particularly when there were remedies on the market at a very
reasonable price.
(c) Children should be divided into small groups, including at meal times, to promote
an intimate family atmosphere. ‘Formal marshalling and regimentation must be
avoided’.
(d) Whilst there should be an emphasis on domestic training there was no reason
why girls should not follow a commercial or other career path if they had the
necessary talent.
(e) Every child should help with small jobs and chores about the home. They should
be encouraged to be creative and arts and crafts teachers employed.
(f) Dressing the children uniformly should be discouraged.
(g) Children should be allowed a considerable amount of supervised freedom. They
should be allowed to go to the local shop and older girls permitted to go into town
on the bus to run errands.
(h) A large playground and hall was a necessity. A field for sports should be made
available. Senior girls should have their own sitting room. Music should be
encouraged, both playing instruments and singing as well as listening to music
on the radio. Dancing should also be encouraged. Caring for pets was another
useful occupation for children.
(i) The Manager should possess skill and judgement ‘have a strong personality
without being overbearing and dictatorial ... and strictly impartial’. Those charged
with the care of such children should have a keen interest in their work and
possess the requisite experience and knowledge of psychology.
7.289 The Sisters of Mercy noted in their Opening Statement that this lecture ‘tells us much of the
thinking and practice at Goldenbridge’.
7.290 The Investigation Committee heard complaints regarding emotional abuse in the evidence from
complainants. All of the complainants came to Goldenbridge in harrowing circumstances. Some
had lost a parent, and the surviving parent was either not able to cope or was deemed by the
State to be unsuitable. Others were abandoned. Some came from desperately poor families, and
others were born out of wedlock to mothers who felt that society left them with no option but to
place their child in care. Some of those committed were babies; others had spent a substantial
part of their childhood with their families. Most of the children were heartbroken and terrified on
entering Goldenbridge. They all shared a vulnerability that made them emotionally needy.
7.291 Complainants lived in an atmosphere of constant fear of arbitrary punishment for misdemeanours
and of being humiliated. Despite always being surrounded by people, many expressed an
overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness. Many of the complainants stated that they are
left with deep psychological scars as a result of their time in Goldenbridge.
7.292 Witnesses’ account of their experiences in Goldenbridge indicate a very high level of emotional
abuse in that Institution.
7.293 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.
7.294 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.
7.295 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 ...
7.296 When asked to describe what she was fearful of in Goldenbridge she said, ‘what they would do
to you. You knew that you could never get away from their cruelty. You couldn’t escape and take
yourself off’.
7.297 She said she used to lie in her bed at night and wished that she didn’t wake up in the morning.
She said that she would sob her heart out crying for her mother.
7.298 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.
7.299 This complainant said that her grandmother used to come on Wednesday afternoons to visit her.
Visiting day was Saturday, and her grandmother was not allowed into the School. She said that
one of the nuns would come to her and say, ‘Go down to the gate, your grandmother is there’.
7.300 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’.
7.301 When asked to elaborate on the contrast between the English home and Goldenbridge, this
complainant said, ‘the stark contrast was that we were allowed to be children, we didn’t feel that
we were despised’. She said that the living conditions and the food were better and that, although
corporal punishment was used and administered with a cane, she could count on the fingers on
one hand the times it happened to her.
7.302 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?’.
7.303 Another complainant, who spent 15 years in Goldenbridge from the mid-1950s, said that she was
very affected by being called ugly by the nuns and staff while she was there. She said that she
used to keep her head down all the time because she believed that she was so ugly. She spoke
of a lack of confidence and very low self-esteem that has dogged her all her life. It had caused
problems in her relationships with people over the years. In particular, she said it had impacted
on the way she looked after her own children. She treated them the way she had been treated.
She has since apologised to her family. She said she now knew that you must always show
children love, ‘Lift a child up, give the child love, reassure her that she is so pretty or that he is so
pretty. It means so much in life, showing an individual love’.
7.304 This complainant was born to an unmarried mother and had little or no contact with her family
throughout her life. She found it very difficult to cope with the outside world after leaving
Goldenbridge and felt ill-equipped and ill-prepared.

7.305 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.
7.306 This is quite a significant letter. It was written by this complainant to the one person who had been
a mother substitute to her for her entire childhood. It is a sad reflection on the relationship she
had with her carers in Goldenbridge. This letter was not the result of any media campaign, or any
contamination: it is a contemporaneous document written by a very young girl who had just left
the Institution.
7.307 Another witness, who entered Goldenbridge as a small baby and spent 13 years there in the
1950s and 1960s, said that her great problem was fear, even after she left Goldenbridge. She
said she always felt very lonely and that she couldn’t really mix and was bullied a lot.
7.308 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.
7.309 This complainant noticed an improvement in Goldenbridge towards the end of her time there in
the 1960s.
7.310 Another witness was five years of age when she was admitted into Goldenbridge in the mid-
1950s. Her mother developed post-natal depression after the eighth child in the family was born
and was admitted to St Brendan’s Hospital. She specifically mentioned emotional abuse as being
the biggest hurt that she experienced in Goldenbridge.
7.311 She spoke of name-calling and jeering, and said that it came from staff members and carers who
were past pupils who had been kept on as part of the staff. She said it was very, very abusive,
and the comments centred on the fact that her mother had had a mental breakdown and was in
a psychiatric hospital. She said that the one person who stood out the most for referring to it a
great deal was Sr Venetia. She spoke of practices in Goldenbridge, such as underwear
inspections and a lack of any preparation for menstruation, as contributing to the lack of
confidence that all the girls experienced.
7.312 She said that the effect of their institutionalisation had devastated her family. Her three sisters all
suffered from serious psychological problems. She was particularly traumatised by the memory of
her younger sister, who she claimed was physically abused in Goldenbridge.
7.313 Another witness spent nine years in Goldenbridge from the mid-1950s in similar circumstances to
the previous complainant. Her mother was placed in a mental institution following a breakdown.
7.314 She said that one of the hardest things about being institutionalised at seven years of age was
the sense of isolation. She spoke about being jeered at by Sr Venetia and by workers because of
the fact that her mother was in a mental institution. She said that they were all called ‘mad’,
especially by Sr Venetia. This had a very deep psychological impact on her.
7.315 Another witness spoke of the great sadness caused by her mother’s mental breakdown that
resulted in the family having to be placed in care. She gave a poignant description of her
relationship with her father throughout her time in Goldenbridge. Her father was a timid man who
held the nuns who ran the School in great esteem. She said that he constantly hoped that he
would be able to take all his children out so that they could be home together. However, she said
that she knew intuitively that this would not happen. She also said that she never asked about
her mother. She knew that it affected her father to speak about her, and therefore she never
mentioned her. She said that he was very uncomfortable and that she felt like his protector. This
child developed an extremely severe respiratory condition, which she claims was not properly
medicated by the staff in Goldenbridge.
7.316 She described the atmosphere in Goldenbridge as being grey and barren, and said that she had
no possessions of her own when she was there. However, she did not tell her father what was
going on in Goldenbridge or that they were being bullied, because he was like a co-dependant.
She also protected her younger sister who was a bed-wetter, and used to try and replace her
sheet early in the morning before the wet sheet was discovered. She was aware, even while she
was in Goldenbridge, that the fact that her father visited her was very important, and she was
terrified that anything would happen to him.
7.317 This complainant has lived in England for a long number of years and said that nobody knows
about Goldenbridge, because she has never spoken about it, even to friends that she has known
for 25 years. She said that she constantly feels ‘no good’. She said that the journey that she has
had to follow to put herself together, and not have a sense of being a marked person in an
orphanage with the stigma and abuse, has been a very long one. It has cost her a lot emotionally,
physically and mentally. She felt sorry about her father. He may have known what the children
were suffering in Goldenbridge, but could do nothing about it. She said that, if it had been her,
she would have been challenging the nuns, but her father was intimidated by them and could not
question what was going on. She asked why would a man, who was basically a good man, feel
so intimidated in dealing with the nuns in Goldenbridge who were caring for his children.
7.318 Another complainant spoke about the contrast between Goldenbridge and a care home in
England. She left Goldenbridge at 13, and went to live with her mother in England. Her mother
was quite abusive and the complainant ran away from home. She ended up in a children’s home
in England. She said at first she had thought she had gone back to Goldenbridge again, but she
found it a lovely place with lovely people. She said she tasted food that she had never tasted and
she remembers how the tables were set. Sometimes she ‘played up’ there, and she would not be
given pocket money if she did that, and the people in charge would bring her into the sitting room
and talk to her. She said that they were lovely and that she has great admiration for all of them.
7.319 She recalled that there were sitting rooms in the care home in England. Whereas in Goldenbridge
there were no comfortable chairs or sofas, only wooden chairs and tables.
7.320 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.
7.321 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.
7.322 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”.
7.323 She said she found this question so difficult to deal with that she often lied.
7.324 She found filling in application forms, which required parents’ names and occupations and where
she was from, to be deeply upsetting and shaming for her.
7.325 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.
7.326 She spoke of particular girls who suffered humiliation at the hands of Sr Venetia. One particular
girl suffered from perspiration, and Sr Venetia used make her strip off to her underclothes every
day and wash in front of all her peers. She said that Sr Venetia had particular girls whom she
treated as favourites, and they were never beaten and got special treatment from her.
7.327 Many witnesses complained of the name-calling that they endured during their time in
Goldenbridge. They spoke of being called ‘worse than the soldiers who crucified Christ’, or being
called ’filthy’ and ‘dirty’. Other witnesses referred to verbal insults of being called ‘fat and ugly’,
being called ‘crackpot and mad’. Other witnesses made reference to the hurt caused by the name-
calling and the degradation that accompanied it.
7.328 For a number of complainants, one of the most difficult memories was the treatment they recalled
their siblings receiving while in Goldenbridge. These witnesses suffered greatly, where those
siblings went on to have serious psychiatric problems or even where they had subsequently died.
They felt that, in some way, they might have been able to help the sibling had they spoken to
them more openly about their experiences in Goldenbridge.
7.329 One witness, who spent seven years in Goldenbridge after the death of her mother, described
trying to protect her younger brothers in Goldenbridge. They were bed-wetters, and she was very
upset when they were punished for wetting the bed. She couldn’t bear to see them slapped,
because she knew that they couldn’t help doing it. Even though she was just a child herself, she
could see that beating children for wetting the bed was cruel and unfair.
7.330 She visited her younger brothers in another industrial school because she believed that, if the
authorities knew that somebody from outside the Institution was watching, it would be easier on
the boys there. This was an impression she got from Goldenbridge, where she felt that anybody
who had a parent or relative in touch with the School got an easier time. She visited her younger
brothers in the Industrial School until she was 18. At that stage, her father had returned.
Eventually, the family were all reunited and, to this day, are very close.
7.331 She was nearly 10 years of age when she went into Goldenbridge and she had a clear memory
of life before the Institution. She felt that it gave her a bit of a foundation and that she was luckier
than children who had no mothers or fathers. She used to fantasise about a real home, and used
to tell stories about things that happened on the outside. One of her brothers spoke to the
Investigation Committee and confirmed that his sister did protect both him and his other brothers
and sisters while they were in Goldenbridge.
7.332 Another witness, who had a good experience of family life before being admitted to Goldenbridge
at the age of nine following the death of her mother, said that her overall impression of the
Institution was of horror and fear. Her father died in 1967, but whilst he was alive he had regular
contact with the family. He visited every second Sunday, but he would often arrive after he had
been drinking. She recalled how Sr Eleonora21 and one of the lay staff would speak to him in a
degrading way. His children would plead and beg him to take them out of Goldenbridge, and his
famous saying was ‘keep your chin up ... it’s not what’s on the outside, it’s the inside that counts’.
She said the family were very poor. Their mother was a lovely woman. She believed that the fact
that their father visited them regularly spared her from a lot of the abuse that the other children
were subjected to. One of her great dislikes in Goldenbridge was that some of the girls were
treated as favourites and pets.
7.333 She spoke about being beaten and abused if underwear was dirty, and also spoke of the
humiliation of being lined up naked to be painted with a treatment for scabies. She was quite clear
that the way in which this treatment was carried out was designed to maximise the humiliation of
the children, particularly of older girls.
7.334 Some of the witnesses at the Goldenbridge hearings were men who had been sent there as young
boys. One man spoke of the loss of family contact as a result of being placed in Goldenbridge at
two years of age in the early 1960s. He said:
Goldenbridge was a tough place as a young little boy. When I think of my own kids and I
think that if anybody hurt them I would destroy their lives. That is the only true way I have
got of reflecting on what happened to me as a kid growing up.
7.335 This complainant said that it was only when he had his own children that he realised how harsh
his own upbringing had been. They received no individual care and were just herded around.
7.336 One witness gave a very personal account of a tragedy that occurred during her time in
Goldenbridge. She was there for 10 years from the mid-1960s, following the break-up of her
parents’ marriage.
7.337 Within a year of her committal to Goldenbridge, her two older brothers died in an accident. She
and two of her sisters were called down to Sr Venetia’s office, where she found two of their uncles,
together with a lay teacher. They were told about the deaths and they were given two bull’s eye
sweets each. They were then sent back to the recreation room. She said that:
I was sent back down to the rest of the children. Nobody took me aside and put their arms
around me in any shape or form, as God is my witness that is the truth, that is the truth.
21

Nobody gave me any comfort other than the bit of comfort we tried to give each other as
a family.
7.338 The pain of loss and separation was experienced not only by the children. For many parents,
placing their children in care was an act of desperation.
7.339 Another complainant entered Goldenbridge in the mid-1960s, aged five years of age, with his
older sister, following the separation of his mother and father. There were six children at the time,
and only the eldest sister accompanied her mother to England after the separation. Initially, his
father was trying to look after the remaining five children, but they eventually ended up in court
and being committed to Goldenbridge. Originally, he was committed for a 10-year period, but his
mother ‘kidnapped’ both him and his sister and brought them back to England. She came originally
to bring them on a day out, but then went to collect his two older brothers who were in an industrial
school and then travelled across to England with the four of them. The younger sister was left in
another institution, because she was too young to be released on a day outing. His mother visited
the youngest girl until she was old enough, by which time the courts released her and the family
was reunited.
7.340 A letter which this complainant’s mother wrote in the mid-1960s and sent to the Christian Brothers
is relevant:
Dear Sir,
I would like to inform you that I have now taken my children [X and Y] from your care
without your consent. I have also taken [A and B] from Goldenbridge convent. All four are
now in England with me.
I have phoned [the] Artane School from England to say that I took the children with me. I
could not phone Goldenbridge as I do not know their phone number, but I am letting them
know by post.
Please don’t blame me too much for what I have done in taking this advantage, but I
could not see my children unhappy no longer. I have for one year done my best to try to
get the children together but everything failed because I respected the law.
Now, I have taken it into my own hands and if I am sent to jail I shall do the same again
when I come out.
The Justice said I could have my children when I get a home for them. He did not say I
would have to have my husband’s consent so I did what I could to get the home for them,
but I would not consider asking my husband for a letter of consent.
If he wants them he can fight for them from me. But he won’t as he has not been to see
them only twice since they were committed ... 12 months ago.
Yours truly,
7.341 Sr Alida was asked whether the children were shown love and affection. She stated that there
was no doubt that the pre-school children were shown love and affection by her, by staff in charge
of the nursery, and by an older girl who would be assigned to keep an eye on them. She argued
that the children of school-going age were not showered with the same level of affection as would
be the norm today:
Looking back still I would have to say that I never had a feeling that I had a roomful of
150 sad and frightened children. I couldn't say that from my heart. That doesn't mean that
there could be children very sad unknown to me. I didn't know what was inside any child's
heart or in their head. We knew nothing at all about most of the families. Any research
we did, it didn't get us very far, their lives family wise was very bleak. I, at the time, wasn't
– didn't take into consideration what state they were in. As teenagers or as babies. Babies
you could compensate, the babies we loved and we hugged and we gave every kind of
care to babies. They got the best. Any baby that came to our care, I can only say they
got the best. When it came to children from 12 years upwards, I never knew what was
inside their hearts or their minds.
7.342 Sr Gianna stated that she was very aware of the lack of emotional care for the children in
Goldenbridge:
I would be very conscious of that when children came in from a family that had just lost a
mother and how sad they would be. I would be very moved when I would see that because
it was awful for them to come into this big school with this big crowd of children and to be
just one of a group after being in a family setting.
7.343 She explained:

You would be very conscious of 150 children not having the hug and the love and the
care of someone who really loved them closely. You would be very conscious of that. You
wouldn't witness any of that. In our time you didn't do that, you didn't come near or hug
people. That would have been part of our training as well. In hindsight, I think it was a
good thing because I might have been accused of something very different if I had hugged
or loved, as you might want to do.
7.344 She stated that Sr Alida was also aware of how vulnerable these children were. She recalled one
little boy who had lost his mother and was committed to Goldenbridge. Sr Alida asked her to keep
an eye on him as she worked in the workroom:
I remember him coming up, standing beside me, I was at the machine working, and I just
remember him standing there and his little hand coming into mine every so often because
he was so shy and sad.
7.345 Ms Kearney worked as a teacher in Goldenbridge for over 30 years. When she was asked about
the atmosphere in Goldenbridge. She responded:
Not a happy place, I was glad to get out of it. When you have the children sulking, shouting
at each other across the room and shouting at you and calling you all kinds of names it's
very hard to put up with it. It wasn't a happy atmosphere, no. There were some lovely
children in it, that never gave you a bit of trouble, you felt like hugging them but you didn't,
you couldn't, because the bold ones would take it out of them, "teacher's pet".
Position of the Sisters of Mercy

7.346 The Sisters of Mercy accept that institutional life in Goldenbridge had many negative features,
which they listed as follows:
• The large size of the institution and the number of children who lived there gave little
prospect of a replication of a family’s love and nurture.
• The low ratio of staff to children, which for most of the period under review was
approximately 1 staff member for every 30 children.
• The absence of childcare training for Sisters and lay staff.
• The capitation system of funding, together with the level of funding, led to difficult
financial constraints and choices.
• The regimental nature of institutional life where restriction on freedom of movement
operated well beyond school hours and a lack of privacy, particularly in the early years.
• The emphasis on conformity rather than on creativity and choice.
• The very limited opportunities for forming personal one to one adult/child relationships.
• A reliance on corporal punishment as a feature in the maintenance of discipline and
good order.
• A failure to properly understand the level of trauma suffered by each child as a result
of being separated from family, sometimes in circumstances where their placement in
the institution followed the death of a parent.
• A failure to properly respond to the individual emotional needs of the children, including
how lonely and frightened they must have been in being taken from family and placed
in a large institution with children of all ages.
• A failure to recognise the special emotional and educational needs of children who had
come from troubled backgrounds.
• A failure to keep children informed about their family and family events, such as births
marriages and deaths.
• A failure to assess the individual needs of each child, either on admission or on an
ongoing basis.
• A failure to meet the comprehensive educational needs of children and the very
inadequacy of the educational process itself relative to their needs.
7.347 In its written Submissions, the Congregation seemed to distance itself somewhat from culpability
for the emotional deprivation experienced by so many complainants, and stated:
Allegations of emotional abuse are difficult to evaluate. Whether there was a general
tendency to verbally denigrate and discourage the children is something almost as
intangible to assess as the atmosphere in the school ... the complainants undoubtedly
had very real feelings of emotional neglect. One can see how a large institution failed to
supply the emotional needs of the child, even if the carers did not go further and actually
insult and denigrate them. The absence of personal love and encouragement would
undoubtedly have left the children with a lack of self-regard and feelings of worthlessness
... The failure to provide for the emotional well-being of the children in the institution is a
major failing on the part of the industrial school. It is perhaps the one that most impacted
on the long-term psychological development of the child. A child could probably cope
much better with obstacles and handicaps in the institution and, later, out of the institution,
provided she felt loved and valued as an individual ... But where does the blame for
emotional neglect lie? The form of childcare provided by St Vincent’s industrial school,
Goldenbridge was not a personal whim or caprice of Sister Alida or Sister Venetia. It was
a large institution embedded in an institutional structure of child-care approved of by the
State authorities ... The role of the Sisters actually running the schools needs to be put in
its proper context without denying the emotional reality of the children.
Conclusions
7.348 1. Goldenbridge could have operated a kinder regime, where children were safe and
secure, in keeping with the aspirations of the Sisters of Mercy, but it failed to do so.
2. Witnesses described how the conditions in Goldenbridge left them with low self-
esteem for the rest of their lives.
3. Children were routinely humiliated and belittled by the nuns and carers who looked
after them.
4. Children with parents or relatives who kept in touch received more favourable
treatment than those children who did not.
5. Girls left Goldenbridge ill-equipped to deal with the outside world.
Underwear inspections
7.349 An extreme example of the culture of humiliation that permeated Goldenbridge can be seen in the
practice of underwear inspections. Several allegations were made by complainants to the effect
that, when their underwear was changed weekly, their underwear was inspected and they were
beaten if there was any mark on it. Two complainants said the soiled underwear was paraded on
a pole for everyone to see before they received their fresh laundry.
7.350 No reference is made to these allegations in the Opening Statement of the Sisters of Mercy. In
their Submissions, however, they say that the ‘practice of having to show dirty underwear on a
weekly basis is a puzzling one’. They add that:
... it is difficult to see what rational basis there might be for such a practice, except perhaps
to check whether older girls might have started their periods, or checking the number on
the underwear, or something of that nature. If so, it might have been done on an
occasional basis but it would hardly have been a regular event for every girl.
7.351 A witness spoke of the underwear inspection:

We would change our pants once a week. I can see the basket on the corridor, it was a
Saturday. Friday night, there would be somebody on the toilet door, but we would go into
the toilet, one by one let in and we would wash out pants in the toilet. If we didn’t get the
chance, we thought we were going to be too long, we would actually spit on them and
put them under our sheet and lie on them ... We knew there was an inspection on the
Saturday and that we would have to have them clean. If they weren’t clean we would get
beaten across the bare bum.
7.352 Another witness spoke of having to show her underwear on the day that fresh underwear was
distributed to the children. When questioned as to the possible reasons for having to display
underwear, she expressed the view that it served to embarrass and humiliate the children. She
recalled one particular incident whereby a child’s underwear was paraded for all to see:
I do remember one incident in the workroom where there was a pair of panties put on the
sweeping brush, the handle of the brush and swung around and everybody have a look
at so and so’s pants.
7.353 One other witness gave details of the underwear-changing ritual:

We had to show our underwear every Thursday. It could be in the washroom that’s where
I remember it. You had to show your underpants but normally what we did is we devised
methods in how to wash our underwear and we used the toilets in the cisterns to wash
our clothes. Sometimes the night before we would put them under the beds to dry.
7.354 When asked what would happen if they displayed them soiled on inspection day, she said ‘Oh
you would be beaten, severely beaten’.
7.355 Another witness spoke of the terrifying ordeal of a nun or a lay teacher or both displaying the
children’s underwear on clothes inspection day:
There was in the very early days a practice, I don’t know what the correct word, is of a
nun or a teacher holding up and making a display of your clothes if they were soiled so
we quickly learned that way of overcoming it.
7.356 Yet another witness spoke about the weekly practice of displaying underwear:
We all went up in a single file to show our underwear and we had to have them turned
inside out.
In the yard. There was a wicker basket when you come out of the yard to the right hand
side and that’s where you dropped your underwear. Sr Alida had a pole, it was similar to
what you would light candles with in a church, anything that she didn’t like, your underwear
was hoisted on this pole. Often she would say “hands up who thinks this is dirty”. This
caused considerable distress and humiliation and we could never ever trust each other
because if you were anyway close to somebody you wouldn’t put up your hand. If you
didn’t put up your hand she would come after you, whoever that was.
7.357 Another witness spoke of the same ritual:

We got one change on a Thursday. We had to produce our underpants to see what
condition they were in and if they were soiled we were beaten. It was on a Thursday after
school that was the way we were treated.
7.358 Another witness told about washing her underwear in the toilet cistern in order to avoid the
humiliation of displaying soiled underwear on the clothes inspection day:
That was because if you woke up in the morning and you had dirty underwear there was
nowhere you could get it – you didn’t get clean underwear every day. You got that once
a week. What it was if any of them checked to see if it was dirty then they would give you
hell ...
You would get beaten, smacked and the language would be horrific: “You dirty bitch. You
filthy bitch”. You would be called “wet the bed” as well. They used that very regular ...
You would wash the underwear and you would leave it ... we had rubber sheets and you
would leave it under there but if you did that then the mattress would get marked so what
you would do is leave it under the sheet and then the sheet would get – sometimes it
might get stained and sometimes it might not. If it got stained you were accused of wetting
the bed. So you got two goes at it.
7.359 Another witness recalled that the clothes inspection took place in the yard. She felt that the
inspection of dirty underwear was like a form of punishment; not every single girl’s underwear
was checked:
Probably not every single person might have to. I remember I did, I remember when the
girls did, but I wouldn’t say she went around every single person; I couldn’t honest to God
say that.
7.360 One further witness, who had a very good recollection of life in Goldenbridge, also spoke about
showing the underwear once a week when the fresh underwear was being distributed:
For soiled clothing, every single week because we had to show our underwear once a
week to two or three people who had large wicker baskets in front of them. We all stood
in line all with our underwear, as we showed them we got hit with a stick.
7.361 The offensive practice of inspecting underwear was confirmed by many witnesses,
including one put forward by the Congregation as a favourable witness. The practice
caused extreme embarrassment and humiliation and it was futile and utterly degrading.
The four cornerstones

7.362 The ‘Dear Daughter’ programme contained a number of very serious allegations against
Goldenbridge and the Sisters of Mercy.
7.363 The Sisters of Mercy have identified what they describe as four key areas in the ‘Dear Daughter’
programme. They say that these are mistruths that appeared in the programme and subsequently
appeared in evidence by complainants who came into the Investigation Committee to speak about
their experiences in Goldenbridge. The Sisters have said that the recurrence of a number of these
key issues in the statements that were made to the Investigation Committee casts doubt on the
validity of the memories of the women and men who testified. The Sisters of Mercy in their
Submission identified four key allegations:
• Scraps – that children were starved and had to fight each other for scraps thrown out
to them in the playground each day.
• Water – that children had to drink from the toilets because there was no drinking water
available to them day or night.
• Numbers – that children were always referred to by number rather than by name.
• Potties – that babies were mistreated/tied to potties for long periods and frequently
suffered from prolapsed rectums as a result.
7.364 The Sisters submitted that a number of complainants got these particular allegations wrong, and
that they got them wrong in precisely the same way. They maintain that it is the ‘commonality of
the memory errors that gives the clue to their importance’.
Scraps
7.365 In ‘Dear Daughter’, there is a visual image of a colander of scraps being thrown out of a window
into a yard and children fighting for the scraps. Eight of the complainants in their witness
statements allege that scraps of food were thrown out of a window into the yard, and that the
children would scramble and fight each other for these scraps. Eleven complainants made this
allegation in oral evidence. They each, in various ways, referred to the poor quality of the food,
the fact that they were hungry, and that bread was thrown out of a window at 3 o’clock each day,
and the children all scrambled and pushed each other to grab a slice of bread.
7.366 The Sisters of Mercy have agreed with one description of this aspect of life in Goldenbridge. In
her evidence to the Committee, a witness said that at 3.30pm, the children would line up in an
orderly queue, a window would be opened in the yard, and bread would be distributed from a
colander. She said that, if there was any left after all the children had got a slice, it would be just
thrown out into the yard:
... they gave you your bread, there was a tray or sometimes there was a big ... colander
type of thing and the bread would be in there and they’d give it out to you ... you had to
line up. If there was any left and if there was a load of us still there and I would probably
be one of them, she would just sometimes throw it out and you would get it. But for your
first slice of bread you lined up and you got it ... Instead of queuing up again and
everybody would be pushing, she would just throw it and you would grab it.
7.367 She said the bread would first be handed out, and only at the end of this distribution were the
scraps thrown into the yard:
No, I can assure you, we lined up first and sometimes there was two people there, actually
most of the time there was two people there and they would hand you your bread and
you would go and then you would hang around.
7.368 A broadly similar account was also given by another former resident, who said that she could
recall a lay worker handing out lumps of bread from a window overlooking the yard and the
children queuing for the bread. She said that, after the big lumps of bread were handed out, ‘and
then when it gets smaller, she just throws it out to whoever didn’t get any’.
7.369 This account is accepted by the Sisters of Mercy, but other witnesses who spoke about this
distribution of bread gave a different version.
7.370 One witness recalled scrambling for scraps that were thrown out of a window in Goldenbridge.
Another former resident said that she recalled being hungry all the time and that, during her earlier
years in Goldenbridge in the early 1960s, she recalled scraps from the kitchen being thrown out
of a window to the children who were playing in the yard: ‘I just remember the window being open
in the yard and the scraps coming out and we all digging in to get a bit of bread and cake that
was left over’.
7.371 One witness described the distribution of bread in the following terms:
From my memory there was a window in the hall and somebody used to say – word would
get around when you’d get scraps ‘cos you would get them maybe once a month.
Somebody said “we are getting scraps today”. It could be from what the lay people had,
the crusts could be left over and it would be all thrown into a steel bin, a stainless steel
bowl. The window would open and – I am seeing it even as myself, I done it as a child, I
done it as a teenager, and that window would open and the bowl of scraps would actually
just be thrown out, out the window onto the yard and everybody would scream and charge.
You would actually walk on the babies, I am sure I done it myself, it was done on me,
and that just went on.

But there was a practice of when the teachers had their meals that there would be
leftovers and those leftovers would be brought to the yard window and just scattered out
the window and we would dive on them. If you managed to get something your day
was made.
7.373 Another witness, when asked whether it was possible that the scraps were thrown only at the end
of the distribution of bread, stated:
Definitely not ... otherwise I wouldn’t feel so horrified and shamed to have to tell you this.
First of all, who was going to create this order of this orderly row of children that were
hungry to stand in line to wait for bread, who was supervising this? That didn’t happen. It
was a free for all and the strong ones and the ones that were a bit heavy were the ones
that were first to the front of the queue. Obviously the weaklings, I wasn’t that weak, but
I wasn’t very forceful either, they wouldn’t fare so well. What was thrown you would just
have to clamber for it. People would walk on it with their sandals and you would pick it up
and eat it.
7.374 A slightly different version of this story was given by another witness, who said:
The window opened up and whether it be one of the teachers or the helpers they had this
huge big – I have it here, they had this huge big sieve and you would have all the different
crumbs and all sorts, you might even get a piece of cake in it. They would open up the
window and this would be flung out, you would know it was coming. You would stand
waiting on it and there would be a dive for the thing, all these little crumbs. If you got a
bit of cake, you – you would even beat up the one that had a bigger piece than you, a
slice of bread instead of a bit bread. They would just fling it out the window ...
7.375 The Sisters of Mercy assert that this allegation is a serious distortion of ‘the practice of bringing
out a tray of bread and margarine (or jam) to the children in the yard after school’.
7.376 Scraps were thrown out of a receptacle into the yard, and children scrambled for them.
Whatever the circumstances, this should not have happened and was demeaning for the
children.
Drinking water from toilets
7.377 It was alleged that the children in Goldenbridge did not have access to water during the day, and
had to resort to drinking water from either the toilet bowl or the cistern.
7.378 One witness described it as follows:

We used to all drink out of the toilets. There was toilets at the end of the yard, we used
to go down there. There was no taps, you just flushed the chain and drink the water.
7.379 When asked whether he recalled a drinking fountain in the yard, he said:
No. There used to be a little push handle thing down, that hardly ever worked. I remember
it did work, it didn’t always work. I am sure it was there ... We used to ... drink out of the
toilets anyway. You followed what the other kids done.

In between meals there was no facility for a glass of water, there was nothing, nowhere
you could, we didn’t have money to buy anything. There was no machines, no vending in
those days. Nothing like that. You would go to the toilets where they had the loose top
and you would scoop water up, you would scoop it up in your hand or you would get
something like– I don’t know how to describe it. It was like a funnel from the big dryers,
there was a little connection, you would get it and you would drink the water from the
cistern. I mean, you wouldn’t think whether this is healthy or unhealthy.
7.381 One witness said:

We used to drink water out of the toilets, out of the either the bowl or the cistern depending
on how tall you were ... I mean, I see in a statement from Sr Alida she said that a tap was
in the yard, I don’t know where it was because I was never allowed have a drink out of it.
7.382 When asked if she remembered a tap or drinking fountain in the yard, she said:
I was there for twelve years and I don’t remember seeing a tap in the yard. I do remember
drinking water out of the toilets, out of the cistern, out of the bowl.

Because they wouldn’t give you water. You asked for water and you weren’t given it. So
obviously to try and survive, you would come out, you would be in the yard and you would
go into the toilets in the yard and flush the toilets and drink water from the toilets. That
wasn’t just a once-off, that was on a good number of occasions.
7.384 Another witness, when asked about the existence of a drinking fountain in the yard, said that if
there had been a fountain in the yard it must have been broken ‘because we used to drink out
literally of the toilet or lift up the cistern, the top of the toilet’.
7.385 Sr Alida stated there was a drinking fountain in the yard which came from Liverpool and was
marked ‘hooligan proof’. It remained in working order until the time she left Goldenbridge. She
also stated that children could get water from the kitchen and a small bathroom under the stairs.
7.386 One explanation for the lack of access to water is in relation to the problem of bed-wetting which,
according to Sr Alida, was ’a huge problem’ that existed in Goldenbridge. Sr Alida said they
had sought medical advice, and one of the recommendations was the deprivation of all fluids
before bedtime.
7.387 However, Sr Venetia stated to Mr Crowley that children used to drink from the toilet cistern. In his
report he stated:
Sr Venetia confirmed the allegations in relation to the tumble dryer and drinking from the
toilet cistern.
7.388 The Sisters of Mercy denied that children were deprived of water as there was a drinking fountain
in the yard. They conceded, however, that on foot of medical advice they deprived children who
were prone to wetting the bed of water from a certain time in the afternoon. These children may
have resorted to covertly drinking from the toilet. They asserted that this is another example of
how a practice became distorted and exaggerated by witnesses.
7.389 • Children drank out of the toilet, which was confirmed by Sr Venetia when speaking to
Mr Crowley in 1996. This happened irrespective of whether the fountain in the yard
was working.
• Some children were deprived of water in an effort to cure bed-wetting, and they found
water where they could.
Children referred to by number

7.390 The calling of children by number is another specific allegation made by complainants. They assert
that staff referred to them not by name but by number. This is an allegation which appeared in
the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme. It is also an allegation which was made by 11 complainants in
their statements to the Commission and in oral evidence. One witness said:
The numbers were used when they were giving out the clothes or anything like that that
belonged to the children. Anything that you had marked you always had a number on it.
You never had a name on it.
7.391 Another witness also stated that clothes were distributed according to the number of the child.
However, under cross-examination, this witness went further and stated that the children were
referred to by number.
7.392 Another witness recalled the day that she entered Goldenbrige and was stripped of her own
clothes, washed and given a set of clothes that were ‘hard, rough, horrible’ and was given a
number and told ‘never to forget it’.
7.393 Another witness recalled that, when she entered Goldenbridge, her name was taken away and
she was given a number. She said: ‘In Goldenbridge I was a number’.
7.394 This witness was adamant that she was never called by her name, and that it was always by her
number. Even when she was cross-examined about the use of the number for the purpose of
clothing, she stated that she was called by her number irrespective of whether clothes were being
distributed or not.
7.395 Again, another witness when questioned about how he was addressed in Goldenbridge said:
You were called by your surname or your number. It was mainly your surname. You were
never called by your name ...
7.396 He also confirmed that the numbers were used for the system of laundering clothes.
7.397 One other witness disagreed with the contention that the numbers were only used for laundry
purposes:
Some people they knew very well, the ones that were always in trouble, always getting
slapped, some of them would be well known. You would be called by your number ...
7.398 Another witness recounted that she did not recall staff referring to her by her Christian name, but
did recall being called by her number.
7.399 The Sisters of Mercy assert that this was never the case; children were never called by a number.
The use of numbers was for the purpose of laundry and distributing children’s clothing. Each item
of the child’s clothing was numbered so that, when it was washed and ironed, that same item of
clothing could be returned to the appropriate child. Sr Gianna, who worked in the laundry and
workroom of Goldenbridge for three years, gave a detailed account of the washing and distribution
of the children’s clothing. In evidence, Sr Gianna recounted that the children’s clothing, once it
had been washed and ironed, was brought down to the recreation hall for distribution:
And the numbers called out then. We had them in the big baskets and then you picked
out your three articles or four articles and you called out a number and the child who
owned these came forward. She went down and she undressed and you had the senior
girls there helping the smaller ones to dress and undress. They would bring up their soiled
laundry and put it into the baskets.
7.400 Another witness stated that she disagreed with certain aspects of the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme.
In particular, she disagreed with the suggestion in the programme that children were called by
number. She said as follows:
Yeah, it wouldn’t be always numbers I have to say, because I wasn’t always called by
numbers. Maybe some other people may have felt it that way, but when I heard that I
thought, no, that wasn’t me.
7.401 From the evidence of the complainants, what is clear, apart from the issue of the numbers, is that
children were not called by their Christian name. In the main, they appear to have been referred
to by their numbers, their surnames, or by nicknames.
7.402 The use of numbers instead of names was not widespread in Goldenbridge. Numbers were
used, however, on occasions such as dealing with laundry.
Babies left sitting on potties for prolonged periods

7.403 This specific allegation, that babies were strapped to potties for long periods of time and suffered
a prolapsed rectum, first emerged in the Gay Byrne radio show in 1992. It was repeated on the
‘Dear Daughter’ programme. A number of complainants made this allegation in their statements
of complaint to the Commission. However, in oral evidence it did not feature very largely as
an allegation.
7.404 One witness described it in the following terms:

They (babies) were placed on potties, yes. They were strapped down and there were
marks on their little bums when they got up. There was one particular child whose back
passage used to come down. He was a little boy by the name of ....
7.405 This complainant further stated when questioned that she herself was aged around eight or nine
years when she saw this little boy with what she believed to be a prolapsed rectum.
7.406 Another witness made reference to the strapping of babies to potties:

We used to look after the babies there. There was maybe 50, 60 babies. You used to
look after them, you used to have to bath them and change them. You used to stick them
on the potties, strapped to potties for hours on end.
7.407 Other witnesses whose job was to mind the babies made no reference to the practice of strapping
babies onto potties. One positive witness stated that the babies ‘were so well looked after’.
7.408 Several witnesses asserted that they only saw one instance of a prolapsed rectum. One witness
described the shock of seeing a child with a prolapsed rectum:
In the rec there was toilets down near the stage end and the babies used to be put– the
little ones used to be put on the potties. I remember I was sitting more or less facing–
there was benches all around the rec, I was facing these children on the potty. I remember
one of them stood up and something was hanging down and it really frightened me. I
didn’t understand. To this day it is still imprinted on me.
7.409 In her general written statement to the Commission, Sr Alida devoted a section to the care of
babies in Goldenbridge. She stated:
Babies were never left sitting on a potty a long time. There was one baby who suffered
from a prolapsed rectum, however this girl had this problem on admission. There was no
question of young children looking after our babies and no-one was ever taught to reinsert
a baby’s rectum as some complainants describe.
7.410 Sr Alida said that children were placed on potties when they got up in the morning, after every
meal and before they went to bed. She said they would be left for about 12 minutes on each
occasion. This represents a total of six occasions per day that children would have been placed
on potties, for a total period of 72 minutes at least. This would have been a considerable proportion
of the day for toddlers or small children. Many witnesses have described a fairly rigid system
regarding toilet training. With a large number of babies to toilet train and with the limited staff
available, individual attention was not possible. After a certain age, children were not provided
with nappies, and older residents would be required to sluice out soiled sheets and bedding as
well as clean excrement off children who had soiled or wet in the night. That said, the general
view was that Sr Alida was kind and loving towards the babies and, in her testimony to the
Investigation Committee, she said:
Babies you could compensate, the babies we loved and we hugged and we gave every
kind of care to babies. They got the best. Any baby that came to our care, I can only say
they got the best.
7.411 Sr Alida showed kindness to babies, but caring for large numbers of them with inadequate
staff led to a regimented approach in which babies were left sitting on potties for long
periods of time.
General conclusion on the four cornerstones

7.412 Each of these allegations highlighted by the ‘Dear Daughter’ programme had a basis in
fact. While there were differences in perception as between the Congregation and the
complainants, complainants who referred to these elements did not thereby become
unreliable witnesses.
Neglect
General living conditions

7.413 The General Inspection and Medical Reports of the Department of Education and Science give
some indication of the general living conditions of the children. Sr Alida, who had worked in the
School for over 20 years, also provided some information on this issue.
7.414 The first available documentary piece of information is an Inspection Report from the Department’s
Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, in August 1939. She reported four cases of scabies. In a
report the following year, she noted two instances of scabies.
7.415 In March 1941, Dr McCabe carried out a general inspection and found that the School was ‘well
kept’ and satisfactory in all areas. There is no General Inspection Report for 1942.
7.416 When Sr Alida and Sr Bianca arrived in August 1942, they found the children in an appalling
condition. The majority of the children were suffering from scabies and ringworm of the scalp. Sr
Alida said:
They had skin trouble which I never saw before, it was scabies. I’d say 75 percent of the
children would have scabies at that time ... they had ringworm of the scalp a number of
them ... it would be big abscesses in their hair, that the hair couldn’t be combed.
7.417 Sr Bianca set about dealing with the situation immediately. She closed the School for two weeks.
During this two-week period, the children were bathed and their bodies were covered with an
ointment for the treatment of scabies and they were sent to bed. Every three days, the procedure
was repeated until the infection was gone. Their clothes were sent to the laundry, and Sr Bianca
spent all of her time in the laundry disinfecting the clothes by steam boiling, with the help of those
girls who were not infected. After three days, the ointment had soaked into the children’s bodies
and killed the infection. Sr Bianca contacted Dublin Corporation, who organised for the children’s
bedclothes to be removed and disinfected.
7.418 Ringworm was more difficult to treat because there were abscesses on the children’s heads. Sr
Alida said:
They went to Steeven’s Hospital with those. In the hospital, first of all, they were drawing
pus and the hair was stuck onto their heads, it was very nasty to describe. I think in
Steevens’ Hospital they recommended cutting the hair and you had to take it off bit by bit
to get the hair away ... Lotion was then applied to the scalp which killed the hairs and
plaster was put on the head in strips, which was then pulled off and when they pulled off
the plaster they pulled the roots of the hair out as well.
7.419 The General Inspection Reports made no reference to these conditions at all. The following year,
Dr McCabe recorded that the School was ‘well kept’ and that most areas were ‘satisfactory’, but
she criticised the condition of the children, saying they could be ‘cleaner and neater’.
7.420 The next inspection took place on 27th January 1944 and she commented that the premises were
‘very well kept, clean and tidy’ and most areas were found to be ‘satisfactory’, but she found that
the ‘children looked far from being neat and tidy’. She said that their clothes were ‘tattered and
untidy’ and their blankets were ‘thin and worn’. The cause of the thinness of the blankets,
according to Sr Alida, arose from the process of disinfecting them during the scabies outbreak in
1942. Dr McCabe recommended replacing the blankets and supplying each child with a toothbrush
and for the dentist to visit every quarter. She also sought greater supervision of the younger
children. In her evidence, Sr Alida said that it took years to replace the blankets and eventually
they got seconds from Foxford Manufacturers.
7.421 In June 1944, there was another outbreak of ringworm in the School. Sr Bianca informed the
Department that several children had contracted ringworm, and she sought an increase in the
maintenance allowance to cover the cost of treatment. Dr McCabe’s advice was sought by the
Department in relation to the treatment for ringworm, and her response was that the School was
expected to cover the cost of medical treatment for children from the grant received.
7.422 Dr McCabe carried out a General Inspection on 28th June 1944 and she found that the standard
of cleanliness and supervision of the children had improved, but she was not completely satisfied
with the conditions. All the children had not been supplied with toothbrushes, the dentist had
not paid a quarterly visit, and the blankets had not been replaced. The Department made these
observations known to the Resident Manager. In the Medical Inspection conducted during the
same visit, Dr McCabe noted four children required treatment for ringworm.
7.423 Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Reports from 1948 until her retirement in 1963 were, without
exception, very positive. Her reports during these years were not very detailed and were, in fact,
quite repetitive in content. She frequently stated that the School was ‘well run’ and in some years
remarked that it was ‘extremely well run’22 or ‘very well conducted’.23 She also commented in her
reports that ‘many improvements had been made and continued to be made’ to the School.24 The
exact nature of these improvements was not detailed in these reports. Throughout this time period,
Dr McCabe singled out the Resident Manager for praise. In her General Inspection Report of
January 1959 and 1960, she said ‘Sr Alida an excellent nun ... knows many things about running
a good school’. Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Reports of 1963 referred to the fact that ‘Sr
Venetia is now Res. Manager and is doing very well being a disciple of Sr Alida she is excellent’.
7.424 The Medical Reports during this period were glowing, with reference often made to the fact that
small children and babies are particularly well cared for. But in her Medical Inspection Report of
May 1955, Dr McCabe noted that 11 children were receiving treatment for scabies.
7.425 The General Inspection Reports after Dr McCabe’s retirement continued to be very favourable
about the living conditions in the School. Dr Charles Lysaght, who carried out a General Inspection
of the School on 21st March 1966, commented that it was ‘well run’: the premises were clean
and in ‘good repair’ and the accommodation consisted mostly of modern buildings with ‘excellent
dormitory accommodation’.
7.426 Sr Venetia came in for particular praise from Dr Lysaght when he referred to her as being ‘most
competent and appears dedicated to the work’.
7.427 In the 1970s, Graham Granville took over as the Department’s General Inspector. His reports
were also very favourable of the living conditions and the premises and accommodation. However,
there were only three reports for the entire period of the 1970s, namely 1971, 1976 and 1978
because of staff shortages in the Department of Education.
7.428 Mr Granville was concerned about the lack of qualifications of the staff and the change in the type
of child that was being admitted. A lot of the children were categorised as disturbed. Proposals
for the group home system were advocated, and sanction was given, but these plans were not
carried through until the 1980s.
Conclusions
7.429 • The severity of the problem tackled by Sr Bianca and Sr Alida disclosed evidence of
severe neglect.
• The work undertaken by these two nuns was heavy and relentless and brought about
immediate improvements to the School.
• The absence of reference to these problems in the Departmental Medical Reports
discloses a weakness of the inspections.
22
General Inspection Reports 1953, 1954.
23
General Inspection Reports 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963.
24
General Inspection Reports 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960.

Education
7.430 The children in Goldenbridge were educated in their own internal national school. There was
another national school within the same grounds run by the Sisters of Mercy for the children of
the locality. The Cussen Report recommended that, where possible, children should be educated
in external national schools. It identified a drop in standards in literary education in internal national
schools, and attributed this to the fact that the teachers employed were not well qualified. Cussen
also recommended that salaries of teachers in internal national schools attached to industrial
schools should be paid by the Department of Education, in the same way as in ordinary national
schools.
7.431 A Department of Education inspection conducted in 1939, for the purposes of considering whether
teachers’ salaries in the internal national school should be paid by the State, queried why the
children in Goldenbridge did not attend the local national school. The reasons proffered by the
Resident Manager was that the local schools were already overcrowded. She was also opposed
to the children being transported to other schools, on the basis that she could not be held
responsible for them once they left the Industrial School. The Department accepted this
explanation and proceeded to certify the internal national school and to pay the teachers’ salaries
from 1941.
7.432 The Department of Education school inspection report for March 1935 had noted a very
satisfactory educational standard in Goldenbridge, with each school subject rated either ‘very
good’ or ‘good on the whole’. The report concluded that the School was ‘good on the whole’ and:
Order, discipline and politeness leave nothing to be desired. The tastefully decorated
schoolrooms are an education in themselves. Taken class-by-class, progress in subjects
is at least satisfactory and in quite a few subjects very satisfactory. It must be added that
the average age of the pupils according to classification is high. This is due to (the fact
that) many of the pupils when enrolled are very backward. Promotions from year to year
are quite regular.
7.433 The report noted that the internal national school had 140 pupils taught by five full-time and two
part-time teachers. Two of the teachers were nuns and three were lay staff. None of the teachers
was formally qualified, although they all had many years of experience. Staffing levels were
described as ‘quite adequate’.
7.434 Within seven years, standards in the school had plummeted. Sr Alida painted a grim picture of
conditions in the internal national school. She recalled that, upon her arrival in 1942, there were
only two untrained lay teachers responsible for educating 150 children of different ages and
abilities. These two teachers were ill-equipped to deal with this workload.
7.435 The school curriculum was the same as that taught in every national school in the country. The
children did not, however, receive homework in the evenings. From the late 1950s, children who
showed academic ability were given the opportunity of pursuing post primary education because
of a scholarship fund set up by the Archbishop of Dublin.
7.436 In 1977, Goldenbridge was recognised as a ‘special school’ by the Department of Education.
Evidence of the Sisters of Mercy

7.437 The Sisters of Mercy confirmed in their Opening Statement that homework was not a feature of
the internal national school. In addition to the normal national school curriculum, children aged 13
and over participated in a domestic economy training module overseen by the Department of
Education. This training took place in the afternoons. The children were also taught physical
education, dancing and social skills by teachers employed especially for these purposes.
7.438 The Sisters of Mercy conceded that:
With hindsight it seems likely that many of the children attending the school had particular
educational difficulties given their disadvantaged backgrounds and, in some cases,
disrupted schooling. Many were undoubtedly in need of what would now be termed
remedial education. Until late in the 1960s the fact that some of the children had special
educational needs was not recognised. In due course in 1977 the school itself was given
“special school” status. In the 1940s and 1950s however, there were no special facilities,
teachers or resources to take account of those special needs and it is undoubtedly the
case that the method of education provided was inadequate for the needs of many of
the children.
7.439 It is surprising that no programme existed within Goldenbridge itself to identify these children’s
needs and to help them. While it is accepted that, at a national level, programmes like these did
not exist, the Sisters of Mercy were engaged in providing a specialist service for a very long period
of time, and they were the people best placed to identify the needs of the children in the Industrial
School and to provide for them.
7.440 Whilst the Sisters of Mercy may rightly criticise the Department of Education for failing to identify
the particular needs of the children in the Institution, they themselves must take some
responsibility for failing to take any initiatives in this regard over the very many decades that they
were engaged in this work.
7.441 On the issue of corporal punishment, the Sisters of Mercy suggested that it was no more than
would have been in existence in any other national school around the country.
7.442 Corporal punishment was part of the routine in the Goldenbridge internal school. Allegations of
corporal punishment made against both Sisters and lay teachers appear to be correct in many
instances. One of the lay teachers who gave evidence to the Committee has admitted, with some
regret, that she did use corporal punishment whilst she was a teacher in Goldenbridge.
7.443 The Congregation stated:

The use of corporal punishment in the classroom setting was inevitably non-productive,
and has caused indelible memories of being slapped or beaten for no reason. Poor
educational achievement and inability to find employment other than in domestic or low
grade service was the consequence for many children.
7.444 The Congregation added that there was little doubt that practices such as correcting left-
handedness and wearing dunce’s hats may also have been used. It posed the following question:
the question must be asked as to whether this type and level of education was so
significantly different to that available to the average Irish child of the time, as to
constitute abuse?
7.445 The Sisters of Mercy do not accept that children were taken out of school to perform chores. They
conceded that it may have happened occasionally, with girls over 13 years of age, but it was not
an established or widespread practice. The Congregation vehemently denied that the Sisters
conspired to help the children pass the Primary Certificate.
7.446 Sr Alida testified that, when she arrived in Goldenbridge, there was a very poor standard of
education in the School. There were only two untrained lay teachers, Ms Kearney and Ms
Dempsey, whose duties were not limited to the classroom. Apart from being responsible for the
education of the entire school, they also acted as carers to the children and were provided with
board and lodgings in the School. Sr Alida stated that she did not know how they managed.
7.447 Both Sr Alida and Sr Bianca took up teaching positions in the school alongside Ms Kearney and
Ms Dempsey, who at this point moved to lodgings outside the School. Sr Bianca had 10 years’
teaching experience behind her, and Sr Alida had none. Sr Alida had hoped to give up teaching
and dedicate herself full-time to the care of the 150 children aged between four and 16. However,
as she was a qualified teacher and there was a clear shortage of teachers in Goldenbridge, her
teaching skills were too valuable to put to one side. Her principal role in the Institution was as a
teacher and, even when she took over as Sister in Charge in 1954, she continued to teach full-
time until she left. When asked whether she received any training or instruction in relation to how
to deal with such large numbers of children, Sr Alida said she had received ‘none whatsoever. I
think you had to use your own head’.
7.448 Only two of the classrooms appeared to be in use, the other two had clearly fallen into disuse,
and one even lacked the most basic classroom equipment such as desks and benches. There
was no roll book in use. Sr Bianca set about acquiring equipment for the classrooms in
Goldenbridge. She also ordered playground equipment from England, and Sr Alida recalled
swings, a merry-go-round and a drinking fountain being installed in the playground.
7.449 Sr Alida was adamant that she did the best she could to give the children a proper education:
I did as good as I could to give the opportunities to children and given the best I could
give for them in clothes, food and everything else and education. In between there must
be many children who said to me today, "I didn't get a chance." There is one who does
say it, "I didn't get an education”. ... Many of them got into assistant nursing and into
children’s nursing. Our standard of education couldn’t be that bad. I am not saying it was
first class or high, because the children coming in to us had experience of school before
they came. Many came from non-school attendance. Our level –- we never had trouble
with inspectors about the level of education in our schools.
7.450 Ms Kearney, who worked as a lay teacher, confirmed that, after finishing her own schooling, she
completed a course in domestic economy before commencing her first teaching position in the
mid-1930s in Goldenbridge. She shared a classroom with a senior teacher, Ms Dempsey. Neither
was formally qualified to teach at that time. Ms Kearney stated that she was very glad to get the
job in Goldenbridge:
I was always afraid of doing or saying anything wrong, that I would be sacked, that was
my one fear.
7.451 Both teachers used a leather to discipline the children, although Ms Kearney discontinued its use
once she discovered how painful it was by mistakenly hitting herself with it.
7.452 Ms Dempsey taught first and second class, and Ms Kearney taught third and fourth class. She
was on duty until 10pm every other day, working in a supervisory capacity, once class was over.
The older children helped with the care of the younger children.
7.453 In 1946, Ms Kearney applied for and was granted provisional recognition as a primary school
teacher. This qualified her to teach only in an industrial school. She continued to teach in
Goldenbridge until she left.
7.454 When asked if there were things that she would have spoken about if she didn’t have the fear of
being sacked, she said:
Sure ... well for one I would have loved to have seen the children with more space. I
would have liked to have seen them with warmer clothes on them, because at the time
that I went in there first they were very basic. More freedom. ... There were lots of children
I would have loved to have hugged and cuddled. They were so lovely, but the bold girls
would take it out on them, call them names, teacher’s pet, you know and shout at them
and that.
7.455 Once she became a permanent teacher, Ms Kearney stated that she was no longer fearful of
losing her job. At that stage, she no longer lived in the School and was unaware of day-to-day
living conditions. She said that she, therefore, had no reason to complain.
7.456 Ms Kearney stated that she had been of a sunny disposition before starting in Goldenbridge, but
that this changed as the years went by. Ms Kearney found her job more difficult after the arrival
of Sr Bianca and Sr Alida. She noticed a deterioration in the attitude of the children, who became
sullen and defiant. In her view, Goldenbridge was not a happy place, but she did the best she
could in the circumstances.
7.457 A number of complainants spoke about their memory of the education that they received in
Goldenbridge and the impact this had on their later life. The main issues which arose during the
course of the complainants’ evidence were:
• The low standard of education.
• Excessive use of corporal punishment, which lead to an atmosphere of fear in the
classroom, which in turn led to an inability to learn effectively.
• The arbitrary manner in which a few students were chosen to attend the external
national school, which opened up the opportunity of progressing to secondary school.
• Children being taken out of school to perform domestic chores.
• Low self-esteem and lack of confidence as a result of the low standard of education
and often leaving school without any qualifications.
7.458 Some of the complainants had quite positive memories of their school days in Goldenbridge, and
believed that they did come away with a basic primary education for which they were grateful.
7.459 One complainant, who was in Goldenbridge in the early 1950s, made an interesting comparison
between the education she received in Goldenbridge and that which she received at an English
school, which she attended immediately after leaving Goldenbridge. She said that in
Goldenbridge, although she loved learning, she had not learnt anything in the School. When she
was removed by her father from the Institution, aged 11, and brought to England, she attended
school and got on very well there, despite her abusive family circumstances. Her description of
that period was as follows:
It was like a blossoming period. When I went to the school in England I craved education.
That was my way of trying to conquer what life had done to me. I went to this little school
and when we used to be asked to read and write,reading, I used to think to myself “please
don’t come to us” because I used to stammer and stutter and I had a thick accent
apparently. I am there on this particular one day there was reading going on and I was
stammering to myself, “please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me”, the teacher did ask
me to read and I got up and the urine was running down my legs again, I always smelt
of urine, I stunk of it. I was sitting there and I was waiting for the teacher to clatter me or
batter me, but I never saw it. I was only there for a few weeks and I had come on in leaps
and bounds ... When I went there I crammed – once I knew that I wasn’t going to get
beaten, it was wonderful. Anything I could get to read, I loved it, it was a wonderful period
of time ... I managed to scrape through that 11+ ... I have always loved reading and writing
and spelling and that and general knowledge and all that. It was a wonderful period.
7.460 The Congregation argued that it was a tribute, to some extent, to the teaching she received in the
Institution that she was able to pass the 11+ exam within nine months of leaving. The complainant
disagreed, and credited her examination success entirely to the schooling she received in
England. The contrast that she made between the atmosphere in the classroom in England and
in Goldenbridge is significant. Almost all of the complainants who spoke of school in Goldenbridge
spoke of a fear of corporal punishment.
7.461 Another complainant, who was committed to Goldenbridge at the age of seven in the early 1950s
and remained there for nine years, recalled regular punishment by the teachers. She stated that
she was constantly taken out of school to look after her sister, who was unwell, or to look after
babies. As a result, she stated that she was not a good scholar. In the late 1950s, she sat the
Primary Certificate and failed. She was registered to repeat the examination, but the record
indicates that she was marked absent.
7.462 One complainant who attended Goldenbridge in the 1950s stated that she left Goldenbridge
without being able to write at the age of 14. She recalled:
In Sr Alida’s class I know I was very stupid. I didn’t seem to be able to learn. All I know
is that I was getting smacked, for being stupid I was getting smacked ... She would put
me down in the corner ... but then I was so happy to be in the corner, because when you
are in the corner you don’t have to learn.
7.463 This complainant asserted that she learnt nothing in the classroom because she was in a constant
state of fear of being punished, and she recalled regularly feeling nauseous. She described how
she learned to tell the time from a toy watch belonging to one of the other children while she was
cleaning the dormitories in the morning:
I learned the clock under the bed, I learned a watch, how to tell the time. It was wonderful
to learn the time because I was so stupid.
7.464 She did in fact sit her Primary Certificate while she was there, but she failed it.
7.465 A witness who was committed to Goldenbridge in the 1950s at the age of three and remained
until her 16th birthday recalled receiving very little education during her time in Goldenbridge.
From the age of nine, she was regularly called out of class in order to carry out domestic chores.
After roll call, she said catechism class was held. Once this class was over, a nun would come in
and call out seven or eight names. These children then left class to do chores. Whilst she stated
that she was not called out every day, it occurred regularly enough to prevent her from obtaining
a proper education.
7.466 Another complainant, who spent 12 years in Goldenbridge from the mid-1950s, recalled being
slapped regularly and severely in the classroom by lay teachers. She said that Goldenbridge
improved slightly in the 1960s, and a number of children were sent out to do secretarial courses
towards the end of their time there.
7.467 A witness, who was sent to Goldenbridge in the mid-1950s at the age of eight, stated that she
received a very poor standard of education. She was regularly called out of class to carry out
household chores. Her performance was also affected by a constant sense of fear she felt in
class, a fear which remains with her today. She did not sit her Primary Certificate.

7.468 Another witness, who was committed to Goldenbridge in the early 1960s when she was nine years
of age, said she could not read or write when she arrived in Goldenbridge, nor could she read or
write when she left. This fact, which disabled her all her life, left her with a strong sense of
frustration. In later life, she took advantage of the education fund put in place by the Sisters of
Mercy and received lessons from a professional tutor.
7.469 Whilst she arrived in Goldenbridge with absolutely no education, she did not receive any help or
encouragement that might have given her the basics of reading and writing whilst she was there.
She was regularly taken out of class to mind young children. She loved minding children and, had
she had a choice of careers, she would have chosen to be a children’s nurse. However, her
educational disadvantage ruled out such a career.
7.470 A complainant, who was in Goldenbridge for nine years from the late 1950s, recalled being taught
by Ms Dempsey, who had a habit of pulling the children’s cheeks and twisting their ears if they
did not know their lessons. She recalled being made to wear a dunce’s hat on occasion. She
said that:
We had to stand on the chairs as well, hands on our heads, fingers on lips. Sometimes
we had to kneel on those wooden chairs as well.
7.471 This regime continued into the next classes:

Ms Kearney on the other hand, you had to keep your elbows in at all times when you
were writing. The letters had to be like a proper – what’s the word – sort of slant, rounded
and turned ... She had a small stick and your elbows would really be beaten ... After I left
Goldenbridge I don’t think I wrote again really until I was in my 40s.
Post primary education

7.472 From the late 1950s, a few children were sent to the local secondary top, sometimes having
already been transferred to the local national school. Bishop Dunne set up a fund for providing
post primary education for the children of Goldenbridge. These children were afforded study time
in the evening and allowed to forgo some of the usual domestic chores, including bead making.
7.473 One complainant stated that she attended secondary school because her father paid for her
upkeep in Goldenbridge and requested that she do so. She said that only a few of the girls were
given the opportunity of advancing their education:
There was only a few of us that were allowed to go to secondary school. For example,
the girl I mentioned earlier, she was very bright but a punishment for her was that she
couldn’t go to secondary. It was very selective.
7.474 She confirmed that those attending external school did receive some remission of the amount of
time they spent bead making.
7.475 Another witness started her education in the internal national school. Her father took an interest
in her education and that of her sisters. It was at his insistence that they were transferred to the
external national school and later to secondary school.
7.476 She stated that she was considerably behind the rest of the class once she left the internal national
school. Added to her difficulties was the fact that she suffered from mild dyslexia. She recalled
her father giving her a flashlight to enable her to learn spellings whilst in bed at night. She
completed her Intermediate Certificate, but did not proceed to sit the Leaving Certificate
examination.
7.477 A complainant who was in Goldenbridge in the 1960s recalled being taught by Ms Dempsey and
Ms Kearney. She conceded that they were good teachers but thought that they were very cruel.
She pitied the children who found their classes difficult because they were punished relentlessly.
Ms Dempsey would beat children, pull them by the ear and place children in the dunces’ corner
for hours as punishment.
7.478 This complainant did proceed to secondary school, and expressed her gratitude at having been
given the opportunity. However, the manner in which the children were chosen was somewhat
arbitrary. She recalled that, one day, Sr Venetia came into the classroom, wrote a sum on the
blackboard, and told the children to put their hands up when they had completed it. The
complainant was the first to complete the sum and, on that basis, she was selected with two
others to go to secondary school. She said that this occurred after Christmas and, therefore, she
had missed the first term:
We went to the secondary school the next day. I hadn’t a breeze ... In no time I realised
I knew nothing. I felt quite competent in the national school, in fairness I felt quite
competent, but I hadn’t a breeze, not a breeze ... I tried to survive as best I could, I tried
to do whatever I could. But unfortunately, as I felt at the time, it was completely in vain
because I failed my Inter Cert. Destroyed me. I had worked so hard and it was all for
nothing.
7.479 Sr Alida spoke about the difficulty in choosing children to send to the external secondary school
to progress their education:
When secondary education became available in the local school I promoted one child
once, four in the next set and then – looking back on it now it was difficult because there
are people complaining that they weren't chosen. It was very hard to know who you could
pick, who was most entitled to, who would benefit most from it, and you had to try and
give the advantage where possible. I did that to the best of my ability and people benefited
from it in the ways that others did not.
7.480 The Sisters of Mercy pointed out that secondary schooling was available to only a minority of Irish
children until the late 1960s, and that limited education and limited career opportunities were the
order of the day for the average Irish child. The Congregation asserted that complaints from some
witnesses that they were not given opportunities to fulfil their full potential illustrated the dangers
of viewing the past through modern lenses. The Sisters of Mercy claimed that what was
considered adequate at the time may, with hindsight, appear to a particular complainant not only
as insufficient but abusive.
7.481 The Sisters did not address whether they themselves could have made places available in their
secondary schools for children who showed academic ability. This was not done prior to Bishop
Dunne’s initiative, when children were largely prepared for a life of domestic service only. After
1968, when free education was introduced nationally, more children did get the chance to avail of
second level education.
Conclusions
• The standard of education in the internal primary school was not as high as in the
external school.
• The use of excessive corporal punishment affected the ability of the children to learn.
• There is evidence that children between the ages of seven and 13 were taken out of
school for domestic duties and some were taken out more frequently than others.

• There was a lack of educational opportunity in Goldenbridge. The Industrial School
was intended to educate and train for future employment, but many of the children
were only trained for domestic service.
• The Sisters of Mercy did not fraudulently assist children to pass their Primary
Certificates.
• Efforts were made in the 1960s to send some girls on to secondary school or into
secretarial colleges or nursing. These were the fortunate few, and it would appear that
most left the School with no more than a Primary Certificate, and very many did not
achieve this standard.
• Some children arrived in Goldenbridge having fallen behind in their education or
having had no education. No real effort was made to address serious disadvantages
for children when they arrived, and there was no encouragement given to them to
progress.
Chores
7.482 Many complainants gave evidence of the onerous duties imposed on them in Goldenbridge, which
they claimed were not appropriate to their age or their physical abilities. The use of domestic work
as a form of punishment was also referred to by a number of complainants.
7.483 On the other hand, the former residents who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee of
their positive experiences in Goldenbridge did not feel that the chores they were required to carry
out impacted upon them negatively.

7.484 In their Opening Statement, the Sisters of Mercy described the daily routine:
After breakfast every child old enough performed household chores suitable for their age
for about half an hour before school, such as cleaning up the dining room, dusting
corridors, helping with getting the babies or toddlers dressed and so on.
7.485 They said that, from 1.30pm, children from the age of 13 attended industrial training classes.
Different age groups were assigned to do different chores including cookery, needlework, laundry
or housekeeping in rotation. A different routine prevailed at weekends. Saturday was laundry day,
and many children helped the Sisters with sorting and folding laundry. More time was devoted to
household chores on Saturday, and the School got a thorough cleaning.
7.486 In their written Submissions, the Sisters of Mercy accepted the following:
• the children carried out chores in the morning for about half an hour after their breakfast
and before school;
• the children strung rosary beads from Monday to Friday for several hours after school
between 3.30 and 6.00pm and sometimes later into the evening, if there was pressure
to complete a quota. They also worked at beads for several hours on Saturday;
• the children participated in a general clean up of the school on a Saturday, as well as
helping with the laundry;
• the children participated in an industrial training programme from the age of thirteen.
This programme took place in the afternoons after dinner.
7.487 The Sisters of Mercy submitted that, given the substantial amount of chores, it is not surprising
that complainants had general memories of much work and little recreation. They added that it is
possible that former residents may not have very precise memories of the age at which they
performed certain chores; what jobs were done before school and on Saturdays, and what jobs
fell within the remit of the industrial training programme, in which all girls over the age of 13
participated.
7.488 The Congregation submitted that laundry was a large part of the routine in Goldenbridge, given
the number of children. Children of all ages were expected to help. The older children would have
been required to do the heavier work. It was suggested by the Congregation during hearings that
younger children would have gone along to help the older girls and that it was in fact quite a social
occasion. It does not accept that young children were taken out of school to work in the laundry.
In support of this, the Congregation pointed out that laundry only took place on two days during
the week, one of which was Saturday, when many of the children helped out. The existence of
such a practice would have meant that the School relied, rather irrationally, on the labour of small
children, when there was a ready supply of older, stronger girls available. The Congregation added
that, given the fact that children may have done laundry as part of the domestic training
programme as well as laundry on Saturdays, it may be the case that complainants were confused
as to when precisely they did laundry. The Sisters of Mercy noted that none of the complainants
appeared to remember laundry featuring as part of the industrial training programme at all. They
contended that what complainants regarded as an onerous chore was in fact industrial training
for their own benefit.
7.489 The Sisters of Mercy conceded that the School was self-sufficient because of the input of the girls
helping around the School, and they made reference to a woman employed to work in the laundry,
and a member of staff who helped in the kitchen. They contended that the chores which the
children performed were not out of keeping with the standards of the time and could not be
labelled abusive.
7.490 The Congregation was adamant that children as young as seven or eight were not taken out of
school to perform chores, but that children over 13 years of age participated in an industrial
training program in the afternoons. This programme adopted a three-pronged approach to
industrial training: cookery, laundry, and housekeeping duties. This would have entailed a certain
amount of domestic work around the Institution. The Congregation stated:
At this remove in time, it is probably impossible to say that children over the age of twelve
were not, on occasion taken in the afternoon to carry out domestic chores, be it laundry,
minding younger children or helping in the kitchen. This may have been more likely with
girls who showed little interest or ability at school.
7.491 Sr Alida said that there was a course in domestic economy training including cooking, sewing and
laundry for girls over 13 years of age. They partook in this training in the afternoon, having spent
the morning in school.
7.492 On chores, Sr Alida accepted that:

It would be correct to say, and I only recently appreciated it, that all the caring in the
house, when I say caring, the chores, the housekeeping jobs, were all done by big girls
and remember we would have about 80 girls over 12 in the house ...
7.493 Chores included washing and dressing the younger children, sweeping and scrubbing the floors,
caring for the babies, and working in the kitchen and the laundry. Sr Alida accepted that the
chores could be difficult:
In my early day the charges were quite difficult in the sense that it was maintaining the
floors mainly around the house and dormitory, but particularly in the corridors and the
kitchen. They were old tiled floors, black and red tiles, and they were worn with the
hundred years of wear. They were horrible to work on. That was one of the biggest chores
in the house because there were long corridors on the ground floor, the front door and
the hall. The hall was new and modern but the rest was old.
7.494 She added that, under her management, these corridors were covered with a substance called
tapiflex, which made a huge difference to cleaning. Sr Alida accepted that the chores were difficult,
‘except that there were many hands to do it’.
7.495 Ms Garvin spent 13 years working as a teacher in Goldenbridge. She stated that, when she arrived
in the School, there was an extensive domestic training programme in place for the older girls. The
household chores performed by these girls formed part of the household management element of
this programme. Chores included cleaning, laundry, cookery and sewing.
7.496 Sr Gianna’s duties involved working in the workroom, mending and sorting clothes or working in
the laundry on a Monday or Friday. She never saw children younger than 13 working in the
laundry. She stated that the older girls were involved in keeping the School clean.
7.497 The evidence of the complainants was that they had a number of chores to perform daily, from a
very young age, and that these were in addition to the many hours spent at bead making.
7.498 A complainant who was in Goldenbridge during the 1950s and early 1960s told of the chores she
performed every day. She stated that, after roll call, a number of names were called out and these
children were sent to do chores. This happened on a regular basis:
All I can remember is washing floors, scrubbing floors, scrubbing dormitories, doing
laundry, making rosary beads. It was constant, hardly any education at all. The only thing
you were really there for was catechism lessons in the morning. Apart from that you were
taken out of school as soon as you got to the age where you could scrub floors, do
whatever you had to do.
7.499 She described the work in the dormitories, each of which had about 30 or 40 beds:
We had to lift those, they were heavy metal beds. We used to lift them to one side of the
room, and sweep, wash and scrub the rooms ... It would take quite a few hours, because
they were big dormitories ... If it wasn’t done properly they would make you do the whole
thing again ... there would be eight of us who used to do it together.
7.500 If the work was not completed satisfactorily, it would have to be redone, and she was sent to the
landing to be punished by Sr Alida.
7.501 She also described working in the laundry as very heavy work. They had big boilers in which to
boil sheets. She described the procedure of washing these sheets:
you had wooden tongs, which you would pull them from the boiler, into another cooler,
which would rinse the sheets, and then put them through wringers and then hang them
out. We used to have big baskets with all the sheets into them.
7.502 The most difficult part of the laundry work was lifting and pulling the sheets from one boiler to
another. She had to stand on steps to reach the boiler and was always nervous of falling in.
7.503 In addition to laundry and cleaning, she also recalled looking after babies. She recalled bathing
them, putting them on potties and changing nappies. Although she described what, by any
standards, was a heavy burden of chores, her main complaint was not so much about the chores
she had to carry out but the manner in which they interfered with her education.
7.504 One witness described how, when she was nine, she had been required to scrub the cobble-
stoned area in the bathroom as punishment for tearing her dress. She had to kneel down on the
cobblestones to do this, which was painful. Although this was a chore that the children regularly
carried out, she had to do it on her own by way of punishment.
7.505 She also stated that she was taken out of Sr Venetia’s class to work in the laundry on Mondays
and Fridays. She described the large vat-like boilers with very hot water, and using a stick to pull
sheets from the boilers and push them through wringers before they were laid out to dry. The
main laundry was done in the large industrial laundry attached to the School, but there was a
certain amount of washing by hand that had to be done on a daily basis arising out of bed-wetting.
7.506 One complainant who was in Goldenbridge during the 1960s said that she believed that the fact
that her father was a regular visitor to the School saved her and her sister from the hardest
physical work in the School. She lived in fear of something happening to her father, which would
have left her at the mercy of the nuns:
I remember thinking, if anything happens to you we are finished. We would be totally
sucked in here because people that had nobody were the ones that did – and the ones
with low intelligence, God help them, they were the ones that were given the hardest
work. We had big hoovers in those days, big heavy hoovers, washing hallway floors, the
corridors. I was terrified that this is what would become of us. We would end up like
cleaners for the rest of our lives. It devastated me.
7.507 One complainant, who was committed to Goldenbridge for four years at the age of five in the early
1960s, stated that he had clear memories of working regularly in the laundry as an alternative to
bead making in the afternoons. He recalled an incident, while working in the laundry, in which a
boy younger than him caught his arm in a mangle. The complainant was afraid and he ran away.
Sometime later, he saw the boy with his injured arm in plaster-of-paris.
7.508 This complainant stated that he first started working in the laundry approximately one year after
he arrived, which would make him six years old.
7.509 A witness, who was in Goldenbridge during the 1960s, spoke in detail of the chores that were
required of the children:
I remember sweeping that dormitory, that sounds like nothing, but first you had to pull
every bed into the centre of the room, right, lift the bed ... Then lift the bed and shove it
back in. I could do it with one hand I became so adept at it and they were heavy.
7.510 She spoke of other duties:

the scrubbing and cleaning of the building. I mean we scrubbed and cleaned that entire
building and that was a big building, well it seemed huge to us ... When I went there first
they didn’t have heavy, you know, the hoovers? ... They had a reddish floor polish. They
had mansion polish, stuff like that. I don’t know is that the same, but there is a very strong
smelling kind of petroleum type smell off this oil. We used to put it on the floor and then
on our knees polish it.
7.511 The flooring was made of lino and, in order to polish it, the children would skid across the room
on the polishing rag. This made light of the chore and they enjoyed it. The Sisters later acquired
large industrial hoovers which the children used to clean the floors.
7.512 Evidence from a number of complainants was heard of girls being required to clean blocked
sewers and toilets. The Sisters of Mercy stated that this work was done by a handyman employed
by the School, and that no child would have to be involved in such work. However, complainants
have stated that newspaper rather than toilet paper was used, which resulted in toilets becoming
blocked regularly, and one or two girls would be singled out for the unpleasant job of unblocking
them.
Conclusions
7.513 • Older girls were taken out of class in order to look after younger ones, which was
unfair and disruptive to their education.
• Requiring children from a young age to do chores was not in itself abusive, but chores
became abusive because they were too onerous and were carried out under the threat
of punishment.
• The burden of domestic chores and bead making for older girls occupied so many
hours that it excluded opportunities for recreation and personal time.
Food
7.514 Many of the complainants stated that they were constantly hungry in Goldenbridge and that the
food was inadequate both in terms of quantity and quality.
Documentary evidence
7.515 The General Inspection Reports of the 1940s criticised the food and diet of the children; in
particular, insufficient quantities of milk and butter were given during the war years. The
Department of Education had allotted certain rations of milk and butter for children in industrial
schools, and these quantities were not adhered to in Goldenbridge.
7.516 Dr McCabe visited the School in 1943 and, in her report dated 21st July 1943, she found that the
‘diet could be more varied and ample’. Following a further inspection less than six months later,
on 21st January 1944, Dr McCabe reported that the children were not receiving adequate supplies
of milk and butter rations. Dripping was used as a substitute for butter.
7.517 This matter was taken up by the Department of Education’s Inspector for Industrial and
Reformatory Schools, who wrote to the Resident Manager, Sr Bianca, by letter dated 29th February
1944, calling upon her to remedy the situation. No reply was received and the Inspector wrote
again on 17th April 1944. By letter dated 26th April 1944, Sr Bianca responded that Dr McCabe’s
suggestions had been put into effect ‘as far as has been found practicable’. She reassured the
Inspector that every effort was being made to increase the rations of milk and butter for the
children.
7.518 An Inspector wrote back and indicated that, whilst he was pleased with the steps being taken by
the Resident Manager to implement the Medical Inspector’s recommendations, the milk and butter
ration increases were, in his view, inadequate. In particular, he stated that each child was to
receive one pint of milk per day and six ounces of butter each week. Sr Bianca responded on 4th
May 1944 and stated that the rations would be increased as stipulated.
7.519 Dr McCabe visited the School again in June 1944. Once again, she noted her dissatisfaction at
the children’s milk and butter rations, which fell short of the quantities recommended by her:
I insist that children should get 1 pint per head per day also their butter ration. Dripping
as a substitute cannot be considered.
7.520 Dr McCabe questioned Sr Bianca regarding the shortfall in rations and was informed that the
School could not afford the stipulated amounts of butter and milk per child. The matter was again
taken up by the Department of Education’s Inspector in a letter dated 6th July 1944. He
reiterated that:
It is essential that each child should receive a minimum of one pint of milk per day and I
must request you to arrange for this without delay.
7.521 He insisted that dripping was not an adequate substitute for butter. In September 1944, Sr Bianca
informed the Department that each child in the School was getting her ration of butter and one
pint of milk per day.
7.522 In Dr McCabe’s next inspection report of 1st March 1946, she noted that the diet of the children
had improved, with the milk and butter rations increased as stipulated. In a medical inspection of
the children in February and March 1946, Dr McCabe noted that approximately 100 children had
not satisfactorily put on weight since the last visit. The explanation given was that most of these
children had influenza. A failure to gain weight was a serious matter and, in other schools where
this occurred, was seen as evidence of malnutrition. It would appear that the explanation offered
in this case was accepted.
7.523 Sr Alida explained that, when she first arrived in Goldenbridge in 1942, the food was rationed. She
confirmed that dripping was used instead of butter until 1954, when margarine was introduced. A
churn of milk was delivered every morning from a local farm, which was sufficient to provide
children with cocoa, tea and bottles of milk for the babies. She said that she was unaware of any
correspondence from the Department of Education at that time concerning the inadequacies of
the milk and butter rations for the children, as Sr Bianca would have dealt with such matters as
Resident Manager.
7.524 Throughout the 1950s, the food and diet of the children was described as ‘very good’ by Dr
McCabe. She spoke favourably of the food and diet when she inspected the School on two
occasions in 1955. In particular, she stated that the meals ‘were attractive, well cooked and
attractively served’.
7.525 Dr McCabe retired in 1963, and Dr Lysaght inspected Goldenbridge on behalf of the Department
in March 1966. He wrote a detailed report in which he noted that the children looked well nourished
and healthy. He inspected the main meal of the day, which consisted of soup, milk, mincemeat,
vegetables, custard and tinned pears, and he found that the amounts served were ample and
well cooked.
7.526 The School was aware in advance of Dr McCabe’s inspection, and ex-residents recalled that extra
food was provided. Dr McCabe did not eat with the children, and based her report on observation
of the food served on the day of her inspection.
7.527 Sr Alida stated that the Department inspectors did not examine or taste the food that was given
to the children:
I cannot say that I ever saw an inspector with a spoon or anything tasting food, I cannot
say I ever saw it.
7.528 The Inspector from the Department of Education always had her meal in the convent and not with
the children in the dining room.
7.529 The majority of the witnesses who testified to the Committee complained of hunger and
inadequate food during their time in Goldenbridge. They spoke of constantly being hungry. The
quality and quantity of the food that was provided was the subject of numerous complaints by the
witnesses. They also talked about the difference in the quality of food which the lay staff received
compared to the food given to the children; the food provided to the staff was far superior in quality.
7.530 A witness described the difference:
Oh yes. It was different, it was lovely to go in there, you could see what they were eating.
They had a press with all kind of goodies in it ...
7.531 However, one witness stated that the food did improve after 1967, and she received ‘lovely
dinners’ after that time.
7.532 One witness said: ’I remember being hungry all the time’.
7.533 Another said:

I was always hungry, but then I have always had a good appetite but I never felt full. The
only time I felt full if you went out with your family and you got sweets and things like that.
7.534 Another said she was hungry, and explained:

Well, simply because we had so little to eat. I do remember all the girls used to eat, there
were plants around a field, there was a hedge and we used to call them bread and butter
plants. I remember that. We would eat the leaves off the hedges. Then from 4.30p.m.
when we had supper which consisted of cocoa and bread and butter, that was it then,
nothing else until breakfast the next morning.
7.535 One witness described the food as: ‘basic. It was just bread and water or bread and tea and that
was it’. He also complained of not receiving enough food:
... because when the food was put on the table it was grabbed so you were either fortunate
or you weren’t. A lot of the time I was unfortunate because I was very small anyway.
7.536 When asked about whether they ever got treats, another witness said:
We did eventually as time went on. There would be a nice cake on the table for Easter
or something, yes there was, but that would have been maybe twice a year, maybe
Christmas. Yes, there was sometimes some treats.
7.537 One witness described the effect of lack of food on her, ’I used to eat compulsively when I came
out because I was hungry in Goldenbridge’.
7.538 As she had younger siblings, she gave her portion of food to them:
I used to often give my own food to the kids because they were forever hungry. I actually
got a taste for eating wet muck because when I had a pain in my tummy I would eat that
and it would take the pain away.
7.539 Another witness gave a similar account of the lack of food:

Oh, the food. Today I have a serious eating disorder and I believe, in my opinion and in
the medical opinion it has stemmed from Goldenbridge. The food was pure slop, to be
honest. It was like lumpy porridge in the morning and cocoa that was like dishwater, very
thin and bad looking. The evening was – it wasn’t porridge, it was bread and porridge.
The meal at lunchtime was just like vegetables swimming in water. I don’t recall much
meat and I don’t remember ever seeing a chicken.
7.540 She stated further:

The food was very bad, but I noticed that no matter what slop they were giving me, and I
use the word slop because to be honest we had no choice, we ate it, we were hungry. I
was constantly hungry.
7.541 Another complained of the constant hunger:
Yes, food food food. We dreamed about it. I think, if I recall, I even traded sweets. We
were like little animals. We were like little dogs. We traded bits and bits and bits ... I stole.
I stole sausages, I remember.

There was never enough of it. It was only basics. Twelve slices of bread on the table,
pre-buttered. Six at our tables, some tables would be bigger. You got two slices of bread
and cocoa, and a cup of cocoa that’s a fact. You would steal from anything, you would
eat the crumbs. If you saw trays outside teacher’s thing, if you got into the place at all,
you would know that somebody got trays at certain times in the day, you would be dying
to get hold of the trays to see if there was anything left over on it.
7.543 Another witness, who was in the School in the 1960s, painted a picture of the meals in the School:
... in the mornings we either had bread or porridge. Oh, the porridge. I know they had to
make it for a lot of people but the lumps, we used to heave trying to eat it. You had to eat
it, there was no way you would leave it on the plate. Dreadfully to say, sometimes you
tried to flick it on to somebody else’s table, it’s a terrible thing to do but you did do that. I
don’t know what we were given for dinner. I know the potatoes were sour, not always
sour but sometimes they smelled sour like sour milk. We had cabbage. I don’t know what
other vegetable we had because today I do love my food. I remember cabbage with these
little tiny black flies that we used to pick out. You still had to eat it. The bread, I don’t know
what they did to the bread when you had breakfast time, but it used to have these hard
lumps. The food, you had to eat it. There was no way you were ever going to leave it.
7.544 Another complainant, who spent four years in Goldenbridge from the early 1960s, stated that food
served to the staff was very different to that served to the children. The cake crumbs, which the
children scavenged, were leftovers from staff:
The crumbs – the crumbs and the bit of cakes would come from the teachers, there would
be biscuits. It was a known fact that the teachers lived in the lap of luxury. They had
proper food, they would have someone cooking, they would be called – they knew their
time for tea. So when we would be doing the wash up in the dining room you would try
and get into the kitchen into their room to see if you could grab anything off the table ...
when they weren’t looking. If you were caught with it in your mouth you would get a clatter.
Positive witnesses
7.545 Evidence was also heard, at the suggestion of the Sisters of Mercy, from a number of witnesses
who had positive memories of their time in Goldenbridge. One of these witnesses was committed
to Goldenbridge in 1947 and remained there for 10 years. She recalled that the standard and
quantity of food improved when Sr Alida took over as Sister in Charge. She stated:
The food changed. We got extra food. We used to get afters, started giving us bread
puddings and jelly and ice-cream and stuff. A little bit more food.
7.546 Another was asked whether she recalled being hungry, and she responded:
Not really, not starving anyway. When I heard somebody said they were starved, if you
are starved it means that you don’t get any food; if you are starving it just means that you
are possibly hungry. But there were three meals, there was porridge in the morning time,
there was your dinner with sweet, it could have been Carragheen moss. Maybe the day
that somebody put the currants in the rice or put the cocoa in the rice and rice came out
brown but if you were bloody well hungry you would eat it. Some of them stuck their nose
up at it and said they couldn’t eat it but if you were hungry you would eat it.
7.547 Another positive witness, who spent eight years in Goldenbridge from 1948, stated that the food
was very basic. She recalled receiving half a slice of bread for breakfast along with a cup of
cocoa. Dinner consisted of stew, casserole or shepherd’s pie, and there was bread and cocoa
again for tea. She accepted that she often felt hungry:
I suppose I felt I was hungry. We didn’t do anything about it. I would have liked to have
been able to have some more.
7.548 Another positive witness remained for three years as a carer after her discharge date and,
although she had more positive memories of the food, she did not distinguish between the food
she received as a pupil and the food she received as a carer.
7.549 Sr Alida stated that bread was delivered every day except Sunday, and they had brack at the
weekend. She recalled that the children got porridge, bread and butter for breakfast; dinner
consisted of sausages, black and white pudding, or rabbit or mincemeat with vegetables. They
had dessert every day, which usually consisted of a milk pudding. Vegetables were grown in the
garden but, as it did not produce enough quantities, they were also purchased from the market
every week. She accepted that, because the food was cooked for such large numbers, the quality
of the food was affected.
7.550 Sr Alida stated that the children had snacks between meals. Crates of fruit such as apples and
oranges were purchased from the market on a weekly basis. She bought boiled sweets in bulk
from a wholesale shop on Capel Street and broken Club Milk chocolate bars from Jacobs factory.
7.551 None of the witnesses, even the positive witnesses, could recall anything like this type of food
in Goldenbridge.
7.552 Sr Bianca and later Sr Alida, when she took over as Sister in Charge, had their meals in the
convent. The only meal they supervised in the Industrial School was dinner. Towards the latter
stages of her management, Sr Alida recalled buying delph and cutlery in bulk and, by the time
she left Goldenbridge, there was no broken tableware in use. She also recalled the kitchen
facilities being up-graded with the addition of a gas cooker, toaster and deep fat fryer. She
confirmed that there were no set menus during her time in Goldenbridge.
7.553 Sr Alida said she never received complaints from the Inspector about the children’s food and diet.
7.554 Sr Alida denied that scraps were thrown to the children in the yard, as alleged by some
complainants. She added that, while she was in charge, no child would have been so hungry that
she would have had to pick scraps of food from the ground.
7.555 Sr Alida asserted that:

one thing I cannot be challenged with is neglecting the food of the children or their clothes.
Most certainly I never neglected – I would have said that from '54 onwards the quality of
food, cooking equipment, clothing etc., that I did my utmost to give them the best and
they got it.
7.556 In a statement made to the Investigation Committee Sr Alida stated:

I believe the children could have eaten more but they certainly did not go hungry.
7.557 Sr Gianna recalled accompanying Sr Alida to the market to buy trays of apples and oranges. Sr
Alida recalled that there was dessert every day after dinner, which consisted of tapioca, corn flour,
rice or jelly.
7.558 The Sisters of Mercy denied that children were starving or malnourished in Goldenbridge. They
conceded as a matter of probability that the quality of the food in the School during the 1940s was
relatively poor, due to the war years and rationing in society generally. However, they asserted that
the food and diet improved considerably during the period under review.
7.559 The children were served with four meals a day, which were simple and adequate. They submitted
that approximately 30 percent of the capitation grant was spent on food.
7.560 In response to allegations by complainants of constant hunger, they stated that:

food was not available between meals and this might have given rise to a sense of
being hungry.
7.561 They also stated that the:

more extreme allegations concerning inadequate food for the children are not accepted.
Conclusions
7.562 • Children were often hungry in Goldenbridge. The food was insufficient and of poor
quality. Although improvements were made from time to time, the diet was never more
than adequate.
Clothing
7.563 The Sisters of Mercy stated that clothing was an area ‘where considerable improvements were
made throughout the period under review’.
7.564 This would appear to be confirmed by the inspection reports from 1952 onwards. Before that, Dr
McCabe was critical of the clothing of the children. Following an inspection in 1944, the
Department of Education wrote to the Resident Manager requesting her to implement Dr
McCabe’s suggestions, which included improving the cleanliness and tidiness among the children.
Sr Bianca replied by letter and stated:
We find it increasingly difficult to provide suitable clothing for the children and in many
cases have to be satisfied with patching their old garments, but every effort is being made
to secure personal cleanliness and neatness amongst them.
7.565 In a further letter of 15th June 1944 to the Department, Sr Bianca conceded that they could not
properly clothe the children, but cited the inadequacy of the capitation grant as the cause:
Having used all possible means to economise in food and clothing we find ourselves
totally unable to meet the demands of our creditors. We owe large sums of money for
clothing and the present maintenance allowance only suffices to feed the children, leaving
no margin for clothing, so that we have no hope of being able to pay our debts on the
present grant.
7.566 On 28th June 1945, Dr McCabe noted that the clothing was ‘fair’ but ‘could be improved’. No
further information is provided regarding how the clothes could be improved or the problem with
them. The following year on 1st March 1946, she again described the clothes as ‘fair’ but added
that they were ‘to be improved now that stocks are more easily obtained’. The Department of
Education’s Inspector wrote to Sr Bianca on 22nd March 1946 on foot of Dr McCabe’s
inspection, stating:
It is observed that the children’s clothing is not as good as it should be and it is hoped
that with the supply position becoming easier, steps will be taken to make the necessary
improvement in this matter.
7.567 By 1948, the clothing had improved. Dr McCabe described it as ‘good’. The same description was
given following her visits in 1949 and 1951. From 1952 onwards, Dr McCabe reported that the
clothes were ‘very good’. In her General Inspection Report of May 1955, she provided more detail
on the quality of the clothing, stating:
Brightly coloured attractive hand knit jumpers and skirts ... children very well groomed.
7.568 Dr McCabe did use the term ‘very good’ in her Inspection Reports to describe clothing from 1956.
7.569 Dr Lysaght, when he took over from Dr McCabe, commented in his report of 21st March 1966 that
the clothes were ‘good and sufficient’. From then on until the closure of the School, the clothing
of the children was not an issue.
7.570 Sr Alida in her evidence revealed the nature and quality of the clothing of the children when she
first arrived in Goldenbridge:
The clothes were all handmade at that time, there wasn’t a single garment that was
bought. Skirts were made, nightdresses made and they were very basic altogether, the
clothes were ... made from grey flannelette mainly.
7.571 She confirmed that clothes were handed down from child to child:
... They were passed down along the line. They lasted a long time. The nightdresses were
grey flannelette mostly ... and those things had a long life compared with the garments
we are wearing today, so there wasn’t much new bought or many new clothes.
7.572 She acknowledged, however, that the clothing improved gradually from the time when she arrived:
the poverty stricken look that was in Goldenbridge when I went there changed gradually,
everything changed bit by bit. The clothes improved ...
7.573 When Sr Alida was asked whether she was aiming to get the children good clothing that wouldn’t
mark them out as institutionalised, and whether she dressed the children up nicely on specific
occasions, she replied:
What we had in the early days was certainly institutional gear. There has been complaints
that the children were dressed up for occasions. I will be quite honest that the children
were dressed up ... because there were visitors.
7.574 Sr Gianna, who worked in the School in the early 1960s, had a very positive opinion of the clothing
situation, and stated that:
My first impression when I came to the School was that the children had just beautiful
clothes. I would also remember the Sisters in the convent, the children used to come up
on a Sunday for Mass and a lot of the Sisters would make comment about how lovely
they looked. They always had lovely white socks up to her knees, in the summer short
white socks. They might have black patent shoes. They had lovely pleated skirts and
none of them were the same, they were all different types of checks or plaids. They had
nice coloured jumpers, different types of jumpers. I would have always seen them as very
well clad.

7.575 Several of the witnesses complained that, when they first arrived in the School, their clothes were
taken off them. One witness recalled being given clothes by people who took her out of
Goldenbridge on holidays:
Once you gave them up for the wash you mightn’t see them again.
7.576 She specifically remembered that her ‘... confirmation dress was sent over from England. I wore
it on my confirmation day, I never saw it again. I can still see it now, it was a red and white dress’.
7.577 One witness described her distress when she decided not to go to her mother’s funeral due to
the nature and quality of her clothing:
Immediately I could see that we would stand out. We were looking different to other
people. We had these institutional haircuts, up here somewhere, cut like a bowl around
your head, and I was going to be dressed what I’d like to call urchin ... Disgusting clothes.
That’s not what I wore when I went out at the weekend to be with my father. I wore clothes
he bought for me.
7.578 Another witness stated that, when she attended secretarial college while at Goldenbridge, she felt
out of place due to her appearance and clothing:
When you went to that place I was about 14 and a half and all these girls coming in, I am
not vain, I don’t go by appearances but my clothes were raggy compared to the young
women that were going there.
7.579 This sentiment was echoed by a complainant who remembered how their clothing labelled them:
... we were labelled, we had it here, institution, Goldenbridge ... it was the way we walked,
talking about walking. It was the clothes we wore. We tried to be fashionable and were
big frumps.
7.580 Another witness was extremely critical of the changes of clothing and the clothing in general:
There was very little changing of clothing. I think I wore – I know when I went in first we
wore like what they wear in Dickens’s days, the pinafore. That was left on us for months
and months and months, we didn’t change that.
7.581 Some witnesses had positive comments to make about the clothes. One such witness
remembered wearing nice jumpers and good clothes on Sundays:
We had jumpers, we had Sunday jumpers, red jumpers. I am sure they were red. They
were good jumpers for when you are going outside, going with a lady, you had your good
clothes on.
7.582 Another said:

... What was very good every year in the summer Sr Venetia would get all new clothes
and they were put away for us ...
7.583 Another witness pointed out that Sr Alida looked after the girls before they left, providing them
with new clothes:
Say when you were 16 and you left, you always left with new clothes. She made sure you
had a new – everything was new and you had a case; but if you left before you were 16
you wouldn’t get as much but once you left at 16 you were rigged out from head to toe.
Conclusion
7.584 The children in Goldenbridge were conscious of their institutionalised appearance, and
this contributed to the feeling of inferiority recalled by so many. However, clothing was
adequate and, in particular, efforts were made to provide girls with proper clothes when
they left the Institution.
Aftercare
7.585 Aftercare did not feature prominently in the testimony of witnesses before the Committee. The
Sisters appeared to be able to find positions for most of the girls when they left at 16 years of
age. Until the mid-1960s, almost all the girls entered domestic service, and this was the only
industrial training they received. From the early 1960s, some girls were given the opportunity of
attending secretarial college and training as children’s nurses. These girls were also found jobs
when they left.
7.586 Of more concern to witnesses was the lack of any preparation for dealing with the world and, in
particular, the lack of any knowledge of relationships with men. Witnesses spoke of how extremely
vulnerable they were on leaving the Institution. Even the circumstance of their leaving was handled
in an insensitive way, according to many complainants.
7.587 For most complainants, the day of discharge was the day immediately prior to their 16th birthday.
For many, although they knew this was the case, the actual discharge event appeared to be
sudden and unexpected. They spoke about being completely unprepared for this and of receiving
very little encouragement or support from Sr Venetia as they left what was, after all, their childhood
home. One complainant recalled being terrified when she was told she was leaving Goldenbridge.
7.588 Another complainant said that every day in Goldenbridge she used to imagine walking through
the gates and leaving it. When the day came that she was going home, she was petrified. She
recalled being brought into a room in Goldenbridge and being told by Sr Alida that she was going:
She gave me a pair of rosary beads and I left terrified, you would never believe ... I went
back to my grandmother’s from Goldenbridge. I didn’t know how to speak properly. We
spoke our own language, I know that you will find that strange. We were only children,
we didn’t grow up. We spoke differently to each other. If you were brought up for nine
years in a home you all speak the same, you all speak the same language, I spoke this
language. I was terrified of people. I walked, I had a stoop, my shoulders were bent ... I
would not look at nobody. I would not look in your eyes, I couldn’t. I was afraid ... I was
afraid of everything and everybody ... I didn’t know how to survive out there, this was a
new world this was something.
7.589 She said that she did not feel normal when she left Goldenbridge, that she always felt bad, and
she felt people were looking at her. She had no confidence and that, even now at 62 years of
age, ‘I will never have confidence because Goldenbridge took everything, everything from me as
a child, everything, my childhood, everything’.
7.590 This complainant said repeatedly that she was stupid and that she looked stupid, and she said
that most of the children who left Goldenbridge looked stupid. She said that she was treated as a
‘bastard’ in Goldenbridge.
Conclusions
7.591 • Although girls were placed in jobs when they left Goldenbridge they were isolated and
vulnerable in the outside world because they were ill-prepared for it and many had
feelings of inferiority.
• One of the reasons why girls were unprepared was the unworldliness of the nuns. The
inadequacy of the preparation should have been addressed by the nuns in order to
give the girls as much of a chance as possible in their adult life.
General conclusions
7.592 1. Life in Goldenbridge was full of drudgery. Children went from chores to the classroom
to bead making without respite until bead making was discontinued in the mid-1960s.
Staffing levels were poor, and children had to do a great deal of domestic chores.
2. Punishment in Goldenbridge was pervasive. Children were beaten for small
infringements. It was unpredictable, arbitrary and led to a climate of fear, although
after the 1960s it decreased significantly.
3. Goldenbridge was a closed institution with little or no contact with the outside world,
and children became institutionalised as a result and suffered in many ways when
they left.
4. Girls who were incapable of making their way in the outside world were kept on as
carers, despite being wholly unsuitable. They treated children brutally and were able
to do so without any control by the Sisters in charge.
5. Activities which need not have been abusive became so when excessive demands
were placed on the children and fear of punishment was constant.
6. Some children were treated less harshly because they had relatives to look out for
them.
7. There were no internal controls by the Congregation. Much of what was learned about
the Christian Brothers’ industrial schools came from their own Visitation Reports but
there was no such system in Goldenbridge. The Carysfort Mother House appeared to
offer no guidance or supervision whatsoever and even the nuns in the Goldenbridge
convent adopted a ‘hands off’ approach.
8. The regime in Goldenbridge, which was flawed from the outset, did not change for 30
years. The Congregation did not learn from its experience of childcare. Other Orders,
such as the Sisters of Charity, identified the need to rethink the system of large
institutions caring for large numbers of children. The Sisters of Mercy have lamented
the lack of any childcare training in the State, but organisations entrusted with the
care of children could have developed training programmes for their members. The
Congregation had the experience of childcare but failed to develop expertise.
9. The regime became kinder and more child-centred in the late 1960s and the number
of complainants was small, which suggests that even though Goldenbridge was still a
large, crowded institution, better management could have an important bearing on the
quality of life of the children.
10. The Sisters in charge during the relevant period were harsh and unfeeling towards
the children. Humiliation and degradation were constant occurrences, both from the
Sisters and from the lay staff. The children felt that no one cared for them and that
they did not matter. Even the members of the Congregation who spoke to the
Committee failed to appreciate that Goldenbridge was abusive because of the attitude
of the Sisters who ran it. Hard work and dedication were no excuses for a regime that
made children feel despised and worthless.
11. The Department of Education inspections observed some problems but missed
others. The Inspector did address the issues of food and clothing in the 1940s but,
once these obvious problems were solved, the inspector did not report other, real
problems of Goldenbridge, including the excessive chores, the pressures of bead
making and the emotional deprivation. These problems could have been discovered
by speaking to the children.

Chapter 8
St Michael’s Industrial School,

Cappoquin, County Waterford
(‘Cappoquin’), 1877–1999
Introduction
8.01 Cappoquin Industrial School is of special interest because it existed first in the form of a
conventional Industrial School and subsequently as a group home, and in each of these
manifestations it gave rise to major complaints of abuse. The story of the Institution highlights the
need for proper management and supervision, whatever the structure of the care facility. In the
early part of the history, there are examples of severe physical neglect, while the more recent
period is dominated by other failures.
8.02 This chapter also deals with certain allegations made by former residents of St. Joseph’s Industrial
School for Boys, Passage West, County Cork, which was also under the management of the
Sisters of Mercy. A sexual abuser moved from a School in Passage West to the School in
Cappoquin therefore an account of his movements is relevant to the investigation of Cappoquin
Industrial School as well as Passage West.
8.03 St Teresa’s Convent of Mercy was established in 1850 in Cappoquin, County Waterford.
8.04 St Michael’s Industrial School was built in the grounds of the convent and, in January 1877, it
received 36 boys as its first residents. The Industrial School only admitted boys, as there was
already an Industrial School for girls in Waterford City.
8.05 The accommodation limit of the School was increased from 51 to 65 in 1928, and from 65 to 75
in 1938. Until 1944, the State capitation grant was payable on only 51 of the children, as those
under six did not qualify for a capitation grant; from 1944, it was extended to all 75 children.
8.06 In 1969, the School was given permission to keep boys past the age of 10 and, in 1970, was
permitted to admit girls for the first time.
8.07 Until 1985, St Michael’s Industrial School, Cappoquin was under the authority of the Sisters of
Mercy, St Teresa’s Convent, Cappoquin, County Waterford. Accordingly, until 1985 the Mother
Superior of the local convent, St Teresa’s held the highest level of responsibility for the
Industrial School.
8.08 In 1973, a site was purchased from the Cistercian Monks on the Melleray Road in Cappoquin,
and two group homes were opened in 1974. For the purposes of this report, we have called these
homes ‘Group Home A’ and ‘Group Home B’. A third group home (which is referred to in this
report as ‘Group Home C’) was bought as a temporary measure in 1976. The original Industrial
School closed in 1977. All the children in care at that stage were resident in the three group
homes.
8.09 The ownership and responsibility for the group homes were transferred to the South Eastern
Health Board in 2005.
8.10 A total of 1,483 children were recorded in the admission register of St Michael’s Industrial School
over the entire period. For the period 1930 until 1983, the total number of children was recorded
as being 582. In the period 1897 to 1960, it was understood that some 96 voluntary admissions
were recorded for St Michael’s.
8.11 When the boys reached the age of 10, they were transferred to other industrial schools around
the country. Most of the children were committed through the courts in the early years and came
from the counties of Tipperary, Waterford, Cork, Wexford, Limerick, Galway, Clare and Dublin.
8.12 The Mother Superior of the convent appointed the Resident Manager of the Industrial School and,
during the period covered by the inquiry, there were seven Resident Managers, of whom four
account for much the greater part.
8.13 The documents available to the Committee included:

• The reports of the General and Medical Inspections conducted by the Department’s
Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe,1 following her appointment in 1938;
• Memoranda and correspondence between the Department’s Inspectorate and the
Resident Manager and Superior for St Michael’s Industrial School following the
Inspections;
• Memoranda and correspondence between St Michael’s School and the Department in
relation to the financial viability of the School, the reduction in pupil numbers, capitation
grants and such like, and the plans to move from an institutional model to that of
group homes.
Neglect
Sisters and staff working in the Industrial School

8.14 The pool from which the Resident Manager and the Sisters were drawn to work in the Industrial
School was confined to the Sisters in the local convent, St Teresa’s. As there was no central
organisation of the Sisters of Mercy at that time (this came much later), it was not possible to
source Sisters from outside the Community of St Teresa’s.
8.15 The number of Sisters resident in St Teresa’s during the relevant period was approximately 28
from 1940 to 1960, and decreased to 20 in 1985.
8.16 Four Sisters worked full-time in the Industrial School; the remaining Sisters were engaged in other
full-time activities such as primary and secondary teaching. There was a boarding school from
1963 and a commercial college. From time to time, a number of the other Sisters helped out in
the Industrial School. The Sisters who worked full-time were assisted by a number of lay staff. It
would appear from the records that in the region of four to five lay staff were engaged. Their
numbers and roles varied from time to time, but usually included a matron, cook and various
tradesmen.
1

8.17 One witness recalled:
I kind of have memories of one nun looking after about 90 kids in the yard, or in the
School, in very small rooms.
8.18 Another witness said that:

The nuns had a supervisory capacity in the sense that they looked after the medical part
of it and they looked after possibly the dormitories and things like that. But the lay staff
had the day to day practical workings and they would get you in for your meals or they
would get you ready for bed or they would get you for walks... generally the lay staff
did that.
Approach of the Sisters of Mercy to allegations of neglect

8.19 In their Opening Statement, the Sisters of Mercy acknowledged that at times they failed the
children in their care:
... Cappoquin industrial school went through particular periods of difficulty and there were
undoubtedly times when children in our care suffered. We deeply regret the situation, as
revealed by the Department records, regarding the diet and health of the children in the
period 1944–5 ... We acknowledge that there were management difficulties in the 1980's,
which must have impacted on the quality of care for the children ... As a Congregation,
we are deeply sorry for our failings in the running of Cappoquin industrial school at these
particular times and for the effect of this on the children in our care ... It is also true to
say, however, that there were long periods of time when the school was viewed by the
Department as being well run and the children well cared for.
Criticism of conditions during the 1940s

8.20 The early contemporaneous documents reveal a story of serious neglect of the children in
Cappoquin. The Institution was overcrowded, and accommodated children in excess of its
permitted certification number. The children were seriously undernourished and underfed.
8.21 The Institution was managed by the same Resident Manager from the late 1920s to the mid-
1940s.
8.22 The first surviving record of a General Inspection of St Michael’s is dated 1939. The School
received a clean bill of health from Dr Anna McCabe, who described the children as well kept and
well fed.
8.23 The next report was almost four and a half years later and dated 1943. Although this report refers
to a previous inspection carried out the year before, there is no record of this inspection.
8.24 Dr McCabe found on this occasion the following:

• The School was overcrowded (91 children);
• The infirmary had been taken over as a dormitory;
• The food and diet was unsatisfactory, with a lack of butter, meat, bread and sugar. She
carefully examined the amounts given to the children and considered they were all
underfed and she gave the example of 7lbs of mince per day and 7lbs of butter per
week being divided amongst 91 children.
8.25 Dr McCabe stated in her Inspection Report of 1943 that she had drawn the Resident Manager’s
attention to the size of the children on several occasions, and the response she received was that
the children were very active. She was sceptical about this explanation, and she reported the
situation to her superiors in the Department and advised them to write to the Resident Manager.
8.26 In December 1943, the Chief Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools Branch wrote, on
behalf of the Minister for Education, to the Superior of the convent to express serious concern
about the under-nourishment and weight loss of the children, the overcrowding, and the lack of
fire escapes.
8.27 In a written response dated January 1944, the Superior said that the diet that had been approved
by the School Medical Officer (a former Medical Inspector), and the advice of the present Medical
Inspector had been adhered to. The lack of milk was explained by the difficulty in procuring milk
and the proximity of two military stations. She robustly defended the Resident Manager, and
described her as doing all in her power to keep the supply going, and expressed her satisfaction
that there had been no neglect where the children were concerned. She acknowledged the
overcrowding, and went on to say that steps would be taken to reduce the numbers to the
accommodation limit. Notwithstanding the criticisms that had been made against her, however,
she took the opportunity to request an increase of the limit to 80.
8.28 She agreed that the fire precautions were inadequate and intended to consult a qualified authority
on the matter. She stated that financial constraints did not allow for the building of a recreation
hall, and she requested the Department to give them a grant for a new classroom and dormitory,
thereby releasing the old classroom for a recreation hall.
8.29 Dr McCabe did not accept the response of the Superior, and advised her Department that she
could only go by her own observations – the children had not gained weight over a period, and
the only conclusion that could be drawn was that they were not getting sufficient food.
8.30 The Department wrote to the Superior on 3rd February 1944 and requested her to get a report
from her School Medical Officer as to why the children had not gained weight. This report was
furnished to the Department by the Superior on 22nd February 1944. The School Medical Officer
who wrote the report stated that he had agreed the children’s diet in conjunction with Dr McCabe’s
predecessor, but had recommended that the diet be supplemented by cod liver oil. This was done
for a short period, but discontinued during the ‘emergency’, and he suggested that the Department
should now supply cod liver oil to the School. He also stated that all but one child in the School
were ‘abnormal’, and this was why the children were small in stature. In her covering letter, the
Superior stated that the Resident Manager found it impossible to supply the whole School with
cod liver oil.
8.31 Dr McCabe disagreed with the opinion of the School Medical Officer, and suggested that properly
fed children did not need to supplement their diet with cod liver oil. The Minister for Education
was informed of the response of the Superior, and a decision was taken on 14th March 1944 to
send a strong letter to the School. The terms of the letter sent two weeks later were that the
Department did not accept any of the reasons given by the Superior or the Medical Officer, and
directed the Superior to inform the Department of what action she intended to take as soon as
possible.
8.32 The Superior responded that she had consulted with the Resident Manager and staff, and there
had been no falling off in the diet of the children. She suggested that one explanation for the
weight loss may be that there was too long a fast from the evening meal at 5pm to breakfast the
next day. She proposed to introduce a ‘slight collation’ before bedtime. She wrote that she found:
... it was almost impossible to secure sufficient milk, to allow a pint per day to each child
... I may add that as far as our judgement goes – not to mention our good will – every
precaution is taken to secure the health of the children – one of the few advantages that
will probably fall to their future lot ... Should it not be too great an intrusion the Resident
Manager would feel grateful for the address of the firm which supplies Cod Liver Oil
in bulk.
8.33 Clearly frustrated, Dr McCabe informed the Department that she felt the children needed to be
properly fed, and wondered what the ‘collation’ would contain. On 13th April 1944, the Department
once again, wrote formally to the Superior, telling her the children were simply not getting
enough food:
... The position is, however, that the dietary seems, in any case, to have been inadequate
all along as evidenced by the failure of the children to put on weight in the normal way.
What is required is an all-round increase in the amount of food given to the children and
the Minister will be glad to learn that you have made arrangements to have this done ...
It is noted that you have arranged for the issue of a collation before bed-time and I am to
enquire of what it consists.
8.34 By letter dated 20th April 1944, the Superior acknowledged the Department’s letter and said:
... With regard to the dietary, which had been approved of, no change has been made,
with the exception of butter being served to all the children, since Margarine has been
unprocurable. Each child receives one pint of milk per day – more during the summer
months – The Collation consists of bread and butter, which makes a fifth meal each day
... If dietary counts in the matter of health, the immunity of the children of this school from
sickness, should be some proof, at least, of the suitability of the food supplied.
8.35 Dr McCabe held her ground, and told the Department that she was quite satisfied that the diet
was inadequate, and added that, in her opinion, the Resident Manager was a domineering woman
who resented criticism and challenged advice. The Department decided to let matters rest for a
period, as some changes had been made to the diet. They could then monitor to see if the children
gained weight. They instructed Dr McCabe to go to the School in September 1944 and weigh
every child.
8.36 Dr McCabe visited the School on 21st August 1944 and, on the day in question, she reported
receiving an excellent meal, and she stated:
The day I visited the school there was certainly an excellent meal given and I intend to
re-visit this school within the next few months to check up again – however I feel if the
children were always as well-fed as the day I was there that they should put on weight.
8.37 The children had not in fact put on weight and still looked undernourished. She suggested that a
letter be sent to the Manager with the following recommendations:
• To increase butter from 7lbs to 30 lbs per week;
• To introduce chips fried in dripping several times per week;
• To give all children a cup of milk or soup at 11am.
8.38 In an internal Departmental report dated 9th September 1944, the opening sentence set the tone,
and went on to describe the appalling state of affairs that continued to exist:
This is another school run by the Sisters of Mercy which has a long record of semi-
starvation. Dr. McCabe's report following her inspection last November disclosed such an
appalling state of affairs that we went over the head of the resident manager and issued
an ultimatum to the Manager. Dr. McCabe's latest report shows how far we have got. Out
of 75 boys, 61 are under the normal weight for their age-height groups by from 3 lbs. to
21 lbs. The butter ration is exactly the same as it was in November, 1943 – 7 lbs. (At 6
ozs. per head it should be 28 lbs.) The boys continue to look pinched, wizened and
wretched and look lamentably different from normal children.
It is abundantly clear that the only hope of the required improvement lies in drastic action.
The first and most obvious step is the removal of the present resident manager. Dr.
McCabe informs me that she is a ruthless domineering person who resents any criticism
and challenges advice. Her explanation of the children's failure to gain weight – their
"activity" – rivals Marie Antoinette's "why don't they eat cake?". She has bedded down
long since into a groove out of which she cannot be shifted by some annual criticism, and
it seems clear that she holds the manager in the hollow of her hand. I see no hope of
improvement while she continues in office.
The state of affairs existing in this school is so deplorable and indefensible that I think
further strong action is required. I suggest that payment of the state grant be suspended
for three months and, that the manager be informed that there will be a special inspection
say, early next December. If that inspection shows that the underfeeding has ceased and
that the weights generally are on the increase and tending towards normality, payment
will be resumed. If not, consideration must be given to the withdrawal of the certificate.
I might mention that Dr. McCabe's account of the nuns' schools generally is most
alarming. Underfeeding is widespread. In fact, she tells me that in only one school Kinsale
– is she completely satisfied with the diet. The general rule is what she describes as a
bare "maintenance diet" – sufficient to keep children from losing weight but not enough
to enable them to put on weight at anything approaching the normal rate. A third junior
boys' school run by the Sisters of Mercy – Passage West – is in the same category as
Rathdrum and Cappoquin, and she proposes to visit it again shortly. She is strongly of
opinion that we must hit the schools in their purses by threatening to stop grants – and
stopping them if necessary in one or two of the worst cases – if we are to effect an
improvement. This was followed by a series of notes between [the] (Inspector of
Reformatories and Industrial Schools) and Dr McCabe. [The Inspector] was reluctant to
take such drastic action as recommended by the Chief Inspector especially as he felt
stopping the funds might make it worse for the children. Dr McCabe felt the only way to
bring about improvement was to hit the school through the purse strings as similar action
in other schools had brought about change. A decision was taken to insist on the removal
of the Resident Manager with a follow up special inspection in three months. If conditions
had not improved by then the grant was to be suspended. A further suggestion was
mooted, to approach the Bishop of the Diocese, if things did not improve under the new
Resident Manager.
8.39 On 21st September 1944, a statutory request from the Minister to remove the Resident Manager
was sent to the Superior of the convent. This was accompanied by a strongly worded letter, setting
out in detail why the Department could not allow the present state of affairs to continue:
The Minister for Education has had before him the report of the Medical Inspector
following on her recent visit to St. Michael’s Industrial School, Cappoquin, and has learned
with regret that the physical condition of the children continues to be most unsatisfactory.
Only ten boys have reached the normal weight for their age. Sixty-one boys are below
the normal weight by amounts ranging from 3lbs. to 21lbs.
I have already informed you that the Minister cannot allow this state of affairs to continue.
Repeated representations to the Resident Manager having failed to bring about the
desired improvement, I am directed by the Minister to inform you that he is satisfied that
the Resident Manager has failed to discharge efficiently the duties of her position and that
she is unsuitable to discharge those duties, and I enclose a statutory request to you to
remove her from her position.
8.40 The letter went on to state that, if St Michael’s was to continue as a certified industrial school, it
would be necessary ‘to effect a radical improvement in the feeding and care of the children’.
8.41 To achieve this end, a Resident Manager who would take ‘an active and sympathetic interest’ in
the welfare of the children would have to be appointed, and she would have to comply with the
suggestions and advice of the Medical Inspector.
8.42 The Superior responded with a letter dated 10th October 1944, and asked that the Resident
Manager be allowed stay on and promised that things would improve.
8.43 The Minister, by letter dated 20th October 1944, refused to withdraw the statutory request. He
again wrote on 6th and 7th November 1944, as he had not heard from the School about the new
Resident Manager. On 11th November 1944, the Department received a telegram from the
Superior to the effect that ‘the suggested arrangements at St. Michael’s School have been in
effect since 21st ultimo’. The Department understood this to mean that a new Resident Manager
had been appointed.
8.44 The Department then wrote to the Superior on 15th November 1944 and asked for the appropriate
form to be completed with regard to the new Resident Manager. This elicited the following
response from the Superior:
Immediately on receiving a negative reply (22/10/44) to my request, that the then Resident
Manager of St Michael’s School, be allowed to hold the position provisionally, I appointed
Sr. [Adriana]2 to fill the post. I thought it well to defer notifying this waiting the Inspector’s
visit. The strong censure contained in your Communication came as no small surprise, as
apart from the failure of the children to put on weight we had no reason to think that Dr.
McCabe was not satisfied with the general status of the School.
8.45 The Superior wrote to Dr McCabe directly on 27th November 1944 and suggested they meet to
discuss the situation.
A new Resident Manager

8.46 When the Department received the letter advising them of Sr Adriana’s appointment, the Inspector
of Industrial and Reformatory Schools sought Dr McCabe’s views, particularly in the light of the
fact that the appointment papers revealed that Sr Adriana was in her mid-60s. In a handwritten
note, Dr McCabe described Sr Adriana as second in command to the previous Resident Manager:
She is completely under the influence of the previous occupant of the post. She is a bit
of a martinet and in my opinion unsympathetic to children. In short, she is unsuitable for
the appointment.
8.47 On 22nd December 1944, the Inspector wrote to the Superior, setting out all the points that had
led to the decision to request the removal of the Resident Manager. He also pointed out that the
new Resident Manager was unsuitable by reason of her age and her identification with the
previous unsatisfactory regime:
The unsuitability of the appointment is emphasised by the special circumstances in St.
Michael’s. As I pointed out to you in the course of our long correspondence early this
year, the Minister for Education is satisfied that the former Resident Manager persisted,
in the face of repeated representations from the Medical Inspector and the Department,
in maintaining an inadequate scale of diet for the children.
8.48 The letter went on to remind the Superior that the diet was to have been improved:
2

Yet, when the Medical Inspector visited the school in August last, she found that the
medical charts, far from showing the normal increase in weight which would inevitably
have followed upon such an improvement in the diet, indicated that the weights generally
were about the same as they had been on the occasion of her previous inspection in
November, 1943. Generally speaking, there was no significant increase in weight at all.
8.49 The Inspector went on to say that because the Resident Manager had been:
identified so long with this unfortunate state of affairs and had shown herself so unwilling
to take the advice or act upon the recommendations of the Medical Inspector or the
Department that it was felt that no improvement could be hoped for while she continued
to hold office.
8.50 Because the new Resident Manager, Sr Adriana, had acted as assistant to the former Resident
Manager, and because she was older than her predecessor, the Inspector regarded it as
unreasonable to expect her to implement the ‘fundamental changes and improvements’ that
were necessary.
8.51 He went on to address the Superior’s surprise at the strong censure contained in his previous
letter:
I would impress upon you that this Department could have no graver charge against any
school than that the children are not properly fed. As you said in your letter of 5th April
last, health is one of the few advantages that will probably fall to their future lot, and
underfeeding in their tender formative years constitutes the gravest threat to their
enjoyment of it.
The position of Resident Manager in a school like Cappoquin calls for a young, active,
Sister who is sympathetic and kindly disposed towards children, and preferably one who
has been trained as a nurse.
8.52 He concluded by arranging that Dr McCabe would visit the following month to discuss this and
other outstanding matters, such as the accommodation limit, fire precautions etc, with the
Superior.
8.53 The Department’s reservations regarding the suitability of the new Resident Manager were not
acted upon. Dr McCabe visited the School on 27th February 1945 and, in a detailed handwritten
report dated 12th March 1945, she advised the Department that the food had improved and the
children had gained weight. She was still not happy, however, as she found that children had dirty
necks and ears and, when this was drawn to the Manager’s attention, she said it was as a result
of the boys playing about in the turf. Dr McCabe did not feel that this was from where the dirt
had emanated.
8.54 She discussed the School in general with the Superior on this visit, and asked her to provide a
young, active sympathetic nun with knowledge of nursing for the role of Resident Manager. She
was told there were only a small number of nuns in the convent and, as they were not tied in with
any other convent in the diocese, they did not have a place from which they could transfer a nun
to become Resident Manager. The Novitiate of the Congregation was in Waterford but, when nuns
came from the Novitiate to the convent in Cappoquin, they were not transferred from convent to
convent but from the National School to the Industrial School, or vice versa. In view of these
difficulties and the more favourable report from Dr McCabe, the Department decided to give Sr
Adriana a probationary period of six months and then arrange a formal inspection. This decision
was conveyed to the School in a formal letter dated 9th April 1945.
8.55 Six months later, on 29th October 1945, Dr McCabe inspected the School and reported that she
was satisfied with the way things were going in the School under the new Resident Manager. The
annual inspection reports for the next five years refer to the food and diet as no more than
‘satisfactory’, although the School generally was deemed to have improved all round.
8.56 The issue of inadequate diet arose in 1952, when Dr McCabe once again became concerned
about the diet of the children. She reported that, although not ill, they were not too robust. There
were a lot of children with runny noses, and she felt the diet could be more varied. She noted that
the Resident Manager was keen to do her best. On her next visit on 21st October 1953, Dr McCabe
noted a very big improvement in the food, clothing and school buildings.
8.57 Dr McCabe paid 11 more visits to the School during the tenure of Sr Adriana. The reports were
less detailed, and on occasions she reported a number of visits on one report. Overall, she
described continued improvements being carried out. She mentioned Sr Adriana in most reports
as being an excellent Resident Manager, kind to the boys, if a little old-fashioned. In her opinion,
it was a well-run school, with the children well cared for.
8.58 One witness, resident in the Institution for four years in the mid-1940s, recalled:
... Hunger, hunger was a big problem ... All the time ... I had a habit anyway and some of
the other boys had a habit, if we got a crust for our supper or for our tea, we would divide
the crust into small little pieces and keep it in our hand for the intervening period between
the next meal and we would eat one of these things every few minutes. It was a small
little crust. That’s what kept us going.
Conclusions
8.59 • The children were severely underfed for a long period in the 1940s and 1950s.
• On being told by the Medical Inspector that the children were seriously underfed the
Superior’s first priority was to defend the inadequate diet. The state of the children
was not a concern for her.
• The Superior was arrogant and dismissive of the Department’s complaints.
• The Manager was grossly incompetent but the Superior was determined to keep her
in place.
• The Department’s contention that conditions in Cappoquin were mirrored in other
industrial schools run by the Congregation was an indictment of the Sisters of Mercy
generally in respect of their care of children, and disclosed widespread neglect.
• The Department’s assessment also represented an extraordinary admission of failure
on its part in respect of its oversight of the system.
Buildings and accommodation

8.60 Although Dr McCabe’s early reports concentrated on dietary issues, she continued to comment
on the need for improvement to the accommodation and sanitation facilities and, in particular, the
lack of a recreation hall.
8.61 In a report of the mid-1940s, she stated:

I spoke again with the Manager about a Rec. Hall, – she discussed with me several plans
she had for improvement in this school and added if she could receive an extra allowance
she would carry these out – but of course without help financially she was powerless to
make these desired improvements.
8.62 Again, two years later, Dr McCabe’s report states:
a plan has been discussed to have a recreation hall built – but so far that is all.
8.63 In the late 1940s, the Inspector wrote to the Resident Manager expressing his pleasure with the
overall improvement in the children’s health and well being, but noted the serious need for the
following to be carried out as soon as possible:
• improved sanitation facilities;
• erection of a recreation hall;
• provision of adequate fire escapes.
8.64 On receipt of this letter, the Sisters of Mercy informed the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore that
the Department of Education had requested them to provide improvements, and sought his advice
as to what they should do. He wrote to the Department and posed the question:
Is it likely there will continue in the near future to be a demand for such schools in view
of the increasing State grants being made available for widows, orphans, etc.? As the
Head of the Diocese, I honestly feel unable to reply to the request of the Cappoquin
Convent for advice and I would be grateful to you for a helpful direction in this matter.
The numbers in the school may decline and the overhanging debt would remain on the
Community which would have, so far as I can see, no means of paying it off.
8.65 The Secretary of the Department responded to the Bishop, pointing out that he did not accept that
the Sisters of Mercy could not afford to make the necessary improvements, as they had had an
increase in capitation grants recently, some of which was given on the basis that works would be
done. Some other industrial schools had already made improvements, and some had borrowed
to do so. He pointed out that Cappoquin had rarely been anything other than full to capacity, and
any improvements would only enhance the value of the building should it be closed and sold off.
8.66 The Sisters of Mercy also turned to a local TD, and the Department received a representation on
behalf of the nuns, pleading that they needed assistance by way of a grant for the money needed
to carry out the improvements. He was informed by the Department that there were no grants
available and, when the capitation grants were increased in 1948, it was made clear that schools
themselves would be responsible for the supply of equipment and building improvements.
8.67 In the early 1950s, the Department granted the appropriate licence to the Superior to authorise
the necessary works to be carried out to construct a classroom, toilets and general repairs to the
Industrial School in Cappoquin.
8.68 The new classrooms were built, and it appears that the works went ahead before the Department
had finalised the paperwork necessary when schools were erected with State aid. The Sisters
advised the Department that they had had to proceed because of the pressures from the Industrial
School Section to provide recreational and sanitary facilities for the children. The old School had
been condemned by both the Primary and Chief Industrial School Inspectors for a number of
health and safety reasons. The Sisters had gone ahead with the building works and carried out a
number of other renovations and extensions (e.g. new sanitary block and fire escape) for which
they were not making a claim. They pointed out that the weekly allowance of 24s per head was
entirely inadequate to feed, clothe and procure medical attention, as well as clear overhead
expenses: wages of staff, matron, sub-matron, seamstress, laundress, nursemaids.
8.69 The following year, a report was prepared for the Department containing the background as to
how the Sisters came about erecting the new School. It contained debate as to whether the
children could have been sent to the convent school in Cappoquin instead. However, the author
submitted that this would have caused accommodation and integration problems in the local
school, and he recommended that the Sisters should be given the grant.
8.70 This was followed up by a further report that same year, in which the case was considered and a
recommendation was made to pay the grant.
8.71 Despite the recommendation to pay the grant, the Department was reluctant to apply to the
Department of Finance for the funds, and had another inspection carried out by the Schools
Inspector one year later. He also recommended that the grant be paid. He recognised that the
parents in the local schools would not accept the industrial school children, and that there was no
alternative but to educate them within the Industrial School. However, it was deemed inappropriate
to remove the boys under six years of age from the external National School, because of the
financial consequences for that school, and therefore, the Industrial School was only given two-
thirds of the cost of the building, as that represented the actual needs of the School.
8.72 The Sisters had built a school large enough to accommodate 64 children, but the Department
suggested that, as the proper size of the School would have been one to accommodate 48, the
Department of Finance could base the grant on a pro-rata basis. In the early 1950s, the
Department of Finance finally sanctioned a grant, which was two-thirds of the estimated cost of
building the School for 48 pupils.
8.73 Although the Sisters had erected a school big enough to accommodate 64 pupils, a report by an
Organising Inspector to the Department of Education 10 years later found, that despite there being
just 37 children and well equipped classrooms, the School was not sufficiently used.
8.74 In the late 1960s, the Industrial Schools Branch of the Department of Education informed the
Primary Branch that, in furtherance of the policy pursued for some years back of sending industrial
school children to schools which cater for the local children, they proposed to amalgamate
Cappoquin Industrial National School with the convent national school, and sought the views of
the Primary Branch on the matter, asking them to state whether there would be any loss of income
to the Industrial School as a result.
Conclusions
8.75 • Old unsuitable classrooms, poor sanitation and inadequate fire escapes were problems
not addressed until the early 1950s.
• The children were all under 10 years of age and needed facilities for play.
The decline in numbers

8.76 Cappoquin, with an accommodation limit of 75, had never been a big industrial school and,
because of the ages of the children, few of them were available to work on the farm or in trades
that would have served the needs of the School. The School could not have been financially viable
when numbers began to fall in the mid-1960s.
8.77 In the mid-1960s, the Resident Manager wrote to the Chief Inspector of Industrial Schools advising
him that numbers were declining in the School and expressing her disappointment that he had
not managed to visit the School despite his recent journeys south. She advised him that the
Congregation did not feel inclined to expend money on the premises of the School if it was doomed
to closure. She requested that the Department should allow Cappoquin to keep boys up to the age
of 16 years, as had recently been agreed for Mount St Joseph’s Industrial School, Passage West.
8.78 Three months later, the Department received a further letter from the Resident Manager in which
she advised the Chief Inspector that the numbers had fallen to 46 boys, and that the declining
numbers were a source of anxiety to the Congregation who had put a lot of money into
improvements over the years. She repeated her request to retain boys until they were 16, and
emphasised the suitability of the local secondary school in the area where the boys could get a
secondary education.
8.79 Clearly frustrated by the lack of a visit from the Department, the Superior of the convent wrote to
him again two weeks later, and impressed on him the urgency of the situation. She suggested
that, if he could not come to them, they would come and meet him. Two months had passed since
their request to hold on to boys until 16, and he had promised to visit within the week.
8.80 There is no record of whether this meeting took place but, two years later, no progress had been
made, as evidenced by the letter written by the Superior to the Chief Inspector which pleaded with
the Department to help keep the School open:
You must be aware that our numbers are exceedingly low now – before 1st July, they will
be reduced to nineteen – a big drop from our original certified number which was seventy
five! I heard that the Boys’ Jr. School Kilkenny will soon be converted to one for the
handicapped Children. [I wonder if you heard that we made a big effort to get this place
recognised for the Retarded – but, failed, alas!] Now, you will appreciate the fact that it is
a big disappointment to us, that this Institute here, will of necessity, come to an end, within
twelve months from now. We spent thousands of pounds on renovations and
improvements on it, in 1954–1955 – of which [an Inspector] & Dr McCabe can assure you.
In the light of all this, it would be a considerable help to us, and a favour we would deeply
appreciate it, if you would be so kind as to send us the boys under 10 years from Kilkenny,
when the time comes for their departure from there. We know that some of those children
are from Co’s Waterford and Wexford – is it too much to say that we would have a little
claim on these?
I leave this matter to your kind consideration you have no idea of what it would mean to
us to be able to keep this School opened for a few more years. Unfortunately, we are
situated too close to three Boarding Schools, to be able to use this building for the
same purpose.
8.81 In a handwritten note, the Chief Inspector wrote:

spoke to Sr. (Superior) and indicated that she was pushing an open door – that as many
as possible consistent with the determining factors would be transferred to Cappoquin.
8.82 A month later, Dr Lysaght made a surprise inspection of the premises on behalf of the Department
of Education. There were 32 boys there, all aged 10 or under. He recorded eight staff members,
including the Resident Manager. He found the condition of the premises in good repair, and was
informed that the Congregation had spent a lot of money on improvements and was most anxious
about falling numbers. The Resident Manager feared they might have to close down. Dr Lysaght
toured the building and was generally pleased with what he saw. He remarked on the good table
manners displayed by the boys, and felt this was down to the efforts made by the Sisters with
them. He thought the boys had a well-balanced and varied diet. He carried out a medical
inspection, and raised a number of concerns about the arrangements in existence for dental
treatment, which were not very satisfactory. The School in general had a happy and homely
atmosphere.
8.83 In the late 1960s, the Superior again wrote to the Chief Inspector, and requested that they be
allowed to take girls as well as boys, due to a decrease in numbers. She also requested that boys
be allowed to stay until 12 years of age, in order that they could go to the local national and
technical school for further studies.
8.84 In a Department memorandum, the view was expressed that there seemed no reason why these
requests should not be granted, provided accommodation arrangements were suitable. It was also
felt that it would be better to have siblings together.
8.85 The Resident Manager raised again the following year the issue of allowing boys to remain until
their sixteenth birthday, and the Department noted in an internal memorandum that this had been
a success in Passage West. Accordingly, it recommended that St Michael’s Cappoquin be
approved for retention of boys until the age of 16. This was agreed by the Department some four
years after the original request had been made by the Resident Manager.
8.86 In 1969, Sr Carina3 wrote to the Department, seeking permission to allow five senior boys to
receive secondary education in a nearby secondary school. The Department did not accede to
this request.
8.87 Later that year, the Resident Manager wrote to the Chief Inspector acceding to his request to take
boys from Artane, which was about to close. She wanted boys as young as possible. In her
original conversation with him, she had offered to take five, but now felt she could in fact take 10
and maybe, in time, more. A short time later, however, he received a letter from the Resident
Manager in which she stated that, on mature and lengthy deliberation, the Reverend Mother and
her Council:
... are of the opinion that we are not in a position at present, to admit pupils – boys or
girls, nor to take any in future. This means that we must regretfully disappoint you in
withdrawing our consent to take boys from Artane School.
8.88 This brought the Chief Inspector to Cappoquin within a fortnight. He persuaded the Superior to
withdraw the application she had made to close the School.
8.89 In 1970, the Department certified St Michael’s for the reception of girls and retention of boys until
17 years, with special permission.
8.90 In 1972, two years after the publication of the Kennedy Report, a decision was made by the
Department of Education, the Sisters of Mercy and Waterford County Council to erect a model
group home in the grounds of St Michael’s Cappoquin for 15 children of mixed sexes, on a site
offered to them by the School Manager. This plan was the implementation of one of the major
recommendations of the Kennedy Report.
8.91 Later that year, a Department Inspector carried out a general inspection. It is worth noting that
the previous inspection by Dr Lysaght was in 1966 – a period of six years had elapsed since the
Department had carried out an inspection.
8.92 The Inspector found 67 children in care. He noted that, of all the schools he had visited so far,
Cappoquin was most in need of an upgrade. He was encouraged by the fact that one of the
Sisters had just completed the Kilkenny childcare course and was in England on a placement. He
was informed that the plans for a group home were being drawn up, and the Resident Manager
was most anxious to get this underway, as one of her main problems was overcrowding.
8.93 The Inspector noted that, although the plan was to move in the direction of group homes, no extra
effort was being made to introduce any form of grouping. The Resident Manager, although active
3

and devoted, was too old and worn out, and the authorities were further handicapped by recurring
staffing problems. The staff numbers at the time were two full-time Sisters, one temporary full-
time Sister, one Sister in charge of the kitchen with a lay assistant, two part-time Sisters and four
lay staff. A nurse called every few weeks.
8.94 A group of Departmental officials visited St Michael’s Cappoquin in 1972 to further the group home
scheme and select a suitable site. They agreed with the proposal from the Superior that they
should buy a site from Mount Melleray Abbey, as it had the advantage of proximity to the convent.
8.95 The report, drawn up by one of the Department officials following this visit, made a number of
observations regarding the difficulties facing St Michael’s:
A factor in the unsatisfactory condition and management of the residential home in St.
Michaels has been that it is looked upon as the poor relation by the Convent and has not
been properly supported by it. Discreet hints were given to [Sr Clarice]4 that the residential
home demands attention as good as can be given to any sector of the Convent’s
education Commitment ...
... At present there are 65 children in the residential home which is too many for the kind
of set-up there. Apart from this, a small town like Cappoquin would not find it easy to
absorb and integrate a community of children as large as the present.
Add to that the difficulty in getting the Convent to allocate suitable staff to St. Michaels in
adequate numbers and the future might seem most appropriately to lie with two modern,
well-staffed group homes accommodating a total of about 30 children between them.
8.96 A general inspection carried out in the mid-1970s recorded that 65 children were in care. It noted
that only 12 of these were formally grouped (the 12 youngest), with a full-time lay worker and a
Sister on a part-time basis as their staff. The two group homes were well under construction.
8.97 In 1976, the Department of Education appointed Graham Granville as a childcare advisor to the
Department of Education and Inspector of Residential Children’s Homes and Special Schools.
This position was one of the recommendations made by the Kennedy Report in 1970.
8.98 The first general inspection report from Mr Granville is dated 2nd April 1976 and, by then, two
group homes had been opened in the grounds of Cappoquin, with a number of children still
accommodated in the old Industrial School.
8.99 He was disappointed with his visit and found an air of complacency in the old Institution and the
new group homes. The Resident Manager and her assistant were very elderly and had only two
very young staff to assist. The children in the old premises were divided into three ill-defined
groups and:
I can only express my very grave concern at the extremely low standard of care that is
available for the children. I believe that the present environment is damaging by the very
nature of its institutional primitive appearance, it is lacking in warmth and consequently, I
would question the quality of care being applied for the children.
8.100 The report continued in a critical vein: he noted that there were serious staffing problems for some
time and, in fact, in the previous 12 months they had to dismiss a staff member following
complaints from a parent to the medical officer in the area.
8.101 The two new group homes had a young nun in charge of each, who were trained social workers,
and a very limited young, inexperienced staff:
4

The Sisters in charge at the New Group Homes have transferred some of ineffective child
care practises into their Homes. I am most concerned about their attitudes and approach
to the work, they are lacking any impetus and they are negative in a number of ways.
8.102 He decided to return to Cappoquin within a week and speak to the Reverend Mother in private
about the situation. She agreed with his suggestion that the way forward was to phase out St
Michael’s over a five-year period and move towards group homes.
8.103 Later that month, in an internal memorandum, a senior Department official, having read Mr
Granville’s report, suggested that the root cause of the problems in Cappoquin was the lack of
male staff in a school that had, until recently, been a home for boys. Mr Granville confirmed that,
even with normal discharge, it would take several years to reduce the numbers in Cappoquin to
the ideal of about 30, with 15 in each group home. There was general agreement with Mr Granville
that the old building needed to be phased out as soon as possible.
8.104 In June 1976, Mr Granville furnished a confidential report to three senior officials in the Department
of Education, following a visit to Cappoquin when he met with the Resident Manager, and a child
psychiatrist who later joined their meeting.
8.105 His findings were so serious that it is necessary to quote the report extensively:
I visited Cappoquin, St Michael’s Convent ... and observed the following points which I
discussed with the Resident Manager, [Sr Carina] as I have done on previous visits of
mine to Cappoquin. At the latter part of my visit [the child psychiatrist] arrived at St
Michael’s.
(1) The old Convent is in a very serious situation as to the ability to continue to
provide Residential Child Care.
(2) There are neither in my opinion the resources nor the facilities to provide for the
basic needs of children listed as per attached.
(3) At present there is only one group of children, principally boys, but including two
girls, who are nice children but are having bad experiences in the group.
That statement is a personal observation and staff confidential views.
(4) The older boys who should have been discharged now are bullying the younger
children, both physically and emotionally. I have consistently advised [Sr Carina]
to discharge these boys and to the full nature of the problems that are happening
within the precincts of the Convent. This has been confirmed to me by staff that
“bullying” is taking place. There are also a cross-section of problems happening
in the Town of Cappoquin that without doubt are the result of institutionalisation
and negative Child Care attitudes.
(5) Problems are now being encountered by younger boys who clearly wish to follow
the patterns of their peers, and subsequently [Sr Carina] and [the child
psychiatrist] wish to transfer these children ... The inappropriate transferring of
children has to cease at Cappoquin from St Michael’s.
(6) There is a grave danger that the attitudes of the Nuns at St Michael’s will
perpetrate into the new Group Homes. In fact it has done so to some degree
where I know that children are sent to bed for some problem by Lay Staff and
ignored. Modern Child Care practice contains ample sanctions, if skilfully and
professionally applied but the above practice is both detrimental and damaging
to any child and there is absolutely no reason for the above practice.
(7) There is a grave danger that this Residential Child Care Centre may be subjected
to a Press campaign.
(8) The Rev. Mother and myself have discussed these issues, she is extremely
concerned.
(9) Can we request that [Sr Carina] be relieved of her post and Sister [Isabella]5 who
works at St Michael’s.
(10) [The child psychiatrist] has a tremendous influence at St Michael’s. As he is no
longer attached to the ... Health Board I suggest that St Michael’s use the
appropriate Psychiatrist on the Health Board.
(11) Money is being mis-appropriated for the use of past pupils who do not make any
contributions to their care and the Department of Education does not pay any
Capitation, as they are over-age.
(12) If the Group size was reduced drastically at St Michael’s to 1 of 12 children plus
2 Lay Staff and 1 Nun as Resident Manager one should see a marked
improvement in overall care attitudes.
(13) I am going back on the 26th / 27th July to review the whole of the committed
children at St Michael’s and have staff meetings with all the Nuns and the Lay
Staff together with the Rev. Mother.
(14) We are in the area of malfunctioning and nearing neglect totally of the children’s
emotional needs, and we consequently have to scrutinise the future of St
Michael’s very closely or the Department could be seen to be colluding with St
Michael’s Child Care practice.
8.106 Following the June 1976 visit to Cappoquin, Mr Granville met the Resident Manager and
expressed his concern about the presence of older boys who were former pupils and who should
have been discharged. He was particularly concerned about two young girls among the children
in the institution.
8.107 Mr Granville paid a two-day visit in July 1976, and the problem of the older boys had clearly not
been addressed, although he got a commitment that they would be sent out to lodgings.
8.108 He noted that there were 29 children divided between two group homes, and the Resident
Manager had 23 in the old building. She assured Mr Granville that she would make a sincere
effort to create another separate unit to accommodate 12 younger children in the near future
without support from the Department of Education. The 11 remaining children could then be
housed more comfortably in the Institution with some re-arrangement of the existing rooms. Staff
shortages, and one or two particularly difficult children, were stretching the capabilities of the staff.
He met all the staff, including lay staff, and discussed the needs of the children on this visit.
8.109 In a follow-up letter, Mr Granville set out in clear terms the steps to be taken to improve the
situation. These included the discharge of a number of children, regular reviews of the children’s
progress, regular staff meetings, and better contact with the social workers with regard to Health
Board children, and he enclosed a number of Master Index Books for record keeping. He decided
for the time being not to transfer some of the younger children out of Cappoquin, on the assurance
from the Resident Manager that she would follow up the proposed new unit.
8.110 A bungalow was purchased by the Congregation in 1976, and the Department agreed to help with
the cost.
8.111 By November 1976, the old building had been vacated and replaced by the two purpose-built
group homes and the new bungalow.
5

8.112 This was when the Industrial School ceased. Letters and correspondence from then on appeared
on notepaper headed St Michael’s Childcare Centre.
Conclusions
8.113 • Children were sent to Cappoquin not because it was suitable for their needs but to
keep the Institution open.
• When falling numbers jeopardised the existence of the School, the nuns threatened to
resign their certificate unless more children were assigned to Cappoquin, and the
Department acceded to the request, notwithstanding the serious deficiencies of which
it was aware.
• The Department’s own files contained evidence of the troubled history, inadequate
facilities and poor management in the Industrial School which should have led to
serious concerns about the placement of more children there.
The era of the group homes

8.114 For the period 1977 to 1990, the average number of children accommodated in the three new
group homes was approximately 50. It appears from the documentation that the aim was to try to
get this number reduced to an average of 30 between two group homes, Group Home A and
Group Home B, with 15 in each.
8.115 In the late 1970s, the Resident Manager, Sr Rosetta,6 notified the Department that she had
appointed Sr Callida,7 then House Parent in Group Home A, to be her deputy.
8.116 In May 1978, the three group homes had between them 48 children under the care of 10 full-
time staff.
8.117 In 1978, Mr Graham Granville carried out a three-day general inspection and, overall, he was
satisfied with the homes. He was not happy at the lack of social work support for the children, but
commented favourably on other aspects of the facility. He thought the environment in the group
homes was excellent, although he did highlight the need for refurbishment in the two original
houses.
8.118 Mr Granville observed that there was a major problem on the educational front if the children were
to be considered for technical/vocational schools. He also noted that no male staff had been
employed because (a) no suitable candidate had applied, and (b) past experiences had caused
problems of quality of personnel.
8.119 In a letter to Sr Rosetta, he outlined some of his observations and recommendations. He said that:
... overall there has been constructive valuable improvement in the residential child care
policy that is showing results in the elements of human relations and child development.
8.120 He went on to praise the contributions of the three Sisters who had taken charge of the three
group homes:
The influence of Sisters [Isabella], [Eloisa]8 and [Callida] is to be commended within the
group homes. And consequently their direction and evidence of the care staff is
meaningful.
6
7
8

8.121 He recommended that punishments should be recorded, and that the Manager maintain a record
of major punishments that may be administered, noting the name of the child, date of punishment,
reason for punishment and punishment administered.
8.122 No record of corporal punishment was kept.
8.123 Mr Granville made strong recommendations on what qualities a new Resident Manager should
possess, stressing the importance of proper record-keeping and communication with the child’s
family and with social workers:
That any future change in the Resident Manager’s part should consider
(a) that the Resident Manager has to adopt a major leadership role. To be
representative of the Communities child care policy at all levels and to ensure
that this policy is practiced by all the care staff in the group homes.
8.124 He recommended that the children should be allowed every opportunity to develop their individual
personalities. They should also be encouraged to forge links with their homes. Because the group
homes would afford a more normal experience of growing up, he thought that boarding-out of
children for weekends and holidays would no longer be necessary.
8.125 Finally, he hoped that male staff could be employed in the future.
8.126 In a number of internal handwritten documents within the Department, efforts were made to try to
expedite the re-furbishing programme and explore what the Department could do to improve the
chances of the children attending secondary level schooling.
8.127 Later that year, Sr Rosetta formally advised Mr Granville that, owing to extreme pressure of work
both at school and community level, she had to resign as Resident Manager, and appointed Sr
Callida in her place and Ms Noonan9 as co-ordinator from that date.
Sr Callida
8.128 Sr Callida had been in charge of Group Home A since it was first set up in 1975, when she began
with 17 children in care. She had no staff initially and was told to recruit her own team.
8.129 When she took over the role of Resident Manager, she said that her objectives were to give the
children stability, consistency and continuity. She also hoped to concentrate on education, health
and development. She moved into a room in one of the homes, Group Home A, and set up her
administrative office there.
8.130 She continued as Resident Manager until the early 1990s, when she was removed following the
resignation of two lay care workers and an investigation into complaints against her.
8.131 Mr Granville did not immediately appreciate the problems that were developing following Sr
Callida’s appointment. Sr Callida appeared to perform her duties as Resident Manager well and
took a particular interest in the children’s education.
8.132 Over the next two years, Mr Granville noted that the children seemed happy, although he was
concerned at the lack of visits from social workers and the lack of contact with the children’s
families.
8.133 Mr Granville carried out a General Inspection in the early 1980s. He noted that there had been
staff problems but he did not specify what they were. He said that he had discussed them with
9

the people concerned, and he attributed them to the inexperience of Sr Callida, the Resident
Manager.
8.134 He concluded that Cappoquin was going through a ‘slightly chequered period in their development’
and saw no reason why ‘the present turbulence cannot be overcome and a stable path be once
more achieved’.
8.135 In a letter to the Reverend Mother of the Cappoquin Community, he suggested that she bring the
three Sisters in charge of the group homes together to try to formulate a unified childcare policy.
He suggested that:
the three religious Sisters meet weekly as a team to coordinate and cooperate in the child
care practice. At the moment there are three distinct autonomous units in operation and
it would be my opinion that “weak links” have been provided with an opportunity to grow,
and that has not been in the interest of the child care practice.
8.136 He also recommended that a deputy be appointed to cover periods when Sr Callida was absent.
8.137 An abbreviated version of the same letter was sent to Sr Callida, Resident Manager, with a number
of suggestions, including delegation of full responsibility to Sr Isabella during her absences and
the holding of regular staff meetings to build up communication.
8.138 Other problems were emerging. The numbers of children in care were dropping and one of the
houses was under-occupied and over-staffed, which had serious financial implications for the
Congregation. In addition, the lack of any social work intervention, especially for the children
committed by the Department of Health, who did not come under Mr Granville’s remit, was causing
serious concerns in the Department of Education.
8.139 At around this time, however, staff in Group Home A, the group home managed by Sr Callida,
were becoming increasingly alarmed at how the house was being run.
Evidence of former care staff

8.140 Evidence was given by three lay staff members who worked in the homes under Sr Callida’s
management and two of whom made complaints at the time.
8.141 Ms Linehan10 worked in Group Home A from the early to late 1980s. She began work immediately
after leaving school as a carer and, after a few years, was appointed as House Parent in Group
Home A where Sr Callida was Resident Manager.
8.142 She said that, although the children in Group Home A were well provided for materially, and ‘all
their basic needs were met’, they were not cared for emotionally. She said they were afraid of Sr
Callida, and that she herself had witnessed a child with marks on her leg as a result of a beating
from Sr Callida: ‘It was the first time I had seen marks on a child there. And it was a shock and it
was a surprise to me’.
8.143 Although that was the only time she had seen evidence of Sr Callida’s treatment of the children,
‘There was other times when kids said that she did hit but I was never there and I never heard’.
8.144 Ms Linehan said that at the time she did not feel she was in a position to question the way Sr
Callida managed the home. She said there was a regime in place that she could not question,
although she would have disagreed with aspects of it: ‘A lot of the time I would be afraid to speak
out ... I was afraid to lose my job maybe’.
10

8.145 Everyday issues were handled harshly:
I just felt it was too strict and just different things, every day things like that. You know, I
mean when I look back on it it was again the time where – it was very, very strict being
in care for kids, very, very hard.
8.146 Although she accepted that it was a different era and childcare practices were different, she
believed the regime was unnecessarily hard:
Looking back on it. But I think sometimes Callida could have made it a little bit easier for
the children to be in care, because being in care was hard enough, being there without
your parents, and then having somebody sometimes so strict on you, I think was hard.
8.147 She felt unable to express disagreement with Sr Callida, and none of the other care staff were
able to do so either. She described Sr Callida as ‘a very strong person and when she said
something that was it, you had nowhere else to go’.
8.148 This ex-staff member was concerned about three specific issues in Group Home A:
• She did not think that it was appropriate for past pupils to stay in Group Home A with
the children. She believed that some of them were a bad influence on the children.
Past pupils were not allowed to stay in either of the other group homes – only Sr
Callida allowed it. The Department had been concerned snce 1976 about the practice
of past pupils being allowed to stay over. They had been assured that the practice
would cease and that lodgings would be found for the ex-pupils elsewhere. However,
in Group Home A the situation was allowed to continue.
• Sr Callida went absent for days at a time, without giving any prior notice, and without
leaving any contact address or number. The witness, who was in her 20s, was left in
charge of up to 16 small children without any support from the Resident Manager or
any other Sister in Cappoquin.
• Sr Callida regularly drank alcohol – usually whiskey – in the group home. She said that
this occurred in the evening and was often in the sitting room in front of the older
children. She said that Sr Callida would not be so drunk as to be ‘falling all over the
place or anything, but I felt at the time it was drunk when she would slur a word’.
8.149 She did not believe that Sr Callida’s drinking affected the day-to-day running of the home, but it
did affect her personality:
I suppose not as the running of the everyday stuff, because the staff, I think, would do a
lot more of that, of the running of the house and the caring of the kids. But I just felt
sometimes that it probably affected her personality, maybe the day after or something
that she would be a little bit hung over. Maybe that affected her work.
8.150 Another ex-staff member who worked in Group Home A immediately after Ms Linehan left
confirmed this witness’s account, although she was more critical of the impact of all the problems
on the children.
8.151 Ms Tierney11 started work in Group Home A in the late 1980s when she was aged 20 years. She
had no experience in childcare, having worked in an office previously:
[Group Home A]. My first impressions were of all these dirty scruffy children. That is an
awful thing to call them but that's what it was. It was just a chaotic house and there were
just children everywhere. The first day I went there Callida was on her own and there
were just small children all around the house, all over the place, and the house was very
11

shabby as well ... At the time I started there, there were 10 to 12 children living in the
house ... 6 months to 16 years.
It was just a very chaotic place to work. I didn't really understand the workings of the
place or anything like that. As a staff team everyone seemed to be afraid of Callida. Any
time I would answer the phone it was like "is she there?" That was the first reaction, "Is
she there?”
8.152 There was no proper routine, no timetables and new staff just ‘fell in’ with the household duties
and minding the children:
We were basically there to mind the kids, a house full of children, and very young children.
At one stage there was seven of them under five. You would be on your own with them.
At the time there seemed to be really a lack of staff there. For a space of two months or
three months there was two of us working on our own, back to back. We did a 14 day
stint, back to back twelve hour shifts, with no support from anyone. I was often there on
my own with 12 children ... I was on my own a lot there. You would have to get up and
get a load of them out to school, get their breakfast and get them all out to school and
then you had four or five toddlers at home all day. And you had to clean the house as
well. It was very hard.
8.153 She found communication between management and staff was non-existent. It was a frightening
place to be for staff and children, and she did not feel safe. The two group homes were pitted
against each other. The children in Group Home A looked down on the children in Group Home
B. Toys and clothes were in better supply in Group Home A. There was no support from social
workers. Ex-residents frequently arrived at the home and were allowed to sleep over. One
particular ex-resident was an older man with a history of alcohol and drug abuse. The children
were terrified of him. She witnessed the Resident Manager’s abuse of alcohol on numerous
occasions, both inside and outside the group home.
8.154 Ms Tierney said that Sr Serena,12 the Superior of the convent often stayed overnight in Group
Home A with Sr Callida. This Sister did not interact with the staff at all but, she said, had a
particular child whom she singled out for attention and whom she would keep with her during her
visits to Group Home A:
She just was around all the time. She was around all the time ... Every day after work she
would come and she would call into our place most days after work. It was a regular
occurrence. She would stay and wander around and she would be down to Callida. She
had a little pet that was her little pet, one of the kids that was there, and she would come
in and she would make a big fuss over this child and hold her hand and wander around
and really make the rest of the kids feel very inferior to this one particular child.
8.155 Sr Serena and Sr Callida went up to the convent at about 6pm for prayers, and then they would
return to the Home for the evening.
8.156 They went away together quite often without giving notice. Sr Callida had a little girl who slept with
her at night, and she would sometimes take that child or other children with her on her excursions:
Also, the fact that the kids slept in the bedroom, and she nearly always had a young child
sleeping in the bedroom with her. It just became a habit over the years. Some of the staff
used to try and get the child not to go in there but the child just always went in and she
always brought her in. When she would go down to bed at night she would bring her
with her.
12

8.157 When Sr Callida went away:
She used bring her with her most of the time. Most of the time they would bring some of
the younger kids away with them.
8.158 She was not told where the children were or how long they would be gone:
No. We might be told, maybe, to pack a bag for someone an hour before they went,
but that was about it. We just weren't important, we weren't told anything. We weren't
told anything.
8.159 Ms Tierney recalled one occasion when a man walked into the Home accompanied by two other
men and took his children away. Sr Callida left within half an hour and did not return for two days.
In the meantime, this young care-worker did not know where the children were or whether the
Gardaı́ had been informed about their removal. She said she was very traumatised by the incident
and was frightened that the father would come back in the night.
8.160 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.
8.161 She recalled on one occasion that Sr Callida was so drunk that she fell into the playpen on top of
one of the children.
8.162 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.
8.163 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.
8.164 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.
8.165 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.
8.166 Matters came to a head in the early 1990s. She realised that the children needed better support
and it was not forthcoming. Having spoken with her family, she decided that she should report her
concerns to the Reverend Mother of the Diocese and that she would then hand in her notice.
Within two weeks, the Reverend Mother came to the home and interviewed staff.
13

8.167 Another witness, Ms Waters,14 was House Mother in Group Home B, the second group home at
Cappoquin from the 1980s, and she gave evidence about her serious concerns at the way Group
Home A was run and the impact this had on the children there.
8.168 Ms Waters started work on a part-time basis in Cappoquin in the mid-1970s, shortly before it
closed as an industrial school. She did not have any formal childcare training, apart from
completing a correspondence course in the early 1980s. Eventually, she became House Mother
of Group Home B in the mid-1980s.
8.169 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.
8.170 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.
8.171 From the time that Sr Callida became Resident Manager of the two group homes in the early
1980s, management problems arose almost immediately, as had been identified by Mr Granville
in his General Inspection Report of this time.
8.172 Ms Waters gave evidence of a system that was incapable of delivering a proper level of childcare.
One of her main problems was the lack of respect shown to the care staff by Sr Callida that led
to unhappiness amongst the staff. They were not consulted about anything and were not even
given notice of their work schedule, which was often delivered a day in advance on the back of
an envelope. There was no regular timetable for rostering of staff, which made family life for the
care workers very difficult.
8.173 In addition, she identified differences in the way the two homes were run. Group Home A, which
was managed directly by Sr Callida, received preferential treatment in terms of finance and
facilities, which impacted on the children in Group Home B.
8.174 There was very little communication between the two homes. Although she reported directly to Sr
Callida, she rarely saw her. There was no formal system for staff meetings or meetings to review
the children’s progress. She tried to talk to Sr Callida about the problems but she was not willing
to listen. She also recalled that, during this time, there was no support from social workers for the
staff and children.
8.175 She was also aware that children were experimenting with each other sexually and reported this
to Sr Callida. She felt there was a need to give the children some education in the facts of life,
to make them more aware, and she communicated this to the Resident Manager, but this did
not happen.
8.176 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
14

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.
8.177 Although she spoke of her concerns to the girl’s social worker, she received no help or support
from her and was left to handle the situation herself.
8.178 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.
8.179 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.
8.180 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’.
8.181 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.
8.182 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.

8.183 She requested a meeting to discuss the matters raised in her letter. She did not get a response
to her letter, and no meeting was forthcoming. Sr Callida appeared insulted that she would make
such a request, and her relationship with Sr Callida deteriorated further.
8.184 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.
8.185 Sr Serena then held a staff meeting, where some of the staff members who had been complaining
did not support Ms Waters and so, according to Ms Waters, Sr Serena felt she could not take the
matter any further.
8.186 Ms Waters said, ‘I just couldn’t stick it any longer, I couldn’t cope any longer’ so she went directly
to Sr Viola15 who was the Provincial and the person to whom Sr Serena was ultimately
accountable. She raised the contents of the letter she had written to Sr Callida with Sr Viola. Sr
Viola came to Group Home B a month later and interviewed all the staff who, this time, were
prepared to confide in her. Her findings resulted in the dismissal of Sr Callida.
8.187 The only conclusion that can be drawn from the picture painted by these witnesses is one of a
complete breakdown of communication between management and staff. Management structures,
timetables and proper rostering were simply not in place. This had a detrimental effect on the
daily lives of the children.
8.188 This disorganisation was confirmed by the evidence of Mr Lloyd,16 Resident Manager from the
early 1990s. He described what confronted him when he arrived to replace Sr Callida. He found
the buildings were very run down. Lots of very young children were in the Centre. Few, if any,
records were kept of the children. The financial records were in disarray. The previous Resident
Manager had allowed children to sleep in her bedroom. This practice was absolutely inappropriate,
and he considered there were no circumstances in which a young person should ever stay in a
staff member’s room. Children and staff told him that children had been slapped regularly and
inappropriately. When he first arrived he witnessed a staff member slapping a child and
immediately banned the practice. The centre was chaotic; there were staff shortages, impossible
rosters and very low morale. Relatives would turn up drunk. There were no boundaries for the
children and they had no structure in their daily lives. He set about dealing with the problems.
8.189 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.
8.190 He found that Sr Callida had a close friendship with the senior social worker, who, together with
Sr Callida, impeded Mr Lloyd’s efforts to effect change.
15
16

8.191 The problems were compounded by Sr Callida’s reluctance to disengage from the Institution and
the children in it:
At first it was she would kind of meet the children coming home from school, just down
the road and be speaking to them as they were coming up. She would just sit on the wall.
Some of the young people would have felt uncomfortable about that. Another young
person, a five year old girl, was being taken out by another nun, Sr Serena. At first what
I was aware of, like, she had befriended this young person and would take her for a spin
maybe once a week or once a fortnight, down ... to her family home. I subsequently found
out that she was picking up Sr Callida on the way, they were meeting. So I had to put a
stop to that as well, that access.
8.192 He also observed that some of the children were psychologically damaged by the manner in which
the previous Resident Manager selected a number of favourites.
8.193 Mr Lloyd set about introducing changes. New staff rosters were developed, pocket money for the
children was introduced, and the children were allowed out for proper and constructive reasons.
He set about getting the younger children fostered out to befriending families. Proper contact
between children and their families was introduced and encouraged. He found that some of the
children had been in care for far too long. No real attempt had been made to consider when they
would leave care. He held meetings with social workers to build up a profile and history of the
children, some of whom had no idea why they were in care in the first place.
8.194 There was no aftercare system in place. He introduced a system, whereby a staff member was
allocated to each child. They worked their normal roster, but had specific responsibility for a
particular child’s homework, dental visits etc. They then submitted a quarterly report for the
Resident Manager on the progress of each child. He moved the office from Group Home A to
Group Home B, in an effort to redress the feeling amongst the staff and children that one house
was more favoured than the other.
8.195 He encountered huge resistance from the senior social worker to his efforts to review children
properly and to the introduction of fostering. He also encountered interference from the former
Resident Manager, as outlined above.
8.196 Ms Linehan and Ms Waters subsequently worked under Mr Lloyd. They described the contrast
between him and Sr Lucilla. The changes brought about by the new manager resulted in proper
structures being put in place; training for staff improved; regular staff meetings were held; and the
children were much happier, safe and more settled.
8.197 The Congregation’s submission that this witness had a tendency to overstate the degree of his
own contribution was unfounded. Mr Lloyd was an enlightened and progressive Manager, who
transformed the working conditions for staff in the group homes and created a secure environment
for the children.

8.198 Sr Callida was appointed as Resident Manager to Group Home A in the late 1970s, and the
problems identified by the former staff members who gave evidence to the Committee were
apparent almost immediately. In particular, Sr Callida’s drinking became known to the Community
in the convent in the year following her appointment, but nothing was done to ensure the safety
and protection of the children in her care.
8.199 Sr Rosetta was Resident Manager of Cappoquin for two years in the 1970s, and she appointed
Sr Callida as her successor. Sr Callida was a young Sister who had worked in the group home
for some years prior to her appointment. She had completed the childcare course in Kilkenny in
the mid-1970s, and was a secondary school teacher by profession. She was, in short, an ideal
candidate to take up the position of Resident Manager, and appeared to have all the attributes
necessary to make a success of the job. However, there were fundamental flaws to her character
that caused major problems in the School: she was not a good manager/administrator, and she
had very poor communication skills. These flaws were exacerbated by her relationships with two
members of the Community that prevented proper monitoring of her behaviour and a long-standing
problem of alcohol dependency.
8.200 The problems caused by Sr Callida’s personality were obvious to any observer of the group
homes, and yet the Sisters in the Community in Cappoquin failed, for over a decade, to act to
protect the children in her care, who were traumatised and neglected as a result.
8.201 Sr Rosetta identified Sr Callida’s drinking problem as dating to an incident in which one of her
residents was killed in an accident on his first day at work. He was 16 years old at the time, and
his death had a severe impact on Sr Callida. Other Sisters who gave evidence to the Committee
have also traced her alcohol dependency to this event that occurred in the late 1970s:
It was the first of drinking that I heard was that the older boys who came back and knew
him in St Michael's and stayed in the group home, I heard there was drink flowing, but I
couldn't do much about it at that sensitive time. Seemingly it must have gone on from
there, that was [the late 1970s], I don't know which. I think that made an awful change in
her life. Maybe I didn't give her enough attention to help her over that or whatever. It was
only looking back on it maybe I should have. The drink story went on from there.
8.202 Sr Rosetta confirmed that other members of the Community shared her concerns at Sr Callida’s
drinking. Members of the public also voiced their concern: ‘Yes. Well, there was other people
outside told us too about it’.
8.203 Until the early 1980s, Sr Rosetta continued as Superior in the convent in Cappoquin and did
nothing to address the issue of Sr Callida’s behaviour, other than, in the late 1970s, to appoint a
fellow Sister, Sr Melita,17 as a ‘companion’ to encourage her to interact more fully with the
Community in the convent. Unfortunately, Sr Melita’s ability to alert her superiors as to the
seriousness of Sr Callida’s mismanagement of Group Home A was compromised when they
developed a close intimate relationship. Sr Melita remained in Cappoquin until the mid-1980s,
when she was transferred.
8.204 Sr Rosetta was then replaced by Sr Leola,18 who let matters deteriorate even further.
8.205 In the mid-1980s, the six Sisters of Mercy convents in the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore
came together under the overall control and direction of the Provincial Superior of the Diocese,
who was Sr Viola. This Sister thereby assumed ultimate responsibility for the Sisters’ undertakings
in Cappoquin.
8.206 Sr Viola was aware of Sr Callida’s drinking before her appointment in the mid-1980s. She had
been approached by a member of the public in the early 1980s, who expressed concern about
what was happening in Cappoquin. She suggested that the complaint should be communicated
to the Superior in Cappoquin, but she herself did not follow it up.
8.207 In addition, she heard reports within the Community:

So I would have picked up a little bit from the leader in Cappoquin that there was some
– a little concern around the possibility of drink in the childcare home.
17
18

8.208 When asked whether she had any concerns about the impact of Sr Callida’s behaviour on her
ability to carry out her work, she said:
Had I any concern? I suppose the answer to that is that I didn't – because I had never
seen it personally and I had never seen the effects of it and everything I was hearing, if
you like, or seeing myself didn't support the fact that it was affecting management or the
home. So, I didn't address that part of it then.
8.209 She did not take immediate action, but instead set about building trust with Sr Callida:
my memory, would have been that if this is a concern then we need to build trust, to build
a relationship, to come to some understanding of childcare, so that we can address the
issue when we have more concrete evidence. So that was a deliberate decision that
we took.
8.210 Sr Viola said that this process of building up trust involved calling over to the group home and
having tea with Sr Callida on a few occasions during the year, as well as attending in-service days
with her.
8.211 The emphasis, however, was all on Sr Callida and, by her own admission, Sr Viola did not talk to
the staff or to the children during these visits. She did not identify the chronic problems that were
causing such difficulties for the children and the staff there:
I certainly would have felt that the place looked okay. The children looked okay. To me, I
wouldn't have had any immediate concerns at the time.
8.212 This was a missed opportunity, and it allowed Sr Callida to continue behaviour that was, by any
standards, inappropriate and dangerous.
8.213 Sr Viola appointed Sr Serena as Superior to the convent in Cappoquin, and gave her instructions
to keep an eye on Sr Callida and report back on her behaviour. At the same time, Sr Callida’s
previous confidante, Sr Melita, was transferred from Cappoquin and appointed as Superior in
another school. This was regarded by Sr Callida as a great loss, both to her personally and to the
group home, and she and a number of the children rang Sr Viola to express their dismay at Sr
Melita’s departure.
8.214 Sr Viola gave evidence that she had briefed Sr Serena on Sr Callida’s alcohol problem when she
appointed her to Cappoquin, and had asked her to monitor the situation for her. Her evidence in
this regard was vague, however:
I would be very surprised if I didn't. Because it was the thing that we had seriously tried
to build. Liliana19 and myself had seen that as a concern and it was like please observe,
please support, please build the relationship and keep in touch with us.
8.215 Sr Serena in her evidence was quite clear that she was only told to integrate Sr Callida into the
Community in the convent, and was not asked to monitor her drinking.
8.216 Sr Serena found the move to Cappoquin difficult. When asked by Sr Viola to go there as local
leader, ‘very, very, very reluctantly I said yes’.
8.217 Sr Serena did not see her remit as extending to the children in the group homes. She stated that
she was the leader of the Community in Cappoquin, and also had teaching duties in the local
secondary school, but did not regard the running of the homes as something she was concerned
with. She visited Group Home A very regularly, as her friendship with Sr Callida grew, and even
19

helped out with homework occasionally, but she never saw her role as any more than that of
a visitor.
8.218 At first, Sr Serena felt she was resented by the children and by Sr Callida, who were still feeling
the loss of Sr Melita. By degrees, however, she built a close relationship with Sr Callida:
Yeah, the friendship between us developed. Yes, it took almost a year, I think, before –
well, it took her a long time to warm to me, as well, because I think Sr Melita was a good
friend of hers and I felt Callida probably missed her a lot. And it would have taken Callida
a long time to get to know me as well. So, it didn't happen overnight, it was a process
over really the first year, I think. The first year.
8.219 After that first year, she began to spend more and more time with Sr Callida:
Sometimes I went down – this is later on now when I got to know her quite well and we
became quite friendly. We would go down and we would go out socialising, the two of us,
away from Cappoquin. We would go out and have a drink or two. I would have a drink
and so would she.
8.220 They would both return to the group home after a night out, and Sr Serena stayed with Sr
Callida overnight.
8.221 Sr Serena confirmed that the children were left under the care of a lay worker during these
excursions.
8.222 The two Sisters also went away for holiday weekends together:
There were some weekends. With Sr Callida, yeah, there were some weekends that we
went away. I remember – and I remember some of the children coming with us. Two or
three weekends through the time that I was there. But not all of the children. There would
be three or four children with us ... Well, the place I remember is [Kerry] ... [The hotel] had
special – at least I was told they had special bargains, or whatever. So it was generally, as
far as I remember it was [a] hotel in [Kerry], yeah. There were good weekends I thought.
I thought they were good weekends.
8.223 Sr Serena conceded that it was unusual for a Sister in a Community to go away for the weekend
with another Sister, ‘Well, you know, I know it wasn't right. It wasn't’.
8.224 As her relationship with Sr Callida developed, she became more compromised:
As I got to know Sr Callida a bit better it began to interfere with my job as local leader.
Because I felt within myself a great discomfort that I was not doing what I should have
done. I felt sometimes as time went on, that I was living a lie and that made me extremely
unhappy within myself. That is one of the huge difficulties, looking back on my time in
Cappoquin, that is one of my great sorrows, that is why I asked the Community, especially
on one occasion, when Cappoquin was closing down; I asked for their forgiveness, I felt
I let them down. In fact, I felt I let everyone down, including Sr Callida and Viola.
8.225 Her ability to do her job was affected:

Well, I suppose, I felt I compromised myself and therefore I didn't have the freedom,
maybe, to – let me think about that now. I sort of lost my independence and my right to
be independent and, therefore, I really I felt I had no voice anymore and no authority over
anything really, including the community. The community were extremely kind and very –
I don't know what they understood, I never asked them, but they were extremely accepting
and forgiving, I suppose, and kind. But I was deeply unhappy within myself for a long time
towards the end. For a long time. And I suppose, yeah, I was. That has lived with me
ever since.
8.226 When asked what the sleeping arrangements were for the children that accompanied them on
these weekends, she said that they all shared a family room:
Well there were small double beds, so there would have been – if there were three or
four of them they would have been two by two, two by two in the beds and Sr Callida and
I would have shared the main bed. So we would have all been in the same room.
8.227 Sr Serena was remorseful for letting down her Community and Sr Viola and Sr Callida. She was
asked whether she felt she had let the children down, ‘I suppose I didn't – I wouldn't have seen it
like that’.
8.228 She admitted that her relationship with Sr Callida prevented her from seeing how bad things were
in Group Home A, and it also lost her the trust of the staff there:
I thought initially that I got on well with the staff, because we used to chat and talk around
the table and obviously they lost any confidence – they knew I didn't have a role there
but at the same time they lost any confidence I think or any trust they had in me, which
was absolutely understandable. That was quite significant because when we did have
a meeting eventually it really went nowhere because they had lost trust in me. And I
accept that.
8.229 Throughout the first three years of her time in Cappoquin, Sr Serena was in almost daily contact
with her immediate Superior, Sr Viola, who taught in the same school:
That's another place where I reneged my responsibility because I was torn between loyalty
to Viola and the Congregation and loyalty to Callida. So because I was carrying so much
self-blame and shame and guilt and all sorts of things around my role – or myself, I tended
to shy away from talking about things like that to Viola. So that's why I said a minute ago
that I failed Viola as well.
8.230 The result of this conflict of loyalties was that, when Ms Waters, the House Mother of Group Home
B, came to her with serious complaints about Sr Callida in the late 1980s, she did not tell Sr Viola
but tried to deal with the matter herself. She failed dismally, and Ms Waters went over her head
to Sr Viola, who came and interviewed staff and removed Sr Callida from her position as
Resident Manager.
8.231 Sr Callida’s removal came as a shock to Sr Serena, who claimed that she had no idea that things
had deteriorated as badly as they had by the early 1990s. However, she knew of the problems
that caused so much distress to the staff. She was aware that some ex-pupils regularly stayed
overnight in Group Home A, and she was also aware that these men were sometimes drunk and
would be dangerous around young children. She was also aware that Sr Callida absented herself
from the home for long periods and that she regularly drank, sometimes in the company of Sr
Serena. What was clear from Sr Serena’s evidence was that she never considered the safety or
welfare of the children in Group Home A. She professed herself as shocked at the evidence of
the care workers who described conditions as dirty and neglectful. In her own evidence, she said
that she considered the children were ‘spoiled’:
If I had seen anything, if ever I had seen anything in relation to the children in Cappoquin
that worried me or upset me, because I was a teacher and because I had care for children,
I would have been very – I would have done something about it. But I didn't see anything.
I didn't see anything that really concerned me in relation to the staff treating the children,
or anyone treating the children badly.
8.232 Sr Serena conceded that she did not really know what her responsibilities were in Cappoquin:
I see what you are saying, I suppose really now that we are talking this is probably the
first time ever that I have had to sit down and really think about my role, because it has
been put to me the way you have been. I suppose it was all laissez faire. It was all a bit
nebulous, it was, because it only now really, as you ask those questions now, I know what
you are saying, I have to say I wouldn't have seen that connection. It was all a bit
nebulous, yes it was, everything was a bit nebulous, really.
8.233 She said that, although she was seriously compromised in the carrying out of her duties in
Cappoquin, none of the other 10 Sisters who were resident there ever said anything to her or to
Sr Viola:
They probably noticed that I was spending more time down there than I should have. I
tried – I think I would say I tried not to neglect my duties above. I loved them dearly and
I spent a lot of time with them and I tried to do my work there as well as I could.
8.234 Sr Callida’s removal as Resident Manager did not end the problems caused by her time in charge
there. She bitterly resented her removal and defended her record in Group Home A vehemently.
She continued living in the convent for two years after her removal, and interfered with the
committee that had been put in place by Sr Viola to run the homes pending the appointment of
a new Resident Manager. This interference continued intermittently until she eventually left the
Congregation in the mid-1990s.
8.235 Sr Clarice was a retired teacher in the primary school who had a ‘fair’ degree of contact with the
children in the group homes. She recalled that, in the early 1990s, Sr Viola asked her to help out
the staff in the group homes and to ‘be there to help them’. She was already aware that the staff
were having difficulties with Sr Callida at the time and, although she says she did not know the
specifics, ‘I think they were getting contradictory messages about the children who were in the
home and they were stressed’.
8.236 Sr Callida persisted in making contact with some of the children, by meeting them outside the
home. She was particularly obstructive when attempts were made to unite one girl with her mother.
This was a child with whom Sr Callida had had a close bond, which was a matter of concern to
the management committee.
Sr Callida’s evidence
8.237 Sr Callida accepted that there were times when she drank a lot, but did not agree with the
witnesses who testified as to the extent of her drinking: ‘I don’t accept – what’s the word I am
looking for? The bigness of it’.
8.238 She denied that her drinking was problematic: ‘There was never a time when I was out of order
or didn’t know my place or was falling all over the place. I dispute that’.
8.239 Sr Callida was asked to comment on the appropriateness of conducting intimate relationships with
two of the Sisters in the presence of the children. She did not accept that she had a relationship
with one of the Sisters and stated:
The one I acknowledge had nothing to do with the house. In my room there were two
beds and we had a bed each and that was that. But there was an occasion or two outside
of the home when it wasn’t appropriate.
8.240 She denied that she had favourites amongst the children, or that she favoured Group Home A
over Group Home B. She believed that she had a good relationship with staff members, apart
from Ms Waters who she described as ‘kind of aloof’. She did not accept the evidence of Ms
Waters that staff were frustrated, and that staff and children were unhappy. She believed at the
time that Ms Waters was making these allegations and complaints out of spite.
8.241 Although she accepted that some people stayed overnight in the homes from time to time, ‘I don’t
accept that they were allowed roam around’. She said that the only people who stayed over were
past pupils and her own brother. She did not accept evidence from the staff members that one
past pupil in particular was a regular visitor and was often drunk:
No, I never saw Mr Owens drunk. But ... his co-ordination was so poor that he fumbled
and stumbled. ... Mr Owens stayed twice.
8.242 She did not accept the belief, held by members of staff and some members of the Community,
that she had a domineering and intimidating management style and that people feared her, nor
did she accept the evidence that, following her removal, she was insubordinate and interfered
with the new management in the group homes.
8.243 Even at this remove, Sr Callida was unable to explain to the Committee what went wrong in
Cappoquin during her tenure: ‘I don’t know what went wrong. I just don’t know ... Because we had
great times and good times and happy times’.’
8.244 It was clear from her evidence to the Investigation Committee that Sr Callida did not have any
real insight into how she was perceived by other people. She believed she was a good manager,
that the children and staff were happy, and that staff problems stemmed from the personality of
one member of staff who was spiteful towards her.
8.245 One of the Sisters who gave evidence gave a description of Sr Callida’s personality as one of
great power that seemed to work towards negating the power of others. She was intimidating and
forceful. This evidence was challenged, and it was suggested that the Congregation was taking a
one-sided view of her relationships with people. There was, however, evidence from staff
members as to the difficulties they had in communicating with her. She had a divisive style of
management and was not well disposed to any criticism or suggestions.
8.246 Following her removal in the early 1990s, Sr Callida was told to stay away from the group home
and children, in order to avoid confusion for the children. The Congregation had great difficulty in
getting Sr Callida to comply with its wishes. Initially, she continued to come to work every day,
and later she tended to stay around the grounds of Cappoquin, waiting for the children on their
way to and from school. Sr Callida remained defiant, and it took almost a year to resolve these
problems.
The role of the Departments of Education and Health

8.247 The children were let down by poor supervision and monitoring from the Departments of Education
and Health. Mr Granville, the Inspector, identified staff problems in 1981. He thought that the
Resident Manager was young and inexperienced. Right up to his last report, he continued to have
concerns about staff rostering and the erosion of continuity with the children due to staff changes.
Mr Granville had no responsibility for the Health Board children who were coming and going in
the home, with little or no contact or support from social workers.
8.248 Responsibility for Cappoquin was transferred from the Department of Education to the Department
of Health from 1st January 1984, but until 1991 inspections were not carried out because of lack
of staff.
8.249 The South Eastern Health Board was aware of rumours, in the mid-1980s, that the Resident
Manager was absenting herself from the Centre and was drinking heavily. There was no formal
inspection system. An official paid a surprise visit to the Centre, when he found the Resident
Manager present. He was satisfied with what he saw and did not take any action. He did not
speak to any of the children or to the staff or to the nuns in the Community. The Resident Manager
was removed in the early 1990s for the very concerns that were being spoken about.
What the Congregation says

8.250 In its Submission to the Investigation Committee, the Congregation pointed out that suspicions of
child abuse did not form any part of the reason for the dismissal of the Resident Manager by the
Superior in the early 1990s. It submitted that all the evidence and contemporaneous documents
were consistent with the reason for her dismissal being her inappropriate drinking and major staff
communication problems, with the obvious knock-on effect these had for the children in the home.
8.251 The Congregation submits that discreet steps were taken in response to concerns expressed by
members of the Community and by people outside. One sister was asked to be a companion to
Sr Callida in the hope that she would be a good influence because she did not drink. However,
that did not happen. Instead, as the Congregation submission put it, the two nuns:
developed a relationship with each other. This may have had an impact on [Sr Melita’s]
capacity to observe [Sr Callida’s] behaviour in an objective manner. It was one of several
unusual aspects to the Cappoquin story involving [Sr Callida] as to the manner in which
(informal) human arrangements for monitoring her ran into the sand. In the event, [Sr
Melita] did not transmit any concerns about [Sr Callida] to anyone in leadership.
The submission refers to another nun, Sr Serena, who was ‘specifically asked to report to the
diocesan leadership about whether or not there was any substance to the rumours about ‘Sr
Callida’s drinking’. The Diocesan Leader was reassured that there was not but the submission
admits that the system for monitoring Sr Callida failed ‘for unusual and unexpected reasons.’
This unusual matter was the development of a relationship between [Sr Callida] and [Sr
Serena], which compromised [Sr Serena] and prevented the reporting system devised by
[Sr Viola] from working effectively.
The result was that no information of a drink problem or of any other problems reached the ears
of the leadership from internal congregation sources.
8.252 There was a conflict of evidence between Sr Viola, the senior diocesan nun, and Sr Serena, the
local head, as to the latter’s role in monitoring Sr Lucilla. Sr Serena testified that the only brief
she had was to befriend Sr Callida and encourage her to become closer to the Community. She
denied that she was ever asked to report specifically to the Diocesan Leadership about whether
or not there was any substance to the rumours about the drinking. The Congregation has
submitted that there was a system for monitoring Sr Callida but, for unusual and unexpected
reasons, the system failed.
8.253 The problems that faced Mr Lloyd, when he arrived in Cappoquin in the early 1990s, clearly did
not arise overnight. The problems were long standing and had deteriorated steadily over the years.
It was well known amongst staff and members of the Congregation that the Resident Manager
was drinking heavily. A number of Sisters believed that the drinking began after the death of a
pupil in the late 1970s. She had been spoken to a number of times about the matter. The Resident
Manager was in denial and, when one particular lay staff member complained to her about alcohol
consumption on the premises, she was dismissed. Certainly, by the mid-1980s the leaders of the
Community had expressed concern to the Superior of the convent about the Resident Manager’s
drinking, but it took the resignation of two young lay staff members in the early 1990s to force
them to address the issue properly.
The mid-1990s
8.254 The Superior General of the Sisters of Mercy, kept a detailed diary of the events that unfolded
over this period and recorded allegations, complaints and concerns about Sr Callida.
8.255 In the early 1990s, Sr Callida told the Superior General that she had obtained a position with the
Health Board in a project involving the care of a young man. The Superior General informed the
Health Board of her concern about Sr Callida’s suitability for the post because of the complaints
that had come to her notice, including information from Mr Lloyd. In the course of the resulting
Health Board investigation, it emerged that one of the Board’s own senior social workers had
given Sr Callida a glowing reference, even though he knew that she had been dismissed from her
job in Cappoquin.
8.256 The Health Board did not look beyond the social worker’s reference and offered Sr Callida the
job. This happened, despite the fact that the Chief Executive Officer of the Health Board had been
informed in the early 1990s of Sr Callida’s dismissal, and she herself had been in communication
with the Health Board disputing her removal. The social worker should not have given the
reference and was seriously at fault in doing so. The Health Board should have been able, from
its records, to notice the discrepancy between the favourable reference and the fact that the
candidate had been dismissed from her previous post.
8.257 Sr Callida left the Congregation in the mid 1990s. Shortly after that, the Superior General was
asked for a reference for the former Sr Callida, and she recorded her response in her diary:
Phone call from XXX in Dublin looking for a reference for [Callida]. Asked the nature of
work – laundry for hospitals. Told her she had been a member of the congregation. She
asked what was my connection with her – diocesan superior. I said that I believed she
was a hard worker when in hospital for the elderly. She said I seemed hesitant. Told her
I did not really know [Callida].
8.258 In the late 1990s, the matron of another institution contacted the Sisters of Mercy to complain at
the failure of the Congregation to inform her fully of Callida’s background. A senior member of the
Congregation testified that the overall policy with regard to references was that of being honest
and upright.
Conclusions
8.259 • Sr Callida was an incompetent manager who exhibited a lack of basic management
skills including rostering, proper record keeping, communicating with staff and
children, consistency and avoiding favouritism. Each of these deficiencies would have
represented a serious flaw in a Resident Manager but, taken together, they constituted
a disastrous mixture.
• She consumed alcohol in front of the children to excess and she was drunk and
incapable on occasion.
• Her behaviour was unpredictable and irrational; she bullied the staff and occasionally
beat the children.
• Sr Callida exposed children to additional risk by going away unannounced leaving the
children in the charge of junior staff who had no way of contacting her and also by
permitting male outsiders to have access to the home and to stay overnight even when
she was not there.
• It was wrong for the Resident Manager to have children sleeping in her bedroom and
for her and the Sister with whom she was conducting a relationship to take children
away for weekends to hotels to stay in ‘family rooms’.
• Congregation witnesses admitted to some knowledge of Sr Callida’s behaviour, but
did not feel they could do anything about it, and the situation drifted on over 12 years
until it developed into a crisis.
• There was no proper supervision of the Manager.
• The Community did not have the interests of the children as their priority. Any action
taken by the Congregation focussed exclusively on the Resident Manager. The
children were not considered.
• The Health Board neglected its supervisory function in respect of children for whom it
was responsible. One of its senior Health Board officials permitted his friendship with
the Resident Manager, to cloud his judgment, and he failed to recognise gross failures
of management as a result. No proper reviews were carried out by the Board’s social
workers.
• The children in Cappoquin were let down and endangered by each of the institutions
and agencies in whose care they were placed, by the persons in positions of authority
over them, and by persons in supervisory roles. They were fortunate to have care
workers who were more dedicated to their tasks and more committed to the interest
of the children than their superiors.
Physical abuse
Position of the Sisters of Mercy

8.260 In their Submission to the Investigation Committee, the Sisters of Mercy stated that the Committee
was not in a position to reach firm conclusions on allegations of physical abuse ‘as distinct from
the reasonable use of corporal punishment’ where the events alleged arose over 35 years ago.
They accepted that corporal punishment was used in Cappoquin and ‘regret its use and its impact
on the children’.
8.261 From the total of nine ex-residents who appeared before the Committee, the majority described
one or more incidents of physical punishment.
8.262 A witness, who was admitted to Cappoquin as a baby in the early 1950s, described how a
particularly severe beating by one of the Sisters destroyed his trust in the adults who were looking
after him. He was in bed and was naked because he had been treated with ointment. One of the
lay staff gave him a painting set, which he used to colour two religious statues in the room. He
recalled a nun (Sr Adriana he thought) coming into the room and:
... she kind of lost reasoning and, I suppose, from her point of view I was desecrating
something very religious but from my point of view I was just painting, you know. She just
kept hitting and hitting and wouldn't stop. So, I ran for the door ... I was running in the
dark, I just wanted to get away, I was just running in panic. She just kept hitting, and
coming after me down the stairs ... and I kept banging on the door and banging and
banging until somebody actually came out and she just kept hitting and hitting until
somebody came out and stopped her ... Up to then I would have to say while I got a clout
every now and again for not doing something or you got a slap, but it wasn't with
viciousness, not in the same way with viciousness, this was just temper let loose. I don't
know if that person, to me, even if they said sorry, I wouldn't have understood it, I really
wouldn't have.
8.263 The Sister beat him with an ordinary, classroom cane, but it was much worse than punishment
in school:
It was a cane. About two or three feet long, made of bamboo, with a kind of bend on it
like that (indicating) ... they used to use them in the classroom for striking the boards or
tables or hitting somebody. But when you have a naked child and you stand back at two
or three feet and let fly as an adult the cane doesn't stop when it hits the flesh, it cuts,
you know.
8.264 Although this witness was only six or seven when this incident occurred, he was able to distinguish
this beating from the ordinary corporal punishment he received from time to time in the School.
He had been slapped with the cane before, although it had not been a common occurrence. The
beating had a lasting effect:
After that I would say that the trust had gone out, the trust had gone out of it. You never,
ever would allow people get that close to you and you were always looking for a way out.
If somebody raised their voice or anything you would instantly go into fear because I didn't
understand, I didn't understand the power behind it. I am trying to explain that as a child
when somebody does that to you it is the sheer power and the frightedness of it that kind
of haunts you, it comes back to you and when any other adult raises their voice the next
you expect is the assault coming behind it ...
8.265 His recollection of Cappoquin was that younger nuns could not challenge older nuns, even if they
saw something wrong:
It gave that person then the power ... There is no system, nobody said stop if an older
person done something. That's the way it was, they seemed to rule it, you know.
8.266 He described the nun who beat him as being ‘very domineering’, and said that the person who
stopped the beating had not challenged her for what she was doing.
8.267 He said another nun who was there, Sr Mariella,20 ‘was a very standoffish person, very
authoritarian ... She would be more than likely to hit you twice as fast as anybody else’.
8.268 Although the younger nuns or novices were able to relate to the children, the older members of
the staff were more inclined to punish, ‘[They] believed in punishment for the sake of punishment
and that if we punish you enough as a child it will make you a better person, you know’.
8.269 He went to Artane when he was 10 years old, and notwithstanding his experiences in Cappoquin
still believed that the Sisters there did their best and, in contrast with Artane, genuinely tried to
care for the children.
8.270 Another ex-resident who was in Cappoquin in the 1970s described the nuns there as ‘unreal’:
As far as abuse was concerned. They had the bamboo sticks as long as the handle of a
brush ... They would actually beat you wherever they would want to beat you. There is
no such thing as put out your hands, they would hit you on the legs, they would hit you
on the back. I actually seen one incident where there was actually a chap poked in the
eye with it and they had the cheek to turn around and go down to the chapel after it. What
they went to the chapel for, I don't know.
8.271 He named two nuns, Sr Carina and Sr Lorenza,21 who he said were particularly severe. In the
case of Sr Lorenza, he said that, although she could be nice:
20
21
This is a pseudonym. Sr Lorenza later worked in St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Kilkenny. See St Joseph’s Industrial
School, Kilkenny chapter.

... she could get very contrary. She could be a nice nun. I suppose she could be an
understanding nun, we'll say. But yet if she lost the cool she lost the cool, she wouldn't
spare you any more than Sr Carina would spare you.
8.272 A witness, who was admitted to Cappoquin at four years of age in the late 1950s, described a
severe beating he received from the Resident Manager.22 He had been called into her office and
handed a letter sent to him by his mother. Sr Carina asked him to read it, but he could not read:
I remember then I got a beating over that. I remember she beat me so much I ended up
down at the wall, at the end of the wall, she had beat me that much. Then at the end of
it all she just got the letter and she said "seen as you can't read the letter it is no good to
you" and she tore it up.
8.273 He recalled another nun, Sr Mariella, giving him a severe beating because he did not hear a bell
ringing. He had just come out of hospital after an operation on his ears and had bandages on,
which affected his hearing:
... but I couldn't hear nothing and all I could see was everybody running. So, I didn't run.
Next thing Sr Mariella started belting me with the cane, all over and she hit me in the ear
and I ended up back in there again, back in the hospital.
8.274 The witness remembered one nun in Cappoquin with particular fondness:
The reason I have always loved Sr Adriana is one particular incident involving again Sr
Carina, the time when we went to the toilet, you went to the toilet at certain times, right
... So you were lined up and you were told when to go into the toilet, when it was your
turn, in you go, the nun would tell you. It came to me anyway and I didn't want to go, I
didn't want to, you know what I mean. So with that I was brought back into the office. I
must have been about eight, nine at the time, eight at the time. I was brought back into
the office. Again I got beaten. I was stripped and put on the, what do you call it, the office
desk, she used have a big desk she used have all her things on it. I got put on that, and
I was beaten.
But when I woke up on that I didn't wake up on the desk, I woke up in the bed. The first
thing I see when I woke up was Sr Adriana. She had one hand on my forehead and she
was holding her beads with the other hand. That's a picture I never forgot and I never will.
Because that brought home to me, in later years as I got older, the difference. That there
was good and bad. And that's why I have never blamed the nuns or anyone else for what
happened to me. I have never even blamed the Christian Brothers, because that particular
incident always stayed in my mind.
8.275 Another complainant spoke about a particular incident with Sr Carina:

I remember Sr Carina bringing me in between – down on the nun's side of the School,
like, and when I looked at this woman I could see fire in her eyes, like, and I knew what
I was expecting from her and I couldn't prevent it and she caught me and she put me
over her knee and she literally whipped the backside off me with her whole hand. She
said to me, "I am going to leather you ... until I put blisters on your backside", and she
meant it what she said, like. I remember after that I couldn't sit down. I looked at her hand
and her hand was sore red from swinging it. The ring that she was wearing you could see
the white of the band, that will just tell you how red her hand was from lashing me, like.
She was a good woman herself with the cane, like, you know ... Once or twice that
happened to me.
22
Mother Carina.

Bed-wetting
8.276 Given the ages of the children in Cappoquin, it was inevitable that bed-wetting was a major
problem. The Sisters of Mercy accepted that there may have been occasions when children ‘were
punished and consequently humiliated for bedwetting, and, recognising the deep hurt and trauma
this must have caused to the children, apologise sincerely for this’.
8.277 One complainant said fear was the cause of bed-wetting, as far as he was concerned:
Normally if I destroyed the bed it was because of the person present, I would be afraid to
go to the toilet, and if I didn't go to the toilet and I got to bed I would be afraid afterwards
that I would be chastised.
8.278 He said that the consequence of wetting the bed depended on who was on duty. Some of the
staff just cleaned it up, others would slap the child.
8.279 Another complainant, who had a problem with wetting the bed, said that the nuns would hit children
for this:
The boys that wet the bed, they'd have to take off the sheet, their face could be dipped in
it first, their face could be shoved down into it and they would get a few clouts and clatters.
8.280 The punishment appeared to get more severe when one lay person, Ms Lambert,23 was employed
to supervise the dormitories.
8.281 A witness recalled the fear he felt at night, knowing that he would be beaten by this staff member
the next day if he wet himself:
... I had a habit of wetting the bed and she Ms Lambert would come in in the morning and
ask anyone that wet the bed to stay in your bed, which I did stay in the bed ... If you went
back to your bed, you had to go back into it and sit there and wait for your turn ... She
came around, hit all the other young kids, you are sitting there and you are waiting and
you are watching her, waiting for my turn, to lie over the bed and a big cane before you
went to school, before you had breakfast ... That went on all the time I wet the bed and I
wet the bed for a long time, for years. That was my torture for that. Sometimes I used to
stay awake, try and stay awake, I couldn't, I was young. Try to keep my friend awake
beside me. I used to have nightmares ... Yeah, I know that's what I was frightened of,
going to sleep. If you wet it a second time you get more, you know what I mean. It might
be five of the best and then ten of the best.
8.282 Another witness had a similar experience of this staff member:

Ms Lambert would come up in the mornings and if we wet our bed we had to lie in our
own bed. Often the case I ended up lying in my own urine and excretion at times and she
would hit us over the legs, the buttocks and on the back. She was quite cruel, Ms Lambert
... It went on for a long period of time ... there was a little red dimmer light with Jesus on
it in the cross, in the bottom, and I remember I used to look up at it and I used to say
to God, "Please, do not let me wet the bed tonight, do not let me excrete." I used to
be awake.
Lay staff
8.283 Some witnesses described the lay staff as being more abusive than the Sisters. One witness
recalled being lined up after returning from a family holiday and being beaten by the staff member
identified in the bed-wetting section above, Ms Lambert:
23

I remember when we came back from holiday with my mother and father and that, and
we were all lined up and she just started hammering us with the stick, she did ... She
done it on many occasions, you know.
8.284 Another witness who was there in the 1940s and 1950s recalled that the day-to-day running of
the Institution was left to lay staff and that the Sisters had more of a supervisory role. He had no
problems with any of the nuns, but he said the lay workers could be cruel. He found bath-time
particularly difficult:
... they would hit me and hit my hands if I am holding the bath on the side, you know
when you are very small and you are trying to hold the bath and I was fearfully afraid of
water, and they would hit your hands away and catch your head like that and push you
down underneath and try to get the soap off you. Sometimes they would be laughing
while they are doing this and they would take a great bit of fun in doing – ducking you
under the water and making you feel like you are going to drown.
8.285 Although this witness believed that the Sisters in charge knew that the lay staff were cruel to the
children but did not interfere, he still associated whatever happy memories he had of Cappoquin
with the Sisters.
8.286 Another lay member of staff was mentioned by one complainant, who described her using the
handle of a brush to beat him:
... she swung at me, I ducked from her and got under the table, but she used the handle
of a brush and beat me wherever she could hit me.
8.287 Although Sr Isabella treated him in the infirmary for the injuries he had received from this beating,
she would not believe that they had been inflicted by a staff member.
8.288 Physical punishment in Cappoquin continued after the Industrial School had been closed and the
group homes were established. One care worker in Group Home A described seeing a child with
marks on her legs as a result of a beating by Sr Callida.
8.289 Mr Lloyd, who succeeded Sr Callida as Resident Manager, reported that children had told him of
beatings and punishments that were completely inappropriate and severe.
8.290 Sr Callida was asked whether she had ever beaten any of the children, and she said that there
were three episodes that stood out in her mind. She was Resident Manager during the 1980s,
when there was almost universal opposition to physical punishment of children.
Peer abuse
8.291 One complainant described an incident that occurred in the evening when all the boys were in
one room watching television. He alleged that he was being sexually abused by two older boys,
and this aspect of the story is told below. These older boys had been transferred from Artane and
they were put in charge of all the boys in the evening, when the lay staff and the nuns were off
duty. They had canes and used them on the boys:
my brother was being belted with this bamboo stick by the other man ... he was crying
and I heard my brother crying and I was sitting down looking at the television ... I just
turned around and as he had it over his shoulder like that I caught it and I said to him, "if
you don't stop now I am going tell what you are doing to me."
8.292 The sexual abuse stopped after that incident.
8.293 He said that boys could receive beatings from these older boys for minor things:
He could have told him “pick up that piece of paper on the ground there” and we would
keep looking at the television and that would rise him, so he would just go to him and pull
him out of the chair.
8.294 He said the beatings could be ‘Across the legs, across the backside and the hands’.
8.295 A number of older boys exercised this kind of unsupervised authority over the children during the
evening. They instilled fear into the younger boys by beating them with canes.
8.296 He thought that the management of the School must have known about this:
They must have known it. Yeah, they must have known. I believe they did know it ... Them
boys didn't take it upon themselves to say, "come on ... we will get the sticks and we'll
look after these boys." They obviously got authority from someone to do it and they didn't
get it from us.
8.297 The Sisters have submitted that, as only one witness gave evidence that older boys were given
power over the younger boys and none of the staff or Sisters involved at the time are in a position
to give evidence to the contrary, the evidence is so tenuous that no conclusions adverse to the
Sisters could reasonably be supported. However, the abuser in this case gave a statement to the
Gardaı́, admitting the sexual abuse and acknowledging that he was left in charge of the younger
boys in the evening.
Positive evidence
8.298 Although all of the complainants from Cappoquin described physical punishment or abuse, many
recalled particular nuns who were good or kind to them.
8.299 One nun who came in for special praise was Sr Isabella. When asked what it was about Sr
Isabella that singled her out, one witness said:
... What was it that made Sr [Isabella] the best of them? I never actually seen her being
violent with anyone. I never seen her being violent with myself. To me, she was a good
caring kind of a woman. But done her job. If someone needed chastising – if someone
needed chastising she would shout, point her finger. I never actually seen her hitting
anyone, or she never hit me.
8.300 Another witness said of Sr Isabella:

... there is one nun that I still write to ... Sr Isabella, who was outstanding, and I would
have to say that of all the nuns there, she was the one that – she ran the infirmary, I think,
if my memory serves me right. But she would have been one that probably exhibited what
should have been rather than what was ...
8.301 Another complainant, who made allegations against a man he was fostered out to from
Cappoquin, went even further:
You know, if you wanted to find good people Sr Isabella, Sr Carina and Sr Serafina24 were
three walking saints. It is just the staff I didn't like.
Conclusions
8.302 1. The incidents of physical punishment described by complainants went beyond what
was permitted. The children were very young, and such severe punishment was
uncalled for.
24

2. Caning very young children was unnecessary and abusive by the standards of the
time.
3. Untrained lay staff were unsupervised and given too much control over the children,
and this resulted in cruelty.
4. Allowing older boys to discipline smaller children using corporal punishment was
reckless and dangerous.
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse by Mr Restin25 in Cappoquin and Passage West

8.303 Mr Restin was a childcare worker in Cappoquin in the late 1970s. He had previously been
employed by the Sisters of Mercy in another of their industrial schools in Passage West, County
Cork, during the mid-1970s.
8.304 In the mid-1990s, Mr Restin was arrested in England and charged with three offences of indecent
assault on a boy under 16 and with possession of indecent photographs of children. He was
sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, of which he served nine months. Following his prison
sentence, he spent a period of four months in a psychiatric hospital because of depression and
then lived in a probation hostel for a further six months. He returned to Dublin in the late 1990s.
8.305 An ex-resident of Cappoquin disclosed to his psychiatrist that he had been sexually and physically
abused by a number of named individuals, including Mr Restin, whilst in the Institution. He was
advised to report the abuse and, in 2000, he made a full statement to the Gardaı́.
8.306 Mr Restin was interviewed by the Gardaı́ the following year, and admitted sexually abusing boys
in Passage West and Cappoquin. Two years later, he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment:
six years for possession of pornographic material, and two sentences of two years each for
indecently assaulting a boy in Cappoquin and a boy in Passage West.
8.307 Mr Restin told the Committee that he did not know the identity of the two boys in respect of whom
he had pleaded guilty:
I am doing two years for a victim in Passage West and I am doing two years for a victim
in Cappoquin and I do not know who either of those victims are, at this point ... I pleaded
guilty ... I am convinced that whoever they are I ... did abuse them or I wouldn't have said
I did.
8.308 Three witnesses gave evidence that Mr Restin sexually abused them in the Industrial School in
Cappoquin, and a further two witnesses described being sexually and physically abused by him
in Passage West.
8.309 Mr Restin was placed with the nuns in Cappoquin at three months of age, where he remained
until he was nine and a half years old. He was then transferred to St Patrick’s Industrial School,
Upton and was discharged on the day before his sixteenth birthday.
8.310 Mr Restin gave evidence that he was subjected to serious sexual abuse whilst in Upton by a
Priest and by a Brother.
8.311 During his time as a child in Cappoquin and Upton, he was aware of sexual activity among other
boys and he also became involved. He said it was not widespread but it went on.
25

8.312 He became a nurse because he realised he had a problem forming relationships with adults, and
thought he might be able to resolve these difficulties through his nursing vocation.
8.313 After four years’ training, he qualified as a nurse and, on one occasion, was sent on special duty
to attend a patient who needed treatment in hospital in Cork. At that time, a young resident of
Passage West Industrial School was in the hospital where he spent approximately one month. Mr
Restin befriended the boy and got to meet the Resident Manager of Passage West, Sr Vita,26 who
regularly visited the hospital. When the boy left hospital and returned to Passage West, Mr Restin
began to visit Passage West at weekends, when he would spend time there, play ball with the
children and occasionally have a meal with the nuns in their dining room. He said that the Resident
Manager was aware of his medical training and that she also knew he was an ex-Cappoquin
resident.
8.314 After some months, the Sisters in Passage West offered him a job, at first mainly as a driver. He
said the job was better paid than nursing, the hours were more flexible and he was provided
with accommodation.
8.315 He unsuccessfully applied for leave of absence from his nursing job, so continued to be employed
as a nurse whilst also working in Passage West.
8.316 Mr Restin agreed with the suggestion that the moves to Passage West and subsequently to
Cappoquin might have been deliberate, to gain access to young boys. He admitted that he
sexually abused a number of boys – he recalled around five in Passage West, but he denied ever
forcing any boys to engage in oral sex, as had been alleged. He described how he had a routine,
and that oral sex was not part of it. He also denied that he had ever raped boys, and he told the
Committee the reason:
I suppose the fact that I was raped myself, it was something that I found extremely
offensive and it is something I have never done.
8.317 Mr Restin admitted abusing one of the complainants who gave evidence about abuse in
Passage West.
8.318 The complainant was admitted to Passage West in the early 1970s. When his mother died in the
late 1960s, he became involved in petty crime and he was committed by the District Court to
Passage West until he was aged 16.
8.319 Soon after he arrived in Passage West, he came across Mr Restin. Initially, he thought he was
friendly. The sexual abuse started soon after meeting him and continued until Mr Restin left the
Institution. He was forced to engage in mutual masturbation and, after his first experience, he
initially tried to avoid contact with Mr Restin by trying to keep a low profile and staying out of his
way. This did not work and the abuse continued on a regular basis in a variety of locations in the
Institution. He always felt under threat of a beating or punishment if he did not co-operate with Mr
Restin. He then began absconding from Passage West. On one occasion, one of the nuns and
Mr Restin came to the Garda Station to bring him back to the School and, when they got back,
they gave him a severe beating with a stick. Another time, when he was on a visit home, his father
noticed marks on his body from a beating. He told his father that Mr Restin had beaten him, and
his father planned to confront Mr Restin when he called to collect him after the weekend to bring
him back to Passage West. Some form of altercation took place, and it required the intervention
of the Resident Manager and her assistant, before his father agreed to allow him to return to the
School. He did not tell his family about the sexual abuse at the time.
26

8.320 Some time later, he realised that Mr Restin was abusing others. He began to notice signs as boys
emerged eating sweets, having spent some time with Mr Restin. He and two other boys went to
the Resident Manager, Sr Vita, in her room and told her what Mr Restin was doing. She seemed
sympathetic and asked them to name the boys who were being abused. He named about 12 to
15 boys, and the other boys named a few. He was called to her room later that evening, where
the boys he had named were lined up. The Manager asked them in turn if Mr Restin was ‘doing
stuff’ to them, and all the boys except for one denied it. The witness and the other boy who
confirmed the abuse were taken to the hall and given beatings, which were so severe that the
other boy was injured and required stitches. The witness absconded a few days later with two
other boys. He thought that he was not caught for about two and half weeks and did not recall
being punished, which he felt was because the Resident Manager was well aware of why he ran
away. Mr Restin did not bother him after that, and he could not remember when Mr Restin left
Passage West.
8.321 Mr Restin had to engage in protracted correspondence with his employers as he sought leave
from the hospital where he worked to attend the childcare course in Kilkenny. This leave was
finally granted in the early 1970s, but he did not attend the course either in the year the leave
was granted or the following year.
8.322 The records show that in one particular academic year 19 persons attended the Kilkenny childcare
course instead of the usual 20, and Mr Restin was not one of them. It appears that his application
was blocked as a result of an unfavourable response given by Sr Vita to a query made by a
Department of Education official in reference to Mr Restin’s suitability for the post.
Complainant evidence from Passage West

8.323 Another complainant who gave evidence recalled the arrival of Mr Restin. His memory was that
one of the pupils was not well and went to hospital. On his return, Mr Restin was with him. He
understood he was a nurse and was there to attend to medical issues. He fell off a bicycle and
hurt his testicles and sustained a number of bruises in that area. He went to see Mr Restin who
brought him into his cubicle off the dormitory. He applied cream to the affected area. Mr Restin
then undressed and told the complainant to masturbate him, which he did. Mr Restin then gave
him sweets and told him to keep quiet. The witness said that he had to masturbate Mr Restin in
this way on several occasions.
8.324 He said that Mr Restin raped him on three occasions. The first time, it happened in a field to which
Mr Restin had driven him. The second was in Mr Restin’s cubicle in the dormitory, and the third
in an old disused train carriage in the school grounds. He said Mr Restin punched and beat him
on the back during one rape. After the last occasion, he did everything in his power to avoid Mr
Restin, by staying close to the other boys and his brothers. He said he then built up courage to
go to the head nun in the convent, which was separate from the School. He said he told her at
the front entrance to the convent that Mr Restin was sexually abusing him. She told him to go
back to the School and she would speak to somebody about it. Some time later, Sr Vita called
him and accused him of spreading wicked lies and gave him a severe beating. Soon after this,
Mr Restin left.
8.325 Sr Vita worked in Mount St Joseph’s Industrial School in Passage West from the early 1940s to
the early 1980s, and was Resident Manager from the early 1970s until she left. She was a qualified
nurse. She is now deceased. Her evidence was taken on commission at a nursing home in Cork.
Sr Vita’s recollection was that the first complainant above told her about Mr Restin, who had
threatened to do something to him and to a number of younger boys. She said that she asked
him whether Mr Restin had threatened to beat him, to which he replied that he had not. She did
not pursue the matter further ‘in my innocence and ignorance I suppose’ and said she did not
know what the boy could have meant, although she did believe that he had been threatened by
Mr Restin. She sent for Mr Restin, but he had left the Institution by then. She never saw him
again. She said that she phoned Cappoquin looking for him but he was not there. In a statement
made to the Gardaı́ she said:
After [the complainant] had told me about [Mr Restin] I tried to contact him in Cappoquin.
I wanted to talk with him to find out if it was true or false what [the complainant] had said.
I did not get to speak with him, I left a message for him to contact me, but he did not.
8.326 In the Garda statement she added:

I sent word to Cappoquin Orphanage through a nun here that I felt that [Mr Restin] was
not a suitable person to be with children.
The story of Mr Restin resumes in Cappoquin

8.327 Mr Restin’s evidence was that he did not believe he was asked to leave Passage West, nor did
he think Sr Vita knew he had abused boys there. He arranged to move to Cappoquin while he
was still working in Passage West. He was vague in his evidence as to how the job arose. He
believed that he met Sr Isabella from Cappoquin while he was doing an interview for the childcare
course at Waterford Regional Technical College. Cappoquin was nearer to Waterford than
Passage West, and would be more convenient if he was doing the course. He believed that he
might have told Sr Isabella he was thinking of doing the course, and thought that she suggested
that he contact Cappoquin.
8.328 The job he got in Cappoquin involved general childcare duties, and teaching a remedial class of
boys who had reading difficulties. He said that he assumed he would have sought a reference
from Sr Vita for the course and for his move to Cappoquin, but there was no record of any such
request or reference on file in either Cappoquin or Passage West. The records show that, while
Mr Restin was in Passage West, he was also spending time in Cappoquin Industrial School. In
the early 1970s, an official from the Department of Education carried out a general inspection of
Cappoquin Industrial School and reported that:
A ... nurse ... visits the school every few weeks to lend assistance in placements (he helps
out similarly in the Passage West School in Cork).
8.329 Mr Restin thought that he abused three boys in Cappoquin. He described the method he used to
get to know the child. He said he never used threats and just became friendly with them and then
‘they would literally do what you want’. He gave rewards such as sweets but rarely gave money.
He said he would stop if the boys wanted him to and denied that he ever forced them.
8.330 A former resident said that Mr Restin began to abuse him when he was aged 10. The abuse
started when Mr Restin came into his dormitory one night, woke him and brought him to his
bedroom. Mr Restin fondled his genitals and made the boy do the same to him. On another
occasion, when Mr Restin was giving injections, he again molested the boy. He told the boy that,
if he did not tell anyone, he would get a pair of roller skates. Mr Restin continued to abuse the
boy in this way until his sudden departure from the School.
8.331 Another witness said he was sexually abused by Mr Restin in the same way on one occasion. He
remembered being called into Mr Restin’s office and told to take down his trousers, whereupon
Mr Restin fondled his genitals. He was under the impression that Mr Restin was a doctor in
Cappoquin. He thought he was aged around six or seven when this occurred.
8.332 A further witness recalled that the children were told one Saturday they were going to receive an
injection. They were told to go to the old school (St Ita’s) and line up in the hallway. Mr Restin had
a small room off one of the classrooms. The boy was brought in and told to drop his underwear. Mr
Restin and Sr Lorenza were present, and Sr Lorenza began to feel his testicles and she told him
they were normal. He then remembered getting an injection in the buttocks.
8.333 One other witness gave evidence that, although he himself was not abused by Mr Restin, he
remembered him. There was a lot of talk amongst the boys about his giving injections, touching
bottoms and things like that, but he never touched him. He was close to one of the Sisters and
thought Mr Restin would have been afraid he would talk. He never spoke to the Sisters about
what he heard.
8.334 Sr Viviana worked in Cappoquin at the same time as Mr Restin. He was a nurse and, to her
recollection, had a lot to do with the boys. He drove a bus and brought children to the swimming
pool. She said that, as a nurse, he would have taken care of their health. She did not recall him
giving injections, but there was a room in Cappoquin that was called the surgery, and she often
met him coming in and out of there. She said she was always uneasy about Mr Restin, although
was not specific as to why: ‘There was something about the man that I didn’t tune in to’.
8.335 Another nun, Sr Clarice, described the circumstances of Mr Restin’s departure. At the time, she
was the teaching principal of the girls’ primary school in Cappoquin and a former Superior of the
convent. She had contact with the Industrial School because some of the children attended the
primary school and she also helped out at weekends and holiday periods. She remembered Mr
Restin as a kind of supervisor in the institution. He was an assistant leader in the Scouts. One
day a scout leader warned her about him saying ‘Sr Clarice, go home to Sr Carina and tell her to
try and get rid of Mr Restin and do that soon’.
8.336 She went straight to the convent and told the Superior; together, they went to see the Resident
Manager, who listened attentively. The manager said that Mr Restin was due to bring the children
for an outing the following day and she would put a stop to that. She got rid of him soon after that.
The scout leader explained that, while sexual abuse was not spelled out to her by the local man,
she sensed the meaning and urgency of the message he was conveying. She said in evidence
that she never discussed Mr Restin’s previous work history with anybody. She did become aware
afterwards that he had worked in Passage West in the industrial school, because there was a
Sister in Cappoquin who had a sibling, also a Sister, in Passage West:
and I think she wrote to her, but it was only just – I never read the letter and I never knew
anything, but it was really on the urgency of [the local man], that’s how I went to the
Superior and that’s how we went to (the Resident Manager).
8.337 Mr Restin left Cappoquin suddenly. He did not now remember the circumstances and he thought
someone may have said something to the nuns about him abusing boys.
8.338 There is very little information about where Mr Restin was between the time he left Cappoquin in
the mid-1970s and his departure for England in the late 1970s. He said that after Cappoquin he
went to work in Cork before he left for England. Initially, he worked in a bar and then returned
to nursing.
Conclusions
8.339 • Mr Restin’s unsuitability for work with children was clear from his time in Passage
West, but that information was not effectively communicated to Cappoquin.
• Although his unsuitability to take part in a childcare course was known to the
management of Passage West and to the Department Inspector, he was able to remain
in his position in Cappoquin.
• If proper inquiries had been made, he should not have been employed in Cappoquin.
• Children had complained about Mr Restin’s abuse, but action was only taken when an
adult raised the alarm. Children were not listened to or believed when they spoke
about what was happening to them, and this allowed abuse to continue.
Visits to Mount Melleray

8.340 Witnesses from Cappoquin gave evidence about visits by boys to the Cistercian Abbey at Mount
Melleray. One former resident alleged that he had been sexually abused there in the course of a
weekend visit.
8.341 Mount Melleray Abbey is situated about four miles from Cappoquin and is run by the Cistercian
Order. There was no formal relationship between Mount Melleray Abbey and St. Michael’s
Cappoquin. Informally, however, it would appear that eggs were delivered weekly to the industrial
school from the poultry farm and twice a year surplus apples were delivered. Some minor plumbing
work was carried out by a monk on occasions and a priest monk from the Abbey went weekly to
hear the nuns confessions and to say Mass when the local priest was on holidays. The Sisters
also negotiated the transfer of a site from the Abbey farm to accommodate their group homes in
or around 1972.
8.342 Br Cosimo27 was professed in 1957. He attended the oral hearings of the Committee and he said
that he acted as the general handyman at the Abbey. It was traditional that once or twice a year
he collected excess apples harvested at the nearby Glencairn Abbey and delivered them to St.
Michael’s Industrial School. He got to know the children and the Sisters and it occurred to him
during these visits that the boys would benefit from spending occasional weekends in Mount
Melleray where they could enjoy fresh air, gardens and the grounds of the Abbey. He said he had
also observed that the industrial school was cramped and there were very few recreational
facilities available for the children.
8.343 Sr Violetta28 or Sr Carina selected the boys who were to spend the weekend. Typically, they would
be picked up at the School by one of the guests staying in the Abbey, as Br Cosimo did not drive
at the time. They would have their tea, play table tennis or board games, and then retire to bed
at around 8.30pm. The boys usually came in the winter months, when the guesthouse was less
busy. Br Cosimo would take them for long walks, and he acquired toys and a bicycle for them.
None of the other monks had any involvement with the children, as it was considered to be his
project and therefore was his responsibility.
8.344 It appears that from the beginning other members of the Community were unhappy with the
presence of young, boisterous and sometimes raucous boys roaming around the Abbey, unsettling
the quiet, monastic atmosphere. Br Cosimo had a bedroom in the guesthouse. He said that he
sometimes slept on a mattress on the floor of the bedroom where the boys slept if they were
unsettled. He also agreed that he would lie on their beds to talk to them and settle them down at
night. As far as he could remember it was always on the outside of the covers. If the boys were
making noise or messing he would sometimes have to come from his own bedroom to settle
them down and he would be dressed in either his habit or his pyjamas. He never touched them
inappropriately and any touching was inadvertent and had no sexual element. He was aware that
some of the boys who visited were emotionally disturbed and craved attention. It would have been
usual for him to give the children a cuddle or a kiss on the cheek or forehead when they arrived
in Melleray and when they left. He had no sense of awareness at the time that any of his actions
were inappropriate or open to misinterpretation by the boys.
27
28

8.345 Some of the members of the Community complained to the Abbot Visitor during a Canonical
Visitation to the Abbey, and the visits were discontinued in early 1975.
8.346 Sr Viviana was in charge of the group home known as Group Home B and said that she had had
no concerns about Br Cosimo and the children until the issue was raised in public in 1996. In 1995
she had been interviewed by Sr Isabella in relation to the recollections of her time in Cappoquin. Sr
Isabella kept notes of her interview and in those notes a suggestion was made that Sr Viviana
had in fact some concerns about Br Cosimo at the time, enough concern to warrant her
interviewing the boys and visiting Melleray Abbey to speak with a senior member of the community
with whom she was friendly. When she was reminded about this she gave a vague account of
what transpired. It appears that some time in 1974, one or more of the lay staff in the group home
mentioned to her that the children were spending a bit of time with Br Cosimo and wondered if
this was okay. She was satisfied that Sr Violetta and Sr Carina were happy but she agreed that
the lay staff were uneasy about the boys going out. She said that when the concerns of the lay
staff were expressed she had no sense of this having anything to do with sex. She interviewed
the boys and talked about it and she said she personally felt there was nothing in it. The senior
member of the community was a friend of hers and she used to talk to him. She remembered
going to see him and expressing a concern that Br Cosimo was taking the boys and asked him
what did he think. He told her that Br Cosimo was a ‘man’s man’ and she read nothing more into
that other than that he was not very friendly with women. She said she thought no more about it.
She does not recall when in 1974 this happened and had no recollection if there was any
connection between her conversation and the visits of the boys being brought to an end in
February 1975.
Conclusions
8.347 • There was no proper assessment of Mount Melleray as an appropriate place to send
children in care for weekend breaks.
• Staff in the institution were uneasy and expressed concerns about the visits.
• The way that Sr Viviana dealt with the staff unease about the visits showed her
awareness of risk to the boys. The information that Br Cosimo was a ‘man’s man’
should not have given any reassurance. In the result, although she carried out some
investigation by interviewing the boys and speaking to the Abbot, she did not properly
assess the situation and remove the risk to the children that had clearly been
identified.
• Sleeping arrangements were wholly unacceptable.
A recorded case of sexual abuse

8.348 In the mid-1980s, a young boy, David, 29 who was in care in Cappoquin, was placed in part-time
employment in a local hotel. He suffered from an intellectual disability, but was able to perform
odd jobs there and he returned to the group home at night.
8.349 In the course of this employment, he was subjected to sexual assault by a chef working in the
hotel.
8.350 The first person to discover the abuse was the boy’s mother, who reported it to his social worker.
Around the same time, his house parent in Cappoquin became suspicious and spoke to the boy.
8.351 The social worker in her evidence did not recall being contacted by a member of the boy’s family,
even though she had made a contemporaneous note of this contact. She did recall being
29

contacted by the House Parent, who told her that a named boy was being sexually abused by a
member of staff in a hotel where he was employed for work experience. She then informed the
senior social worker, and a meeting was arranged with the Health Board’s solicitor to see what
to do.
8.352 The Resident Manager, Sr Callida, and the house parent also attended this meeting. The witness
said that part of the reason for the meeting was that the local Gardaı́ had been approached, but
the boy was not willing to make a statement. The advice at the meeting was to contact the Garda
Superintendent in the event of the boy not making a complaint. She did not speak to the boy
about this matter, even though she was his social worker. She left that to his care worker, the
House Parent, because she felt that only one person should speak to a child regarding matters
like this.
8.353 They waited for the Gardaı́ to tell them how to proceed but she said that, in the meantime, the
man involved had left the hotel employment. It appears from the documentation, however, that
the employee did not leave the hotel until some time later, and was recorded as being an
employee throughout this time. The boy also continued his employment in the same hotel during
this time.
8.354 The social worker had known about the allegation of abuse earlier, from David’s mother. It appears
from her records that she initially discounted the allegation, without checking either with Cappoquin
or with David. She did not believe what she was being told about the abuse, as the relationship
between the family members was difficult. She telephoned Sr Callida about it, who told her she
would check it out but thought it was untrue. She herself did not speak to the child, nor did she
speak to the care worker involved.
8.355 The House Parent, Ms Faughnan30 suspected at first that David was beginning to smoke and
drink, but he denied it when confronted by her. She decided to keep a close eye on him. When
she was cleaning his room, she discovered money, more than he should have had. He told her
he got it from an employee of the hotel and it transpired, when she further questioned him, that
he was being sexually abused in return for money.
8.356 The Resident Manager, Sr Callida, was away for the weekend when the boy revealed this to her.
Ms Faughnan went straight to the Gardaı́ but they would not formally take a statement in the
absence of the Resident Manager, who was David’s legal guardian. The House Parent then went
to the hotel and confronted the employee, who admitted the abuse. She told him that she had
spoken to the Gardaı́ and that he should leave his job, as she did not feel that the boy should
have to leave because of his actions. She then contacted David’s social worker from the South
Eastern Health Board and attended a meeting with the Health Board later. At that meeting, she
was told that, as she had no witness to her conversation with the employee, nothing could be
done. She did not feel she got any support from her superiors, and got the sense that she had
overstepped her boundaries by the action she had taken. The following day, she observed that
David was not at work and she was relieved that he had been kept at home. He approached her
and said that he was not going to take the matter any further and was not pursuing it with the
Gardaı́. She questioned him as to why, and he told her he just did not want to. She noticed that
he had a new radio. He told her that Sr Callida had given him a new radio and a new bicycle.
8.357 A second record of this allegation of abuse was contained in a memorandum written by a senior
member of the Health Board:
I visited the group home ... and learnt from the staff that David has been sexually abused
by a fellow employee at his place of work.
30

This has been reported to the local Garda, the staff in the home and myself, we are
making further enquiries.
8.358 The memorandum does not advise of the previous allegation made by the family member to the
social worker a month earlier.
8.359 No documentation has been discovered as to how the author of the memorandum handled the
matter or how, a week later, the meeting came to be arranged at the offices of the Health Board
solicitors which was attended by a senior official from the Health Board, the social worker, the
House Parent of the boy who was the centre of the allegation and Sr Callida. The Health Board
was concerned to establish if:
(a) A complaint could be made leading to criminal prosecution;
(b) What are the Boards obligations in relation to [the boy] in its voluntary guardianship
capacity.
8.360 The possibility of a complaint being made on the boy’s behalf was left open. The Health Board
was anxious that the boy would continue in the work placement. The advice given, as recorded
in the solicitor’s note, was that:
... the knowledge of these occurrences would be extremely embarrassing for the Board’s
Staff if there were to be a recurrence of these incidents and a complaint made by the
parent or other parties at a later date.
... If there was any further risk to [David] of any nature then they would have to weigh this
against the value of the placement to him and preferably withdraw him from the
placement.
I stressed to them that it was of utmost concern that they do not expose themselves to
the risk of a potential complaint in relation to the care given to [David]. It would only take
one incident, and a complaint arising out of same to call into question the actions of the
Boards staff ...
8.361 They were advised against approaching the hotel and told instead to contact the Gardaı́.
8.362 There is no record of any contact being made by either the Health Board official or the social
worker with the Gardaı́ in this regard. However, the Health Board solicitor advised the social
worker in a letter that he had spoken to the Superintendent of the Gardaı́ in Cappoquin who told
him they had ‘taken the matter up’ with the alleged abuser prior to Christmas and this person,
while unlikely to disclose anything, would:
... be in fear of the consequences of a Garda investigation and we can only hope that this
will ensure his co-operation ... I think you would have to be reasonably certain that there
is still a problem there before bringing serious consequences to bear on [him].
8.363 The Health Board official who attended the meeting in the solicitor’s office also gave evidence to
the Investigation Committee. He commended the House Parent for personally confronting the
alleged abuser and for the initiative she showed in dealing with the information she had received
from the child. He was not happy in relation to the lack of support she received from Sr Callida in
the follow-up to the case. He sensed that there was an active encouragement of David not to
make anything more of his complaint, because of the consequences it might have for the Centre.
He did not want to go as far as to say that there was a feeling that the Resident Manager had
prevented a prosecution, but rather that ‘there would have been frustration that rather than an
intervention being assisted it had been in some way derailed’.
8.364 He also noted that Sr Callida, although present, did not participate at the meeting in the
solicitor’s office.
8.365 Sr Callida gave her version of events to the Investigation Committee. She explained that the
reason why she did not get involved at the Health Board meeting was because the House Parent
had looked after it from the beginning and was the liaison with the boy. When it was suggested
to her that, as Resident Manager of the Centre, this was a serious matter of a sexual assault on
a child in her care who had an intellectual disability, she said she did not see it as her function to
deal with it or report it to the Gardaı́. She left it to the House Parent to deal with it as the boy had
reported to her. Sr Callida said in evidence that it was purely coincidental that the boy got a new
bicycle around this time. She suggested that it might have been for his birthday and he needed a
bike to get to work. She did not keep a record of this incident.
8.366 Sr Callida’s behaviour in giving the boy the bicycle made her junior colleague suspicious that she
was discouraging him from pursuing a complaint or prosecution. There is no evidence that that
was her motivation but, at a sensitive time in a serious case of sexual abuse, what she did was
an example of extremely bad management and of irresponsibility.
Conclusions
8.367 • This complaint of sexual abuse was made in the late 1980s, and the House Parent had
no hesitation in informing the Gardaı́ and the Health Board. She noticed the boy
behaving unusually, investigated and discovered that he was being sexually abused.
The way she discovered the abuse, followed it up and reported it were examples of
proper care, which placed the boy’s interest first.
• The other parties involved failed in their duties. Sr Callida conveyed mixed signals as
to her attitude to the issue.
• The Health Board failed to establish the facts, including interviewing the boy; failed to
supervise the social work contacts with the boy and his family; and failed generally to
act in the best interests of the boy.
• The actions of the Resident Manager and the Health Board suggest that damage
limitation was their primary consideration.
Testimony regarding befriending/foster families

8.368 Cappoquin, like most other industrial schools, operated a system whereby children were sent to
‘befriending/foster families’ during holiday periods. Two of the witnesses described very different
experiences. One was sent with his brother to a wonderful family. He loved going there so much
that he wanted the family to adopt him. The other witness described staying with a befriending
family for a few months, during which time he met an older man who worked in a local youth
centre. This man showed him a lot of affection, so he requested his house mother in Cappoquin
to allow him to move in with him. Permission was given and he moved in. The man repeatedly
sexually abused him.
8.369 The witness said that the experience had a lasting effect on his sexuality, and that he encountered
many difficulties in life forming relationships. The Sisters submitted that, as regards this alleged
abuse carried out by a third party outside the School, it is difficult to see how the Sisters could
have any case to answer in terms of the inability to foresee the abuse.
8.370 There appears to have been no system for vetting families or of aftercare and, the children
themselves were ill-prepared to deal with abuse or exploitation when they left the convent.
Peer sexual abuse
8.371 A Garda investigation into Cappoquin uncovered serious sexual abuse of younger boys by some
older boys. One of the perpetrators admitted sexually abusing boys there. He said that he himself
had been abused whilst in care and that, when he was moved to Cappoquin, he knew no better.
In his statement, he admitted abusing a pupil whilst there, and this pupil gave evidence to the
Investigation Committee, where he described how he had been subjected to sexual assault,
including rape, by older boys in Cappoquin. When one of these boys beat his brother badly, he
stopped the beating by threatening to tell the Resident Manager what was happening. The sexual
abuse stopped after he threatened to tell. This witness also told the Investigation Committee that
he observed older boys taking younger boys into their beds at night and he suspected what was
going on.
8.372 Another witness described how he saw ‘the lads having sex with each other inside in the home’.
Conclusion
8.373 • Children were left in the care of older boys in the evening, and this practice allowed
physical and sexual abuse to occur. The failure to protect children from such abuse
was a reckless and negligent breach of duty on the part of the Sisters of Mercy.
General conclusions
8.374 1. Many of the faults of the Institution were caused by inept management at local level in
the group homes and in the Cappoquin Community. The structure of the Sisters of
Mercy, which limited the pool of Sisters who could be appointed as Resident Manager,
was a contributory factor, but there was a fundamental failure by the Institution and
the Community to give priority to the interests of the children in their care.
2. Sisters who gave evidence lacked understanding of the nature and extent of the
malfunction of the Institution and the impact on the children. Even at this remove,
some expressed concern for their fellow Sisters but did not feel that, as a
Congregation, they let the children down. Lay staff confirmed that most of the Sisters
in Cappoquin were cold and unfeeling towards the children, although one or two
Sisters were mentioned by complainants as being kind and caring.
3. Organisations providing care for the needy and vulnerable must have procedures for
monitoring the service, but this was not the case in this Institution. The Community in
Cappoquin was inward-looking and motivated by loyalty to its own members, to the
detriment of the children in care.
4. The Department of Education complained about the neglect in the School in the 1940s,
but it was unable to effect any change for far too long.
5. The Department was negligent in inspecting the institution from the mid 1960s
onwards and failed to identify the dysfunction in the group homes in the 1980s.
6. The Department of Health did not provide regular supervision of the children whom it
placed in Cappoquin and did not carry out proper inspections. The children were let
down by those who purported to look after and protect them.

Chapter 9

Clifden (‘Clifden’), 1872–1983
Establishment and history

9.01 The Sisters of Mercy established a convent and an orphanage for girls in Clifden, County Galway
in 1861 at the request of a local priest. Clifden is located in a remote area approximately 50 miles
west of Galway. A branch house was later set up in neighbouring Carna. The orphanage was
certified as an industrial school for girls on 15th July 1872.
9.02 The Mercy Convent in Clifden formed one of five independent units of the Mercy Congregation
within the Diocese of Tuam. From its formation in the late 19th century until 1971, it had its
own governance structure and was completely autonomous. The convent was overseen by the
Archbishop of Tuam. In 1971, the five Mercy convents in Tuam amalgamated to form one diocesan
unit, in line with similar changes taking place throughout the country within the Congregation of
the Sisters of Mercy.
9.03 The photographs and plans provided by the Sisters of Mercy show the Industrial School as a large
imposing building, with the convent immediately adjacent.
9.04 The original two-storey orphanage building was constructed in 1862, and various additions were
made to it over the years. In 1873, after it had been certified as an industrial school, an additional
wing was built and, in 1880, a new internal national school and dormitory were erected. In 1886
a kitchen, pantry, dairy, lavatory and infirmary were added. The next major extension to the
premises took place in 1933, when four classrooms were added. This was the internal national
school, where the Industrial School children were taught. Just yards away, within the grounds of
the complex, stood Scoil Mhuire national school, where the children from the surrounding district
were taught. Eventually, in 1969, some 33 years after Justice Cussen recommended in his report
that, where possible, children in industrial schools should attend local national schools, the two
national schools amalgamated.
Staff and management

9.05 Most of the Sisters in Clifden had completed secondary school education and, on entering the
Congregation, many went on to train as teachers in Carysfort Training College.
9.06 As each convent within the Congregation formed its own autonomous unit, the Resident Manager
and Sisters appointed to work in the Industrial School had to be drawn from the pool of Sisters
available in the mother house in Clifden and Branch house in Carna. The Mother Superior of the
convent made the appointments.

9.07 There were three Resident Managers in Clifden during the period under review: Sr Alma1 held the
position of Resident Manager until her retirement in 1942, and was succeeded by Sr Roberta,2
who held this post until 1969; and Sr Sofia3 then took over as Resident Manager until 1984,
following the resignation of the certificate by the School in 1983. During Sr Roberta’s 27-year
reign, she also held the position of Mother Superior for two terms, her last term ending in 1971
when the five Mercy convents in the Diocese of Tuam amalgamated. Clifden was very influenced
by the personal qualities of Sr Roberta, who ran the School in a strict authoritarian manner. Her
departure from the School coincided with the opening-up of the whole industrial school system
that occurred after the Kennedy Report in 1970.
9.08 A significant factor in the running of Clifden was the enormous workload undertaken by Sr Roberta.
According to the evidence of the Congregation, she worked long, punishing hours in the Institution.
Whilst this can be seen as laudable on the part of the Sister, she was not able to care for the
children properly and did not seek extra help from the local convent.
9.09 Until 1969, when the two national schools amalgamated, three teachers were assigned to teach
in the internal national school. They had little or no involvement with the children outside school
hours. There were usually three or four Sisters, including the Resident Manager, appointed to
work full-time in the Industrial School. Their duties ranged from supervising meals to working in
the kitchen, bakery, nursery and laundry. Until 1969, the religious staff worked seven days a week,
with little or no holidays.
9.10 The Sisters were further aided by lay staff, some of whom were former residents. There was an
average of eight to 10 former residents who stayed on to work in the Industrial School at any one
time. Most of these left some time in their 20s. They had no formal childcare training and
completed their education at primary school level. The profile of lay staff changed in the 1970s,
when professionals such as teachers and care workers became involved with the School.
9.11 There was no childcare training available in Ireland until the 1970s, when a full-time childcare
course commenced in Kilkenny in 1971.4
9.12 Sr Renata5 completed a childcare course in Kilkenny in 1974, and Sr Sofia and Sr Olivia6 attended
an in-service training course in Goldenbridge on Saturdays the same year.
Children
9.13 The majority of children sent to Clifden were committed by Orders of the District Court under the
provisions of the Children Acts and School Attendance Act. Children were committed to Clifden
from all over the country notwithstanding its isolated location. There was no train service beyond
Galway City and the town was served by an infrequent bus service. In 1933, the School was
certified to take 100 girls over the age of six. The accommodation limit was fixed at 120 girls. In
1937, the School accommodated 142 children, although, until the mid-1950s, the numbers
remained at or approximately 120.
9.14 In 1944, the Department of Education changed its system of paying capitation grants to industrial
and reformatory schools, from a system of payment according to the number of children they were
certified to accommodate, to one under which the schools were paid according to the number of
children actually accommodated, up to the limit of their accommodation number.
1
2
3
4
See the chapter on St Joseph’s and St Patrick’s Kilkenny for further details in relation to this course.
5
6

9.15 Sr Roberta applied to the Department of Health in 1956 for the reception of children from the local
authorities. Whilst there is no documentary material confirming the approval of her application, it
appears that it was granted, and there is a letter from the Department of Education to the
Department of Health referring to the School in favourable terms.
9.16 On 8th June 1959, Sr Roberta applied to the Department of Education for a revision in the
certificate to enable the School to accept junior boys. In support of her application, she stated
that, if successful, this would enable siblings to stay together rather than being scattered to various
schools around the country. She also made similar representations to the Minister for the
Gaelteacht, and added, ‘For some time past our numbers here have fallen so we are most anxious
to get the little boys’. The ISPCC supported the application, describing the School as ‘excellent’.
9.17 Dr Anna McCabe,7 the Department of Education Medical Inspector, recommended that the
Certificate be revised to accommodate a limit of 140 children, including boys up to the age of 10.
Indeed, she described Clifden as a ‘particularly good and well run school’.
9.18 However, at the eleventh hour, Sr Roberta withdrew her application to the Department, as the
Archbishop of Tuam refused to support it. It is not clear why the Archbishop made this last-minute
objection, but the following year Sr Roberta renewed her application, this time with the consent of
the Archbishop. She explained:
He has now given us the permission as our numbers have decreased very much since
then.
9.19 The application was granted, and a notice appeared in Iris Oifigiúil on 7th October 1960, which
stated that the certificate for the School had been revised to allow for the admission of junior boys,
and the certified accommodation limit was increased to cater for 140 children. In the 1970s, as
numbers diminished, boys were permitted to stay into their teenage years.
9.20 During the 1960s, Sr Roberta actively sought new pupils. In response to rumours in 1964 that the
Industrial School in Westport was due to close, she wrote to the Department and stated that she
‘would be more than grateful if you could see your way to send us a few pupils’. In 1967, she
wrote to the Department, thanking them effusively for sending the School five children.
9.21 In 1969, during the transitional period when Sr Sofia took over as Resident Manager, the
Department reviewed the situation and the official concluded that:
Clifden is too small a town to accommodate an industrial school that would be as large
as St Josephs is at present. It appears to me that maybe 40 or 50 children consisting of
boys and girls would be a sufficient enrolment for Clifden industrial school. In the final
analysis, the range of necessary services, consisting of schools etc are too restrictive for
an institute of this type in a small town.
9.22 The Archbishop of Tuam agreed with the proposal to reduce numbers. In 1971, the
accommodation limit was reduced to 60 children.
9.23 Mr Graham Granville, who was appointed to the position of Child Care Advisor in the Department
of Education in the mid-1970s, noted in his Inspection Report of the same year:
It would appear upon examination of the files etc. that in the past many of the children
admitted to Clifden were received into Care to be removed “out of sight out of mind”.
9.24 This policy in his opinion was applied especially to children of different racial backgrounds.
7

9.25 A women’s magazine carried a feature in the late 1960s commenting on the fact that there were
13 mixed race children in Clifden out of about 80. By 1980, the profile of the children had changed,
in that the majority were local children from the surrounding areas.
Group homes
9.26 From the early 1970s, the idea of converting Clifden into a group-home school was suggested.
The Department kept a critical eye on the School, after shortcomings in its management were
exposed in 1969. The future of the School was reviewed, and it was agreed that numbers should
be reduced and the School divided into three groups of between 15 and 20 children, in line with
the Kennedy Report recommendations. The Archbishop of Tuam backed the proposal. However,
plans were put on hold following a Department inspection in the early 1970s.
9.27 In the early 1970s, the Reverend Mother, Sr Antea,8 wrote to the Department offering the use of
a vacant building for the purposes of a group home. Nothing appears to have come of this
proposal, although the following year the Department put the idea of group homes back on the
agenda by agreeing to consider a modest grant towards the project.
9.28 The concept was referred to in the Department’s Inspection Reports in the late 1970s and again
in the final Inspection Reports of the early 1980s, but dwindling numbers made the project
redundant.
Closure of Clifden
9.29 In June 1982, the Resident Manager informed the Department that she had given permission to
the Galway Association for the Mentally Handicapped to use part of the Industrial School building
for their own purposes. She indicated that this was likely to be a permanent arrangement as the
building was too large for the group of 24 children resident in the Industrial School.
9.30 In 1983, that number had further dwindled to 15, prompting the Resident Manager to write to the
Department, stating ‘Due to circumstances beyond our control and after consultation with officials
of the Western Health Board, and also due to lack of referrals from the Health Board we are
reluctantly obliged to close the Home in Mid July’.
9.31 A report by Mr Ciaran Fahy, consulting engineer, on the buildings and accommodation in Clifden,
appears in the Appendix to this chapter.
The Investigation
9.32 The Investigation Committee heard evidence in three phases. The first phase involved a public
hearing at which Sr Margaret Casey, Provincial Leader of the Western Province of the
Congregation of Sisters of Mercy, gave evidence on behalf of the Congregation on 10th January
2006. She had no direct involvement with Clifden apart from spending a fortnight there before the
School closed down. She drew from the following sources of information in preparing her evidence
for the Commission’s inquiry:
• archival records held by the Congregation;
• material received from the Commission by way of discovery and complainants
statements;
• documentation arising out of litigation proceedings; and
• conversations with Sisters who were part of the Community in Clifden.
8

9.33 In her evidence of 10th January 2006, she set out in detail the Congregation’s position with regard
to St Joseph’s Industrial School, Clifden.
9.34 In the second phase of the inquiry, the Investigation Committee heard evidence in private hearings
from 10 complainants and, at the request of the Sisters of Mercy, from a former resident who had
positive memories of her time in Clifden. The Committee also heard evidence during this phase
from four respondents, including three members of the Congregation.
9.35 Finally, in the third phase of the Committee’s inquiry, Sr Margaret Casey again gave evidence at
public hearings on 15th and 16th May 2006 and was questioned in relation to the Congregation’s
position in light of the evidence that had emerged during the private sessions.
Physical abuse
Documentary material
9.36 There is one documented case of excessive corporal punishment in Clifden, which relates to an
incident which occurred in the early 1980s.
9.37 A number of siblings were placed in Clifden and reported incidents of violence towards them by
a particular lay worker. One of the girls had sustained bruising to her left buttock, allegedly as a
result of being hit with a wooden spoon for being unable to do her homework. This allegation gave
rise to a Western Health Board investigation.
9.38 The matter arose when the Community Care Team in the area in which the children resided wrote
to the Western Health Board. The letter expressed concern about the possibility of the children
being sent back to Clifden:
Our anxiety is that in the event of the parents being unable to cope effectively in the
future, the only option open is to return these children to this pathogenic atmosphere.
9.39 The Community Care Team requested that ‘the quality of caring in this Residential Home for
children’ be investigated and expressed the opinion that ‘this alleged violence is the work of a
particular staff member, rather than residential care policy’.
9.40 There is no documentation relating to the Western Health Board investigation, except a reference
by a Department inspector to the fact that one had taken place. A list of staff members available
for this time reveals that this staff member remained in employment in Clifden.
9.41 There is no record of a punishment book as required by the regulations being maintained in
Clifden. A book was discovered by the Congregation for the period 1933 to 1956, but it does not
provide details of any punishments. It is a general commentary on the conduct of the children
which, according to this record, was invariably very good.
9.42 Sr Margaret Casey confirmed that corporal punishment was a feature of life in Clifden, and she
stated that it was the norm at the time. The principal form of punishment was slapping,
administered by hand, cane, flat stick or ruler, usually by the Sister on duty. She found no evidence
of a policy under which children were sent to the Resident Manager or other senior figures for the
administration of punishment, and conceded that punishments were carried out in the presence
of other children, usually on the spot. She referred to the punishment book mentioned above, and
confirmed it was not maintained after 1956 and was general in nature.
9.43 Sr Casey acknowledged that the documented case of excessive corporal punishment referred to
above was ‘a significant incident’.
9.44 She conceded that, with the benefit of hindsight, both the Congregation and individual Sisters
regret the use of corporal punishment and recognise the potential effects on these already
vulnerable children.
9.45 In the course of an apology to former residents of Clifden, Sr Casey stated:

I suppose we do recognise that the children that were committed to our care...were
vulnerable and we do recognise that they were traumatised. The system that prevailed in
the Industrial School mitigated against giving them the necessary affection and care that
their vulnerability required ... It was necessary dealing with such large numbers to maintain
order and strict discipline was required. This obviously had a negative effect on the
children and unfortunately we deeply regret that this may have been excessive at times
and for this we are truly sorry.
9.46 All of the complainants who gave evidence alleged physical abuse. They asserted that various
implements were used to inflict punishment, including a ruler, cane, a bunch of keys and a towel
roller. Allegations were made against members of the Congregation, lay workers and older
children.
9.47 A common thread running through the testimony of the complainants was that punishment was
meted out indiscriminately and that this created an environment of fear. One witness, who was a
resident for eight years from the early 1950s, stated:
it didn’t really matter what you were beaten for, it was just one of those things, if they saw
you there and you weren’t doing something then you got beaten for it.
9.48 Another witness, a resident for 12 years from the late 1950s, stated that they were punished:
For nothing, just because they felt like it. If they were angry then they just took it out on
you, sometimes you were an innocent victim just sitting there, or just playing and then
they attacked you, it all depends on what moods they were in.
9.49 A witness, who was committed for just over a year in the early 1960s when she was 12 years
old, remarked:
Anybody got it, it didn’t make a difference. If you were just in the wrong place at the wrong
time or if you were too slow to get your work down or if you didn’t get down the stairs
quick enough or if you ran...Anywhere they could get you they would hit you. Mainly on
the head. That was the sorest. They would hit you with the keys, that was sore.
9.50 Another witness, who was committed to Clifden before she was a year old and spent her entire
childhood there during the 1960s and the 1970s, commented:
I lived in, I think – I watched – I was punished, other kids were punished, I think it was
being in an environment controlled in fear. I think I was very afraid of the nuns, very afraid
of getting things wrong. I think I was constantly in that state of fear of being punished.
9.51 She added that when the anticipated punishment was actually delivered, it came almost as a relief.
9.52 A witness, who was committed to Clifden in the late 1950s, at the age of 11, and remained there
until she was 16, recalled, on arrival with her sisters, being met by a lay worker. The children were
told to take their clothes off for a bath. One of her younger sisters was reluctant to be parted from
her favourite red boots. The witness tried to prevent the lay worker from taking the boots and she
was punched around the head and told that she would not be permitted to back-answer in Clifden.
She further alleged that this carer regularly hit her with a bunch of keys.
9.53 Another witness, who was in Clifden in the early 1960s when she was 12, described an incident
in which she and a boy were confronted by a Sister one afternoon for coming back late. She
asked them whether they had had intercourse but they did not understand what it meant. She
made the boy pull down his trousers in front of the witness and she beat him with a cane. The
witness refused to undergo the same humiliation and tried to escape. The nun pushed her through
a glass door. Her hand went through the glass and she banged her chest hard against a brass
knob in the door. The Sister proceeded to hit her on the back with a bamboo cane. She did not
receive any medical treatment for her injuries. Her chest injury got progressively worse and, when
she complained to the same Sister, she was beaten again. Eventually, another Sister discovered
the extent of the injury and took her to a doctor. She was admitted to hospital for two and a half
weeks. Her family were not informed that she was in hospital. The school record indicates that
she was suffering from mastitis, as does a record signed by the GP on the day she was admitted
to hospital.
9.54 A witness who spent her entire childhood in Clifden during the 1960s and 1970s, made several
allegations of physical abuse by the Sisters. She stated that, when she was five, a friend blamed
her for bringing a cup of water into the schoolroom, which was forbidden. She was punished by
a Sister who hit her with a hand brush. She remembered a number of children who had run away
being beaten with a cane by a Sister whom she specifically remembered, as she used to dye her
hair in the Institution. This Sister gave evidence to the Investigation Committee and vehemently
denied this allegation of abuse.
9.55 Sr Olivia,9 taught the children spelling, and the witness remembered not being able to spell the
word ‘colour’. The Sister hit her with a hand brush four or five times. She said, ‘Sometimes when
you cried that seemed to encourage them to hit more’. She recalled other occasions on which she
was beaten by the same Sister, including an incident in which she was beaten for not being able
to read a passage from the Bible.
9.56 This witness made allegations of physical abuse against Sr Olivia who denied them. Sr Olivia did
confirm that her usual method of administering punishment was to slap children. She accepted
that occasionally she thumped the children. She added that this did not happen often and she
was not aggressive with the children, but accepted that some degree of force was involved and
that she would always regret it afterwards. She stated that, if she felt that she had punished the
children unfairly, she would talk to them about it afterwards. Sr Olivia did not recall ever speaking
to this witness referred to above after a punishment.
9.57 Sr Olivia furnished an additional statement dealing with the allegations made against her. In this
later statement, she accepted that she occasionally used a hand brush to punish children, whereas
in her first statement she stated that she slapped children with her hand only. She explained that
initially she was devastated by the allegations made and was confused. She did not want to
implicate any other Sister, or indeed herself, by conceding that they used a hand brush to
administer punishment. She went for counselling and came to terms with the fact that they had in
fact used a hand brush for this purpose. As conditions improved in Clifden, this method of
punishment was used less frequently.
9.58 She stated that there was no special place where children were sent for punishment. It could
happen anywhere. She would resort to the hand brush for punishment when, for example, the
Resident Manager was away. Sometimes, she had difficulty controlling children and, rather than
face the possibility that the nuns in the convent would tell the Resident Manager, she used the
hand brush to restore order. The Resident Manager also used the hand brush, but not as often
as she had better control of the children.
9

9.59 Another respondent Sister, who taught the children from the early 1960s, gave evidence that
discipline was maintained in the classroom by slapping the children. She used a flat stick called
a ‘slapper’. If a child was very bold, she would administer two slaps to each hand. Former residents
referred to being beaten, whereas she would describe the punishments as being slapped.
9.60 The Sister recalled an incident involving a complainant whom she would have regarded as her
pet. One day, another Sister came to her with the girl and said that she had misbehaved. She
slapped her twice. She felt that the complainant never forgave her for this punishment and their
relationship was never the same again. The complainant had made allegations of serious abuse
against a number of Sisters including this respondent.
9.61 Sr Elana,10 who taught in Scoil Mhuire from the mid-1950s, and after the amalgamation of the
schools, admitted that she did punish children by slapping them on the hands with either a flat
stick or a cane. In the late 1960s, she read a series of articles by Dr Cyril Daly published in the
daily newspapers, advocating the abolition of corporal punishment. She accepted his views and
did not engage in this practice after that.
Conclusions
9.62 1. Control in Clifden was maintained through a regime of corporal punishment that was
pervasive and, on occasions, excessive.
2. Punishment was administered for trivial offences and led to a climate of fear in the
Institution.
3. In the absence of a properly maintained punishment book, it is not possible to say
how much physical punishment occurred in Clifden, although the evidence of
witnesses would indicate that it was considerably in excess of what would have been
regarded as normal at the time.
4. Former residents and staff confirmed the existence of ‘pets’ in the Institution.
Favouritism in such a setting was damaging and undermining because it resulted in
discrimination between children.
Neglect
9.63 There were three Resident Managers in Clifden for the period under review, one of whom held
the position for a continuous period of 27 years from 1942.
9.64 Until the early 1970s, there were on average three full-time members of staff working in the
Institution looking after a large number of children. In the 1970s, the number of staff in the
Institution increased, with teachers and care workers being employed from outside the
Congregation. Childcare training became available in the 1970s, with a course commencing in
Kilkenny and the Sisters in Goldenbridge providing an in-service training course for members of
the Congregation.
Evidence
9.65 Sr Margaret Casey accepted that the staff-child figures were totally unacceptable by today’s
standards.
9.66 She also accepted that the focus was on material things such as shelter and clothes as opposed
to care for the children, and that this was reflected in the staff numbers in the School. She said
that the Sisters in the School worked under very difficult conditions without support services. When
further questioned in regard to the difficulties encountered in the late 1960s, she conceded that
10

during this period, ‘it would appear that the children were being neglected but I would have seen
it more as a management failure than actually neglecting the children’.
9.67 Referring to the fact that there was a significant pool of Sisters in the convents in Clifden and
Carna Sr Casey stated that each of these Sisters was involved in her own ministry, teaching,
nursing etc, or retired or engaged in their own professional training, and that there was in fact no
surplus supply to direct to the Institution.
9.68 Two respondent Sisters referred to staff and management issues in their evidence. One worked
in the Industrial School from the late 1960s until it closed and stated that, when she was sent to
Clifden, there were 86 children and three full-time members of staff: herself, the Resident Manager
and a lay worker. Another Sister helped out on a part-time basis. It was a chaotic and stressful
environment, involving long working hours and no holidays. She did not make any representations
to her superiors at the time for assistance, and simply managed with what she had. She was very
unhappy and did seek a transfer. She was told to ‘hold on for a while, you know, that we will get
you out of it’. Matters did not improve until the early to mid-1970s, when a combination of a
decrease in the number of residents and an increase in staff numbers succeeded in reducing the
pressure. The Sister confirmed that she did not undergo any childcare training until the mid-1970s,
when she attended an in-service training course in Goldenbridge.
9.69 Another respondent, Sr Carmella,11 who was both teacher and principal in the internal national
school from the early 1960s stated that she did not bring any of her concerns to the attention of
Sr Roberta who held the posts of Resident Manager and Reverend Mother:
No, I did not discuss with the Reverend Mother. I just did what the Reverend Mother told
me to do and my work was to teach in the School and that was it. That was what was
allotted to me and I did what I could there. But it was – the Reverend Mother, she
determined the lot of each individual.
9.70 She simply did what she was told to do, as Sr Roberta ‘was that kind of person that her word was
law, she was in authority and that was it’.
9.71 She stated that Sr Roberta, the Resident Manager, and Sr Veronica,12 her Deputy, were strict with
the children and could have shown them more compassion. She accepted that the Resident
Manager might have appeared frightening to a child, ‘she had a very strong voice, her voice alone
would frighten you and I say that alone would make a child afraid’.
9.72 Sr Carmella accepted that there were some teething problems when a new Resident Manager
was appointed in 1969, and recalled the Gardaı́ calling to the School in relation to an incident.
She was asked about a query, in a Department Inspection Report for this period, regarding the
reasons behind the shortage of Sisters in the Industrial School, despite the fact that they formed
part of a Community of 40 Sisters. Her rationale for this situation was that nobody wanted to work
for the new Resident Manager. She reiterated Sr Casey’s evidence that all of the Sisters in the
convent had their own duties, such as working in the hospital or domestic economy school, or
they were retired nuns. There were not any nuns available to work in the Industrial School.
9.73 In the late 1960s, the Department of Education discovered that, small babies, admitted to the
institution, were being sent out to families in the countryside without the consent of the Department
or County Council. They sought an explanation from the Resident Manager, who responded that
this had arisen as a result of an outbreak of smallpox and the need to isolate the babies. She
confirmed that she paid the families £2.00 per week and supplied them with necessities, including
11
12

baby foods, drops, clothes, prams and cots. She stated that she believed that this course was in
the best interests of the children but agreed that it would not happen again.
9.74 There was a difficult transition period in 1969 when Sr Roberta, the Resident Manager, resigned
her post after 27 years and a new Resident Manager, Sr Sofia, was appointed. At that stage,
there were 89 children in the School and two permanent staff members. The Acting Inspector of
Industrial and Reformatory Schools, Mr Phelan,13 visited the School in October 1969 and advised
the Dublin Metropolitan Children’s Court that Clifden was over-crowded and that no further children
should be committed there.
9.75 Following this inspection, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Education wrote to the
Archbishop of Tuam in October 1969, expressing his concern at the staff shortages in Clifden:
My Lord Archbishop,
I am aware of your deep interest in the welfare of the children in St. Joseph’s School,
Clifden, and on that account I request the assistance of Your Grace in the solution of the
following problem relating to the institution.
In the course of a recent visit to St. Joseph’s the acting Inspector of Reformatory and
Industrial Schools was concerned to find that a group of the older girls were flouting
authority by refusing to attend school, by roaming the streets of Clifden after dark
catcalling and behaving rudely to their elders and that the Gardaı́ had visited the school
last week with a view to establishing a more disciplined behaviour on the part of the
children in residence there.
In the opinion of the acting Inspector, which is shared by Father Costello,14 a curate in
the parish, whom he called on during the course of his visit, the serious deterioration of
standards in St. Joseph's is directly attributable to the insufficient staff employed to look
after the 85 boys and girls at present in the institution and as a consequence this shortage
of staff places an intolerable and unfair burden on the shoulders of Sr. Sofia, who has
recently been assigned to manage the industrial school.
To organise efficiently an institution of the size and nature of St. Joseph's, two additional
nuns one of whom, if at all possible, should have experience in nursing or child care would
need to be allotted full time to assist Sr. Sofia in her duties and extra lay help is also
needed in the kitchen and dormitory to the extent decided by Sr. Sofia. It is in connection
with the former requirement that I would ask Your Grace to approach Mother Roberta, the
Superior of the community in Clifden, to ensure that the two additional nuns referred to
above be assigned to full time duties in St. Joseph's as a matter of urgency, if effective
control of the older girls is to be restored and a source of grave criticism of the industrial
school removed.
In regard to the engagement of extra lay staff as required by Sister Sofia, I would like to
make the following point for Your Grace' s information, Mother Roberta has been resident
manger of the school for a number of years and in this position has received the
maintenance grants paid by this Department and the local authorities responsible for the
children detained in the school by court order. It seems, however, as a result of the recent
inspection that by reason of advancing years and other duties in her capacity as Superior
of the convent, Mother Roberta now has little time to devote to the actual day to day care
of the children though she still controls the finances of the school. In my opinion this is an
entirely unsatisfactory arrangement which must restrict Sr. Sofia in the employment of the
extra lay assistance which she so badly needs, and the introduction of the other measures
deemed essential if all round standards in the school are to be raised.
13
14

Administratively it would be a simple matter to change the payment of the maintenance
grants from Mother Roberta to Sister Sofia but in the particular circumstances of the
community in Clifden this change would not be effective unless Your Grace interfered to
make it so. Accordingly, I would also ask Your Grace to use your good offices to ensure
that the financial control of the maintenance grants paid by this Department and the Local
Authorities in respect of the committed children is placed in the hands of Sr. Sofia so that
she may have a free hand in her efforts to restore to St. Joseph's School its former high
standard of performance in the field of caring for the deprived and underprivileged child.
I have the honour to be, my Lord Archbishop,
Yours sincerely,
Assistant Secretary.
9.76 The Archbishop duly made representations to Sr Roberta who assured him that extra staff would
be deployed in the School.
9.77 The acting Inspector again inspected the School a few months later and found conditions much
improved, as documented in his internal memorandum:
St. Joseph’s, Clifden
Rúnai-Cúnta,
On my visit to Clifden Industrial School ... I found that the new manager had made good
progress in the task of restoring acceptable standards in the conduct of this school.
Numbers have been reduced from 85 to 72, and dormitories were clean and smelt
pleasantly and a new locker has been purchased for every child. In the refectory new
chairs have been provided and a substantial dinner has replaced the “traditional” bread &
tea as the Saturday mid-day meal. Minor improvements in the washing facilities have also
been made and Sr Sofia has a programme of painting & decorating, additional heating
and a more suitable arrangement of w.c. accommodation in the pipeline. Furthermore she
has increased the staff from three to nine and has been successful in placing or
transferring six senior girls who had got completely out of hands.
We discussed further reductions in numbers, additional staff who would sleep in and
become more involved in the social life of the children and the assistance of an Art teacher
who would help plan a more individual colour scheme in the children’s dress. Most schools
buy in bulk from shops and factories which can effect a saving of up to 35% but can result
in the child having to fit the article rather than the opposite. Sr Sofia was advised to
postpone structural alterations for the present and to expect a visit next May to discuss
the progress of her plans. The Archbishop was to pay a further visit ....
I subsequently saw Fr. Costello C.C. who supports Sr. Sofia in her determination to
improve matters in St. Joseph’s. Dialogue on most matters will shortly be allowed in the
community at Clifden which may reveal why out of a strength of 40 nuns only two are
willing to work in the industrial school, though all have taken vows to care for “the poor
the sick and the ignorant”.
[A] Having seen the chaos which existed with 85 children in residence and insufficient
staff & the relative improvement with 72 children and additional staff, I am now moving
towards the view that in a small town like Clifden with its limited services and its
comparatively isolated position, the number of children who could be successfully
integrated in the school life and social activities of the district should be not more than 40-
50 (boys + girls) and if you agree, I will discuss this question on the phone with Sr Sofia.
In the meantime I am asking [a], Kindergarten Organiser to call on Sr Sofia and advise
her on the employment of the children’s time outside school hours.
[Handwritten notes at bottom of page]
Since writing this report Sr. Sofia phoned to say that the Archbishop had visited ... & she
felt he would like to be informed of the results of the recent inspection. In view of his
continuing interest it might be well to put the proposal at A above to him in the first
instance together with the recent views on the school.
9.78 The Archbishop was kept informed of developments and agreed that, ultimately, numbers would
have to be reduced.
9.79 A further inspection some five months later reported that five Sisters worked part-time on a regular
basis in the School, and an additional Sister had been appointed on a full-time basis.
9.80 Dr Anna McCabe was appointed Medical Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools in 1939
and held the post until 1965. She also carried out General Inspections of the schools.
9.81 There are General Inspection Reports available for most of the 1940s and 1950s. All of these
reports, without exception, refer to Clifden in glowing terms. Year after year, it is referred to as an
excellent and extremely well-conducted school. The Resident Manager, Sr Roberta, and her
deputy, Sr Veronica, are also praised and referred to as very capable and kind. The last Inspection
Report by Dr McCabe with regard to Clifden is dated 1962.
9.82 Sr Casey and complainant witnesses testified that inspections were notified to the school in
advance and that conditions were improved for the visits.
9.83 Dr McCabe carried out Medical Inspections at the same time as the General Inspections, and
these are documented separately. All of her Medical Reports are very positive.
9.84 The local GP completed Quarterly Medical Returns for the Department which noted that the health
of the children was excellent, their diet varied and they were well nourished, clean and neat in
appearance. The children were taken for walks and drives in the countryside and the
accommodation was in good condition.
9.85 Dr C E Lysaght was contracted by the Department of Education to conduct one-off inspections of
industrial and reformatory schools in 1966. He provided a detailed General and Medical Inspection
Report in regard to Clifden after an inspection in 1966.
9.86 Overall, his report was very positive. He asked why the industrial school children were taught
separately from the local children and was told by Sr Veronica that this was the way it had always
been and that, in any event, the local primary school was too small to cater for them.
9.87 There was a hiatus in inspections until 1969, when the Acting Inspector visited the School and
was alarmed to find it overcrowded and understaffed.
9.88 It is apparent that the reports of the acting inspector were more child-centred than those of his
predecessors, who tended to concentrate on the physical aspects of the Institution as opposed to
the standard of care provided to the children.
9.89 Mr Graham Granville was appointed to the position of Child Care Advisor in the Department of
Education in the mid-1970s. He conducted five inspections of Clifden between the mid-1970s and
the early 1980s. In general, these reports were positive although he expressed concern about the
aftercare and the socialisation of the children into the community.

Food
9.90 Sr Casey said she had spoken to two Sisters who expressed concern about the adequacy of the
food in the School in the mid-1960s. She accepted that, in the 1950s and through to the early
1960s, the food was very basic; at teatime they had bread, butter and jam every day.
9.91 Most of the complainants made allegations regarding the poor quality and quantity of food in
Clifden. Many of the witnesses recall always being hungry, and resorted to stealing food intended
for the farm animals and bread from the bakery.
9.92 Another former resident, who spent her childhood in Clifden during the 1960s and 1970s, stated
that conditions changed in 1969 when a new Resident Manager was appointed. There seemed
to be more money and they never went hungry. This contrasted with previous years, when she
recalled always being hungry and eating food destined for the pigs. However, with the regime
change, she recalled ‘another type of panic around food, because we had to eat what we got and
if we didn’t eat it we got lashed. Well, I got hit. I remember get – being beat because I couldn’t
eat my food’. She recalled, in particular, being beaten by one Sister for not eating her food quickly
enough, but this Sister denied hitting the witness or any other child across the face for not eating
their food quickly.
9.93 One respondent who gave evidence was a national schoolteacher who had taught children in
Carna national school before being transferred to Clifden internal national school in the early
1960s. She stated that, in comparison with the children in Carna, the Industrial School children
were well fed and clothed.
9.94 In its Submissions, the Congregation concedes that:

in view of the repetition of complaints about food, and the evidence of certain particular
complainants such as [the complainant named] it seems likely that hunger was a real
issue for the children in Clifden industrial, at least up to a certain period of time, perhaps
the late 1960’s ... The food does not seem to have been adequate in quantity to satisfy
the appetite of the children. It is accepted that children probably did, on occasion, steal
loaves of fresh bread and extra portions of food whenever they could.
Education
9.95 In 1939, a Preliminary Report was carried out by a Department Inspector into the feasibility of
amalgamating the internal national school and the local national school, Scoil Mhuire, which were
located yards from each other within the same grounds. The manager of both schools, Mother
Alma, was open to the idea, but expressed reservations about the attitude of parents of children
in Scoil Mhuire to the proposal.
9.96 The Department Inspector reported in May 1942 that while in his view it was perfectly feasible to
amalgamate the two schools:
The Rev. Mother of the Community, Mother Alma, who is manager of both schools, and
the principal teacher of the Convent N.S. are all three opposed to the idea of having the
pupils of both schools taught together, mainly because they fear that the parents of the
children attending the N.S. would object. I think it likely that there would be some such
objection.
9.97 Furthermore, £4,000 had recently been spent on upgrading the Industrial School classrooms,
which would be wasted if an amalgamation took place. The inspector concluded that, ‘In my
opinion, the pupils of the Industrial School would not gain, educationally or otherwise, by being
taught along with the pupils of the other school and I do not think the present arrangement should
be altered’. The Department accepted the conclusions of the inspector and the status quo would
remain unchanged until July 1969 when the two schools were amalgamated.
9.98 In 1972, the Sisters expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of post-primary educational facilities in
the area, and in particular the lack of vocational training. They maintained that this had impeded
the development of the Industrial School. The Department investigated the matter and was
reasonably happy with the facilities available. A vocational school replacing the two secondary
schools in Clifden was opened in the mid-1970s.
9.99 Sr Casey stated at the Phase I public hearing:

Up to the ‘60’s the level of education was generally that of Primary Cert, but there was
industrial training provided as well and the children would have been expected to engage
in significant amounts of domestic work depending on their age, such as the laundry,
kitchen and bakery and at any given time a child would have helped on the farm. These
things all of them together would undoubtedly have made the children feel that in some
sense their childhood was thwarted or stunted.
9.100 She added that, in the 1970s, there was a drive to ensure that those children who were capable
and interested in pursuing post-primary education were given the opportunity to do so. Again,
during the 1970s, children were sent to different schools in the locality, or indeed sent to boarding
school, in an effort to minimise the institutional nature of their upbringing and enable them to mix
with other children.
9.101 Sr Casey accepted that it would have been better, from a socialisation point of view, if the children
had been amalgamated with the local national school children back in 1942 when the issue was
first raised. It was put to her that the reasoning behind objecting to the amalgamation reflected
less a concern for the welfare of the children and more an interest in preserving the financial
investment which had been made in the School. Sr Casey accepted that this was one
interpretation of the matter.
9.102 Many of the complainants gave evidence as to the inadequacy of the standard of education they
received in Clifden.
9.103 One witness, who was committed to Clifden in the early 1950s at the age of seven and spent
eight years there, stated she was continuously reprimanded in class, both physically and verbally,
to the extent that she found it impossible to learn anything. In one particular class, she regularly
had to stand in a corner wearing a dunce’s hat. She has difficulty reading and writing to this day.
As regards practical skills, she learned to cook and do laundry work. The only training she received
in preparation for life after Clifden was domestic training.
9.104 Two other witnesses complained that an over-emphasis on religious studies deprived them of
other educational skills. One of these witnesses was five years old when she was sent to Clifden
in the late 1950s. She stated:
You were drilled with religion and if you didn’t know it that you got beaten and that you
had to stand on the desk or kneel down and face the blackboard or face the wall, turn
around against the wall ... we didn’t go on to the Leaving or Inter or anything. We were
not even able to read or write when we left the Institution. It was just sheer luck that we
did survive. We had the survival skills but we did not have the educational skills.
9.105 She also alleged that she was taken out of class to take care of young children. The second
witness, who was committed to Clifden in the early 1960s and spent just over a year there,
described the Sister who taught her as vicious. She had a bamboo cane, which she used with
great zeal if the children did not know their lessons. She concentrated on religious studies. She
alleged that they spent more time trying to avoid beatings than learning.
9.106 The Congregation denied that there was an emphasis on religious studies and that children were
taken out of class to engage in domestic chores.
9.107 Another former resident in Clifden, who was committed in the late 1950s at the age of 10 and
remained there until she was discharged at the age of 16, also alleged that she often worked in
the nursery during school hours. She stated that the standard of her education did not improve
on what she had been taught prior to being committed. The school records indicate that her
reading, writing and calculation were ‘basic’ when she came to the School, but she insisted that
her abilities in these areas were very good at this stage. She also asserted that, when she sat the
Primary Certificate, all of the children copied from each other with the full knowledge of the
supervising Department inspectors. The Congregation submits that this latter allegation is utterly
implausible.
9.108 A complainant who spent her childhood in Clifden during the 1960s and 1970s gave evidence in
relation to the Sister who taught her in 6th class:
we were terrified of her because she was very cruel. I used to be dreading going into her
class because she used to teach in 6th class and I spend years dreading going into her
class because I feared that she would punish me.
9.109 When she finally did go into 6th class, she found that she was not afraid of the teacher. In fact,
the Sister ignored her completely in class because she gave backchat on one occasion. She does
not recall ever being beaten by her, nor witnessing another child being beaten in class. However,
the witness does recall Sr Elana ‘lashing’ children for attempting to run away. She stated that this
Sister had a reputation of targeting the industrial school children for punishment.
9.110 This respondent, Sr Elana, remembered the complainant as a quiet girl. She accepted that she
was strict in class but maintained that this was necessary to preserve order. When the two national
schools merged in 1969, she felt that some of the industrial school children would have benefited
from remedial teaching which was not available at that time. She did not have any time to give
special attention to pupils in need.
9.111 Another Sister, Sr Carmella, felt that the School was under-staffed. The children did not achieve
as well academically as their peers in Scoil Mhuire.
9.112 She said that no real efforts were made to deal with the fact that the industrial school children
were behind educationally in comparison with the pupils in Scoil Mhuire. She helped them with
their study in the afternoons and another Sister, who was partially blind, helped with reading,
spelling and tables, but that was the extent of the assistance given. She stated that they did
eventually catch up with the other pupils. Ultimately, the amalgamation improved them in every
way, ‘Their outlook, their behaviour and everything. They learned from the other children’.
9.113 Despite the apparent emphasis on educating the children, most of them were destined for a life
in some sort of domestic service. Sr Carmella’s explanation was that such an outcome was never
questioned: ‘I think the order of the day was that in the end of it they were going to end up as
domestics’. Sr Roberta, who held the position as Resident Manager until 1969, decided who
would go on to secondary school. She would have liked to have seen more children go on to
further education.
9.114 Sr Carmella stated that chores did not interfere with their schooling and were carried out before
and after school. Girls between 14 and 16 years of age took part in a domestic economy course.
The children were taught music after school and there was an emphasis on musical education in
the School. She was not of the view that inordinate pressure was put on the children with regard to
their performance for the Christmas concert and thought that they quite enjoyed the preparations.
9.115 She denied that there was a marked emphasis on religious education over other subjects, and
stated that half an hour every day was given towards religious education. The School followed
the national school curriculum and was subject to Department inspections.
9.116 On the question why the children did not fare better academically, the Congregation submitted
that the following factors should be taken into account:
• The psychological and emotional state of these vulnerable children, as well as the
effects of institutionalisation, which would have had repercussions on their ability to
learn.
• The pre-existing standard of education of children who were older when committed.
• The absence of remedial facilities.
• The effects of corporal punishment and such practices as wearing a dunce’s hat.
• The absence of motivation where there were no post-primary educational opportunities
and the emphasis in the industrial training provided focused largely on a future in
domestic service.
• The gap between what the prescribed curriculum offered and the needs of children in
institutional care.
9.117 • The standard of education in Clifden was below that available in local national schools.
The failure to amalgamate the children with local children for national schooling
caused disadvantage, both socially and educationally. The interests of the local
community and the Congregation were placed ahead of those of the children in care.
Excessive corporal punishment had a damaging effect on institutionalised children. It
would appear that children in Clifden were regarded as suitable for domestic work and
trained accordingly. The Congregation was correct to draw attention to the ‘effects of
corporal punishment and such practices as wearing a dunce’s hat’.
Chores/Industrial training
9.118 Sr Casey confirmed that children had to rise early in the morning, on a rota basis, to light the
furnaces and fires. This practice stopped when central heating was installed in the School in the
early 1950s.
9.119 The children did various chores around the School and, when old enough, assisted in the laundry
and bakery and on the farm. She did not accept, based on the enquiries she made, that the
children engaged in heavy-duty work on the farm. The extent of their involvement would have
been limited to collecting eggs, cleaning the hen-house and making butter. She conceded that the
work in the laundry was hard until the 1960s, when machinery was introduced. She did not accept
that children were taken out of school to assist with domestic chores.
9.120 She added that the Congregation:

again with hindsight would wish to acknowledge that the routine nature of the School
reflected in the institutional nature of the setting was very far removed from what children
would have experienced in the ordinary rhythm of a family home. It’s possibly true to say
as well that the routine nature was the way Sisters’ lives was organised themselves so it
was transposed to the Industrial School setting.
9.121 Most of the complainants alleged that they had to rise early in the morning, on a rota basis, to
carry in turf and coal to light the boilers. One complainant, who was in Clifden from the late 1950s
and remained there until the early 1970s, added that, if the pot of water for tea was not boiled by
8am, those on duty were beaten and were put on the rota for the following week.
9.122 Another recurring complaint was that older girls were taken out of school to look after babies and
toddlers, a claim denied by the Congregation.
9.123 A complainant, who was committed at the age of 10 in the late 1950s and remained there until
the mid-1960s, asserted that she worked on the farm and assisted with haymaking. She also
worked in the laundry from the age of 11 and washed the nuns’ clothes.
9.124 Another complainant, sent to Clifden at the age of 12 in the early 1960s for just over a year,
stated that regular chores included picking weeds and thistles from the nuns’ graves, washing
and polishing floors, and working in the laundry.
9.125 The Congregation submits that it is likely that complainants merged together the different types
of chores they engaged in at different ages and failed to distinguish between chores and
9.126 In Clifden, as in all girls’ industrial schools, much of the maintenance and upkeep of the School
was done by the residents, often in the guise of domestic training.
9.127 • Clifden was characterised by an exceptionally small staff, and it is therefore inevitable
that the heavy maintenance work associated with a large institution was done by the
girls themselves. Even complainants who were critical of the School conceded that it
was kept spotlessly clean, and it was clear from the reports of Dr McCabe that she
was impressed by the hygiene standards there. This was achieved by a disciplined
round of chores and duties on the part of the girls.
• It also appears that the older girls had to provide the high level of care needed by the
very young children.
• The distinction between using children as a labour force and providing them with
industrial training was an important one. The failure to observe this distinction in
Clifden sometimes led to exploitation.
Health/Hygiene
9.128 A complainant described the general state of cleanliness of the children as follows:
They were filthy, black eyes, dirty clothes or torn clothes ... the hair was sore, and the
fleas used to eat right through the hair, all scabbed. The children’s hair was full of scabs,
full of sores, oozing and the filth and dirt and blood coming from the hair.
9.129 She said she never had a toothbrush in Clifden. The children washed their teeth with bread soda.
They were bathed about once a month. There were two big baths, and the children queued up
naked for their baths. She found this humiliating as she started to develop. The younger children
went first and, while water was added at intervals, it was filthy by the time the last of the girls took
their bath.
9.130 A witness from the mid-1960s said that the older children checked the younger children’s heads
for lice and, if lice were discovered, the children were called dirty or filthy.

9.131 Head lice were a constant problem which was treated by putting a white powder in the child’s hair
and by keeping the hair short. The Resident Manager, Sr Roberta, used to check their heads for
lice and children whose heads were infested were beaten.
9.132 Another complainant, sent to Clifden at the age of 12 in the early 1960s stated that the children
had to sit down every evening and inspect each other’s heads for lice.
9.133 A complainant remembered during the 1960s a lay worker cutting her hair in a very rough manner,
leaving her with chunks of hair missing.
9.134 Every night, both boys and girls got undressed downstairs. They went up to bed in their underwear.
She remembered feeling shy in front of the boys. They kept their nightdresses under their pillows.
Each morning, they went downstairs to dress. She remembered always being cold.
9.135 A number of complainants stated that they received no information about menstruation or the
facts of life. When their periods started, they depended on the older girls to explain what was
happening. Girls left Clifden with little or no knowledge of adolescent development and the facts
of life and were extremely vulnerable in the outside world. This fact should have been apparent
to the Sisters who cared for them.
9.136 Sr Carmella gave evidence that the children kept their school clothes in the classroom, and
changed before and after school. This was a practice that she had introduced, as the children
used come to school late because they could not find items of clothing. They knitted their own
jumpers and she helped them make their own skirts. They wore overalls over their clothes after
school. The children’s hair was always clean and she never observed any children with lice.
9.137 • There was undue emphasis on cleaning and polishing the premises of the Industrial
School and far less emphasis on the personal cleanliness of the children.
• The lack of any proper preparation for menstruation was insensitive and amounted
to neglect
Bed-wetting
9.138 One complainant, who was resident in Clifden for 12 years from the late 1950s, stated that children
who wet the bed at night did not have sheets. A rubber cover was put over the mattress. They
were not permitted to wear nightclothes and slept naked. If they wet the bed, they were beaten.
Their blanket would have to be washed that day and put back on the bed semi-dry.
9.139 Another former resident in Clifden from the age of 10, who was committed in the late 1950s and
remained there until she was discharged at the age of 16, described how children who wet the
bed were called ‘pissy beds’. One of the Sisters or a lay worker would make them wrap the wet
sheets around them whilst they cleaned under their bed.
9.140 A further witness, who was committed to Clifden for just over a year in the early 1960s at the age
of 12, recalled one boy who was punished for wetting the bed by being sent out to the cows in
the field with his wet sheet wrapped around him.
9.141 • Bed-wetting was a perennial problem in Clifden and there is no evidence of a more
enlightened approach there. One witness gave convincing evidence of boys being left
to sleep directly on rubber mattresses without sheets or pillows. This was a harsh
treatment for children who wet the bed. Another gave evidence that sheets were put
on these beds when the Department inspector was due. The Congregation
acknowledged that it was possible that children who wet the bed were treated
inappropriately.
Contact with families
Documentary material
9.142 Clifden is located in a rural area 50 miles west of Galway City. Public transport consisted of an
infrequent bus service. Children were committed from all over the country by the District Courts.
Only one of the 10 complainants who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee was from
County Galway. A document discovered by the Department which gives details of children in care
in the mid-1970s shows that, out of the 48 children in care, only two came from Galway. In
contrast, by the early 1980s the majority of children in Clifden were from County Galway and
surrounding areas.
9.143 Given the fact that the majority of the children placed in care came from deprived backgrounds, it
was very difficult for families to maintain contact with their children in Clifden. It is clear that little
regard was given to the recommendation, contained in paragraph 52 of the Cussen Report, that
children should be sent to industrial schools near their homes whenever practicable.
9.144 In the representations made by the Resident Manager to the Department for the admission of
junior boys to the School in 1959, and again in 1960, she stated that the admission of young boys
with their sisters would keep siblings together and so assist in the formation of familial bonds. She
also stated that, in any event, girls in the School met up with their brothers in St Joseph’s Industrial
School, Salthill on a regular basis. The Western Health Board, who supported the proposal,
reiterated these arguments in their own representations to the Department.
9.145 Mr Granville’s Inspection Reports in the 1970s and 1980s make reference, over and over again,
to the limited contact between children and their families despite ‘every effort’ being made. He
also referred to the lack of personal effects, such as photographs etc.
9.146 Sr Casey acknowledged that there was little contact between children and their families, largely
because they came from far-flung parts of the country. There were no restrictions imposed by the
School on children visiting home, unless it was inappropriate to do so. If family did visit, they were
always welcomed and, if they sent gifts or letters, these were passed on to the children.
9.147 She stated that children were sent to families in Galway and surrounding counties for holidays
from the 1960s, in an effort to give the children some idea of what family life was like.
9.148 Many of the complainants have bitter memories of the absence of any effort on the part of the
Sisters to maintain links with their families and, in some cases, the derogatory manner in which
the Sisters referred to their families.
9.149 Sr Carmella was of the view that the children had little knowledge of the outside world and were
insular in their outlook:
They hadn’t an idea what family life was like. I remember a child asking me – she saw an
ad in the paper for Stork margarine, it was a family sitting around the table and she said
to me, “is that what a family is like?” They hadn’t a clue. They hadn’t an idea what a
dwelling house was like. They were used to big rooms and big utensils and everything
big. They just didn’t have a clue, until they went out on holidays later on.
9.150 She found her years teaching the industrial school children very fulfilling: ‘I felt that I was taking
the place of their parents and the majority of them could confide in me’.
9.151 She agreed that there were some children who should never have been in the School and would
have been better off at home. The system had no means of catering for children who required
extra care and attention, or bright children whose talents could have been fostered.
9.152 • The geographical location of Clifden made it almost impossible for children to remain
in contact with family.
Preparation for departure/aftercare

9.153 Mr Granville made a number of references in his inspection reports to the deficiency in aftercare
facilities and the lack of co-ordination of such facilities between the School and the Health Board.
9.154 Sr Margaret Casey said that the children received industrial training, which consisted of tuition in
crafts, needlework, knitting, laundry, housekeeping, gardening, minding young children and
serving in the parlour: ‘this was seen as industrial training and as an effort to prepare them for life
after the industrial school and for future employment’. She accepted that, until 1969, the primary
career envisaged for the children was a career in domestic service.
9.155 Former residents complained that they were not given any advance notice that they were due to
leave the Institution.
9.156 One witness, a resident in Clifden during the late 1950s and 1960s, stated that she was told the
morning she left that she would be leaving Clifden that day. The nuns had organised a job for her
in the laundry of a hospital in Galway.
9.157 Another witness, who spent over five years in Clifden from the late 1950s when she was 10 years
old, is adamant that she left the Institution, months after her sixteenth birthday, contrary to certain
Department and Sisters of Mercy records. However, the Department pupil file for this witness
appears to substantiate her claim. The file shows that her height and weight were measured
approximately three months after her sixteenth birthday. She confronted a Sister about this at the
time who responded, ‘You are nothing but a pauper’. When she did eventually leave, she was not
given advance notice.
9.158 The positive witness proposed by the Congregation who gave evidence also spoke about being
retained after her sixteenth birthday, and stated that Sr Roberta decided when girls could leave
and that her word was law.
Emotional abuse
9.159 Sr Margaret Casey conceded:
at the very least that the individual needs of the child could not be addressed, that each
child’s potential could not be known or realised so we do accept that some children
experienced life there as being harsh and also impersonal, in fact even abusive. For this
we are deeply sorry.
9.160 She puts this down in part to the fact that the child-staff ratio was very high until the 1970s, and
in part to the lack of training for staff in childcare.
9.161 She was asked whether there was, in effect, an embargo on showing affection. Sr Casey accepted
that Sisters were discouraged from showing affection to the children, and said that this had to be
viewed in the context of the vows taken by the Sisters when entering religious life. Rather than
showing love and affection to one person, you measured out the same degree of affection to
everyone.
9.162 Many of the complainants alleged that Sisters and a lay worker often made disparaging remarks
regarding their families and treated them disrespectfully if they came to visit.
9.163 Sr Olivia accepted that, particularly during her early years in Clifden, it was a cold, bleak place
with little room to show love or affection to the children.
9.164 Sr Carmella stated that the children craved affection, which they sought from the Sisters. They
were not chosen as pets by the Sisters, rather they would attach themselves to a particular Sister.
However, there was, in effect, a prohibition on showing affection to the children, and the Sisters
were encouraged to maintain their distance.
9.165 The two national schools merged in 1969 and the children from the Industrial School joined the
local children in Scoil Mhuire. Sr Carmella explained:
they found it very hard to mix in the beginning, they felt very insecure the first year
because they didn’t seem to belong anywhere. They were very secure down with us and
how they were like thrown in with the town’s children and I felt they were lost the first year.
9.166 Prior to this, they did not mix at all with the people from the locality, as the Resident Manager did
not allow it.
9.167 This respondent stated that many of the Sisters had good relationships with the children and there
was a fair amount of interaction between the Sisters in the convent and the children. When asked
to elaborate on this interaction, however, she stated that the children were often up in the
convent cleaning.
9.168 Sr Elana, who taught in Scoil Mhuire from the late 1950s, confirmed that the convent, where she
resided, was on the same grounds as the Industrial School, although the Sisters in the convent
had little contact with the children. It was a relatively large community, with approximately 30
Sisters in the late 1960s. They were not encouraged to interact with the children from the
Industrial School.
9.169 Two former residents of Clifden had positive memories of small acts of kindness to them by
some nuns, even though they sometimes occurred in circumstances where other nuns had been
particularly cruel.
9.170 A witness, who was sent to Clifden at the age of 10 in the late 1950s and remained there until
the mid-1960s, recalled good memories of one respondent, Sr Carmella. She remembered being
hit by her on only one occasion. This Sister was kind to the children and the witness felt that she
could talk to her. She alleged that this Sister gave her white socks to wear in order to cover
bruises on her legs that she had sustained at the hands of Sr Veronica. The Congregation’s
Submission following the Phase III hearings rebuts the accusation that Sr Carmella was somehow
complicit in physical abuse.
9.171 The witness described another Sister, who worked on the farm, as a lovely nun. She would allow
the children to eat the left-over food from the convent, which had been destined for the pigs.
9.172 At Christmas time, the children would receive a handkerchief, comb or hair slide in a brown
paper bag.
9.173 They were taught singing and dancing and performed at feiseanna.
9.174 Another complainant, who was committed to Clifden for just over a year in the early 1960s when
she was 12 years old, recalled one particular Sister who was kind: ‘When Sister Veronica beat us
up, or Sister Roberta, and we would be sore or crying she would always put her hand on your
shoulder and tell you not to cry, that everything would be okay. But everything wasn’t okay down
there. Everything was bad’.
9.175 The witness also named one Sister who was fine, because she did not beat the children.
9.176 Her abiding positive memory of Clifden is spending time with the animals on the farm.
9.177 The recollection of complainants, that Clifden was a cold, cheerless environment with little
emotional contact from the Sisters who worked there, is borne out by the evidence of the
Sisters themselves.
9.178 The Congregation proposed that evidence should be heard from a former resident, Mary,15 who
had positive memories of the Institution.
9.179 In addition, in its written Submissions to the Commission, the Congregation asked the Investigation
Committee to take account of the evidence of one of the complainants, who was committed to
Clifden at the age of eight in 1966 and remained there for a year and a half, and who it asserts
was a reliable witness and ‘showed balance and emotional closure or maturity in the way he
described life in the school’.
Congregation’s witness
9.180 Mary was committed to Clifden when she was two years old, in the late 1940s, and remained
there until the mid-1960s.
9.181 She was part of a group of children known as the ‘specials’. These were children who were
considered delicate and they were given a special supplementary diet. Every day at 11am, they
were taken out of school and given an egg-flip and cod liver oil. As she got older, she was chosen
to run errands down in the village.
9.182 She accepted that at times some children were hungry. For breakfast, they had two slices of
buttered bread with tea. At lunchtime, they had potatoes and vegetables. During school term, they
had porridge every day at 3pm in the back yard. They had bread with butter and jam for supper.
On Sunday, they had bacon and cabbage. They had dessert three times a week. They always
used delph and cutlery and never ate with their hands, as was alleged by one complainant.
9.183 The witness did not accept that children ate food from the pigs’ buckets as a regular occurrence.
Once or twice a year, when nuns were finally professed, the children were given food left over
from the visitors:
you know, they would bring the food that was left over from all their visitors, we would
have to – there would be a few people who would have to carry it out, so they would bring
it down the walk and they would put it down and we would all go into it. But that was not
something that was daily or weekly or thing, absolutely, that's not true.
9.184 She said that they occasionally stole bread from the bakery, but this was more out of devilment
than hunger. Sr Gina16 supervised meals, and there was no bullying over food at mealtimes:
Clifden was very regimented and everything had to be done in order, because don’t forget
there was so many of us.
9.185 The building was kept immaculately and fires burned throughout the day. It was very cold at night,
however, after the fires went out.
15
This is a pseudonym
16

9.186 The Resident Manager always ensured that they were well dressed from head to toe. None of the
children went barefoot. They were always made to feel that they were as good as anybody else.
The witness described her as harsh, strict and dedicated:
Oh, yeah. Roberta had a very authoritarian voice and if she walked up to you she would
say, "Hi, how are you." Her voice would cut you. We feared her to a certain extent but yet
in our own way if Roberta was sick, we always lined up to go to visit her and she loved
the attention that she got from us. She was very strict, don't get me wrong, and she could
have been very hard at times but I think anything that she did for the children she did –
in other words, if she bought stuff, she had to buy the best because she would make sure
that anyone in the town couldn't be talking about, "oh, look at how badly they are dressed"
or something like that. She always examined things, everything with her was very ritual,
the way she did things.
9.187 She said that she did not like a lay worker, Ms Aherne,17 whom a number of other witnesses have
described as harsh. She said this worker was so eager to please the Resident Manager that she
was unreasonably hard on the children.
9.188 Mary said she was punished by the nuns, but only when she had done something wrong and
never excessively. She was slapped on both hands, ‘if you did wrong it was written down and
before you went into your lunch she would call out the names that those were to be lined up for
a beating’. The beating consisted of being slapped on the hands with a ruler or stick. Only one
particular Sister used a cane to hit children.
9.189 She later elaborated on this theme:

Sr Gina was the only one that used the cane. We hated the cane because the cane was
much sharper. The sticks weren’t bad but the cane was fierce. She would have been the
only nun that would walk around with the cane.
9.190 The witness was asked why Sr Gina would be walking round with a cane when she was not a
teacher, and she replied:
she was supposed to be in charge of the children ... She left in [the early 1960s] ... we
rejoiced over that, that was the best thing that happened.
9.191 Clothes were examined every Monday and if you had a hole in a garment, you were given a week
to mend it. If it was not mended, you would be punished.
9.192 Sr Roberta was feared by the children, and this witness remembered her screaming voice. She
said, ‘Her voice would cut you ... when Sr Roberta screamed she kind of like screamed in general,
everything she said was a scream’.
9.193 One of the reasons for Sr Roberta’s habit of screaming was that she was partly deaf. This
witness said:
In one sense you kind of feared Roberta, there is no doubt about it if someone is
screaming at you all the time. But the way we would refer to Mother Roberta was, “oh,
she was cracked. She’s daft”. But she was by no means cracked or daft ... She was like
a sergeant major.
9.194 She added later:

[Roberta] never liked any of the nuns to have any pets. But she had her own, don’t get
me wrong, she had her own.
17

9.195 She summed up the general attitude of the girls to Sr Roberta by saying, ‘we would say, “oh,
yeah, Roberta was cruel but she was very decent”’. She added, ‘We always refer to her as being
very decent and very kind’.
9.196 She described Sr Roberta’s deputy, Sr Veronica,18 as ‘more of a nag but she got very excited
because Roberta would be always screaming at her, “get this” and “do that” and everything else.’
She was a very nervous individual and always had to have things just right.
9.197 The relationship between Sr Roberta and the rest of the staff, particularly Sr Veronica her deputy,
was always authoritarian. She said:
Sr Veronica had to do everything the way that Roberta wanted it. Roberta would scream at
her the same way she screamed at the kids. She screamed at all the nuns the same way.
9.198 The witness remembered one or two of the staff with affection. She described one of the Sisters
who taught her as kind, but she did not have a lot to do with the children. Another Sister who was
in charge of the farm was also very nice. One of the Sisters taught music, and those involved in
music travelled to different places playing with the band. A handy-man was employed to help
around the School, and she described him as a comedian.
9.199 She said that the worst aspect of living in the School was that there were so many children in it,
and it was necessarily very regimented. She felt very alone. Certain categories of children were
picked upon by their peers. Those who had family and received packages were seen as better
than those who did not. Those from Dublin saw themselves as more elite than those from the
Midlands. Children from the Midlands were ‘the lowest of the low, because you were one of
Maguires’. Mr Maguire19 was the ISPCC Inspector for that area. Travellers were marginalised and
she recalled that, when the more impoverished children were brought to the School, they would
invariably be filthy and their hair would be crawling with lice.
9.200 A lay worker was in charge of ensuring that the children’s heads were free from lice. Sr Roberta
examined the children’s heads every week. If lice were discovered, a lotion was put in their hair
and it was combed with a fine toothcomb. In extreme cases, their heads were shaved.
9.201 She did not recall the nuns referring to the children’s background, apart from one Sister who made
derogatory references about where the children came from.
9.202 Her recollection was that the nuns were not permitted to show the children any sort of physical
affection. ‘No,’ she said, ‘there was absolutely no affection’. She added:
If one of nuns put their hands around you and Mother Roberta found that out, forget it,
they were in real trouble. There was no such a thing.
9.203 She described a particular occasion when one nun, Sr Maria,20 took pity on her:
I remember one incident where Sr. Maria had us all lined up and she asked us all what
we would really – she was asking something, you know, about ourselves what we really
thought. I know I was at the end of the line and she asked me, I said, "I really want to
find my mother." She really took that very, very bad. She went out – it really bothered her.
At the end, she told me to stay behind and she says, "take anything you want from this
press." She says, you know – she kind of did it like this, not a thing. But she did give me
a hug and she says, "oh", she says, "one day you will and you are a special child of God",
and something like that. But now she would make sure that nobody else saw her and that
18
19
20

was it. So, no, they were no way affectionate, no way, no how. If you left and you came
back a nun would give you a hug. But not while you were in the school, no.
9.204 Similarly, the older girls looking after the younger children would not dare to show their charges
affection. She was asked about looking after the babies, if she would have shown affection to a
little child of three or four. She replied:
Yeah, you might, but it wasn't something you really kind of got yourself really into, that –
you know. I never saw anyone really cuddling, you know. Maybe a baby trying to keep
them quiet or something, but other than that you wouldn't pick a child up ...
9.205 She was often chosen to run errands in the village. She stated that Sr Roberta tried to take this
job away from her several times, but she had struck up a good relationship with the town’s people
and, at her request, they would write to the Resident Manager asking her to make sure that she
would be the one coming for the messages. She believed that the Resident Manager had to keep
in with the town’s people and so would do what they said. She added:
she kind of resented me for that, she would say, “you old pet, get out of my sight, you
old pet”.
9.206 The witness described the education she received as standard. Everyone could read and write by
the time they left the Institution. Those with learning difficulties went to one particular nun for extra
tuition. She taught everything by rote. They did not receive any formal sex education and learned
about the changes during puberty from each other.
9.207 Birthdays were always celebrated and the children received gifts of sweets, fruit and a comb and
ribbons for their hair. They also had toast the morning of their birthday. Christmas was also
celebrated.
9.208 She recalled regular visits from the local doctor and the Department Inspectors. When the
inspector was en route from Lenaboy, the School would receive a message alerting them to the
fact that she was on the way. She did not accept that bed linen and clothes were changed for the
purpose of these visits. The children had to make sure that they were clean but, otherwise, very
little had to be done in preparation for the visit, as the School was always in good order.
9.209 She did not have any contact with her family while in the Institution. She stated that the nuns did
not know anything about the children’s background. Before allowing children home to their families
on holidays, Sr Roberta would conduct inquiries to ensure that the home environment was in no
way irregular. If children wished to trace their relatives after leaving the Institution, Sr Roberta
supplied the address at which a copy of your birth certificate could be obtained.
9.210 This witness was kept on in the Institution for a year and a half after her 16th birthday. It was not
her choice and she had wanted to leave, but it was Sr Roberta who decided when each child
could go. She was on night duty for three years before she was permitted to leave. She never
received any payment for the work done in the Institution after her official discharge date.
9.211 Her first job after leaving the Institution was as a cleaning lady in a Dublin hospital. Sr Roberta
organised this job. She said the Resident Manager would try to assist any former resident who
ran into difficulty after they left Clifden. In the late 1960s, the witness moved abroad to where her
mother lived.
9.212 She has always kept in contact with the nuns and feels more of a familial bond with them than
with the family she discovered outside the country. She is married with children and has never
gone into detail with her children about her upbringing.
9.213 The witness has kept in contact with a number of former residents, some of whom have made
efforts to induce her to submit a claim to the Redress Board alleging abuse. She did not believe,
however, that her experience of Clifden was abusive. She made contact with her mother after she
left Clifden and felt that her mother considered her an intrusion into her life. That was, for her, a
much greater hurt and betrayal than anything that had happened to her in Clifden.
Complainant whose evidence the Congregation regarded as reliable

9.214 The Sisters of Mercy described this witness, who was in Clifden for just over a year in the 1960s,
as ‘essentially a reliable witness’. The complainant was born in the late 1950s in the Midlands.
9.215 He had previously been in a residential institution in Lenaboy, County Galway and had very happy
memories of his time there. He recalled spending some time at home after being discharged from
Lenaboy. He had always had enough to eat but recalled his mother crying a lot. When she told
her children that she had to go away for a while because she was ill, he stated, ‘we took it we
were going back to Lenaboy because we liked Lenaboy, Lenaboy was very good. We were
actually looking forward to it, believe it or not, it was going to be a bit of a holiday but it wasn’t
you know’. Instead, he found himself in Clifden. He found Clifden a very different environment: ‘I
was cold, I was hungry, I was lonely, you know, miserable ... I thought it was a cruel regime, that’s
the way I would have looked at it now, very cruel’.
9.216 He recalled being barefoot for what felt like a year. They were given footwear but it would go
missing. He remembered his feet being cold and having a boil on his foot. It was generally the
boys who were barefoot.
9.217 He recalled another boy who was stronger and faster than the rest: ‘It was the law of the jungle’,
and he would rush down in the morning and steal food from the other children’s plates. He blamed
the system which allowed this type of bullying to take place rather than the culprit who, he
accepted, was also hungry. The food was not bad; there was just never enough of it. He was
always hungry. They had bread with jam and a cup of tea in the morning, if another child did not
get to it first. There was a bakery in the School and he remembered the smell of freshly baked
bread coming from it. The children used to sneak in and steal bread from the bakery.
9.218 He said that they did not receive any toys at Christmas, although the Christmas dinner was very
good and in particular the plum pudding. The School put on a play each Christmas which was
regarded as a big event. If you misbehaved, you were excluded from participating in the play.
9.219 Amongst his chores was mopping up urine in the dormitories after children had wet the bed at
night-time. His brother would clean any faeces from the beds.
9.220 He recalled sleeping on rubber sheets, and bed linen only being provided when the Departmental
inspections were due to take place. In general, there were no sheets or pillows on any of the
boys’ beds, only a rubber mattress. The boys slept two to a bed.
9.221 The witness said that one of the ISPCC inspectors forewarned the nuns of the fact that a
Departmental Inspection was imminent. The witness described the change in regime when the
inspector visited:
The thing about it is what I used to remark was that when the inspectors would come,
and the inspectors did come, that everything would improve for that time that they would
be there. Dinners would be good, sheets on the beds, pillows, you know.
9.222 He went on to say, ‘You would be kind of bulling that the inspectors had left because the good
times were over’.
9.223 He was never permitted to go home on holidays. His mother sometimes came to visit, if she could
get a lift, but she was never allowed in. She had to sneak in the back entrance to visit her children
and, when the nuns discovered the fact that she was there, she would run away.
9.224 He stated that he learnt little at school because he was taught through Irish. He could not keep
up with the class because he had a poor aptitude for languages. He received extra tuition from
one particular Sister, Sr Magda,21 who showed him great kindness. She also gave him treats of
bread with butter and sugar.
9.225 Regarding nuns who lived in the convent, he said, ‘The nuns lived in a different area of the School
and there was a lot of nuns that you wouldn’t get to meet’.
9.226 He described the Resident Manager’s deputy, Sr Veronica, as ‘... a tyrant. Very very cruel, very
tough. Very very tough...She would be the one – if there was any corporal punishment she would
be the one to dish it out and Sr Roberta as well’. He could not remember being beaten by any
other nuns other than this particular Sister and the Resident Manager. He remarked that, in
hindsight, the corporal punishment administered in Clifden was probably no more severe than that
administered in other schools at the time. He said:
Well, when you are being punished, it is like everything else, you will always take it that
no one has ever been punished as hard as you, it is human nature... . The corporal
punishment, when you look back on it now, probably was no different than other schools.
It was just the hunger and the cold.
9.227 He was transferred to the Christian Brothers’ Industrial School in Salthill in the late 1960s. He was
fed and treated better in Salthill. He recalled:
as tough and all as Salthill was we got well fed and treated that good bit better really in
Salthill ... There was a difference, believe it or not, between Clifden and Salthill. A good
difference, a major difference.
9.228 Of the three institutions he spent time in, Clifden was the toughest, mainly because of the cold
and hunger. In particular, he recalled being treated with kindness in Lenaboy:
But all I can remember from [there] was the kindness. They were very, very kind to us ...
The kindness, they were very, very kind [there]. When we were being taken out of [there]
to go home I actually missed it.
9.229 He did not accept that his experience in Clifden had impacted adversely upon his life in any great
way: ‘Things like that you just try to bury it, bury it in the back of your mind and go forward you
know’. He is now a tradesman and is married with children.
9.230 Among the points emerging from these witnesses are:

• Both spoke of the inadequacy of the diet in terms of quality and quantity and both
spoke of being hungry. Although one witness said that there was no bullying at
meal times, the other was quite clear that this did occur and it meant that smaller,
weaker children went without.
• Both described a different member of the religious staff as being cruel, as well
as a lay worker, and one of these witnesses identified the regime as harsh and
cruel. In particular, the positive witness’s description of the Resident Manager
was indicative of a person unsuited to caring for children.
• One of the witnesses said that the Sisters were prohibited from any display of
physical affection, which she identified as a hardship for the nuns themselves.
21

Moreover, she learnt from the nuns to keep a distance and not cuddle the
younger children placed in her care. There can be no doubt that the constant
rejection of very vulnerable children instinctively seeking this kind of
reassurance and affection would have had an extremely damaging effect on
them. It seems extraordinary that a Congregation of nuns who had been engaged
in childcare for over 100 years would have continued this attitude towards the
children in their care when they must have seen the damage it was doing. It
would seem that the observance of the discipline of the Congregation was given
priority over the interests of the children. The banishment of the expression of
affection may have made the Sisters appear to be acting fairly, by making them
treat all children in the same way, but it also made them detached and distant,
and at worst cold and cruel.
• Both witnesses confirmed what a number of complainants have said about this
and other institutions, that the authorities were warned when an Inspector from
the Department of Education was coming, and clothes, bedding and food were
improved for the occasion. These two witnesses differed as to the amount of
preparation that was made, but it is clear that the preparations ensured that the
inspectors did not get an accurate picture of the Institution during these
inspections.
• The positive witness, Mary in particular spoke of there being ‘elite’ groups, as
well as marginalised children such as Travellers. She recalled that the Resident
Manager had pets. Religious and lay staff members denigrated the children’s
background. These facts indicate that, whilst, for some, Clifden may not have
been a bad place to be, for others it was harsh and abusive.
• The positive witness was detained for 18 months after her discharge date, to go
on working in the Institution. She said that she did not want to stay and asked
to be let out, but she was clearly a reliable and responsible young person and
was detained at the will of the Resident Manager. Although this witness does
not make a complaint about being kept on, it was clear exploitation and a failure
to consider the best interests of the child.
• One of these witnesses was introduced by the Congregation as a positive
witness. She balanced her criticisms of the regime by testifying that the good
the Sisters did outweighed their shortcomings, but her evidence nevertheless
contained quite severe criticisms and acquires increased importance because
she was advanced by the Congregation as a positive witness.
General conclusions
9.231 1. Clifden was isolated and inaccessible for an industrial school. Contact with families
was nearly impossible because of its location. Many children came from distant parts
of the country, contrary to an important Cussen Report recommendation that children
be sent to schools near their families.
2. Sr Roberta was Resident Manager for 27 years and established a strict, authoritarian
and cold regime unsuitable for caring for children. During her administration, the
School was also very understaffed.
3. Corporal punishment was over-used as a first option for enforcing discipline and was
not restricted to cases of serious misbehaviour.
4. Children were institutionalised by the time they left, particularly those who were
committed from a young age. They had no concept of normal family life. They were
not shown love or affection by the nuns, and only had contact with the Sisters who
worked in the convent (and Scoil Mhuire after 1969). The Sisters in the convent made
an appearance once a year at the Christmas concert, but they were discouraged from
having any other contact with the children who lived only yards away.
5. Mr Graham Granville noted as late as the 1970s that the children had very few visible
reminders of home such as family photographs, which added to the isolation and lack
of identity that they felt after leaving the Institution.
6. The Congregation accepts that the nuns’ vows dictated that they led a regimented
lifestyle, which was reflected in the strictly controlled manner in which the children
were brought up and in the absence of any demonstration of affection by the nuns.
7. The standard of education was low and there was little emphasis on academic
achievement, which reflected the low aspirations the Sisters had for the children as
regards future careers.
8. The children were poorly prepared for leaving the Institution and there were no
aspirations for them beyond careers in domestic service. There was no preparation
for departure. Many of the children had no idea what lay ahead when they were sent
off to jobs in towns and cities.

Appendix 1
Report by Mr Ciaran Fahy (19th January 2006)
1.0 Introduction
The purpose of this report is to describe the physical surroundings of St Joseph’s Industrial School,
Clifden with particular reference to the buildings. It is based on research carried out by Mr Ciaran
Fahy during the course of which all of the relevant documentation in the possession of the
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was examined. On 12th September 2005, Mr Fahy
visited the Industrial School in Clifden in the company of the Senior Executive Engineer with
Galway County Council to examine the Industrial School building and also to meet with the
Manager of the nearby Elmtree Centre. Subsequent to this, there was a meeting with one of
the Sisters (who had taught in the school in the mid-1960s) at the Sisters of Mercy premises
in Galway.
This report is to be read in conjunction with drawings and photographs as follows:

— Drawings
Two drawings provided by the Sisters of Mercy were prepared by Scott Tallon Walker,
Architects for the Sisters in 2001, and shows a site map and a ground floor plan. The 4
photographs were similarly provided.
2.0 Background
2.1 Location
St Joseph’s Industrial School, Clifden was certified in July 1872 and was closed down in 1984. It
was located at the north eastern edge of Clifden due north of the road from Galway and the train
station. It was located on higher ground with the front elevation of the building facing due south
over the town.
In drawing 1, the small building slightly forward of the Industrial School and to the right of it is the
laundry which apparently was built about the same time. It should be noted there is a hospital
further to the east of the Industrial School and obviously this was not in position in 1898.
2.2 Foundation
There is some uncertainty about when exactly the Industrial School was built. The County Council
who now have possession of the building had a report prepared by the National Building Agency
in June 2005. This report suggests the Industrial School was purpose built in 1870, opened in
1871 and certified in July 1872. This report then goes on to say: ‘an increase in the number of
children attending the school required an increase in the size of the building. In 1881 the Industrial
School building was extended to the west creating an additional wing on the side of the building’.
Some details have also been provided by the Sisters of Mercy which show they moved to Clifden
from Galway when invited to do so by the local parish priest and established a convent on 16th
July 1855. It appears that in about 1859, the Sisters became involved in caring for orphaned
Catholic children using a premises rented from the Franciscan Brothers. The details from the
Sisters of Mercy suggest that the Industrial School was constructed in 1862 near the convent and
apparently was built on eight acres (about 3 hectares) of land.
2.3 Subsequent History

It is clear that subsequent to its initial construction, the Industrial School in Clifden was extended
on a number of occasions. The NBA Report says that St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church
alongside it was built in 1879 and the spire was added in 1898. This report concludes that the
laundry was built as part of the initial construction and as regards the Industrial School itself, it
suggests extensions were carried out as follows:
— 1871 the building was extended to the west towards the convent or the Church.
— Some time after 1898 the building was extended to the east apparently adding five bays,
apparently in an attempt to restore the original symmetry by matching the two central
projecting bays.
— About 1932, it is believed that further modifications were made since there is reference
in the Irish Builder of July 1932 to an Invitation to Tender for alterations and additions,
including a new wing, bake house, etc. The NBA believe that the windows in the
western and probably the eastern end of the building were altered at that time and it
also appears that four classrooms were incorporated in the building.
The information from the Sisters of Mercy suggests that additions and alterations were carried out
as follows:
— 1873, it seems an additional wing was built together with baths and water closets and a
new boundary was erected at a total cost of £3,588.
— 1880, a new school room and dormitory was provided at a cost of £528.
— 1886, it appears the limit of the school was increased to 80 and about that time there
were new additions consisting of a kitchen, pantry, dairy, lavatory and infirmary. The
Sisters of Mercy suggest that this was the last significant extension to the school.
— 1911, apparently the school rooms and dormitories at that time were heated by hot water
pipes and open fireplaces. It is not known if this simply is a recording of fact or whether
this was work carried out at that time.
— 1933, four classrooms were built.
Details from the Sisters of Mercy suggest that the school was originally certified in 1872 for 25
pupils and this was increased to 80 in 1886. This limit was further extended to 100 in 1832, 120
in 1944 and 140 in 1960. Details from the Sisters of Mercy suggest that the numbers of children
in the school ranged between 100 and 127 between 1935 and 1965 increasing in line with the
certified limit.
The Sisters of Mercy were based in the convent alongside the Industrial School and in addition to
this they were also involved in running the girls’ primary school, apparently located behind the
convent further up the hill. They also ran a girls’ secondary school and the hospital which is
located to the east of the Industrial School. It appears they operated a farm close to the Industrial
School with the farmyard located just to the east of the Industrial School and the laundry. There
is little or no information in relation to this and it is suggested that the farm extended to
approximately 12 hectares (about 30 acres) and it apparently closed down in 1969. It appears the
Sisters of Mercy ran a commercial laundry in this building alongside the Industrial School but this
apparently had ceased as a commercial laundry by 1940 and subsequent to this, it was used only
for the Industrial School and also for the nuns in the convent.
The Industrial School closed in 1984. It appears the building was disused for a number of years
before a portion of it was used as a Day Centre by the Clifden Support Centre. The convent itself
closed on 5th July 2001. Subsequent to this that building was extensively extended to the rear and
is now used as a home for the elderly.
3.0 Details
3.1 General
The site is shown in the Scott Tallon Walker drawing based on a survey carried out in October
2001, just after the convent closed. The first of the drawings show the site generally at a scale of
1:200, while the later drawings shows the ground floor at a scale of 1:100. The drawings have
obviously been reduced for incorporating in this report and as such while they are to scale they
are no longer to the scale referred to on the drawings.
The first drawing shows the location of the convent together with the Industrial School and the
laundry located just to the right of it. Broadly speaking, the Industrial School is rectangular in
shape incorporating four projections on the southern façade while at the rear, there is a small
courtyard enclosed towards the right hand side of the drawing.
3.2 Farm
Little or no information is available as regards the farm associated with the Industrial School.
During the meeting with the Sister who had taught in the school, she said she felt the farm was
approximately 30 acres. She said the nuns had a supply of milk, butter and eggs from the farm
and in addition they kept pigs and turkeys. There was also a glasshouse for tomatoes located
behind or to the north of the convent and equally, there was a farmyard located to the east of the
laundry which is now occupied by the Western Health Board as shown in the Scott Tallon Walker
layout drawing.
She indicated that the farm closed in 1969.
3.3 Main Building

The building is a two storey although there was a small basement at the eastern end which in
later years at least contained a boiler. Broadly speaking, the dormitories and sleeping
accommodation together with bathrooms were located at first floor level. The ground floor
contained the classrooms, recreation area, dining and cooking facilities. Finally, it should be noted
that there was a single storey bakery located to the right rear at the main block as shown in the
Scott Tallon Walker drawing no. 2, thus forming a small enclosed courtyard at the eastern end of
the building.
The first floor of the building contained five dormitories together with two main bathrooms, an
infirmary as well as some other bedrooms and stores. In addition, a 1944 drawing shows the
nun’s bedroom immediately behind the Sacred Heart dormitory as the Resident Manager’s
bedroom. The two guest bedrooms shown in front of the bakery behind Our Lady of Lourdes’
dormitory were apparently used by staff as well as visitors calling to the school.
The details provided in 1944 refer to the first floor containing five dormitories together with the
infirmary and four staff bedrooms. In each case the height of the dormitories was 4.6m and they
all had electric light and central heating. Details of the individual dormitories are given below:
St Catherine’s 14.0 x 6.2m 39 children

St Anne’s 10.5 x 6.2m 21 children

St Joseph’s 10.5 x 6.2m 20 children
Sacred Heart 11.5 x 6.3m 20 children
Lady of Lourdes 7.8 x 5.9m 14 children
Infirmary 8.1 x 4.3m 12 children
The 1944 details also speak of the lavatories or bathrooms on the first floor and identify these as
‘black’ and ‘white’. Black is described as having 70 wash hand basins and one slop hopper while
the white bathroom was fitted with 44 wash hand basins and one slop hopper. The 1944 report
also speaks of a bath, two WCs and one wash hand basin for the staff on the upper floor. There
appear to have been no toilet facilities for the girls on the first floor although, there is reference to
a range of six toilets at ground floor with a further nine toilets being located outside the school
some 20 to 25m from it.
The ground floor layout is shown in the Scott Tallon Walker drawing no. 2 with the use of individual
rooms marked in. The drawing clearly shows the arrangement of the bakery at the north eastern
corner of the building thus forming a small internal courtyard. The 1944 details describe four
classrooms on this level together with a sewing room, a dining hall, kitchens, pantries, bathroom,
storerooms and a nursery. Six WCs at the ground floor level, presumably for the use of the children
while there is also reference to a bathroom containing three baths and one wash hand basin.
The position of the two kitchens is shown in the Scott Tallon Walker drawing towards the rear of
the building. To the left of this is what is described as the domestic economy room, which was
also a kitchen but was used more for the teaching of cooking and each of these two kitchens was
provided with a range, while there were obviously pantry and scullery facilities alongside them.
The location of the bakery is unchanged from 1944 and is as shown in the Scott Tallon Walker
drawing. To the left of this, what is shown as the cloakroom appears to have been the bathroom
with the three baths located there. The boot store beside these is shown in some of the other
details as a flour store but it is also described as a wardrobe room.
The four classrooms were at the eastern end of the building with three of these being marked as
such in the Scott Tallon Walker drawing. The remedial room appears also to have served as an
office and for storage to some extent with three main classrooms being towards the front of
the building.
The purpose of the room shown as the recreational hall is not entirely clear. On the 1944 sketch
it seems to be shown as a sewing room and this would be consistent with some dimensions given
at that time. The nursery appears to have been located at the north western corner of the building
where the sitting room is shown on the Scott Tallon Walker drawing. Equally, the dining room
seems to have been located towards the front of the building just to one side of the entrance
hallway and the 2001 partition appears to have been simply added after the school was closed.
There appears to have been a second dining room on the front corner of the building to the left
of this.
Some dimensions were provided in 1944 as set out below:

— Classroom No 1 (nearest to the recreational hall)
6.4m x 5.9m x 3.7m high. 35 pupils.
— Classroom No 2 (on the other side of the accordion partition)
— Classroom No 3 (corner room)
— Classroom No 4 (remedial room)
— Nursery
6.1m x 6.1m x 4.0m high. There is a note to the effect ‘20 infants usually occupy
this room’.
— Sewing Room
7.5m x 6.2m x 3.7m high. The room apparently accommodated 40 children.
— Recreational Hall
44.6m x 4.1m x 4.6m high. This is described as being capable of being used by
120 children at one time.
The main entrance into the building appears to have been at the projection on the front of the
building shown in the centre of photograph no. 1 of the 2001 photographs taken by Scott Tallon
Walker. This led directly to the main stairs serving ground and first floor level and the ground floor
level is shown in photographs 38, 39 and 42. To the left of this the dining room is shown in
photographs 33 and 35 and the partition in this room shown in photograph no. 33 seems to have
been a later addition after the school was closed. The dining room at the corner is shown in
photographs 34 and 37 with the first of these showing an internal porch at the entrance into the
building nearest the convent. Photograph no. 36 was taken in the nursery behind, while
photographs 57 and 59 were taken in the storeroom and utility room on the Scott Tallon Walker
drawing. It appears that these were used at certain points as a pantry and also as an office.
Photograph 54, apparently was taken in the kitchen used to teach domestic economy and shows
the position of the range while photograph no. 60, was taken in the other kitchen and shows the
corresponding range. Photograph 58 was also taken within the same kitchen area while
photographs 50 and 51 were taken in the scullery behind it.
Photographs 52 and 53 were taken in what is described as a cloakroom but which also served as
a bathroom, while photograph no. 49 was taken outside the boot room and photographs 47 and
48 show the stairs nearby which obviously provided secondary access between the first and
ground floor. Photographs 23, 24 and 25 were taken within the courtyard while photograph no. 27
shows the bakery taken from the courtyard. Photograph no. 44 was taken within the corner
classroom, while photograph no. 41 was taken in the double classroom alongside looking into the
recreational hall. Finally, photographs 43, 45 and 46 were all taken within the recreational hall.
3.4 Laundry
The laundry is shown in the recent photographs nos. 3, 15 and 16 and is positioned generally
alongside the main building and shown in the Scott Tallon Walker drawing no. 1. It is broadly
rectangular in shape and two storey. The stairs within the building have been removed and it is
now only used for storage but there is still some old laundry equipment within the building and
structurally it appears to be in reasonable condition.
3.5 Services
There seems to have been a form of central heating in the school going back to 1911 and in 1944,
it is clear the building was provided with central heating and electric light throughout. The central
heating was fired using turf and coke and in winter it operated from 6.30 a.m. until 9.00 p.m. It
appears each room was also fitted with a fireplace but fires were only lit in the kitchens and the
sewing room at ground floor level.

2001 Drawing 1
2001 Drawing 2

2001 Photographs

Chapter 10
Our Lady of Succour Industrial

School, Newtownforbes
(‘Newtownforbes’), 1869–1969
Introduction
10.01 Newtownforbes was chosen as the first module for investigation by the Committee because, at
that time, there were just six complaints made against the School. The scheduling of the hearings
was halted, however, by the review process in 2003. Much of the evidence had already been
gathered, and discovery directions had been issued to the Department of Education and Science,
the Sisters of Mercy, the Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise and three of the complainant
witnesses in 2002. Two procedural hearings took place in 2002 regarding variation of the
discovery directions issued to the Department of Education and Science and the Sisters of Mercy
respectively. The first procedural hearing was at the instigation of the Sisters of Mercy and was
held in private on 14th November 2002. The second procedural hearing was at the instigation of
the Department of Education and it also took place in private on 6th December 2002.
10.02 Five complainants were heard by the Investigation Committee.
Background
10.03 Newtownforbes was certified as an industrial school for girls in 1869. The Congregation of the
Sisters of Mercy managed the School from that date until its closure in 1969. As with all other
industrial schools, Newtownforbes was regulated by the Department of Education.
10.04 The establishment of the Industrial School in Newtownforbes was brought about by the then local
landlord, Lord Granard, and the Sisters of Mercy from the convent in Longford. In 1869, Lord
Granard invited the Sisters of Mercy to establish an orphanage for abandoned children and a
school to educate the poor of the town. To this end, he obtained the certification for the Industrial
School from the Department of Education on 29th November 1869, one month in advance of the
Sisters of Mercy arriving there. Three Sisters from the convent in Longford were sent to
Newtownforbes under the direction of the then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Dr McCabe.
They arrived on 13th December 1869. Lord Granard provided the Sisters with a vacant house and
gardens rent-free, in addition to an annual cash donation of £90.
10.05 The Sisters established St. Michael’s Convent in the house provided by Lord Granard, and this
convent became autonomous from the Longford Convent in 1871. The Sisters then embarked on
a large building project, which by 1879 consisted of the Industrial School, a day school, a laundry
and dormitories on the grounds. These buildings were added to over the years. In 1904, an 11-
acre farm was acquired by the Sisters in Newtownforbes across the road from the convent on the
main Dublin to Sligo road. A bakery was also in operation on the grounds. In 1913, a further 15·5
acres were obtained through the Land Commission in the adjoining townland of Carrickmoyragh
which was beside the convent. Also, in 1913, the laundry was expanded and new machinery
was installed.
10.06 Until 1942, the Industrial School had its own internal primary school. However, in 1942, the internal
primary school was closed and the industrial school children from then on attended the external
primary school, which was also run by the Newtownforbes Sisters. This change was made
presumably in response to the Cussen Report recommendations.
10.07 In 1951, a secondary school was established at Newtownforbes, which also became a boarding
school. When the Industrial School closed in 1969, the boarding school took over parts of the
building.
Numbers
10.08 In 1869, the School was certified for the reception of 145 girls, but with accommodation provision
for 240. The School received children committed by the courts, children placed by local authorities
under the Public Assistance Acts, and later the Health Acts, and it also accepted voluntary
admissions.
10.09 The number of children in residence in the School fluctuated from year to year. Over the period
1940 to 1969, approximately 320 children passed through the School. The highest number of girls
recorded in the School during the period under consideration was in 1948, when there were 175
girls in total in the School, of whom 159 were committed through the courts, nine placed under
the Public Assistance Acts, and the remaining seven were voluntary admissions. After 1948, the
numbers in the School began to steadily decline. In 1953, there were 126 girls in total in the
School, of whom 101 were court committals, 18 were placed under the Public Assistance Acts,
and seven were voluntary admissions. This number dropped to 94 in 1955, which consisted of 73
court committals, 14 Public Assistance cases and seven voluntary admissions. Then, in 1958, the
numbers further dropped to 68 in total, which consisted of 47 court committals, 14 Public
Assistance cases and seven voluntary admissions. By 1969, when the School closed, there were
only five pupils resident in the School.
10.10 The decline in numbers was of major concern to the Resident Manager of Newtownforbes in the
1950s and 1960s. It became such a concern to her that she sought to increase the numbers by
having young boys admitted to the School. In 1956, the Resident Manager wrote to the
Department of Education seeking permission for the acceptance of boys under eight years of age.
The Department Inspector had indicated that this would not be possible as there were already
schools for young boys which were not full.
10.11 The majority of children who were sent to Newtownforbes came from Dublin, and in fact 60 percent
of them were committed through the Children’s Court in Dublin. The main reasons for the
committal of these children included poverty, death of a parent, or being an illegitimate child.
Poverty, in short, was the overriding reason for many of the admissions to the School.
Closure
10.12 The Industrial School closed on 31st August 1969. The Resident Manager, Sr Lucia,1 wrote to the
Department of Education on 27th August 1969 informing them of their intention to close the School
at the end of the month. However, she had forgotten to provide the requisite six months’ notice of
intention to resign the certificate for the School, as required by section 48 of the Children Act,
1908. The Department therefore took the letter of 27th August 1969 as notification of resignation
of the certificate of the School, the expiration of which took effect on 26th February 1970.
1

10.13 The Resident Manager wrote to the Department on 19th September 1969, apologising for
overlooking the requirement of six months’ notice. In this letter, she pointed out that they had no
option but to close the School because of the decline in numbers:
May I mention we very much regret having to close down “Our Lady of Succour School”.
It has been our principal work for almost 100 years, now, and the work we dearly loved,
but with the great fall in numbers we were forced to do something about it. Now the whole
building is fully occupied as secondary school classrooms.
10.14 At the time of closing, there were five pupils resident in the School. The two youngest girls were
transferred to Moate Industrial School, and two others were returned to their respective fathers.
The fifth girl was retained until the expiration of her committal term, with a view to sending her to
nursing school in England.
10.15 The buildings which housed the Industrial School were subsequently subsumed by the secondary
boarding school. The boarding school closed in 1987 and the property was sold in 1990. In that
same year, the laundry was demolished and, by 1999, the convent and its grounds were sold and
apartments were subsequently built on the site.
Finance
10.16 As Newtownforbes operated as an independent unit, it was responsible for its own financing and
administration. The main source of income for the Industrial School was the capitation grants from
the Department of Education. The Sisters of Mercy stated that their financial records showed that
the School operated within a range of 5 percent of the money provided by the capitation grant.
Another source of income for the Community was the laundry, which was a public laundry. The
farm only provided limited income because of its small size. It did not even enable the School to
be self-sufficient in milk, butter and vegetables. The boarding school also provided income to the
Community and this amount increased over the years. There is no direct evidence to show how
much the industrial school contributed financially to the Community in Newtownforbes.
10.17 It is clear, however, that the reduction in numbers in the Industrial School, from the late 1950s
onwards, made the School uneconomical. The capitation system of funding was based on
numbers in the Institution and when numbers fell, income dropped. The Resident Managers’
Association consistently looked for increased capitation allowances when, in fact, that would have
had limited impact on small schools such as Newtownforbes that had dramatic reductions in
numbers.
Sources of information
10.18 Contemporaneous documentation for the time period under review was furnished from the
following sources:
• the Department of Education and Science;
• the Sisters of Mercy;
• the Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise; and
• the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
10.19 Garda statements, which were not available at the time of the hearings, were furnished in March
2005. The hearings were concluded in January 2005.
10.20 The Sisters of Mercy have little or no surviving administrative or management documentation in
respect of Newtownforbes. Most of the surviving documentation furnished to the Investigation
Committee by the Sisters of Mercy consisted of individual pupil files and medical reports. However,
a set of documents entitled ‘Report on School Activities’ which covered the period 1938 to 1958
were furnished by the Sisters, and they provide additional information regarding the Industrial
School. These reports were submitted annually to the Department of Education. The Sisters of
Mercy also commissioned Dr Moira Maguire and Professor Séamus Ó Cinnéide to prepare a
report on Newtownforbes, which was furnished to the Committee.
10.21 Oral testimony was available from five witnesses who had made complaints to the Investigation
Committee about the Institution. Two respondent witnesses gave evidence to the Investigation
Committee. They had worked in the Industrial School and the primary school respectively during
the time period under review. The Provincial of the Western Province, which now includes
Newtownforbes, gave general evidence in respect of the School. In addition, a number of witness
statements from various members of the Sisters of Mercy who had worked in Newtownforbes
during the time period were provided to the Investigation Committee. These persons were not
named as respondents. They had worked primarily in the primary school but had had some contact
with the Industrial School over the years in terms of supervision. A total of 13 such witness
statements were furnished.
The witnesses
10.22 Originally, six complainant witnesses had lodged complaints to the Investigation Committee
against Newtownforbes. At the time of the hearings, this number had fallen to five. Their combined
periods of residence spanned from 1939 to 1965. Most of these witnesses spent their entire
childhood in the School.
10.23 Three respondent witnesses had been due to give evidence to the Committee, but one was unable
to do so because of illness. The two witnesses who did give evidence had spent long periods of
time working in Newtownforbes. These witnesses were aged 84 and 85 years respectively at the
time of the hearings. One of these witnesses, Sr Francesca2, had worked exclusively in the
Industrial School from 1946 to 1963. The other witness, Sr Elena3, had taught in the primary
school from 1947 to 1963 and had no direct contact with the Industrial School itself.
10.24 Sr Margaret Casey, the Provincial of the Western Province of the Sisters of Mercy, gave evidence
at the Phase I and Phase III public hearings in respect of Newtownforbes. As a child, she and her
family lived directly across the road from the Industrial School at Newtownforbes, and they were
therefore familiar with the children who attended there. In addition, she attended the same primary
school as the industrial school children.
Management structure
10.25 The convent in Newtownforbes was an autonomous unit from 1871 to 1979. The nuns who worked
in Newtownforbes were entirely responsible for the management, financing and administration of
the School. In particular, the Resident Manager and the Sisters who worked in the School were
appointed from the Newtownforbes convent, and no other source of staffing was available.
10.26 In 1979, there were six such independent Sisters of Mercy convents in operation in the diocese
of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. These six convents were subsumed into a single diocesan unit with
a revised governance structure in 1979. This occurred with all the Sisters of Mercy convents that
were in operation in all the dioceses throughout the country. In 1994, the 26 independent diocesan
units in the country merged to become a single Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, which is in
existence to the present day. Within this organisation structure, there is one Congregational
Leadership and a Provincial Leadership Team for each of the four Provinces in the State.
2
3

Numbers in the convent
10.27 The Superior of the convent at Newtownforbes was also the Resident Manager of the Industrial
School. One Resident Manager’s period in office spanned 22 consecutive years, from 1947 until
the closure of the School in 1969. All of the Resident Managers for the time period under review
are deceased.
10.28 A total of 30 nuns were in the convent but, at any given time, approximately five or six of them
were of retirement age and unavailable for work.
10.29 The number of nuns who worked in the Industrial School ranged from five, in 1935, to nine in the
period from 1945 to 1955. The remaining nuns were involved in teaching in the primary and the
secondary schools and working in the bakery, the public laundry and on the farm. Each nun who
worked in the Industrial School had a designated role, such as looking after the babies, working
in the kitchen and other duties. Only two Sisters worked full-time in the Industrial School from the
mid-1940s to the 1960s, and they were responsible for the day-to-day care of the children. One
of them was involved in the general running of the Industrial School, and the other was primarily
concerned with the provision of clothing. These two nuns slept in the Industrial School itself.
10.30 No records exist as to the number of lay staff who worked in the Industrial School. The 1966
General Inspection report of the Medical Inspector, Dr Lysaght, who reported to the Department
of Education, noted ‘no lay helpers in this school’. At the Phase I public hearing, Sr Margaret
Casey acknowledged that they had very little information on the number of lay staff, but said there
appeared to have been ‘at least one or two’. She also acknowledged that, at different intervals,
some former pupils remained on as lay staff and assisted the nuns in the Industrial School.
Ethos and organisation

10.31 A former nun, Sr Elena, who had taught in the primary school for a period of approximately 16
years, provided useful information on the workings of the Community and the interaction between
the Reverend Mother and the Sisters:
... We ... had no say in anything in the Community. It was ruled, it was governed from the
top, just a select few that’s all.
10.32 The upper echelon of the Community, she said, consisted of four nuns: the Reverend Mother, the
Mother Assistant, the Bursar and the Novice Mistress. She referred to them as the ‘elite’. These
four nuns, it seems, governed the workings of the entire Community of the Sisters of Mercy at
Newtownforbes. The remaining Sisters outside this inner circle had no voice or authority regarding
the operation of their Community. Sr Elena described the role played by the remaining Sisters as:
‘you followed blindly and dumbly’.
10.33 In effect, the organisational structure operating at Newtownforbes was a two-tier system, with the
Reverend Mother and three other nuns at the top, and the remaining nuns at the base. As Sr
Elena stated, ‘You had the elite and you had the everyday folk’.
10.34 She became disillusioned with this system and eventually left the Sisters of Mercy in 1973.
10.35 The ethos of the Sisters of Mercy lent itself to the creation of this two-tier system. One of the
essential rules of the Sisters of Mercy was the vow of obedience. In particular, Rule 28 of the
1926 Constitution, which is replicated in Chapter 7 of the 1954 Constitution, states:
The Sisters are always to bear in mind that by the vow of obedience they have forever
renounced their own will and resigned it to the direction of their Superiors. They are to
obey the Mother Superior as holding her authority from God rather through love than from
servile fear. They shall love and respect her as their mother, without her permission they
shall not perform public penances.
10.36 Rule 29 of the 1926 Constitution takes this a step further and states:
They are to execute without hesitation all the directions of the Mother Superior, whether
in matters of great or little moment agreeable or disagreeable. They shall never murmur
but with humility and spiritual joy carry the sweet yoke of Jesus Christ.
10.37 This rule meant each Sister was expected to follow unquestioningly the will of the Reverend
Mother. In particular, it hindered her ability to question the system or to suggest improvements if
she disagreed with certain aspects of the management and administration of the School. At the
Phase III public hearing, Sr Casey was questioned on the impact that the vow of obedience had
on a Sister’s ability to question her Superior on how a school such as Newtownforbes was being
run. Sr Casey conceded that it was not the done thing to question authority at that time. She said:
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.
10.38 Another consequence of this two-tier system was that background information on a child, when
she was admitted, was not passed down the line to the Sisters working in the School. The theory
behind this policy was that all children would be treated equally if personal details were not known,
but it meant that children who came from particularly tragic or traumatic backgrounds received no
special care or attention. This ‘one size fits all’ approach was not appropriate for meeting the
emotional needs of children in care.
Physical abuse
Attitude of Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy

10.39 The Sisters of Mercy in their Opening Statement and in evidence at the Investigation Committee
Phase I public hearing conceded that ‘corporal punishment was a feature of industrial school life’.
They also acknowledged that:
Slapping was the principal form of punishment administered with a cane or a stick by the
sister in charge or on duty or in more extreme cases by the Resident Manager.
10.40 Furthermore, it was accepted that ‘most children would have experienced corporal punishment at
some time during their time in the industrial school’. This, they conceded would ‘undoubtedly have
had a traumatic effect on the children’. The Provincial of the Western Province of the Sisters of
Mercy, Sr Casey, who gave evidence at the Phase I public hearing, also conceded that the regime
in Newtownforbes was harsh and did not take into account the individual needs of the children.
She said:
We also accept that some of the children who experienced this regime, not merely as
harsh and impersonal, but that they experienced it as abusive and humiliating. We are
deeply sorry that this is the situation and we would like to add our and share in the public
apology already made earlier this year by our Congregation leader ... to the children who
were in our industrial school and who are now adults if what they experienced was this.
10.41 Punishment could be administered by any member of staff and was not confined to the Resident
Manager alone. Sr Casey said:
Corporal punishment was a feature of the life in the Industrial School, and the primary
school, I suppose, as well. Slapping with the cane or a stick was the usual way that this
corporal punishment would have been administered. It was usually administered by the
person who was in charge, more often than not on the spot. In the primary school, which
I can just speak of for myself, it would have been in the presence of other people. If it
was a serious offence it was the Resident Manager that punished. I do know from
speaking with the Sister who minded the small babies that she said that she couldn't slap,
it was one of two other Sisters that could slap if a punishment was needed. But it is likely
that most of the children that went through the school would have experienced corporal
punishment at some stage.
10.42 Sr Casey also asserted that, from 1956 onwards, the Resident Manager forbade the novices to
slap any of the children in the Industrial School.
10.43 Corporal punishment was inflicted by means of a stick or a cane. Sr Casey said that, in her
experience from the primary school, the cane was not carried about by the Sisters:
The stick or the ruler would have been there on the teacher's desk so then if the Sister
needed to administer it for whatever reason it was there at her hand.
10.44 The Sisters of Mercy acknowledged that corporal punishment was not confined to the classroom,
but Sr Casey did not have any personal experience of what occurred in the Industrial School.
10.45 Other forms of punishment were resorted to in Newtownforbes. Such punishments included putting
a child sitting alone at a ‘punishment table’ or putting her to the back of the classroom. Witnesses
also made reference to children being placed in a small room on their own as a punishment. Sr
Casey confirmed that a room known as St Rourke’s did exist in Newtownforbes, although she
was not able to identify which of two possible rooms it was. She confirmed that children were
confined in this room as a punishment.
10.46 Speaking from her own experience in the primary school, Sr Casey said that punishable offences
would have included being late for class, attempting to answer back or not knowing lessons.
However, she said that she did not really know what was considered a serious enough offence to
warrant being referred to the Resident Manager.
10.47 Sr Casey recalled seeing the industrial school children being slapped. She stated:
One Sister slapped children from the industrial school on the knuckles. This seemed
wrong to me then and as I look back now, even more so. I recall another Sister who
slapped too much and for what seemed little reason.
10.48 During the hearing, she elaborated further by saying:

The punishment at times took a level that I would have deemed to be unacceptable and
I just wish to repeat what we have already said as Sisters of Mercy, that we really deeply
regret and apologise for any hurt and damage that was caused to the children that passed
through our schools.
10.49 Sr Casey also acknowledged that bed-wetting was a problem and children were slapped for bed-
wetting. She emphasised, however, that it was only the older girls who were slapped, and that
children under eight years of age were not punished for wetting the bed.
10.50 She said that there was very little understanding about the whole problem of bed-wetting, its
causes and the shame associated with it. One of the other solutions used at that time was to
deprive the children of a drink after a certain hour in the evening.
10.51 She was questioned about the rationale for slapping, and the policy of withholding fluids in the
evening, as neither approach appeared to have had an effect on resolving the problem. She could
not shed any light on whether these practices were even questioned.
10.52 Sr Casey had spoken to Sisters about whether head-shaving was used as a punishment. She said:
I spoke to Sisters about that and the majority wouldn't have remembered shaving of hairs
being used as a punishment. In the course of conversation though with one she felt that
it may have been used but nobody could tell me for certain that it was used. They could
say that shaving of the hair was not uncommon when children became infested with
lice, or whatever. But the Sisters would have offered me the view that it wasn't used as
a punishment.
Documented instances of punishments

10.53 No punishment book was kept in Newtownforbes at any time during its history, and this fact was
confirmed by Sr Casey. In addition, there were no letters or documents dealing with instances
of physical punishment discovered to the Investigation Committee. However, the Department of
Education discovery indicated that the Department Inspector was concerned that the children
were being mistreated in the early 1940s.
10.54 Dr Anna McCabe4 visited the School in 1940 and had noticed in the infirmary that there was
bruising on many of the girls’ bodies. In her letter of 12th February 1940 to the Reverend Mother
of the School, Sr Lucia, 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.
10.55 The discovery contained no response to this letter, suggesting no reply was written by the
Reverend Mother. The Sisters of Mercy contended that the letter of 12th February 1940 from Dr
McCabe had not in fact been sent, as no such letter was found in their archive. The Congregation
also said that it had been unaware of these allegations of neglect until these documents were
furnished to it by the Commission as part of the discovery process in 2004. It acknowledged, once
it had seen these documents, that it was ‘deeply disturbed’ and it accepted the negative reports
of the Department.
10.56 The Sisters of Mercy submitted annual reports to the Department of Education on the School’s
activities spanning the period 1938 to 1958. These reports do not reflect the views expressed by
the Inspector in February 1940 which raised the issue of bruising on the bodies of girls in the
infirmary. In these reports, the Sisters were eager to satisfy the Department that the most cordial
and friendly of relations existed between staff and pupils. The 1941 report stated ‘Nothing but the
most cordial and friendly relations exist’. In 1948, it was noted that ‘A very happy homely spirit
prevails between nuns and pupils’.
10.57 In some years, the annual reports refer to punishments, including the ‘Deprivation of Treats’, which
was considered ‘seldom necessary’, or being placed at a separate table in the dining hall, or being
given a ‘small charge instead of Recreation, or, Transcribing some papers of Literature’. The 1944
report noted that:
4

the greatest punishment of all is to be brought under the notice of the Superior, on her
making visits to the school, their faults made known to her. And thus their good name
gone.
10.58 In 1947, the report noted that ‘Junior Children receive a “Motherly slap” on their arm’. The 1948
report commented that ‘junior children receive a light slap or a caution’ or they could be ‘Brought
before Superior and their good name gone’.
10.59 These reports indicate that the Sisters of Mercy were aware of proper standards of punishment.
The wording of these reports is very similar and repetitive so their value is questionable.
10.60 A respondent witness, Sr Francesca, who worked in the Industrial School for nearly 20 years,
gave evidence. The picture that emerged was that the large numbers in the School meant that
discipline and control were important issues in the management of the School:
Well, you had to be formal with them and strict. You had to be, not harsh with them, no,
but I’d say formal with them.
10.61 She added that another way of being formal was to impose a rule of silence at night in the
dormitories. She said slapping was always a last resort and that she would avoid slapping the
children if she could. Treats were used as an enticement for the children to behave. When children
had to be slapped, she conceded that she did slap them with a stick or a cane or a ruler on the
hands. She also acknowledged that they would be placed in a small room, for a period of half an
hour to an hour as punishment. One such room was known as St Rourke’s.
10.62 She said some children went through the School and were never slapped, and she disputed
allegations that beatings were constant:
... if you take a 100 children, invariably somebody is going to be punished, but I wouldn’t
say it was constant beating.
10.63 Sr Francesca attributed much of the blame to the Department and the medical profession, for not
providing the nuns with better advice on how to deal with the problem of bed-wetting.
10.64 She added:

... in hindsight and from experience I really feel that slapping children was not the solution
or the answer, and I am sorry I ever did it. I don’t think I would do it now or I wouldn’t do
it now.
10.65 The other respondent witness, Sr Elena, said that corporal punishment was necessary at times.
Corporal punishment was also a deterrent against bad behaviour: with the threat of punishment,
the pupils were more likely to co-operate and behave in class. She admitted that she used corporal
punishment in the class by slapping with a cane or ruler. She claimed that she was strict but fair,
and worked in the best interests of furthering the education of the children. To this end, she agreed
that discipline and corporal punishment were part of the regime and necessary. In evidence,
she stated:
... They appreciated discipline in the class very, very much and they worked very
favourably with me and we got on. There was a good rapport between us, even though I
was strict, but they knew I worked for their good and that was my one aim, to help every
child as possibly best I could.
10.66 However, she disputed that corporal punishment was something that was used on a daily basis.
She said she had noticed a cane one day:
and I said I will bring in this today, and if they see it in my hand it might keep them a bit
quiet, they will sit down. They will know that I am on high today.
10.67 Further, she acknowledged that she treated the industrial school children differently:
I know you would have to be strict, very strict with them because learning and school and
books wasn’t their forte.
10.68 Sr Elena also admitted that she was exacting in her standards in the classroom, particularly with
regard to homework, and if children did not have their homework done she would give them ‘a
smack now and again’. She acknowledged that she was more exacting with the children from the
Industrial School.
10.69 This evidence confirmed Sr Casey’s impression from her own recollection of national school that
industrial school children were treated more harshly.
Witness statements
10.70 Thirteen witness statements were furnished to the Investigation Committee on behalf of the Sisters
of Mercy. These 13 statements were from nuns who had taught in the primary school. Each of
them stated that corporal punishment was used in the School but it was not ‘in any way constant
or excessive’. All of their statements repeated the words:
corporal punishment was used only as correction for misbehaviour. It was not
administered for trivial reasons or for no reason at all.
10.71 Four of the 13 Sisters who submitted witness statements were in Newtownforbes serving as
postulants in the early 1940s, the time when Dr Anna McCabe was highly critical of the Institution.
Yet, each of these nuns claimed that the children were well cared for. It is impossible to reconcile
these Sisters’ memories of Newtownforbes with the documented material. The repetition of the
words ‘corporal punishment was used only as correction for misbehaviour’ was formulaic and
defensive and tended to undermine the independence of the statements.
Allegations of physical abuse

10.72 The witnesses who appeared before the Committee complained of severe physical abuse,
including beatings. They claimed that such beatings were administered for bed-wetting, not
knowing schoolwork, talking, and other behaviours.
Bed-wetting
10.73 One witness, Sarah,5 resident in Newtownforbes in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, vividly
recalled being hit by a nun around the head for wetting the bed. She said that anyone who wet
the bed was punished by a beating with a stick or a slap around the head. The punishment was
administered there and then. They were told that they were ‘stupid’ or were called ‘an amadán’ or
‘an eejit’, anything to make them feel ‘degraded’.
10.74 One witness, Hannah,6 resident in Newtownforbes from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, also
recalled getting ‘unmerciful beatings for wetting the bed’. The residents would have to display their
wet sheets to the nuns and then they would be beaten.
5
6

Not knowing schoolwork
10.75 Sarah recalled being beaten with the side of a ruler on her knuckles for attempting to write with
her left hand:
I went to pick up a pencil with my left hand and I got the ruler, not the flat of the ruler, the
side of the ruler on the back of the hand, on the knuckles to make sure that, you know,
you didn’t do that again.
10.76 Another witness, Rachel,7 resident in Newtownforbes from the late 1930s to the late 1940s, also
alleged that she was beaten for not learning passages from the Bible in school. On this occasion,
the nun who was teaching her, Sr Carla8, kept her back after class and swung her around by the
hair until she had lumps in her hair. As a result of being kept behind after class, this witness was
late for her dinner and so she was hit on her back with a cane by the nun in charge of the dining
hall, Sr Paola9.
10.77 Hannah recalled that she was beaten for not knowing her lessons, or not getting them right in
school, or not being able to read. She alleged that a cane or a strap was used to beat them with.
She alleged that they were beaten on the hands with the cane, a ruler or the leather strap.
Miscellaneous punishments
10.78 Rachel recalled being beaten with a belt by a nun, Sr Paola, as she and two other girls had fallen
asleep in the same bed together. The next morning, they got another beating with a cane by a
different nun, Sr Francesca. They were then aged about 10 or 11 years. This witness also took
issue with the documents from the Sisters of Mercy stating that the children received a ‘light slap’.
She said they got a beating and not a light slap.

10.79 1. In the absence of documentary evidence, it is not possible to reach conclusions as to
whether the corporal punishment used in Newtownforbes was so excessive or
pervasive as to amount to abuse. Documentation would have provided contemporary
evidence about the extent to which corporal punishment was used, and the policy of
the authorities as to its use. Without it, the evidence presents two conflicting accounts.
Ex-residents who gave evidence indicated that it was widespread and severe, and was
administered for trivial offences, not just serious breaches of discipline. The Sisters
of Mercy, on the other hand, did not dispute that corporal punishment was a feature
of life in the School, and that children were slapped with a cane, a ruler or a leather
strap, however they believed it was not excessive or abusive, but appropriate for the
time.
2. Older children were physically punished for bed-wetting. Ignorance was no excuse for
the mismanagement of nocturnal enuresis in this way. Whilst blame must attach to the
Department of Education’s Medical Inspector for failing to address the issue, the
Sisters should have informed themselves of current thinking about how to deal with
the problem.
3. Other forms of punishment besides corporal punishment could be abusive when they
caused humiliation, rejection or fear.
4. The letter of Dr McCabe in February 1940 referring to bruising on children’s bodies is
disturbing. Sisters who were in Newtownforbes at the time gave evidence that the
children were well cared for. None of them appeared to have been aware that children
had been mistreated in the School.
7
8
9

5. In the national school, the Industrial School children were treated more harshly than
the town children. One of the Sisters who taught in the School claimed that she had
to be more severe on these children and appeared to defend this severity as being
necessary.
6. Despite the Department’s regulations forbidding the use of corporal punishment for
failure at lessons, it was used for that purpose.
Neglect
Documented evidence about living conditions in the School
Living conditions in the 1940s

10.80 The picture of the School that emerges from the Department’s records is one of serious neglect
in the early years under review. A letter dated 12th February 1940 to the Resident Manager of the
School from the Department’s Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, reveals the appalling neglect
of the children. In this letter, Dr McCabe expressed her disappointment at the ‘lack of supervision’
in the School and, more importantly, her dismay at the filthy dirty condition of the children:
I cannot find any excuse which would exonerate you and your staff from the verminous
condition of several of the children’s heads.
10.81 Dr McCabe was highly critical ‘in finding so many of the girls in the Infirmary suffering from bruises
on their bodies’, stating, ‘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’.
10.82 Further neglect was noted in this letter by the ‘untreated abscess I discovered in the child in the
Infirmary’. She attributed the cause of the serious neglected state of the children to the lack of
adequate and appropriate supervision by the nuns. She prevailed upon the Resident Manager to
take immediate action to remedy these problems, particularly by increasing staff numbers to
ensure stricter supervision. No further action was taken by Dr McCabe except for the threat of
taking the ‘matter further’ if the situation did not improve by her next visit.
10.83 It is strange that conditions had deteriorated so rapidly in just 10 months because, in April 1939,
when Dr McCabe had visited the School, she found it to be in ‘a clean healthy state’ and the food,
she noted, ‘was of very good quality’.
10.84 The inspection reports for 1941 and 1942 are missing. The next available General Inspection
report of Dr McCabe is that of 30th September 1943. On that occasion, she found that the School
had ‘much improved since previous inspections’. Her only criticism was the fact that many of the
children had no shoes and were going around barefoot. She found that 12 small babies ‘had no
shoes at all’ and noted that they ‘looked forlorn and cold’. She was of the view, however, that the
medical care and supervision of the children had improved. Following on from this visit, the
Department of Education Chief Inspector wrote to the Resident Manager on 13th October 1943
regarding the lack of shoes for the younger children. He requested the Resident Manager to take
‘immediate steps to remedy this matter’ and pointed out in the letter that the practice of allowing
children to go barefoot was condemned ‘on medical grounds as exposing the children to the
danger of infection from cuts’.
10.85 By 1944, conditions had deteriorated yet again in the School. When Dr McCabe visited the School
on 15th June 1944 she wrote, ‘I regret to state that this school has gone back since my last
inspection’.
10.86 In particular, the cleanliness and hygiene of the children was a great cause of concern again:
The children looked and were very untidy, necks and hair badly washed and in most
cases heads were verminous.
10.87 On this visit, she also found that 13 children had lost weight but this, it seemed, was attributed to
their having home visits or having returned from hospital. She prevailed upon the Resident
Manager to make a number of improvements, particularly with regard to the supervision of the
children. From this report it seemed that the supervision was left to the girls themselves instead
of members of the religious community.
10.88 Dr McCabe made a number of recommendations for improving the standard of cleanliness and
hygiene in the School. She recommended providing additional bathrooms, a toothbrush for every
child, and a nailbrush and more mirrors. She had also complained about the lack of adequate fire
exits in one of the dormitories. One particular dormitory only had one fire exit instead of two, the
number the Department felt was necessary ‘so as to obviate, as far as possible, the danger of the
loss of life through fire’.
10.89 When Dr McCabe visited the School the following year, on 3rd July 1945, she found that there
was ‘much improvement generally’. In particular, she was of the view that the children were ‘clean
and well cared’ and there was ‘better supervision all round’.
10.90 On her next visit on 1st May 1946, Dr McCabe had similar comments to make, noting that the
‘children were much cleaner and tidier’ and the supervision was much better. Again, in 1947, Dr
McCabe made the same comments, particularly that the children were cleaner and neater, and
the supervision was better. In 1948, it was noted that extra staff were given over to the Industrial
School.
10.91 In contrast with Dr McCabe’s report in 1948, where she recorded that the School had improved
and the children were ‘well cared and supervised’, there is a contemporaneous complaint from a
parent of children at the School. A father had visited and had found that his girls were ‘suffering
from scabies for months past’. He made a complaint to the Department of Education in person on
24th April 1948. He said that ‘One of the girls hands is practically disabled from the sores between
her fingers’.
10.92 He also complained about the ‘very bad condition’ of the children’s footwear and the fact they had
no stockings. The Departmental note which recorded this complaint stated that the parent in
question was asked to put his complaint in writing. It is not known whether he ever did so, but it
would appear that he did not. The note ended ‘nothing further in this case’.

10.93 Conditions seemed to have improved considerably in the 1950s, and they never reverted to the
neglect of the 1940s. This improvement was in spite of a significant fall-off in numbers, which
must have had a serious impact on the finances of the School.
10.94 Declining numbers were a constant source of worry. The only issue raised by the Resident
Manager with the Departmental Inspector was the decline in the number of admissions to the
School and the resulting reduction in income. In 1954, Dr McCabe’s inspection report noted that
the Resident Manager was ‘very anxious about falling numbers’. On every subsequent visit by Dr
McCabe, the Resident Manager spoke to her about this issue and, in 1956, suggested taking in
small boys. Dr McCabe informed her that it would not be possible, as the junior schools were also
experiencing a decline in numbers and that there were three other schools in the locality who
could take in little boys. In 1957 and 1958, the General Inspection Report noted that the Resident
Manager was ‘very perturbed about the falling numbers’. In 1959, Dr McCabe again commented
that the Resident Manager was ‘very upset that the numbers for admission are falling’.
10.95 Dr McCabe did not comment on the impact of the reduced numbers on the ability of the Sisters
to deliver an appropriate standard of care to the children.

10.96 The issue of falling numbers continued to be a preoccupation of the Resident Manager throughout
the 1960s. Each year from 1960 to 1964 the General Inspection Reports noted that the School
was ‘very well run’. Each category of inspection was noted as being ‘very good’, particularly food
and diet, health, clothing and sanitation. Dr McCabe commented in 1964:
The Resident Manager is very co-operative and kind and anxious to make all the
improvements she can.
10.97 The final Inspection Report for the School was dated 28th July 1966 and was conducted by Dr
Lysaght. Overall, he found that the School was well run in each area of inspection.
Response of the Sisters of Mercy to the documents

10.98 The Sisters of Mercy were unaware of the contents of the Department of Education records in
respect of Newtownforbes until they were furnished to them by the Committee as part of the
discovery process in 2004. They said that, before their discovery, they were unaware of such
dreadful conditions existing in the School in the 1940s. Sr Casey at the Phase I public hearing
acknowledged that, once they had seen the documents, they had become very concerned:
We were deeply disturbed when we received the Department discovery of those
documents between ’40 and ’45. I immediately set about meeting all who had worked at
any stage in the orphanage to try and see could they help throw light on these documents,
because that was the first time that we were aware, and that we had sight of those
documents.
10.99 They asserted that their knowledge of conditions in the School was very limited as their
Congregational archive did not reveal such neglect. The material consisted of medical records,
school registers, education levels of the children, and very general information which did not in
any way ‘corroborate the complaints that had been made by the complainants’. Apart from the
lack of documentary material, their attempts to discover more about the School were hampered
by the fact that many Sisters who had worked in the School had since died. In particular, all of
the Resident Managers during the period under review were deceased. When the allegations of
abuse came to light, it was a source of ‘shock’ to the Sisters of Mercy.
10.100 It was even more of a shock to the Sisters when the revelations were made in the ‘Dear Daughter’
programme shown on television in 1996 because:
... it did come as a shock to us at that time, particularly in view of the fact that up until
then quite a few of the former residents would have been in the pattern of not only
contacting different Sisters, but actually coming back and visiting the convent.
10.101 When questioned about the maltreatment of the children that appeared to have occurred, on the
basis of these documents, Sr Casey accepted at the Phase III public hearing the negative reports
of the Department and acknowledged:
That was a difficult period in the time of the Institution and we deeply regret that, but from
then on, I think written into the record again from the opening appearance at the
Commission ... most of the reports showed a marked improvement.
10.102 Sr Casey was unable to provide any explanation for the bad management in the 1940s. She
offered the view that a change in Resident Manager in 1947 seemed to bring about an
improvement and, from then on, supervision became a central issue, which led to improved
conditions. She was informed by one Sister who worked in the School at that time that ‘the
supervision and all that became a big issue ... it was a huge issue, that you could never, you
know, leave the children alone, that there would always have to be somebody there at meals or
getting up or whatever’.
10.103 One of the Sisters, Sr Francesca, who gave evidence commented on this issue. She stressed
that the Resident Manager was very insistent that the children should be supervised at all times,
but she was unaware of the reason for it. This would indicate that Dr McCabe’s criticisms had
been communicated to the management of Newtownforbes at the time, notwithstanding the lack
of any documentary evidence of such communication. It was consistent with the hierarchical
structure of the Sisters that the nuns working on the ground were not informed of the
Departmental criticisms.
Food
10.104 Dr McCabe’s first General Inspection report of 14th April 1939 was very positive about the food.
She found it was ‘of very good quality’ and ‘plentiful’. However, by 1944, the food had deteriorated
to being ‘fairly satisfactory’. In that year, she also noted that 13 children had lost weight, but this,
it seemed, was attributed to their having been sick and having just returned from hospital. For the
remainder of the 1940s, Dr McCabe consistently described the food as ‘satisfactory’ or ‘good’ in
her reports, without providing any details.
10.105 Throughout the 1950s, the food was described by Dr McCabe as ‘very good’. Her reports during
these years are repetitive, as they consistently referred to the food as being ‘well balanced’ and
‘attractively served’.
10.106 Again, in the 1960s, the food was described by her as ‘very good’. The General Inspection Report
of 1964 contained a sample menu drawn up by the Resident Manager, which illustrated the type
of food provided for one particular day. According to this menu, the children received bread and
butter and either porridge and fried bread or sausages and black pudding or eggs for breakfast.
Dinner consisted of soup or milk, roast beef or boiled meat, potatoes and vegetables in season,
and a milk pudding or fruit pie dessert. Lunch consisted of tea with bread and butter, meat
sandwich or summer salad, and a fruit cake or pastries, and supper was milk or cocoa with bread,
butter and jam, and black pudding occasionally. Special mention was made of delicate children
receiving an egg flip at 11am and cod liver oil at 4.30pm. Dr Lysaght, who took over from Dr
McCabe, also described the diet as ‘well balanced and varied’ in his 1966 report.
10.107 One of the nuns, Sr Francesca, who worked in the School from 1946 to 1963, gave evidence that
the children received a hot breakfast in the winter time, which consisted of fried bread with either
cocoa or tea and they also got porridge. In the evening, they received tea and bread and butter
for their supper. She thought that the children received eggs twice a week as they had a farm
with chickens and hens. She said that the children and the nuns received the food from the same
source. She explained:
we got the milk from the farm and they got milk from the farm, we got the bread from the
bakery and they got the bread from the bakery. Meat was ordered from the one butcher,
we got it in the convent and they got it. From my knowledge of the Sister in charge of the
food in the dining room, she was very exact that they would have good food.
10.108 She was of the view that they received enough food, but that:
children are always hungry, even in boarding schools, but, like, I can understand that they
say that they were hungry, you know, but they got their regular meals and good meals.
10.109 She confirmed that children who were delicate or underweight were given an egg flip or cod liver
oil in between meals by being taken out of school. Rachel also said, ‘I used to actually have to
leave my class and go up for an egg flip and cod liver oil at 10.00 o’clock’.
10.110 Hannah, who was in the School between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s, recalled that she was
constantly hungry during her time there: ‘I know we were always hungry, terrible hunger, hunger
pains’.
10.111 She complained of being so hungry that they used to ‘eat the grass’ which grew in the School
grounds. However, she recollected that they received three meals a day: the breakfast consisted
of porridge and bread and dripping; the dinner was a stew with potatoes; and supper was bread
and jam. She added that she never remembered receiving an egg at all while she was in the
School, but she conceded that it could have been the case that she disliked eggs and added, ‘I
know I was a very bad eater’.
Clothing
10.112 One of the Sisters, Sr Francesca, who was responsible for the clothing of the children, and who
worked in the Industrial School from 1946 to 1963, gave evidence that every Christmas she tried
to have something new for the children to wear, as her own mother always had new clothes for
her when she was growing up. She strove for individuality:
my ambition was to get them out of uniform. Now they all wouldn’t be the same, there
would be as many colours as the rainbow, and I was very proud of the fact that I was
able to do something like that for them.
10.113 She wanted each child to have three sets of clothes: one for school, one for outside school, and
one for good wear. By the time she left the School in 1963, each girl had three sets of sandals
and shoes and three outfits of clothing. The Resident Manager got her the material to make the
clothes, heavy material for winter and lightweight for summer. She also taught the girls how to
make clothes and to knit:
They were very proud of the fact they were able to do it because I taught them how to
use patterns, how to cut out clothes and how to use knitting patterns.
10.114 According to her, each girl had a locker assigned with a number which was for laundry purposes
only. The clean clothes were put into the lockers once a week and, on laundry day, the girls
changed and brought the soiled clothes down into a hamper that went to the laundry. Each item
had a number to avoid getting mixed up and, when the clothes were brought down to the hamper,
the girls showed the numbers. She stressed, however, that the underwear was not examined,
as alleged.
10.115 She said that she had no recollection of children being without shoes. She was not able to provide
any information as to the state of the children’s clothes in the early 1940s.
10.116 Sr Elena, who taught in the primary school, stated the children from the Industrial School were
‘always scrupulously clean and very well groomed’, and she never saw any of them ‘with broken
shoes, strapless shoes or whatever could be wrong with them’. She was also of the view that their
clothing was no different to the clothing worn by the day pupils from the town.

10.117 Sarah, who entered the School in the mid-1940s when she was aged one and a half years, and
stayed until the early 1950s, when she was eight years approximately, recalled being constantly
cold at night time in bed.
10.118 Rachel described the clothes and the undergarments as ‘big like denim jeans’ which were only
changed once a month and ‘it was too bad if you had an accident’. However, she said the bed
linen was ‘very clean’ and the beds were cleaned and dusted every Saturday morning. She
acknowledged that they had a toothbrush each, but shared the same bath water when having
a bath.
10.119 Witnesses said that children were not told about menstruation. Another distressing aspect for the
witnesses as children was the complete lack of information provided on the facts of life and their
total ignorance concerning this subject. Two witnesses stated that there were no sanitary towels
provided.
Conclusion
10.120 • Food and clothing improved over the years. In particular, Sr Francesca made
considerable efforts to clothe the children properly. Problems with these basic
elements of care that emerged in the 1940s appear to have been caused by a lack of
proper supervision on the part of the Sisters. As there were almost no lay staff
employed, it must be concluded that the Institution was run largely by the older girls.
Once supervision was improved, the standard of care improved.
Education
10.121 In 1942, the internal primary school at Newtownforbes merged with the town national school,
which was situated on the same grounds as the Industrial School, and from then on the industrial
school pupils attended the same school as children from the town. This change was in accordance
with one of the recommendations of the Cussen Report in 1936. Literary instruction for juniors
(children under 14 years) was to be not less than four and a half hours daily, and for seniors not
less than three hours.
10.122 Children over 14 years followed the Domestic Economy Course for industrial school training in
subjects including needlework, laundry, housewifery, dressmaking and cookery. The Children Act,
1941, provided for an extension of the period of detention of industrial school children to enable
them to attend second level education. Sr Casey at the Phase I public hearing stated that the
records of the Sisters of Mercy showed that, in 1950, three pupils got such extensions. She added
that, in 1950 or 1951:
there is a reference in our archives to seven attending secondary school, five getting
honours in Caffrey’s exam, I think that was a business examination or book keeping or
something of that nature.
10.123 The school register, she said, also showed that, between 1952 and 1962, at least eight children
were attending the secondary school. She drew on her own experience as a pupil and recollected
that, in the 1960s, there were ‘at least 12 to 16 from the industrial school’ attending the secondary
school, but they did not actually proceed to Leaving Certificate class, and she only remembered
one going as far as fourth year. However, she pointed out that this was at a time before the
introduction of free education, which came about in 1967, and most children left school at 14
years of age. In her own class, 30 sat the Intermediate Certificate, but only 13 went on to do the
Leaving Certificate.
10.124 She was of the view that children who showed an academic interest were encouraged by the
nuns to remain on in secondary education.
10.125 One of the biggest grievances of the complainant witnesses was the lack of education and career
opportunities available to them: the industrial school children were prepared for domestic service
rather than any other career. Sr Casey at the Phase III public hearing conceded this point, but
sought to put it in the context of the time:
Certainly the training was for domestic service, but if one puts that in the context, that at
the time and the years that we are talking about domestic service would have been what
most of the people in the country would have went into. Because if you even look at the
Central Statistics Office, figures from there would have indicated that, for example, of
people gainfully occupied by occupation in 1946 that in personal service there were
102,000. 83% were women and of that 79,000 of them were employed as domestic
servants, so it wasn’t unusual in the wider context.
10.126 She also pointed out that some of the girls from the Industrial School went into nursing and into
retail. She acknowledged that not all the children from the Industrial School sat for the Primary
Certificate, but added that ‘every effort was made to give the children a basic primary education’.
Evidence of respondents on education

10.127 Sr Elena, who worked in the primary school, taught fifth and sixth classes combined, amounting
to approximately 35 children. She commented on the difference between the industrial school
children and the town children. She noted that the industrial school children lacked the advantage
of coming from a home with all its attendant love and care and affection, and said that they were,
‘slower and more indifferent and hadn’t their heart in it all. They just came to school because they
had to go to school’.
10.128 Furthermore, she felt that they had no ambition, whereas the day pupils from the town were very
anxious to ‘get on’ and were progressive, and some of the industrial school children were very
weak. She made extra efforts to help them but, with some children who were very bright and
some who were weak in the same class, it made teaching difficult. She was sympathetic:
I always thought, you see, they hadn’t the advantages of coming from a home. They were
in the same environment all the time, surrounded by the same four walls, and I kept that
before me to try and have them as good as the others, as possibly as good as the others.
10.129 She did not believe in ostracising weaker children and never kept children at the back of the class,
or considered them dunces, as alleged by some of the complainants:
I never did it because I didn’t believe in it. I didn’t believe in ostracising some children and
saying they were dunces or branding them. I never did it, and that is why, you see, I was
rather strict, maybe, and perhaps, I would say, harsh with them to try and bring them on
and make them realise that they were as good as the next and that they could do it if they
made an effort. That was always at the back of my mind.
10.130 Sr Elena disputed the contention made by some complainants that they learnt nothing while in
school, and said that she ‘always insisted that they be able to read, write and spell and stand up
for themselves’. She insisted:
that was my motto, with taking an interest in them and working with them and perhaps
pushing them and driving them, a lot of them they didn’t want to do it. That’s what I aimed
at all the time. Any industrial school children, I don’t like using that word, but anyway –
any of these children that I had in my class, they were treated the very same as every
other child and I insisted that they did their homework and I took it and corrected it and
showed them their mistakes. There was no exceptions made, and I would be harder on
them, I suppose, than on the others because they had less sense. Some of them had no
interest in themselves, whether they got on or whether they didn’t, but then as they would
get older, they’d say, “I wasn’t taught” or “I wasn’t helped” or whatever the case may be.
10.131 Sr Elena said that she had no input into where the children went afterwards. She acknowledged
that many of them went into domestic service. Her duty was to teach and she was confined to
that, she had no say in anything else:
You know, we just taught them and prepared them, and then outside of school there was
two other Sisters with them who taught them husbandry and cleaning and all that to
prepare them; exactly.
10.132 She could not discuss such matters with anyone in authority, not even the headmistress of the
primary school, because ‘the headmistress had no interest in the Industrial School’.
10.133 When questioned further, she clarified that the headmistress was only interested in the day pupils
and not the industrial school pupils. She did not approve of this attitude, but felt that she was in
no position to challenge it, as she was a much more junior Sister and had no say:
It wasn’t right. To me more time should be given with the children in the Industrial School
than those coming from their homes because of the disadvantages that the industrial
school children were under and what they were deprived of, of a home and parents and
love and care, and all the rest of it.
10.134 Sr Elena said she was very much aware of the needs of the industrial school children, but claimed
she was helpless to do anything because of the hierarchical system. Each of the Congregational
witnesses acknowledged that the needs of the industrial school children were not met, although
they differed on the reasons why. At Newtownforbes, the recommendation of the Cussen
Commission to integrate industrial school children was implemented but the evidence of the
complainants was that they were very aware at that time that the system discriminated against
them.
Evidence of complainants on education

10.135 Hannah, who was there from early 1940s to the mid-1950s, stated that she ‘didn’t get much
schooling’, adding that she ‘was a very slow child’. Her lack of schooling resulted in her not being
able to read and write to the present day. She explained her illiteracy as follows:
I wasn’t taught to read and write because, as I said, perhaps I was a slow child and I
didn’t get that care like the other children did. The other children got more care than me,
I do not know why. Is it because I was abandoned or I didn’t have anybody, I do not
know? My education was non-existent.
10.136 When she left the School, she got a job as a domestic in England working for a lady who looked
after her like a daughter and with whom she spent 10 years.
10.137 Her lack of education, she said, had ruined her life:
I can’t say I can’t get on with my life, but I could have been anything. I want to be
somebody but I can’t. Even the college I go to now, I get great support from them, not
from the Irish Government. I don’t get any help at all. It has just blighted my life.
10.138 She added:

I just want to know why, why I wasn’t educated and why I wasn’t looked after as a normal
human being, you know.
10.139 She explained further:

I was going to go on for nursing but the education stopped me, the reading and writing.
The barrier was – I couldn’t cope at all with it. I was failing all the exams and it just was
dreadful. And that was something I wanted to do in life and I didn’t get the opportunity.
10.140 Sarah, the witness who was beaten with a ruler for using her left hand, said that as a result of
this treatment and her consequent fear, she was unable to learn anything in school and was put
sitting at the back of the class:
Because I was left handed and I really couldn’t learn nothing, I was just living in fear in
that place, you know. That is all I remember about school, sitting in the back of the class,
not with all the other children in the front.
10.141 She said that, when she was taken out of the School at the age of eight years and returned to
her mother, she attended the National School on Baggot Street, where she was put into a baby
class where ‘children were playing with sand’.
10.142 A different attitude was expressed by another witness, Rachel, who had no complaints about the
quality of the education and who obtained the Primary Certificate. In fact, she said she ‘loved
school because it was an escape from work’.
Chores

10.143 At Phase I, Sr Casey acknowledged that the children were engaged in ‘significant amounts of
domestic work, as well as other work in the laundry, in the farm, in the bakery, depending on their
age’. She acknowledged the effect that this would have had on them:
So this undoubtedly would have impacted on the children. In fact, the children could easily
have felt that their lives were thwarted and stunted by this type of regime.
10.144 The chores which the children were required to do were, according to the Sisters of Mercy,
‘perceived as being part of their industrial training’. The main complaint of the witnesses was the
vast amount of physical work that they had to do. The argument put forward by the Sisters of
Mercy was that such work formed part of the Domestic Economy Course, which each girl from 14
years of age was required to undertake. The course included subjects such as needlework,
cookery, laundry, housewifery and dressmaking. The Reports of School Activities which cover the
years 1938 to 1958, which were submitted to the Department of Education annually by the
Resident Manager, make reference to these subjects. The 1948 report said:
These girls take their turns in assisting in their own school kitchen and dining hall, prepare
trays up for their friends. Assist under the direct supervision of a nun in the bathing and
toilet of young children. Also in sweeping, dusting of convent parlour and halls, washing
tiles, answering hall doors to prepare them for their future employment.
10.145 From the age of 14 years onwards, Sr Casey said the girls worked in different areas of the School,
including the farm, the laundry and the bakery. She recalled hearing the girls singing while they
were scrubbing the cloisters. However, the evidence given was that the girls were carrying out
this type of work long before they were 14 years of age. The Sisters of Mercy stated that ‘children
of all ages carried out domestic chores according to what was considered suitable to their age’.
10.146 Many of the witnesses complained of the hard physical work known as chores which they had to
do in the School as children.
10.147 Rachel recounted that they ‘had to work very, very hard’. She gave evidence of the type of work
that was part of the daily routine of the Industrial School. From the age of seven or eight years,
she said she was on her knees scrubbing and polishing floors, cloisters and big dormitories. When
she was 10 or 11 years, her main chore was looking after the babies, which entailed getting up
at 6 o’clock in the morning to wash and dress them and to wash their sheets if they had been
soiled, as there were no nappies. She had to look after approximately nine or 10 babies in one
dormitory. She slept in the dormitory with them.
10.148 Rachel said that there were three girls looking after the babies and toddlers, one for each of the
three dormitories. In the mornings, she had to wash and dress the babies, and give them their
breakfast of porridge, all before she went to school. No adult, lay staff or nun slept in the dormitory
with the babies. When she went to school, two nuns, one of whom was very old, would look after
the babies. Once school was finished for the day, she had to go back to look after these young
children and take them out to the yard to play. At 5 o’clock, she had to get the children washed
and ready for bed before she had her own tea. From 7 to 9 o’clock in the evening, the witness
described that she had her study time and then, at 9 o’clock, she went back to the children. At
midnight, a nun rang the bell and she got the babies up to put them on their potties. The routine
was the same at weekends. Rachel commented that a doctor had told her that she was a mother
before she was a child, ‘I find I am living my childhood through my little three year old
granddaughter’.
10.149 This witness’s favourable comment about the education that she received, because it was ‘an
escape from work’, becomes understandable when seen against the background of chores she
had to do.
10.150 Hannah gave detailed evidence of the daily routine, involving the various chores which she was
required to do. From the age of 11 or 12 years, her job was to make the bread in the bakery,
early in the morning before going to school:
A particular day, would be you would be up fairly early and you would have to get up to
make the bread in the bakery. We were quite young at that time, I am not quite sure of
the age but we used to have to make bread at quite an early age. Some of the girls were
quite small. They had to stand on stools to go in to make the bread, like troughs, to make
the bread.
10.151 After working in the bakery in the morning, they then went and had their breakfast before attending
school. Other chores included washing and scrubbing the floors in the dormitories, staircases and
in the convent. Even during holiday times, there was work to be done. She recalled that they had
to tease mattresses during the holidays. This witness also worked in the laundry from the age of
14 or 15 years. Contrary to what the nuns asserted, that the girls were happy whilst doing this
type of work and were singing, she said ‘We were always quiet and the nun would be saying the
rosary around you or whatever, especially in the laundry’.
10.152 Hannah described the chores they had to carry out as ‘hard labour’. She alleged that they had to
wash the nuns’ clothes and do the ironing.
Conclusions on neglect
10.153 1. The care of the children was seriously neglected in the early 1940s. In particular, the
health and hygiene of the children suffered.
2. The children received a basic primary education, but their career opportunities were
predominantly limited to domestic service.
3. The Industrial School children were treated more harshly in school than pupils from
the town, and this impacted on their ability to thrive educationally.
4. Children from a very young age were required to undertake heavy physical chores
which exceeded their capabilities.
5. Children over 14 years were required to carry out heavy physical labour under the
guise of industrial training.
6. Children were required to provide care for infants, without adult support or supervision
from a young age.
Emotional abuse
10.154 The Sisters of Mercy, in their Opening Statement, conceded that ‘the individual needs of each
child could not be addressed; that each child’s potential could not be known or realised’. They
acknowledged:
It is undoubtedly the case that the children being placed in industrial schools were a
particularly vulnerable population, not merely because they were children, but also
because, in many cases, of the deprived circumstances from which they were coming.
We recognise that there was no identification or understanding of many of the special or
particular needs these children must have had, and that this lack of understanding showed
itself in many aspects of the running of the schools.
10.155 Sr Casey at Phase I referred to the limitations of the system which, she said, did not and could
not give individual attention to the children. She pointed out that the School catered for large
numbers of children and there was only a handful of nuns to take care of them. She said that they
had no childcare experience.
10.156 The system was that two nuns worked full-time in the School, with others stepping in for
supervision purposes. These nuns worked long hours, seven days a week, which in itself put
pressure on them and ‘would have had a huge impact on the children that were resident at the
time’. She said that the ‘complaints made by former residents brought home to us in a very vivid
manner the experience of the children, and how this kind of a system just couldn’t meet the needs
of children’.
10.157 Sr Francesca noted that the children in Newtownforbes did not get many visits from their families.
It was rare that a child would get a visit. They did not get letters from their families on a regular
basis, and some of the children did not hear from them at all. She said that, when she was working
in the School, she was not aware of this need to belong to a family. She only realised with
hindsight the yearning the children had to belong to a family:
in hindsight again, we tried to give them everything, we’ll say, materially, spiritually,
physically, but we couldn’t give them what they were longing for and that was family.
10.158 Sr Elena commented on the longing for a family and the effect of the break-up of the family unit
on the children. The industrial school children ‘longed for affection’:
Well, I remember school time, 3:15 or whatever, when we’d close the school, they’d hold
on to you and hold your hands and come along with you. To me, that was they were
yearning for affection.
10.159 She also noticed that:
I saw all these children confined, you know, to a very small area and they looked forlorn,
many of them.
10.160 She added, ‘nobody seemed to claim them’.

Loss of family
10.161 Rachel referred to the break-up of the family and the fact that, although the family home was in
Dublin, she and her sister were sent to Newtownforbes:
I was taken away at three years of age ... My sister was eight and I was three years of
age ... I want to know why we were sent, myself and my sister were sent 80 miles away
where we had contact with nobody, no family, no nothing. So with the result I lost out on
a family.
10.162 She had contact with her older sister in Newtownforbes and said that she seemed to bear the
brunt of the regime on her behalf. There was no preparation for leaving the School when her time
came at age 16. She remembered that she was not even informed that she was going home. A
dress and a coat were made for her, and a lay person who worked in the School brought her to
the train station, where she was met by two boys who delivered her to her parents.
Death of a child
10.163 The death of a child that Rachel used to look after had a very traumatic and distressing effect on
her. One morning, the child was not well and she knew there was something wrong with her:
because she was just lying around and I took her on my lap and I hugged her and tried
to comfort the child, although I was only a child myself. I sent up word to say that the
child wasn’t well, but nobody came down.
10.164 She heard that the child had died when she returned from school:
So when the school was over that day we heard that she was after dying, and I still see
her on the bed with her little long dress laid out and we all queued up to see her. That
lasted with me for my life, I always wondered where the child was buried.
10.165 The death of this young child was very distressing for her, particularly because of the lack of
information provided and the fact that she believed no funeral took place:
It haunted me all my life wondering where that child was buried because there was no
funeral.
10.166 Another source of distress was that she was never told the cause of the child’s death. Records of
the Sisters of Mercy noted that the child died of cardiac disease. Another note recorded the name
of the child, and the fact that a nun and a senior girl were with her when she died. The Sisters of
Mercy at the hearing of this witness apologised for this traumatic event in her life. They said:
The Sisters of Mercy would like to apologise to you for the trauma you must have suffered
from witnessing her in that state of ill health.
10.167 They gave an undertaking to the witness to inform her of the location of the grave subsequently.
General conclusions
10.168 1. Prior to 1954, numbers were adequate to ensure that Newtownforbes was financially
viable. However, the Department of Education Inspector in the 1940s was very critical
of the health and living conditions of the children in the School. It is clear that children
during this period suffered serious neglect.
2. Complainants spoke of poor food and clothing in the period after 1954, although there
is no evidence that the children were malnourished or starved. Without a large farm
or a profitable industry to supplement the capitation grant, the management would
have had to struggle economically, resulting in the poor provision of basic needs.
3. The day-to-day care of the children was undertaken by just two or three Sisters.
Management ought to have recognised the inevitable consequence of such a system.
It was abusive for the Sisters, who had a heavy burden of responsibility and work
placed on them, and on the children, who could not have received adequate care and
attention.
4. In order to control such large numbers of children, the Sisters resorted to a strict
regime, depending to a large extent on corporal punishment. It became extensive, and
used for minor misdemeanours, and even though it may not have been abusive in
terms of severity, it did result in control through fear.
5. Transferring the Industrial School children to an external national school to be
educated alongside children from the local community should have been a positive
development, but real integration did not happen. Teachers treated them more harshly
and the headmistress ‘had no interest’ in the Industrial School children. They felt
different, isolated and inferior as a result.
6. Instead of getting more encouragement to learn, the Industrial School children
experienced a more punitive regime, and therefore became more disadvantaged. A
Sister who taught in the national school admitted that she used more corporal
punishment on the Industrial School children because they ‘had less sense’. She
described them as ‘slower and more indifferent and hadn’t their heart in it at all’. Such
children needed encouragement and not a punitive, oppressive regime.
7. Heavy physical duties were required of children from a very young age. These chores
were unsuitable because of the physical demands they made and the responsibilities
placed on young shoulders. Children were required to do onerous chores before going
to school, which affected their ability to learn.
8. Residents were required to provide care for infants without adult support or
supervision. This was an unreasonable burden of responsibility, inappropriate to their
age and was neglectful of the residents and of the infants.

Chapter 11

Dundalk (‘St Joseph’s’), 1881–1983
Background
11.01 St Joseph’s, Dundalk was first certified as an industrial school in 1881 and continued in existence
until 1983. The Rules and Regulations for Certified Industrial Schools in Saorstát Eireann, which
governed all industrial schools, were signed by the Resident Manager of Dundalk on 13th January
1933 and approved by the Minister for Education. The rules gave the name of the school as ‘The
Dundalk Industrial School, Co. Louth for Roman Catholic Girls’.
11.02 It remained a school for girls until 1965, when boys were first admitted. The School received
formal recognition in 1971 for the reception of young boys up to the age of 10 years.
11.03 The original school was established at the height of the Famine in 1847 by invitation of the parish
priest and a number of concerned residents in Dundalk. The Sisters of Mercy came to Dundalk to
work for the poor and sick, and five Sisters from Dublin formed the original group. A house, which
was formerly the offices of the Excise Commissioners, was provided for them in Seatown Place,
and it became known as St Malachy’s Convent. From 1855 onwards, the Sisters began to care
and provide accommodation for orphans. In 1877, two three-storey houses adjacent to the convent
were purchased for use as an orphanage. The funding came from Archbishop Kieran, who was a
former parish priest of Dundalk, from a number of donations, and from the proceeds of a bazaar.
The school numbers increased, and to accommodate the children an additional wing was built. By
1900, the School had become one long building made up of four adjoining three-storey houses.
Numbers
11.04 In 1933, the School was certified for 100 children. The average number of pupils in the decades
that followed was as follows:
1940s 56
1950s 42
1960s 22
1970s 14
Location
11.05 The location of the School on the main street gave it the advantage of being close to the local
community, unlike other industrial schools. The Provincial leader of the Sisters of Mercy of the
Northern Province, Ireland, Sr Ann Marie McQuaid, summarised these advantages in the first
public hearing:
they were out regularly, both on walks and whatever activities were on in the town. Way
back even, I saw it in the Punishment Book of the 1930s, they were getting out to the
pictures which were being held in the town hall. The older girls got permission to go out
to do messages, to bring the little ones on walks. Also, the people of Dundalk ... seemed
to have embraced the children because there was tremendous interaction, there was a
lot of support and care from the people of Dundalk for the children right through the 100
years including a god-parenting programme where people god-parented each child within
the Institution.

11.06 One witness, Elaine,1 who was there in the 1940s and 1950s, confirmed that the local people
befriended them. She said:
The local people were quite good, they would send in treats like boxes of sweets, my job
would be to answer the letters thanking them.
11.07 The location of the School had many disadvantages too. The site was restricted, and offered little
space for development. As Sr McQuaid explained:
They had a small yard at the back with a shelter for the children with a roof and three
sides and a hot pipe that ran through it and connected to the laundry ... On wet days,
they were in the School.
11.08 At the earlier public hearing, she described the atmosphere of the School in more detail:
It was a cold building. Even when the heating was put in in ’51 it was still cold and they
supplemented it in the 70s and they still had to put in heaters. It has long narrow corridors
and it is more long than it is broad. It has a basement and three floors and an attic so it
was a very formidable building for little children who were already traumatised to suddenly
arrive in.
11.09 The limitations of the physical accommodation became a recurring theme in the
Department of Education General Inspection reports for the period under review. The
biggest drawback was that the School lacked adequate recreational facilities for the
children. An outdoor concrete yard was all that was available, until an adjoining field,
owned by the adjacent primary school, was used from 1952. This was of great concern to
the Department of Education over the years and, in particular, the Medical Inspector, Dr
McCabe. Another Inspector from the Department of Education, Mr Sugrue, visited the
School in 1958, with the principal intention of providing additional recreational facilities for
the School.
11.10 It was not until the late 1960s that steps were eventually taken to bring about improved recreational
facilities. It would seem that the School lurched along for many years with very little improvement
or modernisation of the resources, undertaken either by the school management or by the
Department of Education.
Closure
11.11 The School officially closed in 1983. In a letter dated 24th March 1983, the Sisters of Mercy applied
to the Department of Education to resign the certificate for St Joseph’s. The Minister for Education
withdrew the certificate under the 1908 Act with effect from 24th September 1983.
11.12 Three reasons brought about the closure of the School. First, the Kennedy Report (1970) had
recommended the introduction of a group home system, but the physical structure and layout of
the School in Dundalk made such a system difficult. The Sisters of Mercy tried to introduce it by
establishing smaller groups, with children divided by age. However, the group home structure
could only be achieved on a different site and in purpose-built accommodation. The Department
Inspector in his General Inspection Report dated May 1973 stated:
This is one Home, almost certainly, where we will be spared the concern of providing a
Group Home – at least for the present – for lack of suitable site(s).
11.13 Moreover, the Department of Education’s architect, on an inspection of the School in 1976, stated
unequivocally that ‘This building is a death trap’. He also stated that, ‘There is only one
Architectural solution to this case and that is vacate the present buildings’. He was also strongly
1

of the view that under no circumstances should State monies be spent on the building except for
first aid repairs.
11.14 The second reason for the closure of the School was that Health Boards in the 1970s were
focusing more on fostering as a means of caring for children rather than residential care in
institutions.
11.15 The third factor that contributed to the closure of the School was staffing: the Resident Manager
was elderly and in poor health in the 1970s; and it was difficult to recruit staff.
11.16 All these difficulties led the Sisters of Mercy to enter into discussions with the Department of
Education in 1977 regarding the closure of the School.
11.17 To enable the older girls to complete their terms in St Joseph’s, the Sisters undertook the closure
gradually. By 1979, the number of children resident in the School had fallen to eight. In 1983, there
were just three senior girls resident in the School when it officially closed, and accommodation was
provided for them in an apartment opposite St Joseph’s.
Management
11.18 The Mother Superior in St Malachy’s Convent, which was situated adjacent to the Industrial
School, officially had overall responsibility for its management. She appointed the Resident
Managers and was the person who made decisions about major expenditure. The Resident
Managers were responsible for the day-to-day running of the School.
11.19 There were three Resident Managers during the period 1936 to 1983. Their terms of office were
1926–1945, 1945–1963 and 1963–1983.
11.20 All three Resident Managers are now deceased.
Sources of information
11.21 In carrying out its inquiry into St Joseph’s, there were three sources of information available to
the Committee:
(1) The evidence given by three former residents of the School. Originally 21 written
statements of complaint were received by the Investigation Committee in respect of
St Joseph’s Industrial School, Dundalk. As a result of these numbers, Dundalk was
listed within the ‘top 20 institutions’ to be heard [third interim report Dec 2003].2 These
20 institutions were ranked according to the number of complaints made against them.
By the time the hearings were scheduled, however, only three elected to give evidence
before the Committee. The implications of this reduction in the number of complaints
are discussed later.
(2) The evidence given by Sr McQuaid, Provincial Leader of the Sisters of Mercy of the
Northern Province. She gave evidence in public at Phase I and again in public during
Phase III hearings.
(3) The documentary evidence from the records of the Department of Education, Sisters
of Mercy and the Archbishop of Armagh.
2
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Third Interim Report, December 2003.

Time period of complaints
11.22 There were three complainant witnesses, spanning the period from 1946 to 1974.
Education
11.23 Children in St Joseph’s attended an internal primary school that followed the same curriculum as
the local primary school, which was for children of the parish and which was located behind the
Industrial School. The internal school closed in 1942, and the St Joseph’s children were enrolled
in the convent primary school with the children from outside. The School re-located in 1954 to
new premises a short distance away. Attendance at external national schools was recommended
by the Cussen Commission in its 1936 Report, and the 1942 development was beneficial,
especially when the combined school moved away from the industrial school complex in 1954.
11.24 In its Opening Statement the Congregation offered explanations for the educational difficulties
experienced by children in the Industrial School:
It seems likely that many of the children had particular educational difficulties because of
their disadvantaged backgrounds and the traumatic upheaval they had experienced in
their lives by being separated from family and sent into an industrial school.
11.25 Most of the children who went there were very young on entry, aged two years and upwards.
Whatever the cause of the under-achievement, the nuns concede that ‘it is undoubtedly the case
that the method of education provided was inadequate for the needs of many of the children’.
11.26 The Congregation acknowledged the fact that many of the girls left the School with only a basic
level of primary education, but submitted that in Ireland generally, few girls attended secondary
schools at that time. Two of the former residents complained about the limited education they
were given.
11.27 At the Phase III public hearing, the representative of the Sisters of Mercy expressed her regret
that many of the children did not get a better education and that many of them did not develop
their full potential. She added, however, that some children performed better than others at school.
Indeed, some went on to secondary school, and to do nursing or secretarial work. At the public
hearing Sr McQuaid conceded that, in general, there was a lack of awareness of the educational
needs of the children in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, there were no special needs
teachers or classes to cater for children who had been displaced or traumatised. The majority of
girls got no more than the basic level of education and most ended up in domestic service,
irrespective of their abilities.
Industrial training
11.28 There were specific regulations from the Department of Education governing the curriculum to be
offered in industrial schools. The object was to provide the children with skills and training so that
they could become self-reliant in later life. For girls, according to the Sisters of Mercy, this training
involved a compulsory programme in childcare, cookery, dairying, housekeeping and crafts. They
acknowledged that a number of children have felt aggrieved at having to do housework and
chores, because they saw it as doing menial work for the sake of the convent rather than practical
training in preparation for employment. The Sisters of Mercy added that, from the 1970s onwards,
this practice of working in the convent ceased.
11.29 Some older girls in the early years were trained to work in the public laundry but they were not
allowed to use the machinery, which limited the value of this work as industrial training. The
Congregation said it recognised the resentment of many former pupils at the narrow employment
opportunities provided for them. They also recognised that the full potential of many of the children
in the School was not realised and that, as a result, great suffering had been caused.
Department of Education and Science records
11.30 The General and Medical Inspection Reports dating from 1939 until the closure of the School give
a contemporary account of conditions in St Joseph’s. From 1939, when she was appointed, until
1965, these inspections were carried out by the Department’s Medical Inspector, Dr Anna
McCabe. The School was inspected under various headings, such as accommodation, condition
of premises, equipment, sanitation, health, food and diet, clothing, recreation facilities and
precautions against fire.
11.31 The Department’s records reveal the pivotal role of the Resident Managers in the running and
policy-making of the School. The Department seldom got involved in management issues.
11.32 With the exception of two years in the 1940s, the Inspector reported that the children were well
cared for from a physical point of view.
Conditions in the School in the 1940s as revealed by Medical Inspections

11.33 The earliest report by Dr McCabe is one dated 1st May 1939. She found that the buildings and
equipment were in good order, the children appeared well looked after, and the food was of good
quantity and quality. Her only criticism was the lack of playing fields for the children, as they had
only a large paved courtyard for recreation.
11.34 The next Inspection Report is dated 9th February 1944. On this occasion, Dr McCabe found the
School clean and well kept, with the children well cared for. Her only criticism was that the blankets
for the children were worn and needed replacing. A letter from the Department Inspector to the
Resident Manager requested her to implement the recommendations of the Medical Inspector.
The Resident Manager took great exception to the comment that the blankets were worn, and
wrote to Dr McCabe informing her that there was indeed a large supply of blankets in the School,
which she had not noticed. Dr McCabe replied by expressing her surprise at the upset caused to
the Resident Manager, and stating that it was not a personal reflection on her part but that it was
her duty as the Medical Inspector to ensure that the children had warm bedclothes, and where
she saw blankets beginning to wear thin she had to inform the appropriate Resident Manager to
replace them so as to ensure a continuing supply of blankets for the children.
11.35 Dr McCabe inspected the School again on 22nd September 1944. Her report was even more
critical of the conditions in the School on that occasion. The premises were described as not well
kept, with a general air of untidiness around the place. Food was considered to be fairly
satisfactory, but she suggested increasing the amount of milk and providing chips several times
a week during the winter months. The clothes of the children were described as fairly good but
rather patched. Again, Dr McCabe remarked on the absence of recreational facilities and
suggested acquiring the loan of a field from the convent. On this occasion, she was highly critical
of the management of the School saying:
There is a general air of laissez-faire all over the place. I was most disappointed to find
very many of the children with verminous and nitty heads – necks not washed or ears.
11.36 She recommended that the Resident Manager acquire the assistance of a young nun. She drew
the Resident Manager’s attention to the “verminous” and neglected state of the children’s hair, to
the fact that the children were underweight, and told her to supply more milk and chips in winter.
11.37 Again, this report was followed up by a letter to the Resident Manager from the Inspector of
Industrial and Reformatory Schools, requesting that Dr McCabe’s suggestions be carried out. The
Resident Manager replied that they were being implemented. Another letter in January 1945
enquired whether the recommendations had been effected. The Resident Manager furnished a
response on 16th January 1945, stating that the recommendations had indeed been implemented,
save for the fact that there was no young Sister available but a matron had been hired to assist
in the dressing rooms.
11.38 Dr McCabe made two inspections in 1945, in February and September. Conditions were reported
to be satisfactory and it was also noted that a young nun had been appointed as an assistant to
the Resident Manager and that there had been a change of Resident Manager that year.
11.39 However, the following year, the inspection yielded poor results again. On 28th June 1946, having
visited the School, Dr McCabe remarked scathingly in her report on the deterioration in standards
from the previous year. She was highly critical of the running of the School:
The school on the whole is very carelessly run and slip-shod - the children are anything
but clean – the supervision is hopeless. Practically every single child in the school had a
verminous and nitty head which proves the total lack of supervision in the Dressing Room.
11.40 She found that children ‘under 6 were very badly supervised – their ears and heads were in a
dirty state and they had a neglected appearance’. In her report she stated that she had addressed
her concerns to the Resident Manager, who had informed her that the conditions were due to the
fact that her assistant was out sick and had not been replaced. Dr McCabe clearly found the state
of affairs to be completely inadequate and unsatisfactory, stating ‘this is neglect, this just cannot
be excused’.
11.41 The report made clear her low opinion of the management of the School. She wrote:
This school is peculiar in that there never seems to be any lively interest taken in the
children, there is always an apathetic air about the place. The Rev Mother is never very
interested in the Industrial School and when I have asked for extra help she always has
an excuse that she would willingly give it had she sufficient staff to call upon.
11.42 She summed up her frustration with the regime as follows:

if these people are going to run a school they must look after these children – otherwise
I will have to recommend that they are not fit to look after children and have them
transferred elsewhere.
11.43 She did not accept the lack of staff as a valid excuse, and she issued a warning:
Now, if Dundalk wish to keep their school they will have to make changes and employ
people who are interested in this work and who will supervise the children.
11.44 Dr McCabe commented, ‘I have nothing to say about the food as all the children are adequately
fed and look well, if dirty’. Indeed, she commented that this aspect was the only redeeming feature
of the running of the School. She ended her report by writing:
I had really hoped for more changes when the new Sister started but instead of any
improvements the reverse has taken place.
11.45 The Department again followed up the report by writing to the Resident Manager, reiterating the
matters raised by Dr McCabe in her report, namely the poor hygiene of the children, the lack of
supervision in the dormitories, “the verminous and nitty heads”, the poorly kept premises, and the
fact that the assistant nun was absent for long periods of time and had not been replaced.
11.46 The Resident Manager replied that they were in the process of carrying out the recommendations.
She informed the Department that the assistant nun had returned and that extra help had been
engaged for helping with the small children. She also informed him that the staircase and corridors
were in the process of being painted. However, there was no mention of any steps being taken
to improve the hygiene of the children or carry out the other recommendations in the Medical
Inspector’s report.
11.47 Two inspections were carried out in 1947. After the first, on 9th May 1947, Dr McCabe noted that
‘the school has certainly improved’ and that the children were well cared for. The second
inspection was on 13th November 1947, when she reported the School as having ‘definitely
improved’. From that time on, her reports repeatedly noted that the School was improving.
11.48 Whilst noting routinely that the School had improved and that the children were better cared for,
in her report of 21st June 1948, Dr McCabe continued to make suggestions for bettering the lives
of the children in the School, particularly in regard to recreational facilities such as a play hall.
This was still a matter of concern to the Department in 1958, when Mr Sugrue, the Inspector of
Industrial Schools, visited.

11.49 Throughout the 1950s, Dr McCabe reported improvements in the School and specifically referred
to the painting of the dormitories, classrooms and corridors in 1951 and the installation of central
heating in October of that year. In 1952, she noted the acquisition of a field from the primary school
for recreational use by the industrial school children. In March 1953, Dr McCabe commented that
‘lots remain to be done yet’. She noted in that year that there was still no recreation hall. She also
remarked that the Resident Manager was very kind, but tired and in need of a change, however
she noted that the assistant nun was very good to the children. She reported that the nuns were
concerned about the falling numbers in the School.
11.50 In April 1955, Dr McCabe recorded in her Report that the School had improved and that the
Resident Manager was anxious to further improve conditions. She also noted that the children
looked well cared for.
11.51 On 19th January, on her first of three visits in 1956, she noted that the School continued to improve
and that the children were much improved since attending the national school in Dundalk. They
were well fed and clothed. Again, she commented on the fact that the children had no indoor play
hall and could only play in the field attached to the primary school. On her second visit, on 14th
May 1956, she remarked that the School was well run and that the Resident Manager and Sister
in charge were kind and good to the children. She pointed out ‘whilst the school is good and there
is little fault to find, there is a little lack of initiative in running it’. She noted that the children now
had a play hall but she added that more could be done with this space to make it attractive and
bright. In August 1956, she again noted that the School was well run and the children well cared
for, and she further noted that the Resident Manager was to make improvements in the play hall.
11.52 In 1957, the School received two visits from Dr McCabe. The first, in February, noted that the
School was well run and that the nuns in charge were very kind and good. Again, she wrote of
her aspirations for improvements in the recreation hall, saying ‘it just requires a little initiative to
get things going’. The following June, which Dr McCabe referred to as an ‘incidental visit’, she
noted that the School was well run and that improvements were certainly taking place but that a
lot remained to be done.
11.53 In her report of March 1958, however, a more critical tone emerged. She remarked that the School
was well run but not as efficient as it could be. Again, she made reference to the lack of initiative
on the part of management in making changes in the School. She referred to the children using
the field from the national school for play and not having facilities on their own premises. The
Department Inspector, Mr Sugrue, visited the School in September 1958, and wrote a report. The
main purpose of his visit appeared to have been the lack of recreational facilities in the School.
He stated that he was ‘quite satisfied with the general catering for the children’s welfare apart
from recreational facilities’, adding that, ‘There is a great need for a Recreational Hall and for
better facilities for outdoor games and pastimes’. He went on to say that he had discussed this
need with the Reverend Mother and the other nuns in charge of running the Industrial School,
including the Resident Manager and the Sister in charge, pointing out to her that such
improvements in recreational facilities had not been pressed upon the School greatly, due to the
low level of the grant, but now that the grants had been increased substantially, he was insisting
on efforts being made to remedy these defects. He suggested converting part of the old vacant
national school buildings into a recreational hall, and the playground attached to the national
school could be made available as a playground. He also pointed out that the children could use
two tennis courts adjacent to the School. Having discussed these ideas with the nuns in question,
he found them to be enthusiastic about carrying out his suggested improvements.
11.54 After Mr Sugrue’s visit, Dr McCabe inspected the School in October 1958, and found that there
was great activity going on in the School, with many of Mr Sugrue’s suggestions being rapidly put
into practice. She noted that the new Reverend Mother was very enthusiastic and co-operative.
Also, she noted that an opera was being organised for Christmas.
11.55 The year 1959 saw three inspections of the School by Dr McCabe, in March, May and June,
although she issued just one report. In it, she stated that the School was very well run and that
many improvements had been made and continued to be made.

11.56 Again on 29th and 30th April 1960, Dr McCabe referred to continued improvements but was
characteristically vague. For example, she said that much needed to be done, but it was hoped
that changes would be carried out in time. She felt that the Resident Manager and staff were
willing and co-operative and she found the Resident Manager kind and attentive. The same
comments were made in January 1961, that the School was well run and that improvements had
been made and continued to be made. In 1962, she considered the School was still well run.
Redecoration had been completed. She noted again that the Resident Manager was very kind.
After a second inspection in September 1962, she again said the School was being very well run
and the Resident Manager very capable. The falling numbers were of concern to the Resident
Manager. Dr McCabe also remarked that she had visited the sea-side residence of the School
and found ‘all very well and enjoying the holiday’. In 1963, there were four visits by the Medical
Inspector to the School. After these visits, she found the School again to be very well run, with
the Resident Manager being very capable and kind and interested in the children, and noted that
she had done her best to make any improvements that were suggested.
11.57 Following Dr McCabe’s departure from her post in 1965, Dr Lysaght carried out a full inspection
on 24th March 1966. In his lengthy report he remarked that:
There is a kindly & intimate atmosphere in this comparatively small school which makes
up for its old fashioned & rough furniture and equipment. The fact that the numbers are
low and the buildings not fully occupied tend to make it feel bland by comparison with
more compact building or one in which all the rooms are occupied. Much could be done
to bring it up to date by way of say modern beds.
Conditions in the School in the 1970s as revealed by Departmental Inspections

11.58 The next inspection, by Dr Lysaght, did not take place until November 1971. The state of affairs
existing in the School at that time are outlined with some acerbity as follows:
Two elderly nuns are mainly responsible for the running of this school, both spent
practically all their religious life in this one school on this same work ... It seems as if the
school staggered on for years with little interest or encouragement from the Department.
It was left to the Sisters themselves to make a break-through when, in 1967, they
embarked on major works of alterations and improvements. I understand that was
primarily sparked off by the election, in 1966, of a new Reverend Mother, who has given
this work her whole-hearted interest, sympathy and practical support. Until her arrival,
(two sisters) admitted to me that they felt this school was virtually a barracks!
11.59 In April 1973, the Inspector noted the change in the type of child who was resident there,
remarking in his report on the fact that ‘Dundalk seems to have more than its quota of slow
learners and retarded pupils’.
11.60 The report of March 1976 is very complimentary of the work of the Resident Manager, in achieving
a high degree of stability for the children and in creating a warm and friendly environment for
them. Interestingly, the Department Inspector noted:
This establishment is a text book example of the people playing the more important role
than the building.
The children were all very happy and relaxed with their staff both Lay and Religious –
they were able to talk and play freely without any inhibitions.
11.61 Contrasting views were expressed by Department Inspectors. Dr Lysaght amended his 1976
report in complimentary remarks:
This was a worthwhile and valid visit where one could state objectively that the present
Child Care practices are geared towards the interest of the children, there is a healthy
happy atmosphere ...
11.62 However, when the School was next inspected by Mr Graham Granville in February 1977 he was
very critical:
the Resident Manager ... has endeavoured to operate a residential children’s home for a
very long time now under extremely exacting and formidable conditions within her own
community ... is now showing signs of being a sick person and tired. The children are not
suffering unduly at present, nevertheless, the future is very uncertain, and I would see a
grave risk to the children’s safety if there were to be fire, and combine this lack of
enthusiasm towards the children’s social and academic development and one has certain
crucial problems, that cannot be over looked.
11.63 The Department’s view of the School in an internal memorandum dated February 1977 considered
the School to be inadequate on a number of fronts. It listed the concerns of the Department,
namely the condition of the outside of the building; the need for decorating the inside; the
inadequate maintenance of health records; contact with local schools; assessment procedures;
co-operation with social workers; contact with parents; and the very inadequate fire precautions.
The list of requirements was considered formidable, and the Department saw it as a matter of
urgency to decide what had to be done with the School. Because of these factors and the falling
numbers, the eventual decision taken was to close the School, which came about in 1983.
Life in the School

11.64 Elaine, a witness who spent her entire childhood from aged three to 16 years in the Institution in
the 1940s and 1950s, was able to recall the living conditions. She was born in a home for
unmarried mothers in Dublin and, at the age of three, transferred to St Joseph’s as a voluntary
admission. Her earliest memories of the School were from age seven. She described life in the
School as being ‘dull ... grey. Nobody cared ... The food was awful’. She said there was very little
meat and the dinners consisted mainly of soup and potatoes.
11.65 She criticised the clothing. She was given a set of summer clothes in April that had to last right
through until September and October, with the result that she was often frozen. Her dress was
made of calico. All the children suffered from chilblains. The jumpers and stockings which the
children knitted themselves did not keep them warm in the outside yard where they spent a lot of
time. They wore their winter coats only when they went for walks on Sundays.
11.66 She described the daily chores that the children were required to do. She explained that every
child was given a chore that was her special responsibility:
There was two lasses looked after the kitchen ... Other girls would ... look after the convent
... There was one lassie that had the laundry ...We all had chores. Some had the kitchen
duties, some was cleaning up the pantries and things like that. Mine was the youngsters,
there wouldn’t have been many, not in today’s terms. It seemed an awful lot then and it
seemed a big chore. You had to look after them. You combed their hair, you fine combed
their hair and make sure there was no nits and things like that. We didn’t have any
toothbrushes so we didn’t have to look after our teeth ...
11.67 She began this ‘child minding children’ from the age of about 10 or 11. She went on to explain
the system:
We would have lived on landings. Well there was the first landing, second and third
landing. Mine would have been the charges on the third landing, they were the younger
people ... They would have been maybe two to seven.
11.68 Elaine recollected that, when Dr McCabe would visit, everything would be lovely and clean. The
beds would be dressed to perfection and the children would receive eggs twice a week for a few
weeks prior to the visit by the Medical Inspector.
11.69 She spoke positively of the ‘Fairy Godmother’ system, introduced in the early 1950s, which was
a programme for people from the area to take the children in the Institution out for an afternoon and
take them to tea. They would also visit them at Christmas and Easter. She spoke with fondness of
the godmother to whom she was sent. She also spoke favourably of the summer holidays spent
at the nuns’ house in Carlingford. She recalled that, at the holiday home in Carlingford, there were
some lovely nuns who did not work in the Institution.
Physical abuse
11.70 The position of the Congregation was that the first time they became aware of complaints about
St Joseph’s was in October 1999, with the publication of Suffer the Little Children by Eoin
O’Sullivan and Mary Raftery. In their Opening Statement the Congregation submitted:
Allegations of abuse from former residents of St Joseph’s came as a source of deep
shock to us, and particularly to the Sisters of the Dundalk Community, a number of whom
had worked in the industrial school over the years, and were in regular contact with many
former residents.
11.71 They went on to say:

Former residents differ in their memory of the use of corporal punishment during their
time in St Joseph’s. Some have painful memories of it and say they experienced it as
excessive, others say it was not. While it is denied that excessive punishment was used
in St Joseph’s, given the number of years covered by the period under review, together
with the number of children in residence, it is unlikely that corporal punishment was not
sometimes administered unfairly or harshly.
11.72 Elaine spoke of ‘harshness’. She recounted several instances of beatings. One occasion was
when she asked the then Resident Manager if she could sit the scholarship examinations for the
secondary school. She was bright and loved school. When she made her request the Resident
Manager ‘beat [her] within an inch of [her] life for taking that scholarship from people outside’.
11.73 The worst part was the fear of the punishment, and the waiting to be punished. She described
one nun as ‘very rough ... for an old nun’ and added:
She would give you six of the best and you would be lined up for half an hour before you
got the six of the best, so the trauma of waiting to be punished and then being punished.
They could be punished for little or nothing, for talking after lights out at bedtime:
It didn’t have to be anything in particular ... Because ... we were always told we were bold
anyway so it didn’t matter.
11.74 She recalled two other occasions when she was beaten. One was when she was aged 12 or 14
years and was in charge of younger children on a walk. Because she was unable to time the walk,
they went too far away and returned hours late and she was beaten with a stick. The second
occasion was when young children in her care contracted ringworm and she was beaten for that.
11.75 She also complained of being struck by a member of the lay staff, one of a number of young
women from a domestic college in the west of Ireland who were sent to St Joseph’s on work
placement for approximately one year.
11.76 The witness recalled this lay staff member as being very rough with the children:
But she would often get a child and she would pull her by the hair and swing her, only
the wall would stop the person. They would go sliding down. She broke every brush we
ever had in the house. We didn't have many ... She would be murdering them, using them
as rulers. She just flogged people. When she left the place, and she was only there for a
year, there wasn't a brush in the place when she left.
11.77 The children did not complain about this staff member and she completed her placement. The
witness explained that there was no one to complain to:
I don't think that any of us had the knowledge or the wherewithal to complain. We were
at these people's mercy.
11.78 On the other hand, although physical punishment from the nuns was not as severe, she found
what she called the psychological abuse more damaging:
I wish sometimes they would have beaten the living daylights out of me, it would have
been easier, but the psychological abuse, it stays forever and ever and ever.
11.79 Jane,3 who was resident in the Institution in the late 1960s and early 1970s, gave evidence of
being caned frequently by the Resident Manager. She admitted that she was ‘a bit on the wild
side’, and got into trouble in the school. Jane further stated that the Resident Manager who
punished her was also very good to her.
Rules and regulations on corporal punishment

11.80 An unusual feature of St Joseph’s, Dundalk is the existence of a punishment book, which covers
the period 1888 to 1950. The Institution is unique among Sisters of Mercy industrial schools in
being able to produce such a record. There is no explanation for its discontinuation in 1950.
3

11.81 Punishment books were required by the regulations governing industrial schools, but there was a
failure generally to comply with this requirement. They were intended to control the level of
corporal punishment administered and should have had an impact on the nature of the
punishments given.
11.82 If the book is an accurate record, it indicates minimal use of corporal punishment and employment
of a range of deprivations for misconduct by children, but the evidence before the Committee
casts doubt on the completeness of the information in the punishment book. Girls could be beaten
on the spot and capriciously by all staff members, and none of that was recorded.
11.83 The Sisters of Mercy, in preparing for the St Joseph’s hearings, obtained information ‘from people
who had contact with St Joseph’s in the period under review, including former staff, residents,
professionals, Sisters of St Malachy’s Community, former Superiors of the convent, volunteers and
neighbours’. The Opening Statement summarised the information obtained from these sources:
Former staff acknowledge that moderate corporal punishment was used in St Joseph’s
for misdemeanours, disobedience, insolence, unruliness, bullying, and deny that it was
ever deliberately excessive. The hand, a ruler, stick or cane was used. Normally the
Resident Manager administered the punishment, and this was done in her office, or in a
room called St Brigid’s parlour. Both of the Resident Managers disapproved of any
member of staff using any form of corporal punishment on the children, and clearly made
this known, not only in the industrial school but also in the local primary school.
Regrettably this was not always adhered to, and one member of staff remembers being
reprimanded for slapping a girl who had spat at one of the Sisters. It is also recalled that
a member of staff found mistreating a child was not retained in the school.
Former residents differ in their memory of the use of corporal punishment during their
time in St Joseph’s. Some have painful memories of it and say they experienced it as
excessive, others say that it was not. While it is denied that excessive punishment was
used in St Joseph’s given the number of years covered by the period under review,
together with the number of children in residence, it is unlikely that corporal punishment
was not sometimes administered unfairly or harshly.
11.84 Sr McQuaid reiterated the point at the Phase I hearing:

I suppose knowing human nature and knowing the length of the period of time and the
number of children I think it would be unrealistic to say that there weren’t times when a
child could have been treated harshly.
11.85 In her evidence during Phase III, Sr McQuaid described an instance that occurred in the 1950s,
when a member of staff beat the children with a hairbrush. She was reported by one of the senior
girls to the Resident Manager who subsequently dismissed her. The evidence of Elaine was that
one abusive lay worker who beat the children with a hairbrush remained for the duration of her
placement and would not have been due to be retained in any event.
11.86 Sr McQuaid apologised to ‘anybody who suffered either because of unmerited or excessive
punishment, either from a Sister or from ones that we didn’t even notice’. With hindsight, they said
they deeply regretted the use of corporal punishment. They realised that even when it was not
excessive, it must have had a greater impact upon a child living in an institution.
11.87 The rules governing corporal punishment were strict. In no circumstances was it permitted to be
inflicted on a girl over 15 years and, for those under that age, it was reserved to the Manager or
authorised person. From 1946, the Department of Education’s policy was that corporal punishment
was a course of last resort and only for grave transgressions.
11.88 The Congregation stated that there was an emphasis on occupation and regimentation as a
means of management and control of the children, ‘particularly in the 1940s and 1950s when the
numbers of children were large’. It accepted that the impact on the children would have been
restrictive and frustrating, but said that the atmosphere became more relaxed when numbers
decreased in the period 1960 to 1983. It is interesting to note, nevertheless, that the staff-child
ratio in the period 1940 to 1983 was 1:9, which was much better than the norm for the time:
There were usually three Sisters and employed staff and that wasn’t counting the staff
who came in, Sisters who came in in the morning and the evening, so it was amazing
that it was that.
Sisters of Mercy Records: Annual Reports 1934–1958

11.89 Records provided by the Sisters of Mercy include yearly reports written by the Resident Manager,
giving a brief account of the activities of the School and running from 1934 to 1958, after which
the practice appears to have ceased. The reports gave an overview of life in the School for each
year under different headings: education/literary instruction, industrial training, fire drill, recreation,
home leave, conduct of pupils, buildings and equipment, and aftercare.
11.90 Under the heading ‘conduct of pupils’, details of the punishment of pupils was described in general
terms. There was rarely mention of physical punishment: the most usual punishment was
deprivation of certain activities or treats, such as an after-dinner sweet or the weekly walk,
depending on the seriousness of the misdemeanour.
11.91 The information was of a very general nature with some statistical material. These reports were
the only contemporary record of life in the School, and the information recorded is unfortunately
of limited value and varies little from year to year.
The punishment book

11.92 The punishment book covered the period from 1888 to 1950. At the opening public hearing (Phase
I), Sr McQuaid said that the punishment book was still in existence but that it had not been filled
in after 1950. She explained:
Yes, we did have the book, which we gave to the Commission, but it was blank. And I
must say I would have had the question that is probably in your mind, why it was blank. I
don’t have an answer, except that I am conscious that in the couple of other institutions
that I am aware of that had Punishment Books theirs seem to have ended in the 1950s
as well.
11.93 The entries in the book were recorded under headings such as the date, the name of the pupil,
the offence committed by the pupil, who reported the offence, the punishment, and remarks on
the case.
11.94 Offences warranting punishment included the following:

• being insubordinate and disrespectful to teacher.
• taking fruit from the pantry.
• showing disregard to directions.
• going out to visit relations without permission.
• Giving unnecessary trouble and showing insubordination.
• taking money from past pupil without leave.
• wasting time during literary work and showing insubordination to teacher.
• leaving school and going up town without permission.
• taking pocket money from another child and spending it without permission.
• showing disregard for directions and taking correction badly.
• tampering with keys.
• disobeying school rules and defying teacher.
• being insolent on different occasions – disregarding orders given by the sisters and
being disrespectful to teachers.
• refusing to go to recreation.
11.95 The book in many cases recorded that no punishment was imposed and, where punishment was
decided upon, the forms of reprimand included being:
• kept from Sunday walk,
• deprived of Sunday outing,
• deprived of Pictures Matinee,
• Placed at the Junior Table in Dining Hall,
• deprived of day at the Sea.
11.96 Physical punishment was recorded as slapping by the Sister in charge or the Resident Manager.
Six entries of slapping as a form of punishment were recorded in the book. For the most part,
punishment was deprivation of some kind. In this regard, the book’s authenticity as a record is not
consistent with the witnesses who spoke of corporal punishment as being much more pervasive.
11.97 There is no evidence that Inspectors systematically inspected the punishment book.
11.98 The question is whether the book is an accurate and complete record of discipline in the Institution
up to 1950. If it is, it demonstrates the benefits of an ordered system, in which the Resident
Manager exercised independent judgment and a flexible approach to punishment. It is clear,
however, that it does not contain any record of informal or casual chastisement by nuns or lay
staff, and the existence of such other modes of punishment undermined the justice of the formal
system.
11.99 Emmett,4 who was in St Joseph’s as a boy from the early 1970s, described a frightening ordeal
to which he was subjected in a very cruel punishment, when he was put into a small cupboard
known as ‘the black hole’:
The black hole is an area which is situated in the basement of the convent, right beside
the kitchen area. It is about three, maybe four by four square, and in height also. It is
totally black. One was thrown into there kicking and screaming, not wanting to go there,
terrified and wanting to get out because it is not a nice thing to go into and just being left
there all night.
Myself and my brother were put in there. Why I can’t recall. I was terrified being put in
there, kicking and screaming, wanting to be let out ... whatever I have done wrong sorry,
just let me out, let me out. My brother also tried to calm me down but I almost turned my
anger out onto him ... all I knew was that this is totally wrong and bad to be done and
there is nothing one could do about it. One kicked at the door to be let out and only to be
told that if you keep kicking on the door you are going to stay in there much longer. It
could be five minutes and at the time it was all night. An incident which happened in which
I was in there all night on my own, Sr Sienna5 put me in there ... In the early hours, it
must have been six around o’clock ... I heard a noise outside and I thought it was Sr
4
5

Sienna and I said, “please let me out. I will be good, I am sorry for whatever I have done”,
only for one of the kitchen staff to open the door and say to me, “what are you doing in
there?” Naturally I would be so scared to say it to her, because I wouldn’t want to get her
into trouble because God knows what the nuns would do to her. She says, “well okay I’ll
let you out but don’t tell the nuns that I have let you out.” I would have clambered out of
it and creeped and went straight upstairs to my bed. That would be one of the worst times
that it happened.
Another time ... I did kick and push the door to get out but Sr Sienna opened the door
and gave me a slap, and of course gave (my brother) a slap just as bad ...
11.100 The ‘black hole’ may have been an alternative to corporal punishment, but this boy was so terrified
by being locked in that dark recess that the experience was akin to psychological torture for him,
as the nun must have known and intended.
11.101 He also recalled a humiliating incident when he was put into a girl’s dress by the Resident
Manager, who paraded him throughout the School in front of all the other children and staff. He
was about five years old at the time when this incident happened.
11.102 • There was no evidence of dependence on corporal punishment to control children.

There was an effort to make it a punishment of last resort, and the fact that the School
maintained a punishment book for a considerable period of time indicates an intention
to regulate corporal punishment. It also provides evidence that other forms of
correction, such as losing privileges or being demoted, were used. Unfortunately, an
informal system also operated, sometimes cruel, that undermined the value of the
formal policy.
11.103 Sample extract from punishment book
Date Offence By Whom Punishment Remarks on the

Reported Case
August 1947 Disobedient, sulky Principal Teacher Kept from going to These 5 girls
and muttering and also Miss A.6 see Procession seem to be
when corrected. and celebration of leagued together
Troublesome to the St Patrick’s to give trouble.
Sisters in P. Centenary.
School.
September 1947 Refused to do her Miss B.7 Just insisted on its

charge. Impertinent being done.
to teacher.
September 1947 Attacked each In the presence of [Pupil] slapped by Not much
other quarrelling all the children in Sister Sienna. improvement.
over something Dining Hall.
October 1947 Separated from Teacher who was Not allowed out
teacher when out in charge. following Sunday.
walking, went a
different road.
6
7

Date Offence By Whom Punishment Remarks on the
Reported Case
October 1947 Left school without Missed by No punishment
permission in early everyone. Had to given.
morning. Went out be followed by
to the country. teachers in a
motor.
October 1947 Hid all day in the Missed from No punishment
attic. Only missed dining, then given.
when the children reported to
came to dinner. Guards.

11.104 The Congregation does not dispute the evidence that there was neglect for a period in the 1940s
at St Joseph’s. It acknowledges with regret the criticisms contained in the 1944 and 1946 Reports
by the Department of Education Inspector. It points out, however, that after 1946 conditions
improved and the neglect of the earlier years never re-emerged in St Joseph’s. In making this
assertion, it relies on the Inspection Reports after 1946.
11.105 The Sisters of Mercy also acknowledged the failure to meet the educational needs of the children
and conceded that, ‘it is undoubtedly the case that the method of education provided was
inadequate for the needs of many of the children’. They accepted the fact that many of the girls
left the School with only a basic level of primary education. The Congregation also recognised the
resentment of many former pupils that they had been given narrow employment opportunities.
They further conceded ‘the full potential of many of the children in the school ‘was not realised,
and that this has caused great suffering’.
11.106 The witness complained about being belittled:

I always remember (the teacher) would say you are the lowest of the low, you are the
worst of the worst. We would often go out to the grass and try to see what the lowest low
was, how low could you put your hands ... That was constant. We were never encouraged
to think beyond the four walls that we were in.
11.107 The staff did not do what the children needed in order to feel secure and loved:
it was the psychological abuse that was generally meted out because people didn’t see
children as children. We weren’t people, we were kind of fodder and nobody thought
enough to give us a hug or love us, or do anything that would have made our lives better.
... I am not saying they were psychologically abusive. What I am saying is that they didn’t
know how to look after children, they took on a job they were incapable of doing.
11.108 Elaine summed up how she felt on leaving St Joseph’s with the simple phrase, ‘we were there for
the duration and turfed out on the streets then’.
11.109 She could forgive the poor food and conditions, but found it hard to forgive the emotional abuse
and lack of love shown to the children:
But the food was bad. Although I don't blame the nuns on the food, I don't blame them in
that. In my own reading in history we did have the war and there was the rations, I don't
blame them for that. What I always get annoyed with and I find no forgiveness was the
psychological abuse and the lack of love. That would have cost them nothing. A kind
word. But there was that constant – we were psychologically abused, like, whatever it
was about poor unmarried mothers. I am glad it doesn't happen today.
Separation from family and loss of identity
11.110 Issues of identity and family featured prominently in the evidence of all three complainants.
11.111 Elaine was born in a home for unmarried mothers and transferred at the age of three years to St
Joseph’s, where she remained until she reached 16. When her first child was born, she began to
search for information about her own mother, a quest which continued on and off for 30 years,
with the help of her children. At the end of her search, in the mid-1990s, an elderly nun in St
Joseph’s produced from her papers a letter written by the witness’s mother 50 years earlier, and
this letter was sent to her along with other papers released on threat of court proceedings. This
letter was a source of comfort and reassurance, and eased the sense of abandonment
experienced by the witness down through the years. She explained:
Well, my belief is that I was transferred to St Joseph’s Orphanage in Dundalk and my
mother was never told. The only reason I know she was never told was because later on
in 1946 she writes to the convent and she is looking to know where her daughter is. She
is wanting to know would they mind if [she] sent me a little something ... I just believe that
she should have been told ... It is the only letter. But she is quite upset about it, she‘s
heartbroken in that letter. There is one line in it that says “next thing I know the baby is
gone”. That jumps out any time I read it.
11.112 Elaine was resentful that society had enforced the separation of mother and child because of its
intolerance of illegitimacy. She was also told erroneously that her mother was dead. In fact, she
died much later and could have seen her grandchildren. She recalled being told that her mother
was dead and experiencing no reaction. She said, ‘What do you do? I mean I’d never had a
mother up to that. I didn’t cry or I don’t remember crying. They were just words’.
11.113 Sr Sienna who had been Resident Manager had meticulously retained papers relating to the
witness, including this letter. Elaine was grateful that the Sister had preserved them but was
frustrated when she would not hand them over. Only the threat of court proceedings forced their
production. There was no understanding that children needed and were entitled to information
about their families. She said:
Originally when my first baby was born, and that would have been in the mid 1960s, I had
gone back to the orphanage because the orphanage was still open and I was literally told
to get on with my life. I wasn't told who I was or anything like that. I did want to know
because I had a child then and motherly instincts must have told me I had a mother and
she must have had some feelings too.
11.114 She greatly treasured the letter which recorded her mother’s concern:
... I was absolutely thrilled to get it. Even though it hurts it is a letter that – I will always
treasure it, it is heartbreaking. She couldn't tell anyone, she was like myself she was
alone. I did better than her I ended up with a family I could have. I do treasure the letter
it says a lot. It says little but it says an awful lot. As I say, there is one line in it "the next
thing I know the baby is gone". She doesn't know and it is heartbreaking that somebody
could take her child and not tell her.
11.115 Jane was originally detained with her sister and a cousin in an industrial school in the West of
Ireland. She was transferred first to the Midlands, and then to St Joseph’s, without her other family
members. The reason for this separation was not apparent. The result was a complete loss of
contact with her sister and cousin. When asked about them she replied, ‘I really don’t know now,
they probably just made their own way on over to England or Australia, whatever’.
11.116 Emmett was one of a large family, all but one of whom were sent to industrial schools. He was in
St Joseph’s for five years, and was less than four years of age on admission. He went on to
another institution, about which he was positive in his recollections, but described how he had
become institutionalised, with consequent difficulties in maintaining relationships, including those
with his brothers and sisters.
11.117 He described his need to form attachments, and he expressed this in a letter he wrote in 1986 to
the Resident Manager:
I was just thinking to myself, as I have always thought, of that I can never say that I never
had a mother and father because I have had that, and that’s you and Fr Burke.8 Just like
all mums and dads, you fed me, clothed me, taught me to read and write, brought me on
holidays. I will never forget and loads more and I love you both and always will.
11.118 He was asked if he stood by those sentiments today and he replied:

Yes, I would ... Fr Burke ... I wish he was my dad, because I loved him so much. He’s
one in a million ... Sr Sienna as much as there is a lot of good fond memories, and I stand
over the letter and those words I have said in it ... there is a lot of good but yet there is
bad ... I thought she was so good and the next minute she turned bad, by locking me in
the black hole and humiliating me and embarrassing me and hitting me in her office.
11.119 He was eloquent in describing his yearning for a family life he never had. He said:
Father Burke was very affectionate and you would get a hug from him and so forth, but
naturally children need ... more than that, more loving and to be wanted. As all children
would, as anybody in general does. I felt I wasn’t getting that ... I felt that it was an uphill
battle on my own against all the other environments ... just doing what father tells you to
go to school at this time and you come back at this time, go to bed at this time. That’s
fine, because one is institutionalised ... I find it easy to work in these environs, because I
have been brought up in them. If I had joined the army I would have had no problems.
But moving into ... the normal world, it is totally different. Naturally I would see the bond
of family that [the family that befriended me] have with their daughter ... it is so beautiful
that it is something that I wanted to express but I didn’t know where to express it. I just
found that very, very difficult.
11.120 Even relationships with his fellow pupils from St Joseph’s proved transient. He explained:
The funny part about it all, living so long in [another industrial school] and so long in St
Joseph’s I am in contact with none of them ... all children were put into institutions but
they weren’t made to feel together, to be integrated more so, so they can bond good
relations. Now, when I try to bond relations with the children ... one would have been
slowly doing it. Next minute ... you are cast right out of it. I have never seen any of the
girls or the school since then, until the school closed down. The only contact that there
would be with your peers, to the nuns ... The problem with this is that I am going through
a third party.
11.121 He then gave a moving description of his ideal of family life, something he had never had. He said:
(The family) is the foundation of their (children’s) life and if they have as many of their
siblings and their uncles and aunts and moms and dads and grandparents and whoever
else all round them, they will have so much love the strength that will come from that that
they will be a much stronger person. The confidence will be very strong and the self-
esteem will be very strong and nothing will hurt them. I believe that to the fullest.
8

Limited nature of the Investigation
11.122 While 21 written statements of complaint were submitted to the Investigation Committee, only
three former residents came forward to give evidence.
11.123 There were no living respondents, and no evidence was heard from people who had worked in
the School. The material that was therefore available was a limited amount of oral testimony and
the information contained in the written records.
General conclusions
11.124 1. The relatively small number of children in St Joseph’s was an important factor in
making this a less abusive institution.
2. The buildings were extremely cold, unfriendly and forbidding, ‘a barracks’ before
1960, and attempts to improve them made little impact.
3. The children were poorly educated and trained, and their full potential was not
realised.
4. Family contacts were not maintained and children were deprived of crucial
information that would have helped them form family ties and establish identity.
5. For most of its existence, recreational facilities were almost non-existent. The children
were kept occupied by doing daily chores. The need for children to play was not
considered by management. This regime harmed their emotional development.
6. The children came from deprived backgrounds and the conditions did little to help
them.
7. The punishment book, even though it is not a complete record, is evidence of an
attempt to control corporal punishment.
8. Problems arose from time to time in this Institution because of the incapacity of a
Resident Manager, by reason of old age and/or infirmity. The management system of
the Congregation was slow to remedy the situation. The Department of Education was
limited to exhortation and threat, but was unable to effect the necessary change
because the Mother Superior appointed the Resident Managers.
9. There was neglect of children in 1944 and 1946, including gross indifference to
hygiene, where the children were left with ‘verminous and nitty heads’.
10. Despite the forbidding environment and the fear induced by some punishments, the
children did not live in constant fear. The Sisters, particularly in the latter years, were
more approachable and involved. A small anecdote told by Sr Ann Marie McQuaid
illustrates this point: when Inspection Reports said the School needed painting, the
Sisters ran bazaars and collected door to door in Dundalk and Dublin to fund the cost;
they could afford the paint but not a painter, so four of the Sisters, including the
Reverend Mother and the Resident Manager, two Sisters from the School and the
caretaker of the convent, painted the building from basement to top floor at night-
time; a former resident told her that they used to creep out of bed to see the nuns
without their veils.

Chapter 12
Sisters of Charity
Introduction
12.01 In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Troy, wanted to establish
a religious community of women to serve the needs of the poor in the city, similar to the Daughters
of Charity who worked in France.
12.02 His coadjutor, Dr Murray, met Mary Aikenhead, and he thought she was ideally suited to carry out
this plan. In 1812, Dr Murray sent Mary Aikenhead and a companion to begin their training in the
religious life to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary run by the Loreto Sisters in York, England.
The rules of this Institute at that time were based on the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus
(Jesuits), and the initial formation of Sr Mary Augustine, as she became, were based on
Ignatian spirituality.
12.03 Sr Mary Augustine and her companion, Sr Mary Catherine, returned to Dublin in August 1815,
and Dr Murray appointed Sr Mary Augustine as the Superior of the new Community. The Sisters
made the usual three vows of religion – chastity, poverty and obedience – and an additional fourth
vow to devote their lives to the service of the poor. The following year, Dr Troy canonically
established the new Institute under the title of ‘Pious Congregation of Sisters of Charity’.
12.04 Soon after its establishment, the Sisters began their visitation of the poor, and found that the
Rules of the Constitution of the Society of Jesus which they had chosen to follow were not suited
to the type of apostolic life of their new Institute. A new Constitution was drafted by Sr Mary
Augustine, with the assistance of a Jesuit Priest, and was submitted to Rome for approval in 1824.
The Rules and Constitution were deliberated on in Rome during the pontificates of Leo XII and
Pius VIII, but it was not until after the accession of Pope Gregory XVI that they were finally
approved in 1833.
12.05 The original documents remained unchanged until 1917, when the Constitution was revised and
modified in line with the new Code of Canon Law. The next revision took place in 1971, in
accordance with the wish of Vatican Council II, and an Interim Revised Constitution was approved
by Rome and put to the General Chapter of the Congregation in 1977. The Congregation felt that
another draft was necessary, as they considered that the new Interim Constitution did not reflect
the early Ignatian spirituality. A Congregational Committee was formed, and a new Constitution
was drafted using the original 1833 Constitution and key parts from the Constitutions of the Society
of Jesus. As the new Constitution was drawn from the original document, a second contemporary
document was drawn up to encompass the teachings of the Vatican II Council and this was entitled
‘The Complementary Code to the Constitutions.’1 The new Constitution was circulated to the
members of the Congregation in 1980 and, over the next three years, it was revised and edited
and prepared for submission to the Sacred Congregation for Religious in Rome in April 1984. It
was approved in August 1985.
1
Complementary document.

12.06 In 1995, it was recognised by the General Chapter that the Complementary Code needed updating
and, after a wide-ranging consultation process throughout the Congregation, a new Complementary
Document was produced in 2001. The Sisters used the Jesuits’ document ‘Complementary Norms’
to assist them in the production of this document.
12.07 Today, the Religious Sisters of Charity have around 150 communities in six regions and two
provinces, spanning four continents. They continue the work of their founder, Mary Aikenhead, in
three ministries: education, healthcare and pastoral/social. The Sisters of Charity in Australia are
a distinct Congregation since 1842 with their own Congregational leader.
Governance of the Congregation

12.08 The Congregation is centrally governed by a council known as the General Chapter, which is the
supreme law-making body in the Institute and is based in Dublin. This is headed up by an elected
congregational leader with the assistance of her council. A congregational meeting is held every
six years to elect a leader and council, and to deal with the affairs of the Congregation. An
important duty of the congregational leader is to make Visitation to all of the Sisters in their various
residences and ministries every six years. She may delegate this task to one of her council.
12.09 There are three regions and two Provinces headed up by a Provincial/Regional Leader who, with
her team, provide the link between the local communities and the central government. She is
appointed by the congregational leader, who consults with the Sisters in the region/province to
find the most suitable person. The leader must visit all of the Sisters in their residences and
ministries ordinarily every two years, except in the year when this is done by the congregational
leader or one of her assistants.
12.10 The Sisters live in the local community to which they are assigned, and a leader is appointed by
the provincial/regional leader, following consultation with Sisters in the community and subject to
the approval of the congregational leader with her council. The community leader is appointed for
three years, and may be reappointed for a second or third term in exceptional circumstances only.
12.11 The congregational leader, with the consent of her council, has the power to remove the local
superior from office for a grave reason.
12.12 Chapter 4 Section 232 gives an insight into the type of person that should be considered for the
role of community leader:
3. Care should be taken that whoever is appointed to the office of superior be a person
of great virtue, edification, self abnegation and one whose obedience and humility are
well proved. She ought to be discreet, suitable for governing and experienced both in
practical and spiritual things. She should know how to mingle firmness with kindness at
the proper times and have patience and endurance in bearing the responsibilities of her
office. Finally, she should be one in whom the higher superiors can confide and to whom
they can with security communicate their authority. For the greater this delegated authority
will be, the better with the houses be governed and the works of the house promoted for
greater divine glory.
The community leader must also appoint a ministress and bursar to assist her.
12.13 She must give the rules which relate to her office to each Sister, and take care that no one
interferes in the business of another.

12.14 The ministress acts in the absence of the community leader and also makes provision for the
material things needed for the community. The bursar administers the property and funds of the
house and keeps an account of income and expenditure.
Recruitment
12.15 In the past, the Sisters of Charity recruited two types of Sisters: superior degree Sisters and
second degree Sisters. Second Degree Sisters who entered the Congregation were confined to
‘domestic employment suitable to their vocation’. They were required to be ‘content with the
occupations of Martha’ and interiorly to ‘esteem all as being superior to themselves, and, with
religious simplicity and modesty, to give each one exteriorly the honour and reverence which her
station requires’.
12.16 The Rules of the Religious Sisters of Charity provided as follows in relation to second degree
Sisters:
10. Finally, let them remember, that as the peculiar office of those in the superior degree
is to promote the end of this Congregation, by instructing the poor, visiting the sick etc.
etc. so their own peculiar office, is to employ themselves in whatever lowly of humble
occupations may be allotted to them; persuading themselves that by aiding the
Congregation in these offices, in order that the other members may, with less interruption
attend to their own peculiar duties, they serve the same Master of all, our Lord Jesus
Christ; since they do so for love and reverence of the Divine Majesty. With as much
humility and charity as possible, let them be ready to perform with great exactness the
office assigned to them. Thus they will not only receive the reward of their own fatigue
and labour, but likewise become partakers in all the good works which God, to the praise
and glory of His holy Name, may vouchsafe to effect by the ministry of the whole
Congregation, and in all the Indulgences and spiritual favours which the Apostolic See
has graciously deigned to grant for its members, for the advantage of their souls.
...
20. When any one admitted into this Congregation has received one degree, she must
not seek to be advanced to another. Let her endeavour to acquire perfection in her own;
employing herself wholly in the service and for the glory of God, and leaving the care of
all other things to the Superior, who holds the place of Jesus Christ our Lord.
12.17 Today, the Congregation Manual states that each Sister and each local community must take
responsibility for encouraging vocations and, in each part of the Congregation, there is a formation
team, whose members are the Provincial/regional leader and the Sisters who are appointed to
direct the formation of candidates, postulants, novices and the members, both in temporary and
perpetual profession.
Apology
12.18 The Sisters of Charity were involved in five industrial schools, including St Joseph’s and St
Patrick’s, Kilkenny and Madonna House, Dublin.
12.19 The Sisters of Charity have never issued a general public apology in respect of child abuse.
However, the Congregation has issued three specific apologies relating to the criminal convictions
of three of its staff, one in Madonna House and two in St Joseph's, Kilkenny.
12.20 The apology in relation to Madonna House was issued in 1994 and read:
The Religious Sisters of Charity are deeply concerned and saddened by what has
happened to the children at Madonna House. We offer our heartfelt apology to each and
every person who has suffered in a situation where we tried to ensure that they would
experience warmth, care and support.
12.21 The second apology was issued at the sentencing of a male childcare worker in St Joseph’s
in 1997:
While other Orders might have found that the States of Fear programme or other
publications or broadcasts was their moment of realisation, I think it was the criminal
conviction of that child care worker that was a very significant moment certainly for me
and those other sisters who attended and for the congregation subsequently. For us it
was a brutal initiation into the reality of sexual abuse of the most depraved kind. While I
would have read the Garda statements that the children made against this child care
worker, it became very real when the boys were asked to speak in Court and they
described a most horrific litany of terror and hurt and humiliation and pain and
powerlessness. It was at that moment I think for us as a congregation it became real. I
am not saying we accepted it or understood it, but it became real for us then.
12.22 The third apology was issued when another childcare worker from St Joseph's, Kilkenny was
convicted. It read, inter alia:
We are appalled that a care worker employed at St. Joseph's for 9 months from '76 to '77
abused children in his care and we are offering counselling services etc.
He came to St. Joseph's as a qualified care worker, had excellent references from his
former employees in the UK, and was interviewed by representatives from St. Joseph's
and from the Department of Education ...
Peter Tade’s2 abuse of the children at St. Joseph's has caused untold misery for the
men involved. Nothing can make up for what happened to them and we deeply regret
their suffering.
12.23 Sr Úna O’Neill, Superior General of the Congregation, told the Investigation Committee at The
Public Phase I hearing on 7th February 2005 that:
The issue of making a public apology didn't really arise for us. Our response to the
emergence of the allegations was twofold. When we received the allegations through legal
means we responded to them legally through our solicitors. At the same time we were
trying to respond pastorally and that pastoral response was a continuation of what had
been happening on the ground with the Sisters who had actually been in these childcare
homes. Many of our past residents have maintained their contact with the Sisters who
were their carers and that continued and I think some of the Orders have expressed the
way in which that continued.
12.24 Sr O’Neill stated that the Sisters provided two aftercare centres and a fund for past residents:
past residents of our schools can apply for help for ongoing education, for counselling for
themselves or their families, grants for those who are experiencing particular problems,
with regard to family health, employment, accommodation, contributions towards funerals
and burials for those who may not have immediate family, grants for those who may want
to set up a little business or whatever, for those who are searching for parents or siblings,
and for reunions and holidays.
12.25 Sr O’Neill said that the Congregation contributed to the Redress Fund:
we had a number of civil cases before the Court at that time ... We had had the
experience, I had the experience of attending these court cases and I had seen what that
2

process had done particularly to the men who had taken the cases against us. I had
spoken to them about the experience with both of them. I saw what it did with both the
volunteers and the staff who had to testify. There was a strong pastoral reason for us not
subjecting anybody to that kind of process if we could avoid it.
We also felt the definition of abuse was so broad that it would invite many more cases
against us and in fact that has proved to be the case. There has been a very, very
significant increase in the number of cases that have come in from 2000 up to today, very
significant increase for those that had come in beforehand.
We also felt that if we didn't contribute to the scheme, maybe we were wrong in this, we
felt that perhaps the Redress scheme would give a partial payment to the children and
then they would seek the rest from us through legal means and that would have been the
same reason as I have given beforehand.
The same thing again I suppose the cases before the courts take a very long length of
time as we had experienced and we felt that if the Redress scheme to which we could
contribute could be up and running it would mean that those cases would be heard much
more swiftly than in the courts. It was our view that this process would be preferable to
our past residents and to the staff and sisters than going through the difficulties of the
court system and also of course that the substantial amount of money that would be
expended in legal fees could be avoided if we did contribute. We felt it would bring finality
to all of that.
12.26 In their Final Submissions to the Investigation Committee following the hearings into St Joseph’s,
Kilkenny and St Patrick’s, Kilkenny, the Sisters of Charity submitted that the sexual and physical
abuse that was perpetrated on the children in these Schools was inflicted by parties other than
members of the Congregation. Therefore, they stated, ‘the issue of making a public apology did
not arise for the Sisters of Charity’.
12.27 They stated, however, that ‘the Sisters of Charity are absolutely and deeply sorry that any children
in their care were abused in any way’.
12.28 They accepted that ‘A certain number of children suffered appalling abuse’. They also submit that
the manner in which the Sisters organised and ran their schools led to the risks and incidence of
child abuse being minimised and to appropriate action being taken when abuse was discovered.

Chapter 13
St Patrick’s Industrial School,

Kilkenny, 1879–1966
Introduction
13.01 In 1879, the Bishop of Ossory, Dr Moran, acquired from the State an agricultural college known
as ‘model farm’, for the purpose of establishing an industrial school for the boys of the diocese. It
was situated just over a mile outside Kilkenny city, and consisted of a large house with outbuildings
on about 80 acres of land. He invited the Sisters of Charity to take over the management and
control of the model farm and convert it into an industrial school.
13.02 On 23rd December 1879, St Patrick’s was certified as an industrial school for the admission of 186
boys up to the age of 10 years.
13.03 St Patrick’s Industrial School closed on 25th November 1966. All the boys resident in the School
at the time were transferred to other institutions. Later that year, with the approval of the
Department of Health, St Patrick’s reopened as a school for children with severe or minor learning
difficulties. It still provides residential care, day care, respite care and a special school for those
with learning disabilities.
The children
13.04 During the period under investigation, 1933 to 1966, 1,282 boys passed through St Patrick’s. Of
those, 1,176 were committed by the courts and 106 by other means. When the boys reached the
age of 10, they were transferred to other industrial schools, usually at the end of a quarter. In
March 1965, at the suggestion of the Resident Manager in a letter to the Department of Education,
a new policy was adopted whereby the boys remained in St Patrick’s until the end of the school
year.

13.05 The Sister who was appointed as the local Superior in St Patrick’s generally also acted as
Resident Manager of the Industrial School.
13.06 The Sisters in the Community worked in various capacities in St Patrick’s, ranging from teachers
and carers to working in the kitchen and laundry. In general, the number of Sisters in the
Community was between 12 and 14, although it is not clear how many of them were actively
engaged in the work of the School. The Community also employed lay female staff to work
alongside the Sisters. Men were employed in the farm to work under the direction of a steward.
In the later years, a few male employees were employed to care for the boys, supervising them
at play and taking them for walks.
13.07 This Institution, like its counterpart, St Joseph’s, Kilkenny, was ahead of its time. Some of the
Sisters of Charity received proper childcare training in a year-long course in London. The records
indicate that two Sisters from St Patrick’s went to London for a refresher course in 1956 and
introduced the groups system to St Patrick’s. It had already been introduced into St Joseph’s
Industrial School, also located in Kilkenny, which catered for girls up to the age of 16.
13.08 In February 1966, the Department of Health wrote to the Superior General of the Sisters of Charity
at Mount St Anne’s, Milltown, confirming a discussion held the previous month, in which it was
agreed that St Patrick’s would cease to operate as an industrial school and would be used ‘on a
permanent basis, as a residential centre for moderately and severely handicapped children – girls
and young boys’.
13.09 Accordingly, in May 1966 the Superior General gave six months’ notice of the Sisters of Charity’s
intention to resign their certificate as an industrial school.
13.10 Thirty boys were transferred to St Joseph’s, Kilkenny, some to Artane, and the rest were
transferred to other industrial schools. The Sisters received a list of the transfers from the
Department of Education, and they wrote back to the Department in July 1966, suggesting a few
alterations to the list, as some of the boys had friends and wished to be placed together. The
Resident Manager enclosed the modified list for the Department.
Allegations of abuse
13.11 The Investigation Committee heard evidence from nine witnesses who were resident in St Patrick’s
until they were transferred to another institution when they reached the age of 10.
13.12 The period of residence of the witnesses in St Patrick’s covered the period 1943 to 1966, when
the School closed. Three witnesses were in the Institution in the mid to late 1940s; the remaining
six were resident in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The majority of the witnesses were in the
Institution from the age of 4 to 10 years.
13.13 Apart from the correspondence in the 1940s relating to children’s failure to gain weight and going
barefoot, the Department did not appear to have had any concerns about this Institution. Each of
the witnesses was transferred to another industrial school and had serious complaints to make
about the later institution. All of them had been committed to St Patrick’s when they were nine
years of age or younger. Their memories of life in the Institution were, therefore, vague.
Nevertheless, many of them had very specific memories of incidents that occurred during their
time there, which helped form a picture of St Patrick’s.
Allegations of physical abuse

13.14 A complainant who was in St Patrick’s in the 1940s recalled the Institution before it was divided
into the group system:
It was a kind of a – it was a real institution, like. You know, like an orphanage, that's how
I felt. It was a very harsh regime as regards discipline ... I remember we were in the – it
was like an auditorium that we were in. First thing in the morning before school we would
do our catechism. We had to learn our catechism ... I remember one little boy ... he forgot
his catechism. He couldn't remember what it was and the sister that was doing the
catechism – I can't remember, I wouldn't be sure of her name. It could have been Sr
Tyra.1 She gave him, like, a beating in front of all of the boys. We were all sort of sitting
there. She said "I am going to make an example of this boy and this is what you will get
1

if you don't remember your catechism". She beat him with a billiard cue ... Full length
billiard cue, yes. That was the one major incident I can remember at that school.
13.15 He said the beating took place in the front of a large hall where all the boys could see it:
He was brought down to the front where everyone could see him and the nun got this
billiard cue. She made him bend over and she gave him a hell of a beating. Obviously we
were terrified of seeing this.
13.16 The witness believed the boy was about seven or eight when this happened: ‘We were ever so
small. We were really tiny in size’.
13.17 This incident stood out in his mind:

Well, I could still hear, even still today I can still hear the swish of a billiard cue. She
swung it around with all her might. You could hear the wind going through the billiard cue
and the little fellow screaming. It's sort of something you wouldn't forget.
13.18 That was the most severe beating he remembered in St Patrick’s. Lesser physical punishment
was administered for failure at lessons. It was, he said, ‘Less severe, they would get the back of
the ruler’.
13.19 This complainant recalled being fearful during his time in St Patrick’s:
Well, it was a very harsh regime. The discipline was, you know, they were very – you
were just frightened. You were just frightened because you would get a belt for any little
thing. If you stepped out of line on anything or you were in the wrong place you would
have to explain yourself. Just like, an atmosphere of fear, really, prevailed in the place,
you know.
13.20 He recalled being punished:

Oh, yes, you would get plenty of slaps. You would be slapped any time you stepped out
of line. I don't know what we would do to get it. I can't recall why I would be slapped. You
had to toe the line. It was a very strict regime.
13.21 He said that all the nuns were not bad and he recalled some good ones. Overall, there was
strict discipline:
The Reverend Mothers, they were generally austere people. You saw them just fleetingly.
Of course, these places were run almost, you would say, military lines. You could feel
that there was a chain of command. They were very organised, very precision running
places; you know. Apart from there wasn't much stimulation or there wasn't – I wouldn't
say there was happy memories there, really. You were just there and that was it, like. Up
against maybe the remaining orphanages we were probably living in heaven. That's all I
can say.
13.22 A witness who was there in the 1940s and 1950s differentiated between the lay teachers and
the nuns:
You see, the teachers didn't used to really punish you. They were pretty good, the
teachers were. The nuns used to come and repeatedly hit you if you stood out of line.
13.23 He said that this punishment was hard and frequent.

13.24 A complainant, who spent seven years in St Patrick’s until he was transferred to another industrial
school in the mid-1960s, described the punishment he received for bed-wetting:
I suppose what I would like to talk about was the punishments I received as a child when
I wet the bed ... It happened for most of my time when I was in St Patrick's. The
punishment I received for wetting the bed was I was put into a galvanised bath down near
the toilets, this was full of Jeyes Fluid, and a bucket was put into the bath and the water
poured over my head and I was made sit there for five minutes. As I got out of the bath I
was beaten on the behind.
13.25 He said that this cold bath and physical punishment continued daily, from the age of five to the
age of 10:
I suppose every morning when I got up it was something I knew I would have to face, this
punishment for wetting the bed. There was nights where I did get up and I was terrified
to go to the toilets, it was easier just to wet the bed.
13.26 During his time there, corporal punishment was administered for misbehaviour:
I received severe beatings when I was, as they say, bold. One of the things the nuns sort
of enmeshed into the boys, into me, when I go to [another industrial school] to the
Christian Brothers, they would teach me manners. By the time it did come to the stage
when we would be going to [another industrial school] we were terrified of [another
industrial school] before we ever went there.
13.27 Another complainant, who was in St Patrick’s in the 1960s, was committed by the courts for
stealing when he was eight years old. He was brought down handcuffed by two Gardaı́. He
described what happened to him:
When I went out first I was frightened, I was nervous, I was crying for several nights
wanting to go home and that and I started wetting the bed. The nun used to come and
stick my face in it. Then she would start calling me two and three times a night to go to
the toilet. That went on for quite some time there.
13.28 He explained that he had not suffered from this problem before coming to St Patrick’s, apart from
once or twice. In St Patrick’s it was a regular problem. He said that he was called out regularly
during the night, and that meant he did not wet every night. On one occasion, a nun tied him up
with a towel because he was wetting so much:
If I couldn't stay in the bed without wetting it then she would put me in a place where I
could wet all I wanted and it wouldn't make any difference. That was the kind of attitude
that was taken ... I went out to the toilet after the one gave me a belt on the back of the
neck to get me out of the bed. She followed me out to the toilet, I was lying on the floor
and she pulled my legs up on the rails and tied my legs to the rails, I was upside down.
She went out and closed the door. I thought I was going to be left there all night. That
was it. It could have been five minutes or five hours, I don't know. She came back in then
and put me back in the bed.
13.29 Shortly after that incident, he ran away from St Patrick’s:

It was shortly after the hanging me up by the feet, because not only was I going to bed
nervous but I also was wondering was this going to happen again or would she leave me
there, call me earlier, leave me there longer. I didn't know. I had to try and get away.
13.30 He got as far as Kilkenny station when he was found by two nuns from the convent and brought
back: ‘I got a hiding’, he said, ‘I got the head boxed off me’.
13.31 This witness had very specific memories of incidents but was not able to remember the names of
the nuns. He explained why:
There was two nuns there, I don’t know their names. When I was there the people that
was there were just nuns. Like, there was no names, there was no – it was Sister this and
Sister that ... it was just Sister, Sister, Sister, there was no names that I can remember.
13.32 A witness who was in St Patrick’s during the 1960s recalled the punishment for bed-wetting:
My memories are very limited. One of the most profound memories in my mind was being
made to stand against a wall for hours and hours on end ... In the end I would end up
banging my head off the wall.
13.33 He said that this standing against the wall occurred mainly during the night in the dormitory:
Mostly at night-time. I remember it used to go on until it became dawn outside ... I think
it was a standard form of punishment, if you like.
13.34 There would sometimes be other boys with him, and it would be a form of punishment for doing
things like wetting the bed. It happened about twice a week and it was also accompanied by
physical punishment:
I remember a cane used to be brought down on the palm of the hand ... I remember the
sound of the cane as it hit the apron as a warning sort of thing and then you got it.
13.35 When asked whether he had any happy memories of Kilkenny he said:
None at all. I have no other memories of Kilkenny whatsoever.
13.36 A witness, who was in St Patrick’s in the 1960s for five years, recalled two lay teachers who
inflicted severe punishment:
Ms Adams,2 she was a very big woman. One could imagine a child of seven years of age
or around that age group, this woman, we wore short trousers in the School at the time,
she would open the collar of the shirt, you could have been caught talking in Mass or they
would see fit at the time themselves that you would be misbehaving, she would be able
to catch you by the collar of the shirt like that (indicating), with the strength of her upper
hands she would be able to lift you up that way, upside down. Ms Spencer3 would give
you a good beating with a leg of a chair or lump of a stick, whichever she would have at
the time. That could happen maybe two or three times a week depending on what way
they felt ... It wasn't an isolated, no.
13.37 He explained:
Ms Adams would have held you up and Ms Spencer would have done the beating ... She
held you up by the back of the collar of the shirt and trousers being short trousers, she
was able to catch the two legs of the trousers and she would hold you horizontally ... Ms
Spencer would beat you on the legs and on the bottom with a stick ... A leg of a chair.
13.38 This witness attended school at a local De la Salle National School. He said that three Brothers
took the view that the boys from the convent needed toughening up:
They always had the tendency, there was myself and another chap there, you were from
the convent, you were maybe soft as in too well looked after and plenty of good beatings
with the cane wouldn't go astray on you. It would harden you up and toughen you up for
the outside world when you went away from the nuns.
2
3

13.39 Another ex-resident, who was in St Patrick’s in the 1950s, recalled a particular beating of a boy,
during which four other boys were required to hold him down:
It wasn't me that was held down. It was one of the boys that was asked to accompany
the boy that had supposedly done something wrong to hold him down. One had to hold
each hand and the others had to hold a leg each and the nun spanked the boy on that
table like that.
13.40 He did not know what had merited the beating:

No, we were playing. And the nun just picked at random, picked four boys to come in with
this particular other boy.
13.41 He only recalled this happening on this one occasion, but he was unhappy about it:
I didn't like the idea at all. But to say no was – that was not a possibility either, you couldn't
say no.
13.42 When asked whether the nun had struck him with her hand, he replied:
There was an instrument used, yes ... I can't remember. I believe it could have been a
stick, there always seemed to be one item used.
13.43 In the classroom the stick was used:

Yes, we used to get slapped on the hand ... Three or four maybe, I can't be sure.
13.44 This complainant also recalled another incident of punishment:

That happened before lights out in the dormitory. A cat or a kitten came in and was
running around the dormitory, started climbing up on the curtains and that, three or four
of us just hopped out of bed to chase the cat and we were caught doing that by the nun.
I believe it was three or four of us, I can't remember for sure. But we were ordered down
into a room with a tiled floor on it and we were asked to strip off and lie on the floor. She
said she would come back later on and not to move, don't dare move. When she did
come back later, I could not tell you how long it was, she gave us each a few slaps on
the backside as we were lying on the floor, told us to get dressed. On the way up to the
dormitory, we met the head nun and she asked the other nun what were we doing. I
remember the nun clearly stating that we were knitting mats. I couldn't believe that a nun
would tell a lie to another nun.
He explained that the boys often knitted mats in the School.
13.45 He remembered other children being taken out of the dormitory to be punished, but he did not
know what punishment they received: ‘No, you very seldom spoke about things’.
The evidence of the Sisters of Charity

13.46 In the course of her Opening Statement, Sr Úna O'Neill, the Superior General of the Congregation
of the Religious Sisters of Charity gave general information about St Patrick's. This included the
Congregation's view as to how the Institution operated and what life was like there.
13.47 She was asked about corporal punishment in the School:

Well, slapping was obviously a form of punishment that was used to discipline the children.
As far as we can gather it was normally done with the palm of the hand and a cane or
ruler was sometimes used.
13.48 She had been unable to establish what other forms of punishment were used, such as placing
the children in isolation, but found no evidence of this. In the later years of the Institution, there
was a shop and the children could be deprived of pocket money.
13.49 Bed-wetting was a problem:

Indeed, yes, it was a problem. We are quite clear I think as to what happened. We were
told that in the earlier days that any older child who wet his bed had to bring down the
wet sheets to the laundry in the morning. He might be left standing beside his bed for five
to ten minutes when it was discovered that the bed was wet ... Then in the play hall when
they lined up to go to school they would have been called out and they would have been
slapped for wetting the bed.
13.50 Children who continuously wet the bed were woken up twice at night and were given limited fluids
after tea.
13.51 According to Sr Úna, the slapping would have stopped in the late 1950s and 1960s and, after that
time, the staff brought down the wet sheets.
13.52 On the general regime she said:

While we know the general organisation and routine of the school it is possible that events
occurred of which the sisters and the staff were not aware, although there is no evidence
of this in the documentation. I think I said earlier that no matter how much you tried to
care for your child or your children even in a family you cannot preclude the possibility of
bullying or exploitation or whatever, as we know, tragically. The children were closely
supervised but this may not have precluded isolated incidents of rough play, bullying, etc.
The harshness of punishment would probably have varied depending on the personality
of the staff and the sisters. I'm sure that some of the punishment must have been
experienced by the children as harsh and humiliating and unmerited. Undoubtedly each
child and each Sister and each member of staff has their own interpretation of what life
was like in St Patrick's institution.
13.53 In their final submission after the Phase III hearings, the Sisters stated:
The Committee heard evidence from nine former residents of St Patrick’s Industrial
School. This school closed in 1966 and the Sisters of Charity were unable to respond to
the evidence because, given the passage of time, there was no-one left who could
evaluate or respond to these allegations by means of firsthand evidence or even by
hearsay.
It is undoubtedly the case that physical punishment took place in St Patrick’s but the
Sisters of Charity are not in a position to comment on their own behalf as to what occurred.
They are prejudiced in that regard due to the delay in these allegations coming to the fore.
13.54 The Sisters of Charity accept that some excessive punishments were inevitable over the
years, but no record of them exists. There was no punishment book in St Patrick’s and no
record was kept of any punishment, so no contemporary documentation is available. It is
impossible, therefore, to judge the extent to which individual memories of St Patrick’s were
typical of the Institution as a whole.
Allegations of sexual abuse

13.55 Three witnesses gave evidence of being sexually abused by three different lay workers in St
Patrick’s, Kilkenny. All three against whom the allegations were made are dead. The Sisters
submit that they have been unable, due to the passage of time, to source information to assist
the Investigation Committee with its inquiry into these allegations of sexual abuse. The Sisters did
provide a list of former male staff, which corroborated one of the allegations, to the extent that the
men named by the complainant were identified as being in the Institution at the time. The names
recalled by the complainant were close but not identical to the names of former staff members on
the list.
13.56 There were no documented cases of children being sexually abused in St Patrick’s. The
Community annals covering the period 1879 to 1966 contained no records of any incidents of that
nature. Sister Úna O’Neill, in the Phase I public hearing, said the first time the issue of sexual
abuse was mentioned was when:
in the summer of 1999 a past resident called to St Patrick’s for a visit ... He was trying to
trace a man whom he said had worked in the laundry in St Patrick’s while he himself was
a resident. He alleged that the man had abused him sexually and the sister undertook to
try and make inquiries which she did, but no-one in St Patrick’s remembers the man.
That’s not to say he wasn’t there. Nobody remembered him.
13.57 Within a few months, the Sisters of Charity received a solicitor’s letter. She explained:
We first became aware of allegations of abuse in St Patrick’s I suppose formally on 27th
January 2000 when we received correspondence from a firm of solicitors regarding a past
resident who had been in St Patrick’s and who was alleging abuse.
13.58 When the Sisters of Charity received these three complaints, they made a general review of the
documents and files relating to St Patrick’s. Again, the results were the same:
We found nothing in their files nor indeed in any of the documentation to substantiate the
specific allegations that were made by the 11 men who are appearing before the
Commission ... There is neither documentary evidence nor is there supplementary
evidence from the sisters who would have lived there at the time.
13.59 One resident, who was in St Patrick’s from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s, made allegations of
sexual assault against a farmhand. He told the Committee:
His name was Bruce4 and he used to look after us at playtime, you know. He always
carried a stick with him. There was one occasion where I had 25 on each hand, well
several of us had that, we don’t know the reason for it. He use to take me down to the
hay barn and strip me off and he would strip himself off and, you know, I had to do things
to him and he tried to do things to me of a sexual nature ... it happened – six, seven and
eight years old, during the summer months mostly ... I knew what he was doing. I didn’t
feel right, if you know what I mean, but I didn’t know what it was all about. I knew I was
doing something wrong.
13.60 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 ...
4

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.
13.61 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.
13.62 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.
13.63 ‘I was too frightened’, he added. ‘Of Bruce, of getting beaten up and that again’.
13.64 From this witness’s account, it would appear that the abuse had been detected, and involved
several boys, although until then the witness had believed ‘I was the only one’. When the
investigation was taking place, he recalled, ‘I wasn’t the only one that went in, I think that quite a
few of the young fellows went in’.
13.65 He could not, however, recall the name of the nun who questioned him He said, ‘I can’t remember,
I have been trying to think of it. She was in charge of the classes’.
13.66 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
5
6

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.
13.67 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.
13.68 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.
13.69 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.
13.70 He said he was followed some time later, when he was in another industrial school, to his home
town, and Charles had got him into a field, but he had hit Charles and escaped on his bicycle.
13.71 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.
13.72 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.
13.73 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.
13.74 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.
Conclusions
13.75 • There was no culture of facilitating disclosure. Children felt afraid of telling the nuns
what had happened, ‘When nobody else is saying anything you don’t say anything’.

13.76 The witnesses gave varying accounts of their experiences as young children in St Patrick’s. They
range from criticisms of the food, clothing and education to acknowledgments that life in St
Patrick’s had positive features. All of these men had been separated from their families when they
were very young, which affected them all their lives.
13.77 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.
13.78 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.
13.79 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
Gardaı́, 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.
13.80 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.
13.81 This witness had been born to an unmarried mother, and he said that, although he never wrote
to her whilst he was in Kilkenny, she did visit once a year to see how he was doing. He was asked
whether he was shown any tenderness, affection or encouragement in St Patrick’s, and he said
he had not been. He was asked whether he would describe his childhood in St Patrick’s as happy,
and he said:
It would be hard to describe what one would call happiness when one hadn't had
happiness, according to the previous situation I was in. I probably would have found it a
little bit more comfortable. It's very hard to describe what a happy childhood is when you
come through the system up to that stage, one didn't understand what a happy
childhood is.
13.82 He tried to sum up the feeling of powerlessness:

I suppose if one was to look back and describe the impact on the childhood within
Kilkenny, it felt very much like – I am describing it from a different aspect, you were like
the mouse in the corner of the room and the cat standing back a couple of feet away from
you, and this cat is very powerful and tall, the mouse felt small, very weak and very
vulnerable, you had no control over anything that was being applied. It would be the same
with the cat, the mouse had no control when the cat was going to strike with the claw and
kill it. That would be the basis of the regime.
13.83 He was asked if he could single out any nun as having been good to him:
There was – let me think of her name now – there was a Sr Selma7 there, I remember. A
round faced nun, wore glasses, she was very much into music. She would have taught a
lot of bits of music, the melodica and things like that. She would have had a different
approach in seeing things. She would have been a younger nun at this stage in her life
and the others would have been a good bit older.
13.84 One complainant thought St Patrick’s was better than other institutions he went to:
No, St Patrick's compared to the other institutions I was in was not bad, but it was bad
enough for me to remember various things. I do have flashbacks when I come across
certain smells, certain farmyard things, I do think – and cocoa I can't stand.
13.85 Another ex-resident spoke of the effect of being separated from his family:
Yes, I have contact. My family are like strangers to me. I mean I know them all, I know
where they are, but they are just like strangers. I don't know them as brothers and sisters.
13.86 He explained that he had only made contact in the last few years and that he had learnt that his
father had been a good father and did not want his children taken away: ‘He died of a broken
heart’.
13.87 This complainant explained what brought him to the Committee:

Well, I respect the fact that Ireland is doing something about it. I do respect that and it's
good to know that you may be able to stop it happening again. What happened was wrong
and it shouldn't have happened. I don't blame the people that are around today for what
happened then. I am glad that Ireland has been able to grasp the nettle and take it on
board and try and do something about it. I applaud the Commission for that ... That's
exactly why I am here, to make my point known to you.
13.88 One witness was rescued from abject neglect and brought to St Patrick’s.
My father used to very seldom work, he's worked for farmers but very seldom. Most of
the time he used to go out playing at the accordion, at the crossroad dances and the Feis
Ceoil or whatever, you know. When he'd come home at night – well, before he went out
7

he used to lock us all in the coal hole, the three of us in the coal hole, and let us out when
he come in because there was no-one to look after us. One night we got out of the coal
hole and I went down to the church [local], there is two churches there, there is, the Friary
and the other church, it was Christmas time and I took money out of the crib, the crib
money, and bought three Mars bars for myself, [and two sisters] in one of the shops.
Somebody reported me buying them because they knew us around there that we never
had anything and that's actually why we were sent away, I think. He always locked us in
the coal hole. I remember that time when we were being arrested, that's the only time I
ever remember the priest or the police getting involved ... Not out of the theft in the church
but out of being seen buying the Mars bar and everybody knew we shouldn't have had
money to buy them, you know ... From there on I suppose we were kept an eye on and
we were eventually sent away because of that. We were always scruffy, we never washed.
Our hair – actually I had nits and lumps, all kind of scabs on my head when they sent me
away. I can remember that, being washed and cleaned and you had your head shaven
and that, you know.
13.89 On an application to court by the ISPCC, two of the children were put into care, but the oldest girl
of 14 years was kept at home:
There was three of us taken, my oldest sister, my other sister and me, and two of us were
sent away because they said my oldest sister had to stay to look after my father, he had
no-one to look after him. She stayed there to look after him and we were sent away.
13.90 He spoke about the great relief he felt at being listened to and believed:
Well, the only thing I want to add really is I feel very relieved after 40 years, I used to tell
people sometimes when I was drunk in the pub, you know. You would meet somebody
and they would bring something up and you would kind of ... you could see it in their eyes
that their weren't listening to you, they would be looking at you like a zombie, either
straight through you or over your shoulder. The next day I would feel sorry for telling them.
It might take me a week to get over the guilt of him knowing and telling someone else
because they didn't listen. In the last two or three years since I have had counselling and
all I have noticed people listening, looking at you straight in the eye and listening to you.
That has made a big difference to me in my confidence. It has made me feel that I can
move on, which is something I never felt before ... Belief is the main word in this, belief,
or listening. Not even belief but actually listening and saying "oh, did that happen to you"
... People seem to have changed because whether they just wanted to – people used to
look at me and say that happened inside walls, it's got nothing to do with me. Now people
are saying, they are looking through the wall or over it. They are listening to you. You
are not talking gobbledegook or things like that. The difference that has made to me
is unbelievable.
13.91 Another ex-resident, who used to receive occasional visits from his older sister, recounted a story
that had left a lasting impression:
My sister ... came to visit me there once and we were going through the School and
passed by the kitchen and the kitchen door was open. There was an old nun at the sink
and I remember [my sister] asking me if I wanted a drink of water. I said I would love one.
She asked the nun, I couldn't believe she had the nerve to ask the nun for a drink. The
nun came over and asked if I would rather have a glass of milk instead of water. I couldn't
believe that she would ask me if I wanted a glass of milk. I thought that was the greatest
thing ever. It's the only time I ever remember getting a glass of milk.
13.92 Although he had no memory of the food he got in St Patrick’s: ‘That glass of milk sticks out
like anything’.
13.93 This complainant said that the children were afraid to ask for a glass of water in the summertime.
He said that they would get water out of the toilet cistern rather than ask for it:
The cistern is the part up top that stores the water and you pull the chain, it had a chain
on it. There was four or five cubicles with a partition between each. I can't remember
exactly how many cubicles there were or how many toilets there were. The cubicles did
not reach the wall and we used to – two of us, one would stand on the toilet and the other
would give us a lift up and we would sit on that partition wall and lean across and scoop
the water into our mouth from the cistern. I would get down then and give him a hand to
get up to get the water out.
13.94 When asked why he did not ask for a glass of water, he explained:
You dare not ask, you just did not ask for things in that School ... There used to be buckets
of water taken out by this man, I remember, but it wasn't often enough.
13.95 A subsequent occasion, when the witness was in another industrial school, illustrated the
relationship he had with the nuns in St Patrick’s:
Guinness put on a show at Christmas time and boys from the schools were asked to
either do something on stage for entertainment for everyone. I was learning how to Gaelic
dance at the time so a Christian Brother asked me if I'd do some dancing so I did. When
I got back to my seat I turned around and there was two nuns I remembered from Kilkenny
coming towards me. My first reaction was "what the hell have I done now?" They came
over and just asked me how I was. They were a bit disappointed that I danced and didn't
sing and that was all. I was glad that was all was the problem.
13.96 When he saw the nuns coming towards him, he assumed he was going to be punished for
something.
Physical care
13.97 The fact that the complainants had all been in St Patrick’s as very young children meant that,
although they had specific memories, they did not recall general conditions in the School. From
the documentation, St Patrick’s appeared to be a well-run institution.
13.98 In the first record of a General Inspection, dated 22nd April 1939, Dr Anna McCabe visited the
School and found the children well cared for and well looked after. There was plenty of good
quality food and the children were well clothed.
13.99 In September 1940, the Bishop of Ossory, Bishop Patrick Collier, wrote to the Kilkenny Journal in
support of an appeal by the Sisters for charitable funding from the people of the diocese. In that
letter, he spelled out very clearly the high regard he had for the work of the Sisters:
Without looking for a penny for themselves, these devoted Religious give their time and
talents to their little Charges with a loving care surpassing that of natural parents. It is
only just and right that their lives should be kept free from the nightmare of want, and the
constant fight to pay their way.
13.100 The Bishop directed that his letter, together with a letter from the Reverend Mother, should be
read at all masses. The Reverend Mother’s letter was also printed by the newspaper. She
explained that St Patrick’s had 186 children aged between one and 10. Out of this, only 135 were
in receipt of the full State grant of 12 shillings per week. Another 27 were aged between four and
six, and were paid for at a rate of 10 shillings per week. In addition, the School had about 24
children under four years of age, for whom the Government did not pay any grant:
These we admit when our room allows, to save them from destitution and the dangers
of Proselytism.
13.101 The large number of additional children put a strain on the finances. Industrial schools were not
intended for babies but this was a time of great poverty in Ireland and clearly the Sisters were
faced with hard choices. The choices made impacted on the level of care available to the children
who had been committed by the courts and in respect of whom funding was made available by
the State. It was the children as well as the Sisters who made the sacrifices for the babies taken
in by St Patrick’s.
13.102 The next record of a General Inspection was on 10th December 1943, over four years later.
Although it referred to a previous inspection dated 29th November 1942, no record of Dr McCabe’s
findings in 1942 have survived. She described the School as well conducted, clean and the
children well cared for. Her next inspection was dated 5th July 1944, and she requested that the
supply of milk to each child be increased to one pint per head per day, and butter to be increased
to 6 ozs. She was concerned about the lack of an external fire escape.8 She also drew attention
to the fact that the children were barefoot in the playground.
13.103 On 19th July 1944, the Department wrote to the Resident Manager pointing out that, although the
School continued to be well conducted and the children generally were well cared for, they were
not putting on sufficient weight:
He is concerned, however, to note that a number of them have not been putting on weight
at the normal rate. It is essential that each child should receive a minimum of one pint of
milk per day and should be allowed the full butter ration of six ounces per week, and I am
to request you to make the necessary arrangements to have this done.
13.104 It requested that the practice of allowing children go barefoot should be discontinued. Each child
was also to be supplied with a toothbrush.
13.105 This letter appears to have called into question the suitability of the Resident Manager because,
two months later, it was proposed to replace her with a Sister who was 66 years old. The
Department wrote to Dr McCabe seeking her views on the suitability of this appointment. Dr
McCabe replied that:
I am not in favour of appointing as Resident Manager old or elderly women as they are too
set in their ways and are very difficult to deal with regarding new changes and innovations.
13.106 One Departmental official shared Dr McCabe’s concern but felt that, in the absence of ‘any specific
age rule’, it would have to be agreed to. A senior official suggested a solution:
I agree with Dr McCabe that this lady is rather old (over 66 years) to discharge the active
duties of Manager of an institution like an Ind. Sch. An appointment of this kind is not
subject to the Minister’s approval, but he has power (Section 5(4) of the 1941 Act) to
request the removal of a R. Mgr. on the grounds of unsuitability, and that power might be
availed of in this case if it is decided that the appointment should not be approved.
13.107 The Minister suggested that this should not be framed as a formal request but should be
suggested more informally. This action was followed, and a letter was sent by the Department to
Managers of St Patrick’s in October 1944, referring to the proposed appointment:
it is observed that this Sister is over 66 years old. It is considered that a person of that
age would be unable to give the necessary personal attention to the duties which a
Resident Manager of an Industrial School is expected to discharge. In the circumstances,
8
February 1943: the Cavan Industrial School fire – 35 children died.

it is requested that a younger member of the Community be appointed to the position as
soon as possible and that the new appointment be notified to the Department.
13.108 The appointment of the older nun did not proceed, and a younger Sister, Sr Frida,9 was
appointed instead.
13.109 In March 1945, two letters were sent to the Department defending the Sisters’ decision to allow
the children go barefoot in the summer, and requesting that the Department should reconsider its
direction to acquire sandals. One of these letters appears to be from a doctor or pharmacist living
locally, and the other was from Dr Peter Birch, the Bishop of Ossory. In a letter which he claimed
was unsolicited by the Sisters, Dr Birch asked that the edict in relation to the boys going barefoot
be reconsidered. He suggested that the boys loved the freedom of playing barefoot in the summer,
and most children in ordinary homes would be allowed this freedom.
13.110 This was followed by a letter to the Department from the Resident Manager, where she also took
up the issue. The Department consulted Dr McCabe and suggested that perhaps a compromise
could be reached, whereby children over six years of age could go barefoot. Dr McCabe was not
willing to stand down on the issue. Her main reason for this was the danger of infections from
cuts and bruises – in particular, tetanus.
13.111 The Department wrote to the Resident Manager on 14th March 1945, and refused to change its
position on the matter. It suggested that sandals could be acquired from the boot suppliers. In an
addendum to her General Inspection Report dated 14th March 1945, Dr McCabe made an
additional note dated 11th April 1945, where she noted the difficulty the Resident Manager was
experiencing in obtaining sandals. She conceded that, if they could not be procured, she would
make an exception to the rule for the summer months only. Despite obtaining a number of
samples, and several months of correspondence, it appears that no suitable sandals could be
found, and the rule was relaxed for the summer of 1945.
13.112 From 1945 until 1964, Dr McCabe visited St Patrick’s annually and was generally pleased with
how the School was run and the condition of the buildings. She repeatedly stated that the children
were very well cared for and happy. Improvements to the buildings were being made constantly,
and the accommodation and equipment were very good. In the late 1950s, the group family system
was introduced and the children were divided into three groups. Dr McCabe described the new
group system as very satisfactory.
13.113 For some of her inspections, Dr McCabe did not generate a separate report but simply made an
addendum to the previous Inspection Report, saying that the School was running well. She
appeared to visit the School very regularly. A single report covered the period from March 1961
to June 1963, and against each of four entries is stated, ‘Very well run school. Children very
well cared’.
13.114 Each category of inspection is graded ‘v.good’, with Health achieving ‘excellent’.
13.115 A review of the Medical Inspection files for the relevant period shows that Dr McCabe was satisfied
with the health of the children and the attention being paid by the Sisters to record keeping.
Furthermore, in one instance, the Sisters paid for private treatment of over 40 children.
13.116 One complainant who was in the Institution during the 1940s, which was the period criticised by
Dr McCabe, shared her views on the food there:
9

Oh, it was terrible food ... You would get kind of watery soup. There might be bits of celery
in it. It used to make me almost heave. Just, maybe, bits of meat and potatoes in it. The
food, it wasn't very good. It wasn't something you looked forward to. You had to take it
because there was nothing else. So the food was very bad there, I thought ... there was
regular meals. You got breakfast, a bit of porridge in the morning. I was like a gruel,
watery porridge. Then you got the dinner. Dinner was very poor. Then you got a bit of
supper, a bit of bread and jam. That's all I can remember ... Very little meat. I can't
remember ever getting eggs or bacon or anything like that. I'd never known food like that.
13.117 Another complainant was also in the School during that period. He was admitted in the mid-1940s
after the break-up of his parents’ marriage:
Well, food, we could have done with a bit more, you know. You didn't get a lot for
breakfast, there was only a bit of a slice of bread and a mug of tea. You had a bit of
dinner then in the middle of the day and you had the same thing as you had for breakfast
later on.
13.118 A witness who was there in the 1950s was critical of the food. He recalled:
It was kind of a green mash, it was cabbage stalks and potatoes ... I remember getting
that almost every day I was there: Green mash, bread and dripping, watery Cocoa. Egg
flip, that was a kind of boiled milk with boiled eggs chopped up and put into it, you were
given a ladle of it. There was other stuff they gave, castor oil with molasses in it in a big
ceramic jug. The food wasn't that good.
13.119 A witness who attended the School in the 1960s was quite clear that he had fared better in St
Patrick’s than he would have at home:
I know myself that you got food on a regular basis there; you got your breakfast, your
dinner, your tea and you got cocoa going to bed. Food was not a problem there, I never
felt hungry there. I might have felt frightened but I never felt hungry.
General conclusions
13.120 1. It was not possible for a handful of nuns to give an appropriate level of care to nearly
200 very young boys, irrespective of how hard–working and dedicated they were.
2. There was no accountability in the administration of punishment.
3. The authorities in St Patrick’s failed in their duty to keep proper records. The absence
of documentary evidence, accordingly, does not mean that there was no abuse.
4. Record keeping is part of the duty of care and is intended to make an institution
accountable. The absence of records has put both the Sisters of Charity and the
witnesses at a disadvantage.

Chapter 14

Kilkenny, 1873–1999
Brief history of the School

14.01 The Sisters of Charity were approached by the Bishop of Ossory, Dr Moran, in 1872 and asked
‘to care for the little homeless girls of the poor’. They had been a presence in Kilkenny since 1861,
caring for the sick in fever and work house hospitals and prisons.
14.02 A site was purchased on the Waterford Road, and the Sisters moved into a large cottage on the
grounds. In September 1873, a new building comprising a convent, school and chapel was
opened. The School was certified on 22nd March 1873 for the reception of 126 girls, of whom 100
were chargeable. This was increased to 130 in 1950.
14.03 The School was transferred to the South Eastern Health Board on 6th April 1999. At that time,
there were 10 children in care in two houses, Avondale and Crannog. Avondale was purchased
by the Sisters of Charity in 1976, and leased to the South Eastern Health Board in 1999, and later
transferred to them under the Redress Scheme. The other home, Crannog, was built by the Sisters
of Charity with funds raised locally and through an exchange of land between the Sisters and the
County Manager. In 1995, an adjoining house was purchased by the South Eastern Health Board,
and the two houses then formed one unit. The original house was transferred, free of charge, to
the South Eastern Health Board in 1999.
14.04 The Sisters of Charity provided a detailed description of all improvements, changes and
adaptations made to the buildings and grounds between 1876 and 1984, which appears at
Appendix 1.
14.05 The photograph of the convent and part of the Industrial School:

The children
14.06 During the period under review, 1,900 children passed through St Joseph’s, Kilkenny. Most of the
children were committed through the courts in the earlier years, and the majority came from the
counties Kilkenny, Tipperary, Dublin, Laois and Carlow in the period 1933 to 1966.
14.07 The Sisters of Charity also managed an industrial school for young boys known as St Patrick’s
Industrial School in Kilkenny. It operated from 1879 to 1966. Between the period 1933 and 1966,
the records of the Sisters show that 127 girls in St Joseph’s had brothers in St Patrick’s at the
same time.
14.08 The children admitted to Kilkenny were very young. Between 1933 and 1966, 221 of the children
admitted were under five years of age; 234 were aged between five and 10; and only 101 were
over 10 on admission. The proportion of very young children increased between 1966 and 1999:
362 children under five years of age were admitted, and 261 were under 10; only 112 children
were over 10 on admission.

14.09 There were 18 Resident Managers in St Joseph’s during the relevant period. In most cases, the
Resident Manager was also the Local Superior. A number of Sisters from the Community were
involved in the School, and a small number of lay staff worked in the School in teaching, farming
and laundry.
Sources
14.10 The sources of information were:
• the evidence of former pupils;
• the evidence of staff members;
• the evidence of respondents; and
• the records in relation to the School which were furnished to the Commission on foot
of discovery directions to the Department of Education, Sisters of Charity, Diocese of
Ossory and An Garda Sı́ochána.
The period 1933 to 1952

14.11 In the first record of a General Inspection dated 22nd April 1939, Dr Anna McCabe visited the
School and was approving. The children looked happy and content, were well clothed and fed,
and she was impressed with the large amount of home preserves that were used.
14.12 The next record of a general inspection was 9th December 1943, over four years later, and,
although it recorded a previous inspection in November 1942, no note or record of her findings in
1942 have survived. She described the School as well conducted, clean and well kept. Food and
diet were described as satisfactory, and clothing as fairly good. There was no fire escape, but fire
drill was practised regularly and there were six ladders available for escape from the building,
which was not too high. On 23rd February 1943, 35 children had perished in a fire in Cavan
Industrial School, and fire safety was high on the agenda of the Inspector at this time.
14.13 On 4th July 1944, Dr McCabe paid another visit to the School and found a generally well conducted
school. She did not think the children were getting an adequate supply of milk and butter and
insisted that it should be increased. She was still concerned about the lack of fire escapes, and
wrote in detail about the dangers for the children in the dormitories, particularly the one situated
over the domestic economy kitchen, where a fire could start. Dr McCabe found the children’s
health to be good on this visit.
14.14 Following this inspection, by letter dated 5th August 1944, the Department Inspector wrote to the
Resident Manager and requested that each child should receive a minimum of one pint of milk
per day, together with the full amount of butter ration allowed by the Department of Supplies.
14.15 Because of the tragedy in Cavan, the Department was very concerned that all children could be
safely evacuated in the event of a fire. The Inspector expressed the Minister’s grave concern that
there was only one exit from a dormitory accommodating 21 children, which led to another
dormitory accommodating 57 children, which in turn had two exits close together leading to the
same corridor. It was evident to him that children in all of these dormitories would be trapped in
the event of the corridor filling with heavy smoke. He requested that the Resident Manager
immediately set about providing an adequate fire escape.
14.16 The Resident Manager responded, by letter dated 7th September 1944, that the children’s diet
had been adjusted, and she was working in conjunction with the Resident Manager in the nearby
St Patrick’s Industrial School, Kilkenny to resolve the fire escape problem and, by March 1945,
the Inspector was able to report that the fire escape was in place.
14.17 In her inspection report dated 15th March 1945, Dr McCabe described the newly appointed
Resident Manager, Sr Irma,1 as excellent. She noted a nurse had been appointed to take charge
of the younger children and thought it was a step in the right direction.
14.18 For the next 10 years, Dr McCabe visited St Joseph’s, Kilkenny on an annual basis. Her reports
about the School indicated an exceptionally high level of satisfaction with all aspects, and she
was particularly enthusiastic about the Resident Manager, whom she described as very capable
and someone who had added much to the School. A very efficient nursery was established for
the very small children and added much to their comfort.
14.19 Two witnesses, who were resident in the Industrial School in the mid to late 1940s, gave evidence.
The witnesses were siblings who were placed in care after the death of their mother. This was a
period during which St Joseph’s was still operating as a traditional industrial school.
14.20 Although both witnesses experienced feelings of rejection at being placed in care, they were also
aggrieved at what happened to them whilst in St Joseph’s. They described the upset at being
separated from their brothers who were placed in another industrial school.
14.21 They both described Sr Elvira,2 who was a school teacher, as being particularly nasty and cruel.
They said that she punished children for no apparent reason and also locked them in a cupboard
without food or drink until late at night. This Sister left in the mid-1940s, and one of the witnesses
said that things improved following her departure.
14.22 Both witnesses told of lay staff who were former pupils and who were left in charge of the children.
One lay staff member was described as particularly nasty and is alleged to have kicked and
beaten the children.
14.23 They also recalled the daily routine in the School, which involved getting up early in the morning,
attending Mass, followed by breakfast and doing chores, which involved a lot of scrubbing and
polishing.
1
2

14.24 It is clear from the annals of the Sisters of Charity that, from the mid-1940s, they were aware of
the limitations of industrial school life on the development of the children. They saw that the
restrictions placed on nuns by their profession narrowed their social contacts, and this affected
the children who left the industrial schools ‘knowing nobody and knowing nothing of the ordinary
etiquette of social life’.
14.25 Change began with the appointment in 1944 of the new Superior who was praised by Dr McCabe.
Sr Irma was trained in child psychology and believed that the children should be encouraged to
treat St Joseph’s as their home, given more freedom and trusted to go out alone.
14.26 These reflections by the Congregation on their own mission, together with the publication of the
Cussen Report in Ireland and the Curtis Report in England, prompted the Sisters to draw up a
five-year plan to implement change.
14.27 Among the changes were:

• Children were to be given much more freedom.
• Regimentation was to be abandoned, and the children were to be trusted and treated
as individuals.
• There was to be more careful and sympathetic supervision by the Sisters, and they
were to be encouraged to use their imagination with the children.
• Children were to be allowed out in small groups of two’s and three’s to replace the
‘dreary crocodile to shop with their pocket money, to go walking and on picnics and
holiday excursions’.
• Efforts were to be made to keep siblings together, and children from the same family
were to be given a table to themselves in the refectory.
• A new nursery unit was to be built.
14.28 Following the publication of the Curtis Report in 1946, a childcare course was set up in London
by the Sisters of the Holy Child. The course was of one year’s duration. Initially, two Sisters of
Charity took the course and, subsequently, 10 Sisters completed their training in residential care
of children in the 1940s. Thirty more Sisters attended short courses in the early 1950s. Also, in
the 1950s, a number of Sisters were sent by Sr Irma to train in the English Child Psychology
Course. The annals note that this experience ‘has changed the whole attitude to the treatment of
Industrial School children’.
14.29 In 1952, the word ‘Institution’ was dropped, and the School was officially known as ‘Girls Industrial
School’ and thereafter always referred to as St Joseph’s Girls’ School. The premises were
remodelled to provide for groups, and the large group of 130 children was broken into three
smaller groups of 30, providing for children between seven and 16. These groups were given
Saints’ names, but in fact became known as ‘sets’, distinguished by different colours: red, green
and blue. The younger children formed a fourth group, the nursery group.
14.30 Each group had its own sitting room and separate dining room which were newly painted and
decorated. From 1953, the children from fourth class upwards attended outside schools, and the
annals for that year remarked:
This gives them the opportunity of mixing with children who have their own homes – in
this way they hear something about home life.
14.31 By 1954, the School was grouped into four self-sufficient units, and Dr McCabe in her report of
that year noted that the residents were mixing with children from outside at recreation and school.
She felt they were much happier and lived a more normal existence. The Sisters were also very
enthusiastic about the changes brought about in the children as a result of the new system, and
this was noted in Dr McCabe’s report dated 14th September 1954.
14.32 The group home system was recommended by the Kennedy Report in 1970, and many institutions
were thereafter obliged to close or adopt the group home system. By that time, the Sisters of
Charity had been operating a group system for almost 20 years, thanks largely to the vision of
Sr Irma.
14.33 • At an early stage the Sisters of Charity identified the fundamental flaws of the system
of large-scale institutional care for young children.
• They also recognised the difficulties that those who took religious vows encountered
in meeting the social and emotional needs of children.
• From the late 1940s the Sisters of Charity sent their members abroad for training in
childcare and child psychology. They applied this training to their childcare practices
in Ireland, to the great benefit of the children under their care.
Sexual abuse incident of 1954

14.34 On 25th October 1954, the new Resident Manager, Sr Tova,3 wrote to the Department of Education
asking them to give her immediate permission to transfer two girls. She described both of them
as not fit to be with younger children, owing to their immoral conduct and bad influence. She wrote:
Already they have taught – them sinful sexual acts, that makes it expedient to dismiss
them from this school immediately.
14.35 The Department informed Dr McCabe about the application, and she left immediately for Kilkenny
to conduct a general inspection.
14.36 She spent two days there and, in her General Inspection, she reported in the usual glowing terms
with regard to the condition of the School and the facilities for the children. Under the heading
‘General Observations and Suggestions’, she wrote, ‘I had a long discussion with Resident
Manager regarding this school’.
14.37 Dr McCabe made no further comment in that document as to what they discussed.
14.38 In a separate 10-page hand-written report signed and dated 1st November 1954, Dr McCabe gave
a very detailed account of the investigation she carried out. This revealed that a painter, Mr
Jacobs,4 who had been in the employ of the Sisters for a period of 30 years, had sexually abused
some of the girls. Dr McCabe’s report was a revelation in what it disclosed about St Joseph’s and
attitudes to sexual abuse of children at that time.
14.39 Dr McCabe’s report began with an account of her conversation with the Resident Manager, who
had identified two girls, one aged 15 and the other aged 13, as having ‘corrupted the whole
school’. Dr McCabe reported:
Apparently the girls had got into each others beds and had invited other children into their
beds and have “behaved immorally” with them. Also the Resident Manager informed me
that other children in the school were also engaging in immoral practices and she named
several girls.
3
4

14.40 Dr McCabe listed 11 children, one of whom was only eight years of age. Three of the children
were 10 years old, two were 11, two were 12, and three were 13 years old. One child’s age was
not mentioned. One 10-year-old was described as having ‘... indulged in immoral practices with
another young child’. The eight year old ‘knew a lot’ as she had been associating with boys and
girls before admission. Generally, these children were described as ‘associating with’ other
children and being up to ‘immoral practises’. One 13-year-old, who had already been transferred
to Limerick Reformatory, was described as ‘a very bad type’.
14.41 Dr McCabe acted promptly and appropriately. She reported:

I asked the Resident Manager to round up all the children she suspected or knew to be
behaving badly and I told her I would interview each child separately and also that she
was to institute “one way traffic” so that they could not compare notes.
14.42 Dr McCabe’s account of her interviews indicates that she approached the children in a friendly,
non-threatening manner. The little girls agreed that they had got into each other’s beds but did
not admit any serious misconduct. One 12-year-old, however, was more forthcoming:
I questioned xx and told her I had heard she was a naughty girl and had been behaving
badly in the school, pulling up skirts and getting into one another’s beds. She said she
had done these things and I said to her “now isn’t that a silly way to behave” and she
agreed it was and that she would not do so again. I asked her who had taught her these
tricks and she told me she had learned them in the school.
14.43 Dr McCabe continued to question the child and asked her whether anyone had pulled down her
knickers. She said her mother had done it once to punish her, and then she said Mr Jacobs had
done it to her. The girl then gave Dr McCabe a detailed description of what ensued, the particulars
of which need not be included in this report. It is sufficient to say that the story told by the child
showed that the behaviour of the employee was not a casual or chance encounter, but was the
result of careful preparation by a calculating child abuser. The innocence of the child in sexual
matters was apparent from her account.
14.44 Dr McCabe then questioned the two girls mentioned. They both described very similar conduct by
Mr Jacobs. One child said that she had told Sr Stella5 ‘who put her to bed and shut the door’.
14.45 Dr McCabe then asked the Resident Manager about Mr Jacobs and was told that he was ‘a
marvellous man and the mainstay of the Institution’, who had been employed by ‘Four Reverend
Mothers’ over a period of 30 years. He was a married man with a large family.
14.46 Dr McCabe told the Resident Manager about the child [BB] who had reported the matter to Sr
Stella:
The Resident Manager told me that she was on holidays when that had happened but on
her return she heard all about it but was inclined to disbelieve it “as these children are all
so well informed before they come into the school and often tell a lot of lies that it is
difficult to believe them”. When I mentioned XX and AA she was really shocked.
I asked her why when she had heard about BB why she had not informed the Department
and ask them to investigate the matter. She told me really she thought the child was
imagining it.
14.47 A different account appeared in a statement prepared by the Sister in question, Sr Stella, which
was taken after Dr McCabe’s investigations. She said that she observed a child in tears after
coming from the School where Mr Jacobs had given her sweets. According to this account, the
5

Sister asked the child whether anything had happened in the School, and the child said no, that
she had only gone in to Mr Jacobs for sweets.
14.48 There was no explanation offered for the account given by Sr Tova to Dr McCabe, which
corroborated the child’s story that she had told Sr Stella what had happened.
14.49 Dr McCabe asked to interview the two girls for whom the application to transfer was made, and
she interviewed the older of the two, who was almost 16 years old and who was working in the
laundry to keep her away from the other children. She could not elicit any information from her.
14.50 Dr McCabe then discovered that the Resident Manager had already transferred the second girl to
a reformatory in Limerick. This child had told one of the Sisters that her uncles had been interfering
with her before she had come to St Joseph’s. In an account of this, the nun in question stated:
Then I discovered that for two years prior to her coming here she had on countless
occasions indulged in sexuality with her two uncles and with other boys. We got none of
those details about her when she was being committed to the school. I reported the matter
immediately to Mother Vera6 who took action.
14.51 This was the child who had been described as a ‘bad type’. The Reverend Mother had telephoned
the Good Shepherd Convent, a girls’ reformatory in Limerick, and had asked that the child be
taken immediately. Dr McCabe advised the Resident Manager that what she had done was illegal
and she had no authority to transfer the child without Departmental permission.
14.52 On receipt of Dr McCabe’s report, a number of Department officials met and made the following
proposals:
(1) Dr McCabe was asked to visit Kilkenny and confer with the local parish priest or
administrator who might wish to bring it to the attention of the Bishop.
(2) The Resident Manager was to be advised to dispense with the services of the painter
with least possible delay.
(3) To advise the Resident Manager to immediately request the return of the child who
had been transferred to St Joseph’s in Limerick without sanction.
14.53 The memorandum setting out these proposals went on to state:

When these matters were dealt with and a further report from Dr McCabe received after
her interview with the ecclesiastical authorities, the question of the transfer or the disposal
otherwise of the two girls can be considered.
14.54 Statements were taken from three of the Sisters in charge of the group about the type of immoral
conduct they observed over the period leading up to the investigation by Dr McCabe in November
1954. It appeared that, over a period of six months, these Sisters had noticed changes in the
behaviour of some of the children. In May 1954, one Sister had observed some of the little children
out of their beds at night without their night dresses on. The instigator appeared to be an ‘older’
child, who was eight years old. She reported the matter to her superiors and to a priest. The
children were punished, and were given stern lectures, and matters appeared to settle down in
that dormitory.
14.55 Nothing further happened until the next August, when she discovered two children had been
sleeping together and, a fortnight later, heard a child refer to two girls ‘going out with each other’.
At this point, she questioned the children closely, and discovered that one of the children had
been sexually abused by her uncles before coming to St Joseph’s.
6

14.56 Sr Tova then took up the story. She said that, as soon as she discovered the child’s sexual history,
she arranged for two Sisters to accompany her to Limerick, and wrote to the Department for
sanction for that transfer, and for the transfer of an older girl to St Anne’s, Kilmacud. This
precipitated Dr McCabe’s investigation and the revelations about Mr Jacobs, which she confirmed
came as a great shock, as he had been working in the School for 30 years and ‘no-one had ever
suspected him’.
14.57 When speaking to Sr Tova, Dr McCabe dismissed the behaviour of the other children as childish
playing and did not think it merited any further action. The Sisters, however, wanted all the children
concerned transferred out of St Joseph’s. A few days after Dr McCabe’s visit, one of the children
was found ‘doing an immoral act in the playground before young children’, and this confirmed the
Sisters in their view that all of the children involved should be transferred out of St Joseph’s.
14.58 A meeting was held on 5th November 1954 attended by Mother General, the Reverend Mother,
Dr McCabe and the Assistant Secretary to the Department. From the account of this meeting, it
would appear to have been a damage limitation exercise on the part of the Sisters.
14.59 The Mother General and the Reverend Mother informed the meeting that they were satisfied that,
apart from the Jacobs affair, things were not as bad as originally thought. The matter had been
brought under control by the removal of certain girls, diligence on the part of the Sisters, and the
fact that, as a result of the group system, the ‘evil had not extended beyond a single group’. They
also said that ‘the affair in which XX had been concerned with Mr Jacobs had occurred in the
summer of 1953 and not, as had first been thought, during last summer’.
14.60 In a complete contradiction of what had been reported by Dr McCabe, the Sisters then said that
Sr Stella had not been informed that relations with Mr Jacobs ‘had gone beyond him giving her
sweets’. The Sisters accepted that Sr Stella should have had her suspicions aroused when she
discovered the young girl in tears so soon after being given sweets by Mr Jacobs.
14.61 The meeting was then joined by the local parish priest, Fr Curran.7 He had read Dr McCabe’s
report. He attempted to make light of what had happened, asserting that ‘the happenings
concerned were such as frequently occur in girls’ schools throughout the country’. The account of
the meeting stated:
We did not accept this view, and on Dr McCabe’s pointing out that a peculiar vicious
aspect of Jacobs depravity was that he had entered upon his misdeeds with malice
aforethought, Fr Curran admitted the heinousness of Jacobs offences, but continued to
make light of the misconduct of the girls amongst themselves. It had become evident that
Fr Curran’s stand was to prevail upon the Department not to take steps that would bring
Jacobs into Court. On the Assistant Secretary enquiring further in this regard, Fr Curran
stated plainly that he would appeal to the Dept not to take any measures with regard
to Jacobs.
14.62 He appealed to the Department on the grounds that, although Jacobs deserved penal servitude,
the court case would bring the convent into great disrepute, and the children involved would have
to give evidence, and this would do them immense harm. Mr Jacobs had been dismissed
immediately following Dr McCabe’s disclosure:
The Reverend Mother here confirmed that she had paid Jacobs and dismissed him, on
that day, but without giving him any reason ... Jacobs had, she said, received his dismissal
in silence.
7

14.63 When the suggestion was made by the Department that the Bishop should be informed, Fr Curran
was strongly opposed to this move, as his Lordship was old and deaf and the affair would upset
him. He agreed to accept full responsibility for this decision, should the Bishop ever learn of the
affair. He undertook also to interview Mr Jacobs and intimate to him that he was not yet out of the
woods, and that everything would depend on his future conduct. He said he would, ‘Put the fear
of God into Jacobs’.
14.64 The Department officials were impressed with Fr Curran:

Fr Curran is obviously a very sensible and shrewd pastor and on consideration for his
years we felt that a visit on our part to the Bishop was not called for. We agree also to
recommend that no steps be taken towards a prosecution of Jacobs.
14.65 The meeting then had to decide how to deal with the children involved. The whole matter had
originally come to light because of a request for a transfer of two children because of immoral
behaviour. It was decided that these two children, together with a third girl, should be removed –
two to their families, and one to St Anne’s Reformatory in Kilmacud. It was felt by the Sisters that,
with the ‘ring leaders’ gone, the rest of the children would forget the episode, although strict
supervision would now be necessary, particularly during meal times.
14.66 The Reverend Mother then called in the four Sisters who had charge of the children and, in the
presence of Dr McCabe and the Assistant Secretary, she praised their devotion but advised them
and, in particular, Sr Stella that they needed to be much more vigilant and enquiring when it came
to the children.
14.67 The Departmental officials recommended a course of action to the Department. By letter dated
10th November, the Resident Manager was notified that one girl could be transferred to Kilmacud
Reformatory and two others returned to their parents and grandparents.
14.68 On 28th November 1954, the Mother General of the Congregation wrote to the Assistant Secretary
of the Department to thank him for his kindness:
I shall never forget your kindness during your visit to Kilkenny, and you may count on my
poor prayers. Please God, the unpleasant affair is closed forever and we shall hope that
there shall never be a repetition.
14.69 The matter of the children abused by Mr Jacobs was not addressed by that meeting. The Resident
Manager continued to correspond with the Department about the four girls who had been identified
as having been abused by Jacobs, in order to have them transferred from the School, in the
interests of the other children. She wrote two days after the meeting:
The other three children ... have still fresh in their memory the experience they had with
Mr Jacobs in 1953. They also know about each other’s contact with him, which shows
they must have and probably still are discussing this matter among themselves.
14.70 It does not appear from the records that the permission was granted, as three of their names
appear seven months later in a report to the Chief Inspector by Dr McCabe dated 22nd June 1955.
The Reverend Mother General had asked Dr McCabe to meet her in Milltown in Dublin, at the
headquarters of the Congregation in Ireland, to discuss the situation in Kilkenny where, once
again, she was concerned about the behaviour of six of the girls. These six girls were aged
between 9 and 13, and two of them had revealed to Dr McCabe the previous November that they
had been sexually abused by Mr Jacobs. They were now seen as a corrupting influence on the
rest of the children, particularly their own siblings in the School. The Reverend Mother told Dr
McCabe that she was concerned that the six girls were continuing to corrupt the little ones, by
giving them bad example at every opportunity. Dr McCabe was surprised as to how this could be
the case if the children were contained in one group. She was informed the problem arose at
recreation time when the groups mixed. Dr McCabe’s report was summarised in the Department
of Education submission:
The Rev. Mother claimed that these children were “misbehaving themselves with each
other and with the small children”. They were, she said, “giving bad example” ... They
were said to have taken girls from another group, brought them up into the fields and
taught them “wrong in the grass”. When the Sister-in Charge inquired into their behaviour,
one of them remarked, “It was no harm”. Mr Jacobs, the painter dismissed by the school
the year before, had said that he was “an old man and it was no harm” ... Much of the
“bad behaviour” came to light as some of the girls were preparing for their first Holy
Communion and though, when questioned, there were many “denials”, one child told the
Rev Mother that [named child] was “doing it constantly”. For her part, the Rev Mother
considered 11-year-old [named child] “the most hardened”.
14.71 This characterisation of the child as the most hardened was offensive and unjust, having regard
to the brutal and invasive sexual assaults she had suffered.
14.72 Dr McCabe then visited St Joseph’s to investigate these complaints, and she made a written
report on 24th June 1955. She concluded that two children (aged 11 and 13) were the ‘ringleaders’
and that another (aged 13) was ‘a good follower’. The two children mentioned by her had been
identified as having been abused by Jacobs in her visit in November 1954; the third child was a
sister of the 11-year-old mentioned above.
14.73 This 11-year-old child was described by Dr McCabe having ‘a very bad influence and I think the
youngsters are terrified of her. She seems to have great power over them’.
14.74 Another child was mentioned as ‘one of Jacobs unfortunates’ although her name had not appeared
in the November 1954 report. Dr McCabe reported:
There was another child mentioned [child named](11) but she did not try tricks herself but
had been one of Mr Jacobs unfortunates, but on discretely questioning her, I discovered
that he had only started on his campaign when he was disturbed!
14.75 Dr McCabe discussed the supervision with the Reverend Mother and was told the staff would
need to have eyes in the back of their heads to deal with the problem:
I enquired about the playground – there is a small patch of grass on it and here some of
the performance takes place and also in a shed in the playground. Apparently the little
ones play “House” there (as the Sisters thought) but really this performance was taking
place.
I consider that the nuns have slipped up in their supervision.
14.76 All the girls were part of one group, although they did interact with younger children in other groups
at recreation. Dr McCabe observed:
The “good girls” are very alert and it is really through them that the nuns got to know
about the behaviour in the grass. Now there is a kind of reign of terror there and if anyone
of these girls (mentioned above) approaches a child she “runs a mile and screams”.
14.77 Following a meeting with the Chief Inspector of the Department, it was decided to transfer nine
girls to Kilmacud, and the transfer was authorised on 28th June 1955.
14.78 In her General Inspection Report dated 22nd to 23rd June 1955, the entry under ‘General
Observations and Suggestions’ stated:
I visited this school to investigate a complaint made to me by the Mother General and
Reverend Mother of the school about certain children’s behaviour in the school. As result
of all this 10 girls were transferred to Kilmacud Reformatory. The chief cause of this
outbreak was “lack of supervision” on the part of the community.
14.79 The Department of Education made observations on these events in its submission to the
Committee. The Department stated:
The response to abuse in Kilkenny illustrates how the Department and the religious dealt
with issues of child sexual abuse at the time, in particular:
• The apparent inability of the Sisters of Charity to detect what appears to have been
widespread sexual abuse carried out by a long-term workman. It may not have begun
with the children mentioned here.
• The decision of the Department, on the advice of the parish priest, not to pursue the
prosecution of Jacobs, having considered the concern expressed by the priest to
protect the children from further trauma as well as the reputation of the convent.
• The absence of professional counselling or sex education for the girls affected.
• The concern to remove certain girls from the school and the perception that the girls
who had been sexually abused were compromised in some way. Some were sent
back to their families, with no provision for helping them come to terms with what
had happened.
14.80 Sr Astrid8 was appointed to the staff of St Joseph’s one year after these events in 1955. She
confirmed that she heard nothing about the circumstances that had led to so many of the children
being removed and to the dismissal of an employee who had been in the School for over 30
years. She said that no protocols were in place at any time for dealing with allegations of sexual
abuse by the children, and the matter was never mentioned. This was notwithstanding the clear
responsibility placed on the Sisters by Dr McCabe for failing to supervise the children properly.
St Anne’s, Kilmacud
14.81 The need for a dedicated reformatory for girls arose in January 1942, when two girls who had
been committed to St Joseph’s Girls’ Reformatory in Limerick for ‘serious moral offences’ were
deemed by the Resident Manager to be unsuitable. She requested that they be immediately
discharged, in order to protect the other children and the interest of the School. It was suggested
within the Department of Education that the ‘most convenient solution’ would be to establish a
second reformatory school for girls who had committed moral offences. One of the problems this
Institution could address was the question of children over the age of 12 who were in an industrial
school and were found to be ‘exercising an evil influence over the other children’. Although the
Minister had the power to transfer these girls to a reformatory, in practice this did not happen
because the only reformatory for girls, in Limerick, would not take such children. St Anne’s was
run by Our Lady of Charity Order, who had ‘intimated that they intended to conduct it for the
benefit of girls with marked tendencies of a certain nature’.
14.82 In fact, it would appear that the only cases envisaged for St Anne’s were ‘where the girl
disapproved of the intercourse and made a report to the Garda, or had an illegitimate baby to the
public knowledge, or where her relations or friends learned of the act and reported it’.
8

14.83 It was to this reform school that the nine children from St Joseph’s were sent. They were all 13
years of age or younger, and at least four of them had been the victims of severe sexual crimes
whilst in the care of the nuns.
14.84 A witness who was in the School during the 1954 investigation and who was one of the girls
transferred to Kilmacud gave evidence. She had not been abused by Jacobs, and it seems that
she was sent to Kilmacud because her sister, who had been abused, was going there.
14.85 Sharon9 was one of five children. She lived with her parents in Dublin. The home situation was
not good: her father and mother had problems, there was domestic violence and alcohol abuse,
and the family faced eviction. In these circumstances, the children were taken into care. She and
two of her sisters were admitted into St Joseph’s, Kilkenny. She saw very little of her two sisters
in the School. Her parents did not visit, her mother only came once. Her first memories were of
being very frightened and trying to keep herself small. She hid under beds or behind her older
sister. She remembers being very lonely and isolated. She had no one to turn to except her sister.
14.86 Prior to the day of the transfer to St Anne’s, she remembered the ‘set’ she was in were summoned
into the sitting room. They were told that some of them had been very bold. She has only a hazy
recollection of what else was said, but the outcome of it was that nine or 10 of them were
segregated and not allowed to mix with any other girls. They were kept in cubicles in the dormitory
and could not leave there, other than to get food and then return. She remembered Sr Ella10 and
Sr Liv11 were there at the time, as were a number of other nuns. They were told they had
committed mortal sins and sins of immodesty. She and her older sister were transferred, but
another sister was left behind and she did not see her again until she was 16.
14.87 On the day of the transfer, she was pleased because she thought they were only going out for
the day, as they were told they were going to the zoo. She was shocked to discover this was a
lie: it was the first time a nun had lied to her. Her transfer papers to Kilmacud described her
as ‘not of previous good character’. She only saw these papers recently, when revealed by the
Commission, and was deeply upset at this description, as she was only 10 years old at the time.
14.88 Sharon said that the nuns in St Joseph’s were obsessed with religion. There was an endless litany
of Mass, Novenas, Benediction, retreats, fasting, grace before and after meals, prayers night,
noon and morning, and so on. She felt that the nuns were more concerned with saving their souls
then anything else. They did not encourage the children to nurture friendships, and she
remembered one occasion in particular: when she held the hand of a friend as they went for their
Sunday walk, a nun came from behind and silently separated them.
14.89 This witness remembered very little about her schooling or the teachers, other than a climate of
fear in the classroom. She attended school within the Institution. Sr Liv was the schoolteacher,
and she was very strict and used a stick to slap children.
14.90 Sharon said that St Anne’s, even though it was a reformatory for girls, was wonderful in
comparison to St Joseph’s. There was more freedom, she did not feel she was under the
microscope. She never felt safe in Kilkenny, but she did not have the same feeling in St Anne’s.
The transfer papers had described her as ‘not of previous good character’, yet the Sisters in St
Anne’s never made her feel like that. In St Anne’s, she was recognised as a person. As an
example, she described the following:
9
10
11

In a little way ... that I was walking on my first walk and Sister Ellen12, who was in charge,
actually took my hand. I can never forget that moment because on the one hand what
was so sinful in Kilkenny, well maybe that is going too far but I wasn’t allowed to do that
and here I was in St Anne’s and Sister Ellen took my hand.
14.91 She was introduced to the world of books in Kilmacud and became an avid reader in later life,
despite having been classified as almost illiterate in Kilkenny. The food in St Anne’s was not good
but, because she was happy there, it did not seem to matter.
14.92 She is close to her sisters. She only found out in recent times that her older sister had been
abused by Mr Jacobs in 1954, and that would have accounted for the complainant’s removal from
St Joseph’s. Her younger sister remained in Kilkenny.
Sisters of Charity Submission

14.93 In their Submission, the Sisters of Charity disclosed that the current leadership of the
Congregation first heard about the Jacobs case when they were shown documents discovered by
the Department of Education in the course of investigating a complaint. Sr Úna O’Neill stated:
There is no record of any kind in any of the files of the Sisters of Charity regarding this
matter and they were not aware of what had happened until the Commission made the
file available for inspection to the Congregation’s Solicitors in 2001.
14.94 The Sisters of Charity submitted their observations on the case. Their position was defensive. In
relation to the discovery of abuse by Dr McCabe, they stated:
Even Dr Anna McCabe with her medical training, expertise and the high reputation for
professionalism which she appears to have earned within the Department (in the opinion
of the current Secretary General), had to persist in her interviews and questioning before
evidence of abuse emerged.
14.95 From the documents, however, it would appear that the abuse emerged in the course of very
gentle questioning that did not depend on medical training and expertise. Dr McCabe was
thorough and prepared to coax and listen: the Sisters allude to this approach as ‘persistence’.
14.96 The Submission went on to state that there was no evidence that the Sisters were ‘anything other
than totally co-operative throughout Dr McCabe’s investigation’. Given that the investigation was
into the serious sexual crimes against eight- and nine-year-old children in their care, nothing less
than total co-operation would have been expected.
14.97 The Submission further asserted that, had the Sisters themselves discovered Mr Jacobs’s abuse,
they would have acted as decisively as they did when it was brought to their attention by Dr
McCabe. The documents indicated the abuse was indeed brought to their attention by one of the
little girls, and she was not believed, and her complaint was dismissed by both Sr Stella and
Sr Tova.
14.98 The Submission concluded:

In these circumstances any adverse finding against the Sisters or criticism of them would
be unfair and unwarranted.
14.99 This Submission was prepared in 2006. It did not address the appalling plight of the children who
were abused by Mr Jacobs; it did not examine the attitude of the Sisters in seeking to remove the
victims to a reformatory; it did not question the integrity of Sr Tova, who gave one account to Dr
12

McCabe about the complaint made to Sr Stella, and a completely different one to the Department
officials and the parish priest; it did not acknowledge the damage done to these children by the
sexual abuse and its consequences, which included the children being isolated from their friends
and removed to reformatories. Far from trying to help these damaged girls, the Sisters chose to
dispose of them as bad influences. With their removal, the whole episode was expunged from the
history of St Joseph’s.
14.100 • The nuns investigated the sexual behaviour among the girls and identified those
involved, but did not take the next step of asking why this behaviour had happened.
They blamed the children for immorality but did not follow up the inquiry as Dr
McCabe did.
• This abuser had been employed in St Joseph’s for 30 years before his activities were
revealed, but the 1954 episode was treated as a single episode, and the full extent of
the sexual abuse of the children was not established and no attempt was made to
do so.
• Notwithstanding the more progressive attitude the Sisters had towards childcare, they
were still unable or unwilling to believe the child who complained about Mr Jacobs.
Dr McCabe uncovered the serious sexual abuse going on in St Joseph’s by listening
to the children.
• The attitude of the Sisters appeared to be to blame the children for having been abused
by Jacobs, and they sought to have them transferred away from the Institution.
• No lessons were learned from this incident. The risk that unsupervised access posed
to the children, particularly by male employees, was never acknowledged or
addressed. No procedures were put in place and no warnings given to staff about
listening to children who complained of sexual abuse. This was to have serious
consequences less than 20 years later, when two dangerous sexual abusers were
employed in the School.
Alleged sexual abuse by a foster family

14.101 Annette13 was resident in St Joseph’s, Kilkenny from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. She was
three months old when admitted into care.
14.102 She described growing up in St Joseph’s as a sad and lonely existence. She was never treated
with kindness or respect. The nuns told them they were the children of prostitutes. The staff were
cruel. She was often locked up in a cubby hole as a punishment for talking in the dormitory at
night, so she learned not to speak. It was a frightening experience, and she was afraid to do
anything other than pray to get out. She was often hit with a leather strap.
14.103 She was in the ‘red set’, a less favoured group in St Joseph’s. She thought the food was
horrendous: she described getting cocoa, and lumpy porridge for breakfast. She never felt full and
was always aware of being hungry. She liked school, however, and was a good student.
14.104 In May 1961, she was released by order of the Minister for Education to Mr and Mrs Lacey.14 She
was nine years old. She remembered being sent to the Reverend Mother’s office and there was
a couple sitting there. They seemed quite old to her and they were introduced to her as her uncle
and aunt. She went out with them for day trips initially, and then she spent a couple of weeks
over Christmas. The Sisters asked her how she got along and, at that stage, she thought it was
13
14

fun being brought to the seaside and given treats. She recalled the food they gave her was very
rich and, because they gave her toys, she thought she had landed in heaven.
14.105 She testified that, when she was released into the care of the Laceys, things changed. She was
sexually abused by Mr Lacey. He built a corrugated shed in the garden which he used solely for
the purpose of raping her. He told her it was a playhouse. She believed Mrs Lacey knew what
was going on as, after being raped, she told her to have a bath. It happened two or three times a
week in various places, wherever they were living at the time, until she managed to ‘get away’
from them at the age of 15.
14.106 The couple travelled all over the country and spent time in Kildare, Wicklow, England, Wales etc.
When she was 11, they were living in Northern Ireland, and she managed to run away at that
stage, but was caught and returned to them. After this incident, she was sent by them to England
to live in Mr Lacey’s brother’s house, and the couple later followed over. During the 1312 weeks
that she spent there, she recalls regularly being given a drink and falling asleep; she would wake
up next morning, partially clothed and very sore. She complained to Mrs Lacey, and was punished
by being hit with a leather and locked in a cellar, or she was deprived of food. She was forced to
work for the couple in all of their various enterprises, including an ice cream parlour and a
restaurant.
14.107 Annette now knows that the Laceys were not in fact married. They were of different religions and,
although one of the conditions for them to be allowed to foster her was that they would protect
her religion, they never brought her to mass or church when she was with them.
14.108 Annette was not aware until recently where she read the documentation that the Sisters were
opposed to her going to the Laceys.
What the documents revealed

14.109 The documents reveal mistakes by the Department of Education. The story is recounted here in
some detail as an example of how failure to follow up and supervise children placed in foster care
could leave them totally unprotected
14.110 In November 1960, Mrs Lacey wrote to the Rev Mother in St Joseph’s, having been referred by
an official from the Adoption Board Dublin. She and her husband were anxious to have a little girl,
as they had no children of their own. She described herself as having the means to give the child
a good home, a mother and father’s real love, and a good education. She said they were both
Catholics and in good health. The Laceys said they were married in 1928, 33 years prior to the
application in 1961.
14.111 Sr Klara15 wrote to a senior official of the Department of Education on 25th November 1960, telling
him of the request from the Laceys. She explained that Annette could not be adopted legally, as
her mother was alive but untraced. She suggested that perhaps the Laceys could be her
Godparents, and sought his opinion on this matter. She hoped he could help find the mother so
that her consent for adoption or the Godparenting arrangement could be sought.
14.112 Sr Klara wrote again on 3rd December 1960, advising the official of the Department that the Gardaı́
had had no success in tracing Annette’s mother and wondering whether she should go ahead
with allowing the child go to the Laceys. She suggested getting a reference from the parish priest
before making a final decision. At this stage, the Laceys had brought the child out for outings and
were keen to take her. The official advised her to get the reference from the parish priest before
allowing it to go ahead.
15

14.113 On 10th December 1960, Sr Klara wrote to Mr Wade of the Department of Education as follows:
Since our conversation (phone) I have received a letter from my friend to whom I wrote
for information re. couple who wish to adopt Annette. It seems this “party” is only here for
the past few months from England. The husband is a lapsed Catholic, and the wife a
Protestant. As we have been warned that “couples” are going through Dublin trying to
adopt children, and from the information just received, I don’t think it wise to go any further
unless we get a very definite proof of the suitability of the Adopting Parents.
14.114 Sr Klara wrote again to Mr Wade on 12th December 1960, expressing her continuing uneasy mind
regarding the couple who wished to adopt Annette, and seeking his advice as to whether she
should pursue the matter with the parish priest in the UK, as the couple had only resided four
months in Ireland. The parish priest in Terenure had vouched that they were attentive to their
Church duties in the four months that he knew them and were worthy and reliable people.
14.115 Sr Klara came under increasing pressure from the Laceys, who were indignant that Mr Wade,
when he interviewed them, had information to suggest that they were not Catholics. Mrs Lacey
denied this and said they attended Mass every Sunday. Sr Klara remained very doubtful about
them.
14.116 On 15th December 1960, in an internal memorandum to the Inspector in the Department of
Education, the author advised that he had spoken to the parish priest in Terenure, who
recommended that the child should be allowed out to the Laceys for Christmas.
14.117 In a letter dated 15th December 1960, Mrs Lacey wrote to the Department:
Dear Sir,
As requested I herewith make an application for permission to have Annette the child from
St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Kilkenny for the Christmas period. My husband and I have
already had her out for one day and we have asked the Mother Superior to let us have
her with us, as we are giving a children’s party at our café, and the Mother Superior said
as far as she was concerned it would be alright. The child having no parents or relatives
we are both willing to help her in every way possible, by giving her a good home, with a
Mother’s and Father’s love, bringing her up in the Catholic faith, and educating her in the
best possible manner. We are quite aware on account of her age that we cannot adopt
her legally, but are more than willing to be her Foster Mother and Father. My husband
being Managing Director of a large firm tells you that we have the means to do the very
best for the child. Trusting you will grant us this permission.
Yours Faithfully
Mrs Lacey
14.118 A note on the letter said: ‘Phoned Sr Klara and informed her of our inquiries. She is now satisfied
to release child for Xmas holidays and we are to [make] ... inquiries regarding Lacey couple with
a view to advising mgr on question of release on supervision certificate TOR 16/12/60’.
14.119 On the same document, the particulars with regard to her release for Christmas were recorded,
together with a note of an interview with the Laceys on 16th December 1960:
Interviewed Lacey couple – wife claims to be a convert and husband to have been reared
a catholic but has not been assiduous in the practice of his religion. He undertook to
produce their marriage certificate.

14.120 In a letter to Mrs Lacey dated 8th January 1961, Sr Klara informed her that Annette was safely
back in Kilkenny and had been telling the Sisters about the wonderful time she had with ‘my
Mammy and my Daddy’ and thanking her for giving her such a good time.
14.121 The child obviously had an accident whilst with the couple, because Sr Klara also noted that ‘on
the following day she would take Annette to the Dr. to have the stitches removed D.V’.
14.122 It appeared from the documentation that followed that the Laceys travelled to the UK in early
January 1961, to expedite references and other matters required for the adoption of Annette. Mr
Lacey had written to his parish priest in Oldham in England, seeking confirmation that he was
married in the Catholic Church. The parish priest was unable to provide this, but said he saw no
reason to doubt Mr Lacey’s word that he had been. There was also a short note from another
parish priest where the Laceys resided for six years, which said the couple were known to him
and well suited to have care of a child.
14.123 On 8th February 1961, the Laceys contacted the Department to press for the release of Annette,
citing the fact that they had purchased a new house and were anxious to purchase furniture with
Annette in mind. This prompted Mr McDevitt to write to the parish priest of Oldham to seek
confirmation that the Laceys had married in the Catholic Church sometime in 1928, possibly
around May. He could not provide the exact date.
14.124 He did not receive a reply and followed this up with another letter on 9th March 1961. This letter
was returned to Mr McDevitt with the following handwritten note by the parish priest:
St. Mary’s Oldham
Dear Sir,
As far as we can ascertain the facts given by Mr Lacey are true and to be believed.
Sincerely yours, P.P
14.125 The Laceys followed up with another letter to the Department on 16th March 1961, pressing the
Department for a decision about releasing Annette to them. They felt they had provided more than
enough information to the Department about themselves and asked the Department to give the
matter urgent consideration.
14.126 In a detailed report in April 1961, concerning the Laceys’ application, Mr Wade wrote to Mr
McDevitt, Inspector. He set out the circumstances of how the couple came to Ireland in 1960 and
immediately contacted the Adoption Board with regard to taking a child into their household. They
had been referred by the Adoption Board to St Joseph’s, Kilkenny as an institution that might be
able to ‘supply their want’. Sr Klara understood from this referral that they had been vouched for
by the official in the Adoption Board, and she introduced the couple to Annette. Mr Wade had met
the couple on several occasions as they had called into the Department. On the surface, they
appeared pleasant but he had a number of concerns. First, Mr Lacey admitted to being lax about
his religious duties; secondly, Mrs Lacey protested that she was a convert to Catholicism but was
hazy as to the date of her conversion from the Protestant religion; and, finally, although she could
give the location, she was not sure of the exact date of her marriage to Mr Lacey. Added to this,
Sr Klara had her own doubts about the couple’s religious persuasion and had been warned that
couples were going about the country seeking to adopt infants – therefore, she was not prepared
to make the decision on her own authority. Mr Wade concluded that the application should be
refused on the grounds that the whereabouts of the child’s mother were unknown and her consent
would be needed for final discharge, coupled with the vague replies by the Laceys about their
marriage.
14.127 This report was passed on to the Secretary of the Department by Mr McDevitt on 26th April 1961,
with a long handwritten note attached. He described the case as somewhat difficult, because the
Laceys appeared on the face of it to be the ideal couple to be given the care of the child, were it
not for their difficulties in verifying their pasts so far as religion was concerned. He had spoken
with them and felt they were not being frank about the matter, although very anxious to get custody
of the child. The clergy in Britain had not been helpful in clarifying the matter. He concluded his
report with the following:
Considering (1) that the child’s parents may still be and probably are alive; (2) that the
child was committed on grounds which are now invalid and that some doubt may therefore
be entertained as to whether the Minister has power to discharge her on supervision
certificate (’tho I think he has), and that there is the possibility of endangering her faith,
the balance of argument appears to be against acceding to the application and I so
recommend. If approved, I suggest that refusal be communicated in interview.
14.128 In an internal memorandum to the Minister dated 28th April 1961, the author (T.O R) also
expressed some reservations but, overall, was in favour of letting the child out to the couple. His
reasons were that, in the first instance, it was against the Constitution for the child to be detained
by them under any circumstances. Secondly, two parish priests were satisfied that the girl’s
religious affairs would be catered for, and so the Department was covered from the moral point
of view. As for his own conscience, he would be guided by the fact that nothing but good could
come from her being with this couple. He recommended that the child should be allowed to live
with them on the understanding that either parent could come forward to claim her back at any
time.
14.129 She was discharged by order of the Minister to Mr and Mrs Lacey on 5th May 1961.
14.130 The following additional particulars were recorded:

Annette was discharged on May 5th 1961 by Order of the Minister of Education to Mr and
Mrs Lacey, [address redacted]. Mr McDevitt and the Resident Manager (Sr Klara) were
not in favour of this adoption.
14.131 On 11th May 1961, Mr and Mrs Lacey were informed officially in writing that, after very careful
consideration, the Minister for Education had now ordered the release of Annette to their care
with the condition attached that, if her parents at a future date claimed custody, they would have
to immediately surrender the child to them. Mr McDevitt signed the letter on behalf of the Minister
and also asked the couple to keep him informed of any change of address made by them. The
Resident Manager in Kilkenny was informed in writing at the same time.
14.132 Precisely one year later, on 11th May 1962, Mr Wade received a memorandum from one of the
Departmental officials who said he had called on Mr and Mrs Lacey at the address where they
were living when Annette was discharged to them. He spoke to the woman who now occupied
the house. She told him the Laceys had left a long time ago, had sold their business and now
had either a pub, or a fish and chip shop in the Southeast.
14.133 Enquiries were made by the Department with the Gardaı́ in the Southeast on 22nd May 1962, and
neither Annette nor the Laceys had ever been heard of. Eventually, the Gardaı́ located the Laceys.
The Department noted that they should have been informed of their change of address by them,
and it was felt that enquiry should be made in regard to Annette’s welfare, spiritual and otherwise.
This note is dated 28th May 1962.
14.134 Sometime between June and September 1962, Mrs Lacey wrote to the Reverend Mother in
Kilkenny from her address, expressing a wish to return Annette because she said Annette was
lying, stealing and using bad language. They had had to remove her from her school in a local
convent, as she was not making any progress, and she was a constant worry to them and clearly
did not appreciate what was being done for her.
14.135 Sr Hanna,16 who had taken over from Sr Klara, informed Mr McDevitt about the letter and advised
him that she had written immediately to Mrs Lacey to tell her the child would be welcome back in
St Joseph’s and was expecting her back any day.
14.136 This prompted the following letter to be sent by the Laceys to the Department on 3rd September
1962:
Dear Sir,
Some time ago I wrote to the Rev. Mother at Kilkenny School stating that we were very
disappointed in Annette, the way in which she had turned out, by stealing things, and
above all telling lies, not thinking they would inform you in this matter. However, since we
have warned her that she would have to go back to St. Joseph’s she has improved
considerably, and is now attending the local school. I know in her heart of hearts she
does not want to leave us, or to go back. Owing to my writing this letter we have had a
visit from the Rev. Mother, and she advised us to have an older girl who was well moulded
and whose character was well formed. She thought and we both agreed with her, that it
would help Annette very much to have somebody like that, as we feel it would break her
heart to be sent back now after 18 months and we do not wish to part with her unless
she commenced her bad ways again. As you know we are in a position financially to have
another girl, also good accommodation to accept an older girl like the Rev Mother
suggested and we would train her to take a good position in life. Trusting you will be able
to arrange this for us ... Yours faithfully ...
14.137 This letter was sent to the Resident Manager for her observations on the matters raised in it. Sr
Hanna called the Department and spoke to Mr Wade, who noted her views in a handwritten note
dated 18th September 1962:
Sister Hanna called on 12/9/62 to discuss this case. She is very worried about Annette
and would like her to be anywhere but with the Lacey’s, whom she considers unsuitable
to rear the child. Her offer of a second girl to the Lacey’s was made in the hope of getting
Annette back and she had no intention of fulfilment.
14.138 Following this memorandum, it appears that Sr Hanna and Mr McDevitt paid a visit to the Laceys
and told them that Annette’s grandfather was seeking custody, and Rev Mother wished to have
her returned to the School by Sunday 7th October.
14.139 The Laceys wrote to the Department on 1st October 1962, expressing this as a great shock to
them, as they had been told 18 months previously by the then Rev Mother that she was the only
child available in Kilkenny that had no parents. They insisted that she did not want to leave them
and had come to know them as her parents. They said they had inquired about the grandfather,
who was out all day and only returned late at night, so she would not get the care and attention
she needed. They also said that Mr McDevitt had indicated that it was a matter between Reverend
Mother and themselves, as he could not force them to give up the child. They pleaded with the
Department to assist them in the matter.
14.140 The Department acknowledged receipt of the letter on 2nd October 1962 and advised that inquiries
were being made. The question is whether anybody spoke to Annette. The person who was best
placed to deal with any reservations about the Laceys was Annette. There is no record of any
communication with Annette, either by the Department or by the Sisters.
16

14.141 The next piece of correspondence on file is four months later, dated April 1963, and was a note
from the Laceys to the Department advising them that they were returning to England on 9th April
1963. They explained the short notice due to delays in finalising deals. They expressed their
intention to send Annette to a Catholic boarding school as soon as they were settled in England
and gave their new address. They told the recipient not to worry about her, as she would be
brought up as a good Catholic and with a good education.
14.142 A break in the documentation then occurred, but Annette’s evidence was that, throughout this
time, she was subjected to severe, continuing sexual abuse by Mr Lacey, both in Ireland and
in England.
14.143 Four years later, the following letter was received by Rev Mother in St Joseph’s, Kilkenny from a
Church of Ireland Vicar based in Northern Ireland dated 22nd May 1967, and read as follows:
Very Rev and Dear Mother,
I wish to make enquiries about a child who was possibly fostered or adopted from your
Orphanage some years ago. I have only the scantiest details concerning her and I would
be grateful if you could assist me in disseminating the facts.
1) Childs name: Annette – Surname unknown
Age: 1412–15
2) Party who fostered or adopted her: Mr Lacey and his wife Roman Catholic and Church
of England respectively.
Occupation: Café caterers since 1966, formerly Industrial Caterers in England or Wales
some years ago.
The child has not practiced her religion since coming here nor has she been encouraged
to do so. She has been absent from school since February at her “parents’” connivance.
I fear she may be in real danger from lack of proper supervision. “Parents” unsuited to
the task of properly rearing the girl. If this child has ever been in your care, and if you still
have any legal authority over her would be grateful if you would let me know. The local
Divisional Welfare Offices are also interested in the child and have left the matter in my
hands to see if something could be done for the child before it is too late. Please forgive
me putting such a problem before you – If you have any facts concerning her I would be
grateful if you would let me know at your earliest convenience.
Respectfully yours
Vicar
14.144 The Resident Manager sent a copy of the letter to Mr McDevitt on 4th June 1967, reminding him
of their reservations about the couple at the time and recalling that they had done their best to
prevent her leaving St Joseph’s.
14.145 In January 1968, concern for the welfare of Annette moved from Northern Ireland to the UK. The
Children’s Officer in the UK wrote to the Education Officer in Belfast, reminding him to follow up
with the Department of Education in Ireland concerning this child. The inquiry was forwarded to
the Department sometime after 15th March 1968.
14.146 On 30th September 1969, when Annette was 17 years of age, the Children’s Officer in the County
Borough of [place redacted] wrote to the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools with the
following information:

Dear Sir,
Re: Annette – 1.11.52
The above named girl was placed by you in 1961 from St Joseph’s School, Kilkenny into
the care of Mr and Mrs Lacey who were, at that time, living in, Co Dublin.
After moving from place to place in Ireland the Lacey’s eventually came to live in [the UK].
Over the last few months, they have alternatively written letters complaining about the
girl’s behaviour and asking for help and others to say that everything was alright and they
preferred not to be visited.
On the 13th August, 1969, Mr and Mrs Lacey deposited Annette’s belongings in the
Department with a final letter to say that they wished to have no more to do with her.
As we have no background knowledge of this girl prior to her going to live with the Lacey’s,
I would be most grateful for any information you could supply regarding Annette’s case
history before this time.
Yours Sincerely
[Children’s Officer]
14.147 The Department did not respond until four months later and, in a letter dated January 1970,
they stated:
Dear Madam,
With reference to the enquiry you made in September last in regard to above-named girl,
I am directed to inform you that according to the records of this office, Annette was an
illegitimate child, the daughter of [details redacted mother later re-married] ... The couple
separated. It is believed they are in England, but the address of either party is not known.
Annette was baptised a Roman Catholic. She was committed to the care of St Joseph’s
Industrial School, Kilkenny by order of Court [date redacted]. She remained in that school
until May 1961, when she was discharged to the custody of Mr and Mrs Lacey, then living
in Co Dublin [address redacted]. The Lacey’s later went to reside in England. It was made
a condition of the discharge of Annette to their care that should either or her parents at a
future date claim custody of this child the Lacey family would have no option but to
surrender her immediately to such parent.
I am to express regret for delay in replying to your letter and that we have no more useful
information to give. The Resident Manager of St Joseph’s School, Kilkenny, may be able
to supply more details in the case, such as Annette’s progress at school, names and
addresses of relatives or friends in this country.
Your Faithfully
14.148 By this time, January 1970, Annette was almost 18 years old.
14.149 • The documents in this case disclose that considerable thought was given to placing
the child with the Laceys but they do not record that the essential requirement of
supervision, namely communication with the child, took place.
Complainant account of sexual abuse by fostering family

14.150 Another complainant was five years old when she was committed to St Joseph’s with two of her
sisters, and remained until she was 16. She was from a Traveller family and could remember
many arguments between her mother and father as a young child. She did not remember the
court experience, but her sister told her that she did not think the family understood that the
committal would be for such a long period. Her brother was committed to another industrial school
at the same time, and she never saw him during those years. Her father was killed in the late
1960s. She has since been told by relatives that he was disappointed and remorseful that he
never managed to get his family out of St Joseph’s.
14.151 This witness’s main complaint was that she had been sexually abused by the father of a family to
whom she was sent for holidays. She stated that children in St Joseph’s went out on holidays on
a regular basis. They were sent to families for the month of August. A large group of them would
go up to Dublin on the train to be met by their host families at Heuston Station. She was sent to
a family who had no children of their own. Initially, she was sent with another girl from St Joseph’s
and it was all very exciting. She was paraded around by the couple to their friends’ houses and
shown off as the ‘child they had for the month of August’. The husband started to abuse her. It
started with touching and eventually led to more serious abuse. She cannot understand how the
family were not vetted. She was discharged to them, and the abuse continued when she lived
with them full-time. When she started dating her boyfriend, she told him what was going on and
he confronted the man’s wife and told her what her husband was doing.
14.152 She said she had been taken out of school because the couple permission to have her discharged
to them. They suggested that she could work for them in their office in Dublin. She stayed with
them for about a year.
14.153 She remembered an occasion when another pupil of St Joseph’s, who was staying with a
befriending family, called to visit her. The father attempted to abuse the young girl, who had to
lock herself into a bathroom. The girls discussed it afterwards, but the complainant was the only
person the girl spoke to.
14.154 She had very few vivid memories of her initial period in St Joseph’s. She was committed with two
of her sisters. The three of them were put into the green set in the charge of two nuns, one of
whom she described as ‘evil’. The other would hit the children across the ears for no apparent
reason.
14.155 She went to school in St Joseph’s primary school and then to the Presentation Convent in
Kilkenny. She did well in school and was quite disappointed when she was taken out just before
she was due to sit her Intermediate Certificate to stay with the foster family.
14.156 She believes that she was treated differently from other girls in St Joseph’s because of her
travelling background. For example, she suffered verbal abuse, being called ‘tinker’ by other girls.
Her sisters received similar treatment. The nuns knew it was going on, but there was no attempt
to stop it by the Superiors or those in charge. She also felt her family were discriminated against
when they visited her.
14.157 She has heard from other family members that her father often cycled from [another county] where
he worked to see them but was turned away. She made inquiries about this from family members,
and she found out recently that her father had tried on several occasions to get the children out
of the School. For the past 30 years she had believed that her father did not care about his family.
It was only when the documents were shown to her in the process of this inquiry that she learnt
the true situation and it has angered and upset her greatly. She believed that, if he had succeeded
in getting them out, they would at least have been loved. They never got any love in the School.
As a result, she found it difficult to this day to hug her own children.
14.158 She maintained some contact with her friends from St Joseph’s, and has attended some reunions
to see them. She does not regard it as her home nor does she go to see the nuns: she attends
just to stay in touch with the girls, as they have a lot in common. Most of the girls in her set, the
green set, have very bad memories but she believes that girls in other sets would have different
memories. In particular she says that those in the blue set ‘were made’. The sets were segregated:
every child in the green set felt they were nobodies, and she believed that was the reason why
they were in that set. Most of the girls in it came from dysfunctional families. The red set was not
too bad – they were ‘half right’. The blue set was a totally different scene, because they got all
the extras. Sr Astrid had overall responsibility for all sets, but was specifically in charge of the
blue set. Once assigned to a set, there was no possibility of moving to another.
14.159 She thought Sr Astrid would like to believe that she was close to all the children, but that was not
the case. The children tried to keep in with her but Sr Astrid had her own cronies and pets, and
she gave them extras.
14.160 It is difficult to see how the nuns in St Joseph’s could have known if a befriending family was
abusive unless the child herself told them. However, they should have taught the girls to recognise
inappropriate behaviour and to report it.
14.161 Differential treatment between the units is a major criticism of the institution.
Positive witnesses
14.162 The first positive witness proposed by the Sisters had no contact with her natural parents and was
almost two and a half years old when she was placed in St Joseph’s. In her early period there,
she was cared for in the nursery but she had very little recollection of that time.
14.163 During the rest of her period in St Joseph’s, she was part of a group known as the ‘blue set’,
which had Sr Astrid in charge, assisted by a number of lay staff. There were 30 girls in the blue
set, ranging from five to 16 years. Once a child was assigned to a set, it was usual for her to
remain there. She cannot remember any occasion when a child was transferred from one set to
another, nor does she think it would have been possible to ask for a change of set. The different
sets would get together during recreation in the playground, and when they went to outside school
after the age of 10 or 11. They also came together in the recreation hall for an hour or two of
television, as there was only one television at that time. Each set had its own dormitories,
subdivided into senior and junior, its own sitting room and refectory.
14.164 Daily life in St Joseph’s involved a routine of getting up in the morning before school and carrying
out a number of chores. The older girls would have some duties in looking after the younger girls,
to ensure they were getting their meals or that they were going to church in the mornings. Children
did the washing up after meals. On reflection, she was very satisfied with the food. They had
porridge for breakfast, and dinners varied with food such as stews, corned beef and smoked
haddock. They had a drink of cocoa after school, and tea, bread and jam at teatime. The older
girls sometimes helped out in the nursery, especially during the summer months. Before she left,
she had also worked in the bread room.
14.165 She went to school in St Joseph’s until the age of 11, and then on to the Presentation Convent in
Kilkenny, which was a 20-minute walk away. Two or three girls walked to and from school together
each day. They returned home for lunch. She had no problems in school and made a lot of
friends, especially through sports. She did not recall any difficulty integrating with the girls in the
Presentation Convent. She was encouraged by the Sisters to stay on and further her education,
and she believed herself and two other pupils were the first girls to do their Leaving Certificate
from St Joseph’s. She passed it and went on to Secretarial College and subsequently had a
successful career.
14.166 She made good friends within St Joseph’s and was still in contact with many of them. They were
scattered widely around the world, in London, Germany, Italy and the United States.
14.167 During the summer months, there were outings to the seaside. In August each year, St Joseph’s
closed and all the girls went out to families. She went to a family in Sandymount, Dublin, which
she found a very positive experience.
14.168 She described Sr Astrid as a very gentle person who did not slap the children. She hardly ever
raised her voice to anyone. She was very good to them. The main means of discipline was to
remove privileges, such as the film night or the weekly pocket money.
14.169 That was the situation in the blue set. From what she has heard, the experience in other sets was
a little different: control was achieved more by voices raised in temper, and the atmosphere may
have been different, as some of the nuns and staff were more strict. She has not heard any
complaints about physical punishment, but she knew that bed-wetters probably had to wash their
own sheets.
14.170 She did not remember any children in her set ever being put in a cubby hole as a punishment.
She did recall that there was a cubby hole which held sweeping brushes and the like. She had
heard of the threat of being put in a cubby hole in the other sets, but not in her set. She did not
know what went on in other sets.
14.171 Overall, she found the experience in St Joseph’s a good one, but she did find life a bit restricted.
This may have been for security reasons, but everything, even hours of play, was regimented to
a certain time.
14.172 She has kept contact with Sr Astrid over the years. When she left St Josephs, she stayed in a
house in Dublin which was solely used for the purpose of looking after the girls when they arrived
in Dublin. She has attended reunions in Kilkenny every two years for the past 14 or 15 years.
14.173 The second positive witness had been in care from the age of four, and was 12 years old when
she arrived at St Joseph’s in the mid-1960s. From the start, she thought it was really good and
settled in easily. She was placed in the red set with her sister, who was two years older. Mrs
Dunphy17 was in charge and personally she found her nice, but thought she could be strict, and
some younger children may have found her a bit cross. Discipline was enforced by stopping
pocket money or not allowing children to view the film.
14.174 She remained in the red set until she was transferred to the green set two years before she left
St Joseph’s. She did not ask for the transfer, but was pleased with the move and thought there
was a very good atmosphere in the green set. Sr Tilda18 was in charge and she was kind to all
the children. She was older by then and was allowed a lot more freedom. The girls were friendly
and she was very involved in sports. She won All-Ireland camogie medals. She believed that
every opportunity was given to her to develop in St Joseph’s, and she felt she did a lot better than
many children from ordinary homes. During summer holidays, she went to a befriending family
who were extremely kind to her. She did her Leaving Certificate and said that anyone inclined to
do so was encouraged to study and do well. Subsequently, she did a commercial course in Dublin
in a private college and eventually got a good job. She thought the driving force for all of this was
Sr Astrid.
14.175 She believed that St Joseph’s, Kilkenny would have been a role model as a school, had it
remained single sex. The introduction of boys was not good for the School. One of the things she
missed about the School was not being part of a family and not being shown affection. She found
things were sometimes a bit rigid, but felt this was mainly because there were a large number of
children to cater for.
17
18

14.176 Sr Astrid was asked whether she agreed with the suggestion that those who were in the ‘blue
set’, which was under her immediate control, fared much better than the children in the other sets.
Sr Astrid insisted that she did not treat any of the children differently. The groups were very
separate. She did not accept that the blue set got things that the others did not. She said that the
Superior gave all the groups the same things, but thought that perhaps sometimes someone from
her own family might come and give her group extra sweets and things like that. She agreed that
Traveller children could be called names by the others, as they had a lot of children round the
place and name-calling was inevitable.
14.177 • The group care system could not replace a loving family, but it did offer a more child-
centred environment where children were encouraged both socially and educationally.
• Attending the external school worked well for the children, and there is evidence at
this time of good integration between the children from St Joseph’s and the local
community.
The Group Homes

14.178 The system of grouping children into smaller units appeared to work reasonably well throughout
the 1950s and into the 1960s. In 1966, however, a decision was taken to close St Patrick’s,
Kilkenny as an industrial school. It had catered for boys up to the age of eight and had been run
by the Sisters of Charity. Many of the residents of St Joseph’s had brothers in St Patrick’s and,
indeed, this was one of the reasons the Department of Education gave for recommending the
transfer of the boys to St Joseph’s. Accordingly, 28 boys were transferred, to be retained until
eight years of age.
14.179 The sudden increase in numbers, and the integration of boys into the School, caused problems
for the management.
14.180 In an undated document entitled ‘Report for The Department of Education’, which would appear
to have been written in late 1969, the case was made for the need for St Joseph’s Industrial
School to move toward forming group residences in the community. The report stated that, during
the year 1968/69, the Sisters experienced much unrest and disturbance amongst the children. It
manifested itself in a variety of ways, such as absconding and repeated ‘burning incidents’.
According to the report, these problems arose mainly because of lack of proper accommodation,
and proper staff and recreational facilities, which were all put down, in turn, to lack of financial
assistance.
14.181 The report further stated that, in an effort to cope with this problem in May 1969, a small group of
the most disturbed children was placed in a house in Kilkenny donated by Bishop Birch, under
the care of one of the Sisters, and the children were treated in every respect like an ordinary
family. This project, initially an experiment, was a great success, and it became clear that efforts
like this would eliminate many of the problems in St Joseph’s.
14.182 According to the report, the Sisters consulted with experts in the US and Britain, and set about
reorganising the Institution in groups/units as close as possible to the ordinary family. Four groups
with 16 children and three groups with 10 in each were formed, with children of both sexes,
ranging between the ages of two and 18 years. Children under two years were kept in a separate
nursery. Each of the separate groups was staffed by three adults. Alterations were made to the
Institution and the old national school to accommodate the groups, and two dwelling houses were
purchased. The Sisters asked the Department to assess the situation as soon as possible, as the
Congregation could not meet all the costs involved, and needed assistance with reconstruction
work, the purchase of recreational facilities and transport for the children.
14.183 On 12th September 1969, Bishop Birch followed up this proposal by formally requesting the
Department for financial assistance to enable St Joseph’s to carry out the programme of
reconstruction which would bring the Institution in line with modern thinking on childcare.
14.184 The Sisters went ahead with their plans. They altered the existing buildings and acquired two
houses in a nearby housing estate, half a mile away, to set up two ‘family-type’ houses. This was
done without sanction from the Department of Education, which was presented with the problem
of whether to finance the venture, when it had not sanctioned it in advance. The Department of
Finance refused the request for extra funding.
14.185 On 11th September 1969, Mr Wade from the Department travelled to Kilkenny with Mr Madden to
inspect the ‘unauthorised works’ which were at that time being carried out, and about which Dr
Birch and Sr Wilma19 had called to see the Secretary of the Department. Mr Wade set out the
situation as far as he saw it:
To fully understand how the nuns in charge of the Industrial School came to find
themselves in their present plight the following comment may be of assistance. Since the
appointment of Dr Birch as Bishop of Ossory there has been a convulsion in the social
conscience of the laity and clergy in the Diocese of Ossory resulting in a welter of activity
for the underprivileged from child adoption to geriatrics embracing also itinerants. Nuns,
priest and students from St Kieran’s Seminary are involved to a greater extent than ever
before among the poor and needy. A social centre has been erected on the grounds of the
community, a nursery to facilitate adoption work has been approved by the Department of
Health and will also be erected on the convent grounds and there are itinerants settlement
schemes, meals on wheels, companions for the old etc etc. Add to this a favourable
comment from a member of the Committee on the Reformatory and Industrial Schools on
the standards of St Joseph’s, advance information from a member of the Committee that
the group system of caring for children would be a recommendation and that grants would
be available for building to assist in the changeover from the present methods and the
stage was set for the nuns to run off in all directions without an Architect (except for on
one item, play space and enclosed gymnasium) without authority, without money or the
overdraft facilities to pay for the job.
14.186 He was sorry for the situation the nuns found themselves in, describing it as quite pathetic. He
felt that:
the Bishop abetted by a young radical member of the community played a large part in
creating this situation and it seems the Department will have to come to the rescue by
making a case to the Department of Finance for an ex gratia grant.
14.187 He also advised that the new Resident Manager needed to be told that policy making and major
decisions in matters that concern the welfare of committed children had to have the approval of
the Minister, who alone was the responsible authority in these areas.
14.188 The case was made by the Secretary of the Department of Education to the Department of Finance
on behalf of the Sisters of Charity in a memorandum dated 7th October 1969. It stated that St
Joseph’s, Kilkenny was a well-run school and, in the view of the Minister, would always have a
place in the field of childcare:
not alone for its success as an industrial school, but, because of the considerable increase
in costs if it were to be replaced by an institution under lay management.
19

14.189 The Department of Finance refused to make the payment, as provision in the Vote for the Office
of Public Works for school building was already over-expended.
14.190 The Department of Education wrote again to Finance on 2nd March 1970, advising them that they
had a surplus of £15,000 from the Reformatory and Industrial School budget, and wondered if
they could pay this out to the Sisters. The Department of Finance gave their sanction and the
money was paid.
14.191 A General Inspection was carried out on 7th November 1971; the previous one had taken place
on 8th May 1970. The Inspector noted under Sanitation, Health, Food and Diet that it was quite
obvious that these were given top priority by the Sisters. He found the premises in good condition,
and the changeover from institutionalisation to the group home system was well underway. The
staff were hard working and forward thinking. The Sisters were planning to acquire the use of
another nearby house for adolescent boys, as the Resident Manager was concerned about these
children. He also met and had a long discussion with Sr Wilma regarding the childcare course
in Kilkenny.
14.192 Mr Crean inspected the School on 10th November 1972 and was very pleased with the School.
He made the following general observations:
In the last 4 or 5 years the Community at St Joseph’s has spent generously and
constructively – works of improvement are still in progress. It is a wonderful home for the
children in care – it caters for 100 children on average – boys and girls from the age of a
few weeks, up to 17+ in the case of girls and 15+ in the case of boys.
14.193 Mr Crean praised the way in which day-to-day problems were courageously tackled. The
education of the children was given top priority. Thirteen girls and one senior boy were in different
boarding schools. There was never a failure at Intermediate Certificate, Leaving Certificate or
Group Certificate level.
14.194 Much of the correspondence in 1973 between the Department of Education and the Resident
Manager related to finance. It is clear from this correspondence that the Department officials were
very much on the side of the Sisters of Charity. As far as they were concerned, St Joseph’s was
one of the most progressive schools in the country and had carried out extensive works of
adaptation and purchase of property to form self-contained group homes. Since 1968, the Sisters
had expended a total of £80,000, and the State had contributed £24,000 towards it by 1973. The
Department was critical of how the Sisters had embarked on such a substantial programme of
development, but was in no doubt that the augmented capitation grants were being put to proper
use. The properties acquired were vested in the Sisters and not in the State, and the Department
of Finance was reluctant to give grants towards the acquisition of property on which it would have
no claim.
14.195 Two Department officials visited Stanhope Street Convent in Dublin on 18th May 1973, where the
Sisters were proposing to set up an aftercare hostel for up to 13 senior girls from Kilkenny who
would be commencing work or continuing with studies in Dublin. The estimated cost was £21,000.
They agreed to recommend to the Department that they should provide £15,000 toward the
project.
14.196 In the final paragraph of the memorandum of the visit, the following is recorded:
Sister Astrid adverted also to problems relating to emotional disturbance among children
in the Kilkenny home. It was agreed that this was a growing problem in these homes
which needs consideration.
14.197 It appeared from the correspondence between Sr Astrid and Dr Paul McQuaid, Consultant Child
Psychiatrist, dated 12th December 1973 that he had found that a significant number of children in
care in St Joseph’s were seriously or moderately disturbed. This led to a visit to Kilkenny by a
Principal Officer from the Department on 29th April 1974. He met with Sr Astrid, Resident Manager,
the Programme Manager for the South Eastern Health Board, and the Bishop of Ossory. The
focus of the visit was to assess the needs of the School and future trends in dealing with the
problem of emotionally disturbed children in the home.
14.198 The first report from Inspector Graham Granville was dated 22nd February 1976, and was very
positive about all aspects of the School in terms of facilities and care for the children. The Sisters
complained to him of lack of follow-up by social workers who requested places for children, had
them admitted, and then failed to keep in touch with the child; and they sought Mr Granville’s
assistance in tackling this problem.
14.199 Around this time, the School was experiencing problems with some of the children, in particular
with getting them to attend the local schools and to be accepted there.
14.200 The problem with local schools came up for mention again in a General Inspection Report dated
27th January 1977 carried out by Mr Granville. He noted that, although the children attended local
schools and were allowed to join in school activities, there was not good contact between the
local schools and the residential home with regard to the children’s progress etc. In a handwritten
note on the end of the report, it was decided that the Schools Inspector would meet the Bishop
and Sr Astrid to try and resolve the education problem. The author noted that Kilkenny was by far
the biggest residential home in the country, and perhaps the unwieldy size was responsible for
some of the problems.
14.201 Mr Granville concluded his report in January 1977 with the following comment: ‘This residential
complex has a great deal to offer the South Eastern district if it is properly supported and guided’.
Allegations of sexual abuse in the 1970s

14.202 In January 1995, a Garda Sergeant, stationed at Kilkenny Garda Station, began an investigation
into allegations of sexual and physical abuse at St Joseph’s School in Kilkenny. In the course of
his enquiries, he heard allegations of severe sexual abuse, including buggery, and of physical
abuse against two men who had been employed in St Joseph’s during the 1970s. The first of
these allegations involved Thomas Pleece,20 who was employed in St Joseph’s from 1972 until
1976, when he was summarily removed by the Resident Manager following complaints by boys.
14.203 The second man was Peter Tade,21 who succeeded Mr Pleece as a care worker in St Joseph’s
in 1976.
14.204 Thomas Pleece admitted sexual abuse in St Joseph’s, as well as in St Augustine’s where he had
worked previously, and also to abusing two boys fostered by him after he left St Joseph’s. He was
indicted on 271 counts and received a 10-year sentence in October 1997.
14.205 Peter Tade was indicted on 10 counts and he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in
June 1998.
14.206 According to the Congregation,1995 was the first time it became aware of allegations of sexual
abuse in St Joseph’s.
20
21

Thomas Pleece
14.207 After the decision to take in young boys in 1966, the Department of Education Inspectors
recommended that St Joseph’s should employ male staff to help care for them. The first of these
carers was Thomas Pleece.
14.208 The decision to close St Patrick’s and transfer the boys to St Joseph’s caused a number of
problems for St Joseph’s. The girls resented the presence of the boys in the School, and it was
difficult to keep boys and girls separated at night.
14.209 Thomas Pleece completed the course and, on completion, was highly recommended to Sr Astrid,
who appointed him with sole responsibility for 16 teenage boys. He was House Parent for
Summerhill, one of the group homes in St Joseph’s. According to Sr Úna O’Neill, who gave
evidence to the Committee as Superior General of the Congregation:
He was the House Parent for Summerhill so he would effectively have been in charge of
the house. The manager would have visited as she did fairly regularly all of the houses
each day and every evening. She and all concerned thought it was a great achievement
to have a man in charge of the boys. In his professional child care capacity it was assumed
that he would act as a father figure and role model for them.
14.210 This was a view echoed by Mr Graham Granville at the time, who wrote of Mr Pleece in an
Inspection Report of November 1972:
... he is young – probably 28 years – single and naturally at ease with youngsters whilst
unobtrusively maintaining discipline. If he applied and were selected for Oberstown, I
understand he would be badly missed at St Joseph's.
14.211 Thomas Pleece said in evidence that he first became involved with childcare when he started to
work in St Augustine’s Special School in Blackrock. He admitted to sexual abuse of boys in St
Augustine’s. He had formerly worked in a factory.
14.212 From Blackrock he went to the childcare course in Kilkenny in 1971. He said that he did not have
the necessary educational requirement for the course, and was therefore surprised to get an
interview. He had to provide them with an essay/project to satisfy the educational aspect. He also
had a formal interview with three or four persons on the panel. He had the requisite two years’
experience in childcare in St Augustine’s, and he provided three references. He was one of only
three lay persons who attended the first course in 1971. The other 17 participants were Religious.
The college organised a placement for him in St Joseph’s. He lived in St Joseph’s during the year
of the course and, in return for his accommodation, he did a couple of hours each evening doing
games with the children. He also attended short placements in the probation service and in a
school in the UK as part of the course.
14.213 At the end of the year, he was offered a job in St Joseph’s and took up the position in September
1972. He explained:
I was approached by Sr Astrid and asked if I would be interested in taking over the group
of boys in St Joseph's, that they were going to put all the boys together and once the
holidays came in June, that they would be splitting that mixed group up and changing that
unit to a boys’ unit and I could take it over as the team leader there, if you like.
Mr Pleece said that, although he would have had regular contact with social workers, volunteers
and two other Sisters in the Community who worked in the unit, it was Sr Astrid who was most in
contact with him:
I suppose Sr Astrid was the one that would have had her finger on anything that was
going on in the unit. You must remember that Sr Astrid was a mother figure to all of the
children in St Joseph's. The boys, I mean, idolised her. When she came over, like, it was
an event every time because they all wanted to speak to her and give her a hug and
whatever, you know. She was wonderful with the children.
14.214 Thomas Pleece left St Joseph’s between September 1973 and April 1974 and went to work in
Drogheda, where he was offered a job which paid slightly better than St Joseph’s. He paid one
visit to Kilkenny during the time he worked in Drogheda, and became aware that the children were
not happy with his replacement. Sr Astrid met him and they discussed the possibility of his coming
back. He agreed, provided she could match his salary in Drogheda. He returned to Kilkenny in
April 1974 and remained there until 1976.
Sr Wilma
14.215 From 1964, Sr Wilma lived in St Joseph’s Convent in Kilkenny and worked in Kilkenny Social
Services. She had daily contact with the Sisters in the Community. She assisted in the
establishment of the childcare course in Kilkenny in 1971.
14.216 She recalled that Thomas Pleece attended the first childcare course in Kilkenny and was the first
layman to do the course. She interviewed him with all the other applicants. He satisfactorily
completed the course and she was sure she would have recommended him to the Sister in charge
in St Joseph’s, although she did not remember specifically doing so. She recalled he was a good
student and had impressed on the course. Once Thomas Pleece started to work in St Joseph’s,
she had no contact with him. She may have met him once or twice in the grounds but had no real
contact. In her Garda statement, she recalled he had an Alsatian dog which she was terrified of.
She did not remember discussing his progress in St Joseph’s. Sr Astrid did not tell her about his
dismissal or the circumstances surrounding it. She did not know why he left and never enquired
about it.
Richard Evans22
14.217 Richard Evans did part-time work at St Joseph’s five nights per week. He helped the children with
sport and homework, and did leisure supervision. He recalled the boys coming to him with
allegations that they were being interfered with by Thomas Pleece:
It was in the spring of ‘74 ... After a lot of conversation with the boys, a lot of cajoling,
they came to me and they were saying that Mr Pleece was abusing them. The way they
put it was he was interfering with them when they were in bed at night ... Joe,23 Simon24
and Justin,25 and there was a few more of them. They didn't want to go to tell anybody
because they knew they were going to be punished if they did. They were going to suffer
repercussions. Because there was an awful lot of abuse going on that I knew nothing
about, physical and sexual, and I knew nothing about it. I wouldn't have known anything
about it at the time.
14.218 The boys complained again:

After about two, three weeks they came back to me again and they were afraid to go at
the start and said they wouldn't go to report it to anybody, there was no one going to
listen to them. I said, 'What's the harm in going over and telling the Reverend Mother
anyway? ... They were complaining about Thomas Pleece interfering with them in bed,
their private parts, interfering with them, taking them out of bed and bringing them to his
22
23
24
25

room and that sort of stuff ... I listened to what they were saying and I said, “We'll have
to do something about it. We need to tell somebody this is going on, that it needs to stop”.
Even at that stage they still weren't prepared to, you know, to make it public that they
were going to go to somebody in authority ... I think a lot of it was the fact that if Thomas
Pleece found out about it they would get more abuse, they would get physical abuse.
14.219 Mr Evans was aware that someone in authority needed to be told what was going on:
I asked them would they jointly come over to see the Reverend Mother and I would make
an appointment for them to meet her. I don't know what night of the week or anything.
Joe was the only one who decided he would come with me. We rang the doorbell over in
the main building and I looked for the Reverend Mother and we went into the parlour,
Joe, myself and the Reverend Mother. I can remember it so clearly. I sat on the left-hand
side, Joe sat in front of me and the Reverend Mother was on my right. I would say for
half an hour, three quarters of an hour we talked about the general interference and Joe,
as a young lad of that age, was not prepared to turn around and say he's touching me or
feeling my private parts or naming the parts or what he was doing but he was interfering
is the way he put it. It was vague enough and probably gives as much as I would give at
that stage either.
14.220 He said that Sr Astrid listened, but asked no questions about what was being communicated
to her:
She listened, didn't say an awful lot. I vaguely recollect that she said, “Well, I'll look into
it”. There was something of that – something close to that ... I think the words she used
were that “I will do something about it” or – I don't know what way it was put but we left
saying there was something going to happen. That was my impression leaving.
14.221 Mr Evans recalled saying something to Thomas Pleece after he had spoken with Sr Astrid:
... But after the occasion of going seeing the Reverend Mother with Joe I remember saying
something – Now, I can't remember exactly what I said, but I think I said it to Thomas
Pleece that if you are interfering with them boys, “You shouldn't be interfering with them
boys”, or “You should leave them alone” or “What the hell is going on” or something of
that nature I said to him. His reaction was “What business is it of yours?” or “You are only
such and such, what the hell are you going to do about it?” or something like that.
14.222 Whatever was said, Thomas Pleece resented Richard Evans after that:
Now, Thomas Pleece always had an Alsatian and that was his main threat with everybody,
the Alsatian would be put on you or set on you if you opened your mouth or stepped in
the wrong place. He did resent me after that. It was quite obvious that he must have
known or found out we had gone to the Reverend Mother and he wasn't happy about it.
I don't think after that occasion that I ever spoke to him after that.
14.223 Mr Evans described Sr Astrid as being ‘ferociously calm about the whole thing’. She did not say
much or express horror at what she was being told. He was, however, quite sure that something
would be done about it. He said: ‘I think I spoke to [another nun] at one stage about it’.
14.224 Sr Astrid had maintained that she had no recollection of anyone speaking to her about sexual
abuse by Thomas Pleece, consequently Richard Evans was asked to spell out how explicit he
had been with her:
Well, I originally stated to the Reverend Mother that Thomas Pleece was putting his hands
in under the bedclothes in interfering with the boys’ private parts and that Joe was there
to make a complaint. He didn't particularly say that Pleece was catching them, feeling
their penises or anything but he was interfering with them under the clothes, their private
parts I think is the way he put it. But there was no mention of other than that. From what
has transpired since that, there was an awful lot worse than that going on. But that didn't
come out with Sr Astrid that night.
14.225 Though the boys had not been explicit even with Richard Evans, he had no doubt that what was
happening was wrong and had to be stopped:
I knew it was wrong, what was going on. What they had said to me was wrong, it shouldn't
have been going on there.
14.226 He went on to say:

I didn't even understand up to the time we had gone to the Reverend Mother the full
extent of what they were saying to me. I only knew that interfering with boys in bed was
wrong and an older man interfering with boys was wrong. But the full extent of it I definitely
would say I didn't understand.
14.227 He was asked whether he had considered going to the Gardaı́, and he replied:
No, not at that time. Ever since that, ever since I have heard that there was nothing ever
happened about it, and the extremes of it and the extent of it, I live with the fact that I
made major mistakes myself as an individual of 20, 22 years of age, I should have went,
instead of going to the Reverend Mother, I should have went to the Garda, I should have
went to the Health Board, I should have went a whole lot of places, but I didn't.
14.228 The evidence of the witness was that the fact that the boys were being sexually interfered with
was undoubtedly stated to Sr Astrid and that she would have understood that there was more
going on than was being described to her.
14.229 That meeting between Joe, Richard Evans and Sr Astrid took place at the beginning of the spring
of 1974, some months after Thomas Pleece had been brought back to Kilkenny from his eight-
month period of employment in Drogheda.
14.230 Richard Evans did not work in Kilkenny during that summer of 1974, and when he returned he
was not assigned to Summerhill, the house run by Mr Pleece. Instead, he worked in the main
house with younger boys. He said that he did not enquire whether things had been resolved but,
some time later, he met one of the boys in town on Saturday. He asked him ‘has anything
happened up there since?’, and the boy responded, ’Not a thing, it got worse’.
14.231 Mr Pleece continued to work as a care worker in Summerhill until 1976.
The evidence of Thomas Pleece

14.232 Mr Pleece gave his own account of the circumstances of his leaving in 1976 to the Investigation
Committee:
Well, I was just reading Sr Astrid’s account of what happened, but her recollection is a
little wrong in some respects. First of all, a problem had arisen in St Joseph's that I didn't
know about. There had been a complaint made against me. I didn't know this, but one
morning I got a message from Sr Astrid that I wasn't to send the children to school, that
I was to the bring them over to the convent, to the parlour. There was two big rooms in
the convent. Which I did, and other members of staff were there as well. There were two
other members of staff. So they were all there. All the boys were all put into the one room.
I wasn't told anything of what was happening. The boys were being brought into another
room one by one. I was later to learn that – because I was the last person to go in and it
was Dr Black 26 that was interviewing each boy and every member of staff.
14.233 Thomas Pleece said that Dr Black asked him how he was getting on, and whether he had any
problems in the School. He then told Mr Pleece that there had been a complaint against him:
He told me that there was a complaint. He didn't say what the complaint was, he just said
there was a complaint and that they were looking into it. He found that he didn't find any
credence in what the lads had said, and everything was fine, you know.
14.234 Mr Pleece went back to his unit after this interview with the doctor and resumed his duties. He
added:
It was about a week later or maybe two weeks later, I am not 100% sure, that I met Sr
Astrid in the yard. She told me that – what she said was the boys were saying things
about me and that she wasn't very happy and that she had – actually she had said – after
the interview with Dr Black, that next morning, she did mention about that there was a
complaint made but that she thought everything was going to be okay now because Dr
Black had vindicated any allegation that was made.
14.235 Mr Pleece stated to the Committee that he presumed that the complaint made and referred to by
Dr Black and Sr Astrid was one of sexual abuse:
You know, this is where the misconception was. I thought she was talking about the
sexual abuse. I never dreamed that she was talking about physical abuse. She was under
the impression, obviously, that it was physical abuse, you know ... I just took it for granted
that one of the lads had said that I had abused them. Especially if it was Joe.
14.236 Mr Pleece asked Sr Astrid whether he was being sacked:

I asked her did she want me to leave and she said, well, it might be better for everybody
concerned if I was to leave. I did say to her, “Are you sacking me, am I getting the sack?”
Because I wouldn't have been too happy about that. She said, “Well, no, if you are
resigning, that's fine, there's no problem”.
14.237 At all times, Thomas Pleece presumed that Sr Astrid had received a complaint about sexual
abuse. He had been sexually abusing the boys and, in particular, had abused Joe, who he knew
had made the complaint. It was only when he heard Sr Astrid’s statement to the Commission, that
she had had no complaints of sexual abuse, that he questioned this assumption. At no time was
the subject matter of the complaint raised with him. All he was ever told, by both Sr Astrid and Dr
Black, was that a complaint had been made. No details of the complaint were ever spelt out to him.
14.238 He described his interview with Dr Black:

He was asking general questions about the discipline in the unit and how I disciplined the
boys, and what kind of problems were arising out of that. I was talking to him for about
half an hour, you know.
14.239 Thomas Pleece agreed that the whole investigation conducted by Dr Black was a momentous
occasion and he was worried. He had refused the older boys permission to smoke and that had
caused problems but, because the complaint against him had come from Joe, a boy he had
actually abused, he presumed the issue was sexual abuse:
Well I had understood that that's what he said to Sr Astrid because I was just putting two
and two together when she said to me there was a complaint. There couldn't be anything
else because there was no physical abuse.
26

14.240 Although Thomas Pleece disputed the extent of the abuse he perpetrated on Joe, he
acknowledged that abuse had occurred:
You see because I went into Joe’s room and I fondled him, and I committed abuse on
him, when I was confronted by Sr Astrid by a complaint I immediately thought that's what
it was, that Joe had said to her that I had gone into his room. So he was right, like, that
part of it was right.
14.241 It was Thomas Pleece’s understanding that Dr Black had been asked by Sr Astrid to investigate
allegations of sexual abuse, and had found no evidence against him. Dr Black did not spell out
the complaint against him, and Thomas Pleece was afraid to ask.
14.242 Thomas Pleece denied absolutely that he ever physically abused boys:
Well, in regard to physical abuse – I mean, I don't mind the boys claiming that I abused
them sexually, you know, the three lads that I involved myself with. But for any boy to say
that I physically abused them, I deny that completely.
14.243 He said he only ever laid a hand on boys for three reasons: one, if he was in danger from another
boy; two, if a boy was about to self-harm, he would restrain him; and three, in self-defence, which
he said never arose. Therefore, when Sr Astrid tackled him, the thought of physical abuse did not
enter his head because he had not done it. The only thing she could have been talking about was
sexual abuse, which he had done.
14.244 Thomas Pleece left St Joseph’s within a day or two of Sr Astrid speaking with him:
But I know that she was calling a halt, anyway, to me working with the boys. I would have
put the lads to bed that night and I would have said that I was leaving. I think that there
was only two weeks or something to the summer holidays or something like that.
14.245 He was paid up to the summer and was given to understand by Sr Astrid that he would get a
reference. Although he left believing he had been accused of sexually abusing boys, he stated
that he left on good terms. He came back to reunions at Christmas and the like for years
afterwards, and the invitations for this were extended by the Convent. He said: ‘I know I left under
a cloud in Kilkenny. But I left, as I thought, on good terms’.
14.246 Thomas Pleece continued in jobs that brought him into close contact with vulnerable young people
and children.
14.247 In September 1977, Thomas Pleece got a job in a probation hostel in Cork which accommodated
boys in their late teens. He assumed they would have sought a reference from St Joseph’s for
him there, although he did not see one.
14.248 He and his wife applied to foster two young boys in 1978. They were vetted before being accepted.
He said that it never crossed his mind that the fact that he had been asked to leave for sexual
abuse in Kilkenny was a disadvantage to his application for foster children:
We had a number of interviews with the social worker, I don't know how many there was
now, but there was quite a few, and we were in the office another day and there was
maybe three people there, and we had interviews with the head social worker, and the
social worker that had been interviewing us. That was about it. They passed us to foster.
14.249 He assumed that they would have contacted his previous employers but, as this was during the
period when he still had regular contact with Sr Astrid and the convent, he was not concerned
that he would not be given a reference by them.
14.250 He did not link his sexual abuse at work with fostering children:
You see those kind of things didn't enter into one's head at the time. Abuse wasn't – I
didn't see it as abuse ... Well, the only thing I was to reassure myself was that it wouldn't
happen again, ever. That's the assurance I had to give myself, in any other job, because
I wasn't going to let this happen again because I knew I wouldn't survive a second one ...
Yes, in a job situation. That I would never, ever cross the line again, you know, which
I didn't.
14.251 Mr Pleece subjected the two fostered boys to a horrific ordeal of sexual abuse once they had
become teenagers, but he did not abuse again, according to himself, in his employment. In his
Garda statement, he admitted to abusing the boys from when they were about 11 to 15 or 16.
14.252 The hostel in Cork closed down in 1979, and Mr Pleece was offered a job in the detention centre
run by the Oblate Fathers in Lusk and for this he required references from previous employers.
He gave St Joseph’s as a reference because he had asked Sr Astrid if there was going to be a
problem with references before he left and he understood from her that he would be okay on that
front. At the interview for Lusk he was asked why he resigned from St Joseph’s and explained it
by saying he resigned to take a ‘year out’ from childcare.
14.253 He worked in Lusk until 1985, when it closed down, and then was out of work for a period until
he took up another post in Ballymun, also in childcare. He worked there for two years. Then
he worked in a home for children in Dublin as Assistant Manager, and was arrested while still
employed there.
14.254 As well as the two boys he and his wife fostered, they also adopted two children. Again, they
were subjected to a rigorous investigation process before the adoptions were sanctioned. His
employment record would have been made available, but it is not clear whether any direct contact
was made with St Joseph’s as to his suitability.
Evidence of Dr Black
14.255 Dr Black worked for the Brothers of Charity in Belmont Park between 1972 and 1976, and his job
at the time involved the assessment of children with behavioural problems. This work brought him
in regular contact with St Joseph’s, Kilkenny, and he knew Sr Astrid well. He estimated that he
would visit St Joseph’s about 15 times a year. He had no recollection of being asked by Sr Astrid
to conduct an inquiry or try to find out why some of the boys in Summerhill were unhappy. The
mode of inquiry that Thomas Pleece said had taken place would have taken much longer than an
afternoon visit. He could not have questioned more than one or two boys in that space of time.
As far as he was concerned, he never carried out this alleged investigation.
14.256 On the question of the more casual inquiry suggested by Sr Astrid, he said that he would not have
used the phrase that she ‘had nothing to worry about’. He would have said that he could find no
evidence of the alleged offence. In addition, Dr Black said that he would most likely have written
a report, which he would have left in St Joseph’s.
14.257 Although he visited a number of residential schools during his time as a psychiatrist, Dr Black said
that he had never had a complaint of physical or sexual abuse from any child ever. He said that
this was not surprising to him, as he did not really get to know the children well enough for them
to trust him.
Sr Astrid
14.258 Sr Astrid stated that she had no memory of a meeting with Richard Evans and Joe in which
Thomas Pleece’s sexual abuse of the boys was raised. She remembered that Joe came to see
her once or twice, but did not remember Mr Evans accompanying him. She did not disagree
with Mr Evan’s recollection, as she believed he was an honest man, but she did not remember
it herself.
14.259 Sr Astrid was asked if she made Thomas Pleece aware in 1976 that Joe had made allegations of
a sexual nature against him, as stated by him in his Garda statement. She replied, ‘No, that never
– I have no recollection of that’. Thomas Pleece also said that Dr Black was brought in to conduct
an inquiry. She was asked if she had brought Dr Black in to carry out an inquiry. She replied:
Dr Black came regularly to St Joseph’s, he was just on his way to the – he called regularly
to see us in St Joseph’s, to see had we any problems and usually he saw some of the
girls. At that particular time the lads were inclined to run away a bit and come back to me
and tell me he was tormenting them or at them. Well, I said wouldn’t – now he was come
at that particular time and I said would you have a chat with the boys and see how they
are, have they any special reason for running away.
14.260 She agreed that a number of boys had complained to her that Thomas Pleece was ‘at them’,
which she understood to mean beating them or punishing them. On the particular occasion when
she dismissed Thomas Pleece, it was one boy who came. That boy was Simon. She was surprised
by her use of the term ‘abuse’ in her Garda statement: ‘abusing is there, but at that stage I knew
nothing about abuse, sex abuse; that’s the truth’.
14.261 She realised something was wrong, in the sense that she thought the beating was more than
usual. Simon told her ‘we are not able to stick it’.
14.262 To the question why Thomas Pleece was asked to leave, she replied:
Well, when Simon told me that day in the yard, you know, that it was very bad. “We can’t
stick it,” I said, “Well I’ll have to go to Thomas Pleece myself”. I went to Thomas Pleece
that very day myself and said to him “you can’t stay here any longer because the boys
are very unhappy”.
14.263 Sr Astrid was asked how often she had spoken to Thomas Pleece about being too rough with the
children before she had dismissed him. She said it happened a few times:
You see I'd have to go over to him when the lads were run away or anything and they'd
be coming to me. I'd have to go over and say " ... there is something wrong with this the
lads shouldn't be afraid of you and you shouldn't be beating them". Then eventually he'd
take them back, sure some of them wouldn't even go back I would have to take them
down to one of the houses. One particular lad, he said "I won't go back to him now,
Sister". I said, "all right, sure come on for a night or two but it will be harder on you then
when you do go back." But after a few days talking to him and that I'd take him back.
14.264 Sr Astrid said that this had ‘probably happened a few times’ and remembered big groups of boys
being involved.
14.265 Notwithstanding her decision to remove Thomas Pleece immediately, Sr Astrid was adamant that
she had not been told of sexual abuse.
14.266 In 1979, less than three years after Mr Pleece had been dispatched from St Joseph’s, a letter was
sent to Sr Astrid by the Department of Education looking for a reference. It said:
I wish to refer to Mr. Thomas Pleece, who has been offered a post as Housemaster in
Scoil Ard Mhuire, Lusk, Co Dublin. Mr. Pleece has claimed service in your residential
home from 1972 to 1976. Perhaps you would be good enough to state;
1. the nature of the post occupied by Mr. Pleece;
2. whether service was full-time and satisfactory;
3. the first and last date of service.
14.267 Sr Astrid replied by stating that Thomas Pleece had worked in St Joseph’s as a House Parent
from 1972 until 1976. Nothing in her reply indicated any difficulty with Mr Pleece, in spite of the
clear invitation at 2 above to express any reservations she might have. She said:
I suppose one thing I wasn't good at writing letters myself, but I don't know why I wrote
such a short note; that I didn't say he wasn't satisfactory.
14.268 She said that she would have said on the telephone that she would not have had Thomas Pleece
back in St Joseph’s:
I did. I had told him on the phone you see, that was the trouble. They rang me up, you
know, for a reference ... Well the information I gave on the telephone, that I wouldn't
employ, re-admit Thomas Pleece or that I wouldn't have him.
14.269 She went on to say:

I remember getting phone calls from different places where Thomas Pleece applied when
he left St Joseph's. I know the only answer I ever gave was "I wouldn't have Thomas
Pleece back in St [Joseph’s]” – or I wouldn't reply.
14.270 Sr Astrid confirmed that she did not think Thomas Pleece was suitable to work with children
because she believed that he was severe with them.
14.271 • Mr Evans’ account of his meeting with Sr Astrid and Mr Pleece’s account of his
departure are consistent with an allegation of sexual abuse.
• Had Mr Pleece’s behaviour been identified and acknowledged, other children would
have been spared abuse and suffering.
• Having dismissed Thomas Pleece, Sr Astrid should not have given him a reference for
another job that would bring him into contact with children.
Peter Tade
14.272 Peter Tade was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison at Kilkenny Circuit Criminal Court
on 9th June 1998. He died in prison in 1999 before the hearings into St Joseph’s took place.
14.273 Sr Astrid recalled that, after Mr Pleece’s removal, there was a staff shortage in St Joseph’s.
14.274 Sr Astrid said:

When Thomas Pleece was gone I immediately rang the Department. I told Mr. Granville
that I had dismissed Thomas Pleece and would he kindly come down to help me to put
an ad in the paper and have the right salary. He came down, we wrote the ad, I posted it
to the paper. Then when the people applied, came in, I told him that we had so many, but
there was only one qualified person. I said "would you come down to interview if he [is] a
state qualified person?" And he did. He came down to the parlour and the two of us
interviewed Peter Tade.
14.275 According to Sr Astrid, Peter Tade was an elderly man and had great references. He was a very
religious and serious man. Both she and Mr Granville agreed that he should be offered the job.

14.276 A trainee care worker, Donal Kavanagh,27 who was in Summerhill at the time of Thomas Pleece’s
removal, gave evidence about the events which led to his resignation from St Joseph’s in 1977.
14.277 He had returned to Ireland in 1976 having spent some time abroad and began to assist in St
Joseph’s teaching sports to the boys on three evening a week. This was done on a voluntary
basis, as he was acquainted with a female volunteer who worked with the children in St Joseph’s.
He was asked to work in the Summerhill unit following the sudden departure of Thomas Pleece.
He did not have a formal interview for the job. He did not know Thomas Pleece but was simply
asked to step into his unit until they found a replacement for him. Initially, he worked alone, with
the assistance of a Sister who did the cooking.
14.278 After some months, around August 1976, Peter Tade arrived and was appointed as a House
Parent, and Mr Kavanagh became his assistant. Five months later, Donal Kavanagh resigned and
wrote a letter of resignation which stated:
Dear Rev Mother,
Please accept this as my letter of resignation. I leave for the following reasons: Having
two house fathers in Summerhill might work under different circumstances; but in the case
of Mr Tade and I it is not working. I feel and fear that at the present time Mr Tade is
neither mentally nor emotionally stable enough to give the boys the security and example
they need. Furthermore I feel the situation in Summerhill at the moment is highly
undesirable and unsafe.
This is not a hasty or reckless judgment, but an opinion formed after working in close
proximity with Mr Tade for four months, and it is not without great thought and extreme
reluctance that I now bring these matters to your attention; but as my first responsibility
is to the boys in all conscience I must.
Having been assured that there is no chance of transferring to another group, I must
therefore with even greater reluctance submit this, my resignation.
Yours sincerely,
14.279 A copy of this letter was sent to the Bishop, Dr Birch.
14.280 Soon after he took up his post as Housemaster, Mr Kavanagh observed that Mr Tade shouted
and screamed at the boys. He was very volatile. Some of the boys complained to him that Mr
Tade came into their rooms at night, especially after he had had a few drinks. They complained
that he was physically abusive to them. Mr Kavanagh challenged Mr Tade about the boys’
complaints. Mr Tade denied any wrongdoing, and Mr Kavanagh initially accepted his word.
Subsequently, the boys came to him again and said that things were worse because he had
spoken to Mr Tade. He then reported it to Sr Astrid, and she seemed quite shocked by what he
told her and said she would do something about it. He met her on at least two occasions. The
second time he told her that the boys were continually complaining that nothing had been done,
and he felt he could not continue working in the unit with Mr Tade and sought a transfer.
14.281 Mr Kavanagh explained that, at that time, he was in his mid-20s, with almost no experience in
childcare. However, he knew the difference between right and wrong, and he believed the children
were being beaten and he was concerned for them. He decided he would have to resign.
14.282 He spoke with Sr Wilma and told her that the boys were being physically abused. He believed
this conversation took place soon after he tendered his letter of resignation. He believed that he
told her only about physical abuse, as it never occurred to him that they were being sexually
abused.
27

14.283 After he resigned, he continued to worry about the children. He had an introduction to the Bishop
of Ossory and a meeting was arranged. The Bishop was very concerned about what he was being
told, and Mr Kavanagh believed that the Bishop saw Sr Astrid and the Mother Superior, and may
have discussed this with Sr Wilma.
14.284 Sr Astrid was asked for a reference for both Mr Thomas Pleece and Mr Donal Kavanagh, and she
gave them the following reference:
21st August, 1979,
Dear Sir,
With reference to your letters of 16th August re
1. Mr. Thomas Pleece
2. Mr. Donal Kavanagh
Both men were in employment here as
1. Housefather
2. Trainee Child Care Worker
respectively during the periods mentioned.
With good wishes,
Yours sincerely – Sr Astrid
14.285 In the course of her evidence, Sr Astrid was shown a copy of Donal Kavanagh’s letter of
resignation, which was written in January 1977. She was asked what her understanding of that
letter had been. She told the Committee that she was glad when she got Mr Kavanagh’s letter
that he was leaving and she explained to the Committee that she had not really read his letter
properly at the time – she believed he had not written it himself:
I admit I didn't read the letter properly. I had never got a complaint from anybody. None
of the boys said anything about Peter Tade to me.
14.286 She said that she did not trust Donal Kavanagh, although she did not explain why. She agreed
that it was almost impossible to get care workers at that time, either qualified or unqualified, but
she still did not want to retain Mr Kavanagh, who had asked for a move away from Peter Tade.
Mr Kavanagh surmised that her antipathy stemmed from his desire to unionise the workforce in
St Joseph’s.
14.287 She said she never discussed the letter with Bishop Birch and never met him about it. It was only
on reading the letter more recently that she understood that he was trying to help the boys but,
at the time, she was happy to see the back of Donal Kavanagh.
14.288 Sr Astrid denied that Donal Kavanagh had ever approached her previously about Peter Tade’s
behaviour. The first she knew about it was when she got his letter of resignation.
14.289 Sr Astrid said that she showed Mr Kavanagh’s letter to Graham Granville at the time, although Mr
Granville had no recollection of it.
14.290 She said that she did not know what Peter Tade did after leaving St Joseph’s. She believed that,
because he was quite an old man, he would not have worked in childcare again. She confirmed
that she had never been approached for a reference for him.

14.291 Sr Astrid was asked whether she would have sacked Peter Tade if she knew he had been shouting
at boys and beating boys. Her reply was, ‘Well, I would have spoken to him about it ... No I
wouldn’t have sacked him, no’.
14.292 At the time of Donal Kavanagh’s resignation, Sr Astrid said that she had received no complaints
about Peter Tade but, six months later, a complaint of sexual abuse was made to her. She told a
Garda about the allegation, and asked him to accompany her to Dublin to confront Peter Tade
about it.
14.293 The Garda worked as a volunteer in St Joseph’s, Kilkenny. He became involved through another
Garda, who did similar work with the children and encouraged him to get involved. Both these
men became friends and confidantes to Sr Astrid.
14.294 Sr Astrid appeared to take a back seat in the questioning of Peter Tade. She said that the words
‘sex abuse’ were not used, but that Tade admitted to improper behaviour:
When [the Garda] was questioning him. Whatever he was saying to – I took it that there
was something improper going on. He didn't use the word sex abuse ...
14.295 She said all the questioning was about the one incident:
It was all about that incident. But that incident didn't seem very serious really ... It didn't.
The little boy had a sore bottom or something and he looked at it.
14.296 She was asked why, if the incident did not seem serious, she had travelled to Dublin and asked
the Garda to accompany her in order to confront Peter Tade. She gave no clear answer to that,
although she did say that, once Peter Tade had made his admission, she had told him not to
return to St Joseph’s. Nevertheless, she was clearly concerned enough at the initial complaint to
move fairly quickly to talk to Peter Tade.
14.297 The Garda gave evidence to the Committee. He had no involvement with Thomas Pleece but he
did recall Peter Tade as a care worker in St Joseph’s. He remembered that a complaint was made
by Gerry,28 who was the son of a family who befriended children in St Joseph’s.
14.298 Peter Tade used to take Richard,29 who was a boy in care in St Joseph’s, and Gerry on fishing
trips and for spins in his car. Peter Tade took photographs of them. The Garda described what
happened:
the circumstances were that Peter Tade had taken photographs of Richard and Gerry. He
used to take them fishing and took them for spins in his car. But Gerry’s mother discovered
that Peter Tade's face, he was in one of the photographs, had been scratched and pins
driven through it and she suspected something was wrong. She spoke to him and he told
her that Peter Tade did something to him. As far as I recall it was a bank holiday weekend
and Peter Tade was off, he was on leave and he was in Dublin, Sr Astrid said she had to
get rid of him or ask him to leave. I came to Dublin with her – or I came to Dublin and I
met her in Dublin.
14.299 The Garda had met Gerry’s parents before he left, and they were not anxious to make a formal
complaint. They did not want any publicity whatever about their son. The term ‘sexual abuse’ was
not used, but the Garda was in no doubt that an indecent assault had taken place.
28
29

14.300 When confronted by Sr Astrid and the Garda, Peter Tade admitted that he had abused Gerry. He
admitted that he touched the child improperly. Sr Astrid told him he could never return to St
Joseph’s or have any contact with the children there.
14.301 The Garda did not take a statement from Sr Astrid at the time, on the basis that there was no
formal complaint from Gerry’s parents, despite the fact that he had an admission from Peter Tade
himself. He also did not question any of the children who had been in the care of Peter Tade for
the previous 10 months in St Joseph’s, and he did not think that Sr Astrid had done so either. As
far as he was concerned, it was an isolated incident that had been dealt with. Peter Tade left for
England, and there were no more complaints about him. He said he wrote a short report for his
Superintendent that Peter Tade had been dismissed from St Joseph’s for an incident. He never
saw that report again.
14.302 He said that it was 1995 before he realised that the incident with Gerry was not an isolated one,
and Peter Tade had been abusing boys in St Joseph’s since he had arrived 10 months previously.
14.303 He felt he knew the children in St Joseph’s well, and regretted that they did not trust him enough
to confide in him. He admitted that there was an awareness of a certain amount of sexual activity
between the children.
14.304 Neither the Garda nor Sr Astrid saw fit to question Richard, the boy from St Joseph’s who was
with Gerry in the defaced photograph, and who had also been taken on the trips with Peter Tade,
about whether he had been interfered with by Tade. It is difficult to understand why they did not
question the other boys in the home where Tade had worked for 10 months. There was a failure
on the part of both the Garda and Sr Astrid to face up to the danger Peter Tade posed to other
children.
14.305 Peter Tade died whilst serving the four-year sentence imposed on him by the Circuit Criminal
Court in 1999. He had pleaded guilty to seven counts of indecent assault against three former
residents of St Joseph’s and Gerry, the boy who had made the complaint in 1977.
14.306 Peter Tade had given a full statement to the investigating Garda in 1995, in which he had
described being sexually abused by a family friend at seven years of age. In the mid-1960s, whilst
working in a boys’ club in England, he had first abused a boy of 14 years. He was over 30 at the
time. He had abused more children after that and, in 1967, took his first job in childcare. He
described a series of incidents of abuse of young boys aged from about 11 to 14. He worked in
a number of residential homes, but his activities were never uncovered.
14.307 He returned to Ireland to take up the job in Kilkenny in 1976, and his pattern of abuse continued.
He listed a number of boys that he had sexually abused in Kilkenny and a number of boys he had
physically abused.
14.308 After his encounter with Sr Astrid, he returned to England and continued his abusive behaviour
until, one day, a boy he had been abusing for over two years finally told the housemaster of the
school he was working in. He denied the abuse and was acquitted by Middlesborough Crown
Court in 1988.
14.309 By 1995, he had moved back to Ireland and when confronted by the investigating Garda he
admitted abusing boys in Kilkenny.
14.310 When Peter Tade was sentenced, the Sister of Charity issued a statement as follows:
the first complaint we received about Peter Tade concerning sexual abuse was made on
a weekend in June, 1977, when Peter Tade was away in Dublin. One of the children
made a specific complaint of abuse against him to the sister in charge, she immediately
called in a local Garda who was involved with St. Joseph’s in a voluntary capacity and
they both travelled to Dublin to confront Peter Tade. This confrontation resulted in his
immediate dismissal. Peter Tade never returned to St. Joseph’s.
14.311 Two volunteer workers who were in St Joseph’s during Thomas Pleece’s and Peter Tade’s time
there said they had no idea that these men were abusing children.
14.312 A third man, however, had been told about sexual abuse in the School. Patrick McGovern30 helped
out in St Joseph’s on a voluntary basis with the entertainment in the School. He had a fair amount
of contact with the School, and would call in and play music for the children. In or around 1974,
a friend of his asked him to meet his daughter who was working in the School. She said to him
that one of the boys was being molested in bed in the School. He understood that it was sexual
molestation. He called to the convent and told Sr Wilma about this:
I did, I called to the convent. It was dark, miserable weather, I can remember it well, being
on the front step of the convent, there was a light over the door, it was really Dickensian,
I knocked on the door and Sr Wilma came out. I knew her more than I knew the other
nuns so I was glad it was her that answered the door.
14.313 He continued:
I said to you her, I said I have had a bad complaint, and she said – well bad complaints
to her would be a daily thing, she would have to hear it first before she'd agree it was
bad. So I said to her I have a report that there is a boy being molested, and she just took
a step back and said, [Patrick] you can, as sure as you are standing there, that's not the
word she used, it doesn't happen. They have a habit of – or there is a history there of
boys and girls making up stories to gain attention. I said is that the way it is? She said
that's the way it is. So I said thanks very much, and I went back to the person, the young
girl I spoke to earlier on and said nothing is going to be done, it is not going do be followed
through, because we know now there was reason to follow it through.
14.314 He said that, after speaking with Sr Wilma, he was satisfied that nothing further would be done
about the complaint:
No, she made it plain to me that nothing was going on. So I respected her a great deal, I
have to say that at that stage, and I was happy that what she was saying was exactly
how things were, that there was nothing going on. It was only when evidence came up
later that I was annoyed that I didn't do more
14.315 He came forward in 1995 and made a formal statement to the Gardaı́ in relation to this when he
read the revelations about abuse in the newspapers.
Sr Wilma
14.316 Sr Wilma told the Committee that she only knew Peter Tade to see around the grounds of St
Joseph’s. She remembered Donal Kavanagh, as she knew him from around Kilkenny and she
knew his family. She recalled Donal Kavanagh complaining to her that Peter Tade was physically
abusing the children. He did this in the context of speaking to her about doing the childcare course
and, in the course of that discussion, he mentioned that Peter Tade slapped the children. She
remembered telling him that he should go to Sr Astrid about it.
14.317 In her interview with the Gardaı́ in December 1995, she stated: ‘I picked up on it that he might
have been sexually abusing them as well’. In her evidence to the Commission, Sr Wilma corrected
30

that statement. She said she made a mistake in her Garda statement, and that she could not
possibly have known about sexual abuse back in 1970 when Donal Kavanagh spoke to her. She
did know about incest and men interfering with girls, but she knew nothing about men interfering
with boys. She also suggested in her evidence that her statement to the Gardaı́ was somewhat
informal, and not as formal as the signed document would suggest. It took place in her
solicitor’s office.
14.318 She said she did not personally arrange for Mr Kavanagh to see the Bishop, but found out later
that he did see him. Her action was to tell him to talk to Sr Astrid about the complaint, and she
would have taken no further action in regard to the matter. As far as she was concerned, Sr Astrid
was in charge of the matter and would have been dealing with it properly.
14.319 Sr Wilma told the Committee that, back in the 1970s, if she was told that an adult was molesting
a child, she would not have interpreted that as meaning some kind of inappropriate activity. Patrick
McGovern gave evidence that he complained to her that one of the boys was being molested by
a care worker. She had no recollection of it at all. Patrick McGovern said that her response was
to dismiss it as not having happened. She said that, even if she had been told, she would have
done nothing more that tell them to go to the person in charge of the Institution.
14.320 She said in response to questioning that she did not find it at all extraordinary that, when Peter
Tade was sacked for interfering with a boy who was visiting the School, it was not discussed
among the Sisters in the Community. It was the business of people in residential care and ‘we did
not discuss our works, we simply didn’t’.

it wasn’t extraordinary at that time, it wasn’t extraordinary that I did not know about Peter
Tade. It wasn’t extraordinary at all. It was normal. When it came to our works and this
was about work, this was about Sr Astrid area of work. When it came to our works I may
as well have been living in Kerry as living in St Joseph’s. That’s reality.
14.322 Despite running the childcare course in residential care in Kilkenny, she was living with a
residential institution on her doorstep, and she knew nothing about what was going on inside it.
Sr Wilma attended a number of meetings with Bishop Birch and the Department of Education.
She also signed a report on proposed changes about to take place in St Joseph’s. She
acknowledged that a newspaper article written by her in 1999, which asserted that she had nothing
whatsoever to do with St Joseph’s, was not entirely accurate.
Other allegations of abuse

14.323 In the course of the Garda investigation in 1995, a female care worker admitted to sexually
assaulting a number of boys in the School by taking them into her bed and fondling them. She
said she was 16 years old at the time and was unaware that what she was doing was wrong. The
boys were seven or eight at the time. Once she got older, she realised that this was wrong.
14.324 Sr Astrid recalled another bizarre incident. Some time around 1966 or 1967, young deacons from
St Kieran’s College came to St Joseph’s to help with the children. A year or two later, towards the
end of the 1960s, some of these students came to Summerhill to supervise the boys at night time.
She was told that the students, she believed there were four involved, and the boys in Summerhill
were running around naked. She did not see it herself but told the Garda about it. He reported it
to the President of St Kieran’s, who in turn informed the Dean of Students. She said that she
herself spoke to the President of the college about the incident, and the students did not return to
St Joseph’s after that. She did not mention this incident to anyone and none of the children made
any complaints. Sr Astrid commented that, although she did not think that there was any question
of sexual abuse in this incident, she was sufficiently worried to speak to the Garda and to discuss
it with the President of the College:
But I didn’t, you see the trouble with me was I didn’t know about sexual abuse, you see.
That was the trouble with me.
14.325 She did not agree that she buried her head in the sand on this issue.
The Kilkenny childcare course

14.326 The Sisters of Charity were the first Congregation to establish a training course for people involved
in childcare. The course was first held in 1971 and was attended mainly by religious.
14.327 Sr Wilma said the idea came from Bishop Birch, and she drew up an outline for the course which
was presented to the Department of Education. They agreed to fund it, and it was eventually
recognised as an official qualification in residential childcare, and was also recognised by the
Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work in London. Both she and Mr Pat
Brennan31 had considerable experience in social work and working with children, but neither of
them had actually worked in residential childcare.
14.328 Mr Brennan, who was the Director of the Kilkenny Diploma Course in Residential Childcare,
described the course and the training it offered. The course, which ran for 10 years from 1971 to
1981, came about as a result of the recommendations in the Kennedy Report. Bishop Birch offered
the Department of Education a house in Kilkenny, and the Bishop sponsored and designed the
course. Mr Brennan was acquainted with Bishop Birch and was offered the job of running the
course. Sr Wilma was one of the lecturers on the course on a part-time basis. Students who
attended the course were sent on placements for in-house training, and St Joseph’s was one of
the placement centres. He believed that Sr Wilma was the supervisor of the placements in St
Joseph’s; it was considered to be her domain and, as a result, he had very little to do with St
Joseph’s.
14.329 Prospective students on the course were interviewed by a panel of five, including Mr Brennan and
Sr Wilma. There were normally around 50 applicants for 20 places. The requirements were: two
years’ experience in residential childcare, the Leaving Certificate, three references, and two
essays. He said that the issues of child sexual abuse or incest were never discussed on the
course and were not on the agenda. From 1973, there was a huge preoccupation with physical
abuse, mainly because of the controversial Maria Colwell case in England, where a child died in
1973 as a result of failure to protect the child in a violent family situation.
14.330 The course contents included training on how to deal appropriately with bed-wetting. The course
attempted to try and make the participants think for themselves and make decisions on their own,
without allowing their religious training to shape all their decisions. The participants were almost
entirely made up of religious personnel, and this caused some tensions. He said that some
participants left the course, and he was met with some opposition about the content of the course.
14.331 Students were followed up after the course. Once a year, there was a residential weekend and
they met socially. He personally called on some of the students to assess progress. The course
did not require formal feedback from Resident Managers of the institutions to which the students
were sent. The course ceased in 1981 because it could not get the professional recognition from
the National Council for Educational Awards.
31

14.332 • The Pleece case and the Tade cases indicate a high level of immaturity and naivety in
dealing with issues of sexual abuse, particularly on the part of Sr Astrid. Allowing
these men to leave St Joseph’s and continue with careers in childcare was dangerous
and irresponsible. It was not enough to remove them from St Joseph’s. These men
posed a risk to children and, with her experience in childcare, Sr Astrid should have
been aware of that.
• The inability to face up to the problem of men abusing young boys was not confined
to the Sisters. Experienced Gardaı́ and professionals were also inadequate in their
response to this issue.
The period 1978–1990

14.333 Sr Astrid continued as Resident Manager of St Joseph’s until 1986, when she was replaced by Sr
Livia.32 This was a turbulent period for the Institution, when established methods were questioned,
particularly by qualified lay staff who were employed there. The documentation revealed a degree
of tension between the Department of Education and the Resident Manager about keeping
numbers down. The School was perceived as having too many children to care for any of them
properly, although this was not a view shared by the Sisters.
14.334 This was a period of transition between the Department of Education and the Department of
Health. Responsibility for St Joseph’s was transferred to the Department of Health in January
1984.
14.335 On 14th October 1977, Mr Granville attended St Joseph’s to give the staff a formal lecture on
leadership in the group homes, and to discuss the future of St Joseph’s with the Provincial and
Sr Astrid. It was agreed that the aim would be to try and reduce the numbers in the homes to 60
by 1980. Mr Granville believed that the large numbers in residence were partly responsible for
difficulties with the local day schools. They also discussed plans to employ a social worker for the
children. Health Board social workers at that time were not geared specifically towards children.
14.336 From November 1977, the Department began to focus their attention on the size of St Joseph’s,
Kilkenny. This followed a report by Graham Granville on the future needs in residential homes. In
an internal memorandum dated 16th January 1978, senior Department officials were in agreement
that over 100 children was too large in Kilkenny, and around 60 maximum was a more desirable
figure. The Department was perplexed by the fact that Kilkenny was so full, when the homes
in other areas were faced with decreasing numbers and many were considering closing in the
near future.
14.337 The reason for the Department of Education’s dissatisfaction with the large numbers in Kilkenny
is evidenced by a four-page letter dated 8th May 1978. In this letter, Thomas O’Gilin of the
Department of Education invited Mr T O’Dwyer, Principal Officer in the Department of Health, to
meet and discuss the question of the future development of residential homes. He set out the
changes that had taken place over the years since the Kennedy Report in the area of building
programmes and in the declining number of children committed through the courts and the ISPCC.
This had led to a situation where, in most cases, the homes’ finance for current costs came from
the Health Boards who had the largest number of placements, yet responsibility for capital
financing still remained entirely with the Department of Education. This created the anomaly
because provision of capital money entailed a planning function, but the information needed for
planning for future needs had to come from the Health Boards who were placing the majority of
the children. The Task Force currently studying the situation were most likely to recommend the
32

transfer of responsibility for residential homes to the Department of Health but, in the meantime,
many urgent problems existed that required the co-operation of the two Departments.
14.338 In a report on a visit to St Joseph’s, Kilkenny dated 25th April 1979, the author met with Sr Astrid
and was made aware of a number of her concerns with regard to the difficulties still being
experienced by short-term children fitting into the outside schools, where they underwent the
double trauma of change from their own homes to residential care and out of the residential home
into a strange school. She also drew his attention to the fact that, after prolonged negotiation, the
social worker who had been released from the South Eastern Health Board (SEHB) to work in St
Joseph’s for a two-year period had now been recalled to normal duty, due to staff shortages in
the SEHB. Finally, she requested grant assistance for the aftercare residence under construction.
14.339 On 23rd January 1980, the Department noted that, despite the plans to reduce numbers, the
Kilkenny returns of September 1979 showed 124 children still in residence. Following an
investigation into this, it was discovered that, while there had been no children committed to
Kilkenny since 1977, the Health Boards were making full use of the resulting vacancies, obviously
with the co-operation of the Resident Manager.
14.340 In his report dated 2nd February 1980, Mr Granville submitted what he considered were the direct
relevant factors to the population figures of St Joseph’s, Kilkenny. First were the changes brought
about by the Kennedy Report, which meant that residential homes moved away generally from
large institutional centres to group homes, and this dramatically dropped the number of residential
places on a national basis. Secondly, the lack of social work support services to the any of the
children in residential care in the SEHB area. Thirdly, there was a lack of preventative work being
carried out under the School Attendance Act. Finally, the growth in population had not been taken
into consideration by the SEHB when planning for provision of their services.
14.341 In conclusion, Mr Granville recommended that Sr Astrid should be instructed to cease all
admissions until the numbers were down to 70. He also recommended that no money should be
paid for the work on the aftercare hostel until numbers were reduced. He noted that Kilkenny had
an excessive number of trainees and not enough trained staff.
14.342 Mr Granville carried out a General Inspection on 25th May 1980; the previous inspection was dated
27th January 1977. He inspected all the group homes and, in general, his comments were
favourable. In January 1981, Mr Granville, in an addendum to his General Inspection report, noted
that Summerhill had been redecorated and refurbished to an excellent standard. The five other
group homes, however, still needed attention, and only two were in satisfactory condition. He
noted that there were too few staff and some were untrained in the nursery, where babies were
in residence for far too long. He was very concerned about the emotional damage being
inadvertently caused by being handled by so many different staff, and discussed this with the
Resident Manager. There were 41 staff in total in the School, two male and 39 female. There had
been 32 changes of staff since 1977. His concluded his report with the following:
Conclusions:
1. The overall total number of children in residential care has not decreased over the past
few years, which is a disappointing factor. Page 211 records 113 children in residence,
two more than at the latest inspection. There is a marked increase in the numbers in the
nursery and in the short term unit St Teresa’s ... In my opinion there are far too many
children in residential care in a city the size of Kilkenny.
14.343 He concluded this report by stating:

I would state that the Manager has a very serious communication problem with the staff
in the group homes. There would seemingly be a lack of information at all levels being
exchanged and I would have to raise questions about this matter. I did discuss it with the
Manager and I came to the conclusion that it has been a perennial problem, as far as I
am concerned. It has always been extremely difficult to obtain the facts about Kilkenny,
due to the defensive protective air around the centre. Nevertheless, one has to
consistently maintain a working relationship with the manager and centre even at times
that may be extremely difficult.
14.344 The following year, he inspected the School again, in February 1982, and continued to be
concerned about the quality of care in the nursery and discussed this with the Resident Manager.
14.345 He carried out another General Inspection a year later, in February 1983, and noted that there
were no longer any male staff in the group homes and felt this was a serious omission in the care
teams. He was concerned about the increase in staff turnover (seven in the year) and the shortage
of religious Sisters due to illness and training. Twelve of the care staff, which represented nearly
50%, were on childcare courses, which presented a serious management issue and were being
replaced by substitute staff on a part-time basis, which he was not happy or satisfied with, as the
children had no continuity with staff.
14.346 Summerhill was now known as Sancta Maria, and provided additional short-term accommodation.
The nursery had been closed, which was a major achievement. The quality of care within the
nursery had not been satisfactory, and the Manager was aware of his views backed by evidence.
He was still concerned about the high number of children in care in Kilkenny, too high for the city
to absorb in socialisation and academic terms.
14.347 St Joseph’s asked the Department in late 1983 to sanction a remedial teacher to be attached to
the School. The difficulty for the School centred around the fact that local schools were unwilling
to cater for children on ‘short term’ stay in St Joseph’s. On 16th February, officials from the
Department of Education, Department of Health and South Eastern Health Board met to discuss
the special educational needs of short-term referrals, where it was agreed that the Department of
Education would consider approving the services of an extra teacher, on a trial basis, to cater for
the needs of these children.
14.348 Sr Ronja,33 who was in charge of Avondale was the subject of complaints by two childcare workers,
in 1986 and 1990 respectively.
14.349 A woman in Avondale from 1985 to 1986 made complaints including institutionalisation of the
home, lack of consideration given to professional opinions of staff, authoritarian-style leadership,
failure to cater for the emotional needs of the children and corporal punishment.
14.350 The complaint was investigated by a Health Board official, but he dismissed it. Sr Ronja said she
had no recollection of this investigation, and did not recall speaking with him, despite being shown
contemporary documentation of such meetings.
14.351 In April 1990, childcare practices in Avondale came under scrutiny once again. Another childcare
worker met with Sr Alicia34 and the Health Board official and outlined the difficulties in Avondale in
regard to the manner in which the childcare services were being conducted there under Sr Ronja.
14.352 She expressed grave concern about the following areas:

1. Corporal Punishment – severe in some cases
33
34

2. Control of food – being stored in room of House Parent and not available to childcare
staff
3. Provision of mundane food at certain times and better food being produced when
house parent appeared
4. Refusal of houseparent to communicate with staff
5. Undermining of decision made by childcare staff
6. Problems with staff roster and rostering of house parent
14.353 She informed the meeting that another qualified care worker in the house was threatening to
resign unless matters improved quickly.
14.354 On 30th April 1990, in a letter addressed to Sr Alicia, Programme Manager of the South Eastern
Health Board, Sr Ronja, House Parent of Avondale, tendered her resignation, having been
assigned by her Superior General to a missionary post overseas.
14.355 The childcare worker gave evidence of her experience in St Joseph’s. She completed the Kilkenny
childcare course in 1974/75 and obtained a contract in Avondale in St Joseph’s for a six-month
period from January to July 1990. There were 11 children in the unit, and Sr Ronja was in charge.
At the start of her assignment, Sr Alicia warned her that the person she would be working with
was ‘quite difficult’. What transpired was that she found the systems in place in Avondale
institutional and sterile, and the staff were mainly involved in cleaning, sewing and cooking, with
little time devoted to the emotional needs of the children. Very little affection was demonstrated,
and there was one particular child singled out for favouritism. The children told her they were
beaten quite severely, and she had no reason to doubt what they were saying to her. Food was
of reasonable quality but was rationed, and there was no flexibility around the portions the children
were allowed. She found all this extraordinary in the 1990s.
14.356 She met with Sr Alicia and a Health Board official about her concerns in April 1990. She
complained about Sr Ronja‘s management of the children in the house. There was no consultation
over key decisions, and Sr Ronja was an autocratic manager. She felt that Sr Ronja resented her
and perceived her as upsetting the apple cart. Children were not allowed to show any signs of
independence. For example, she allowed the older children to walk to mass by themselves one
day, and Sr Ronja took grave exception to this.
14.357 Sr Ronja also gave evidence. She joined the Sisters of Charity in the mid-1970s. She started in
St Joseph’s in 1977 and remained there until 1990. She was a qualified childcare worker. Sr Ronja
worked in St Joseph’s initially and, in 1981, she became House Parent in a group home known
as Avondale, which catered for 15 children aged 2 to 15 years. She reported directly to Sr Astrid
and, in the beginning, she only had one live-in staff member, Barbara Brady,35 who was a
tireless worker.
14.358 Sr Ronja tried to ensure that the children in her group home were properly fed, clothed and
attended school. She enforced discipline by occasionally slapping the younger children on the
backside with an open hand and sending them to their rooms. With the older children, she would
ground them from a disco or swimming.
14.359 Sr Astrid gave evidence that she witnessed Sr Ronja physically punishing a pupil. Sr Ronja did
not remember this occasion, although she did remember having to slap the boy once for not
attending school and forging notes of excuse. Sr Astrid said in her Garda statement that she
recalled that some of the children complained to her that Sr Ronja was cruel to them. She said
35

that, one day, Sr Ronja had a small boy in the convent parlour. She recalled hearing the boy
screaming because Sr Ronja was beating him. She said that Sr Ronja was reprimanded for that.
General conclusions
14.360 1. The Sisters of Charity were progressive in their approach and unique among
Congregations in sending their members to the UK to undergo courses in childcare
and, as a result, they split up the Institution into separate units, which worked much
better than the large unitary institutions.
2. Notwithstanding the favourable evidence about this Institution, children were severely
physically punished and treated unsympathetically by some of the care staff, which
continued into later years. Even when complaints were made, no action was taken by
management to protect the children.
3. Differential treatment between the units is a major criticism of the Institution. The
quality of care depended on which unit the child was placed in. The blue unit was run
by Sr Astrid, the Resident Manager, and the girls in it received the most favourable
treatment, according to the evidence. This Sister was very kind and there was little or
no corporal punishment, and the girls in her group considered themselves, and were
considered, to be the lucky ones.
4. No lessons were learned from the Jacobs case at the time, and no proper system of
record keeping or monitoring was introduced. In its Submissions, the Congregation
did not address the serious implications of this case. The apology referred only to the
two convicted abusers and, even then, no Congregational responsibility was
acknowledged.
5. Sr Astrid eventually removed Mr Pleece and, later, Mr Tade after complaints were made
to her about them. However, she did not face up to what had happened to the children.
She failed in her duty to provide accurate information to other bodies and thereby
exposed other children to the risk of abuse.

Appendix 1
1876–1882
• Ten acres purchased for farm.
• Foundation stone for new chapel and convent.
• Main sewer installed from school to river. Grant of £100 from Corporation paid for
installation.
• Convent cells were demolished to provide dormitories for the children and a new
Lavatory.
• Water supply previously provided in barrels now replaced by flow conveyed by
machinery from the River Nore.
1888–1894
• Wall to enclose the farmyard.
• New stable, coach house and hennery built.
• Entrance gate erected.
• New wing erected. Consisted of School room 62 feet long and 27 feet wide, with 59
bedded dormitory over it. Mr Stephen Lalor builder. Mr Byrne architect.
1894–1900
• Veranda erected: glass-roofed passage leading from the playhall to the Schoolroom
and other parts of the Institution.
• New Entrance gate.
• Rebuilding of Institution stairs and other improvements following a fire.
1900–1905
• A new Technical room erected with a small Dormitory for the little ones above. Built by
Mr Cleere and completed by 8th May 1903.
• Review Fields purchased under the new Land Act by Mr Buggy solicitor.
1905–1915
• 1907: House and premises of Mr Pembroke of Patrick Street rented for us by Mr
Lanigan, Solicitor. Rent was £24 per annum with 82 year lease.
• Boundary wall built; cattle houses and stables built on farmyard side and an entrance
in the farmyard made with a new gate for cattle and fodder. Cost £204.10.0 Completed
in May 1908. Architect Mr Burden of Kilkenny. Fee £8.
• Electric light brought to Convent and Institution by Ampere Electrical, County Dublin.
Completed in January 1910.
• 1914: New bathroom with two baths, foot baths, hair-washing baths, dispensary
apparatus with one bath and three up to date w.c.’s, copper boiler and large cylinder
installed. Cost £282.12.1. Mr Cleere, builder. Mr Young, plumber.
• New copper piping installed by Mr Young. Cost of £407.10.0.
• 1915: Repairs to gable end of Steward’s House, boundary wall and cow house.
• Cottage completely renovated. Cost £217. Builder Mr Cleere. Sanitary arrangements
by Mr Young £33.
1925
• Electric Battery renewed: £243. It supplies Institution, Convent and Laundry.
1926
• New system of conduit pipes in the children dressing room installed. Cost £142.10.0
• Field purchased of 8 acres at £450.
1927
• Heating apparatus installed in new play hall which heats St Mary’s and St Michael’s
dormitories, as well as the Dispensary, Nursery, Infirmary and schoolroom.
1928
• Completed the Central heating of Institution- including children’s refectory, workroom,
Linen room. Teachers room, lower corridor and upstairs, all dormitories, corridor etc.
– also convent.
1930
• New hostel for the girls to replace the cottage. Cost: £377.
1932
• Store room in Institution retiled, new presses fitted and a Carron Range erected to
replace the old one.
• Back playground was cemented.
1933
• Veranda passage rebuilt and enlarged.
• Part of roof re-slated and fitted with snow-boards.
• Part of wall cemented.
1934
• Battery for electric light renewed. New house constructed for same.
1935–1941
• Two fields purchased known locally as Morrissey’s fields for a playing field for the
children adjoining the school yard and another large field adjacent to the convent
grounds.
• A modern playground built and equipped.
• 1936: New Girl-Guide hall built and opened on 2nd February.
1938
• New water tank erected for the Institution. Holds 4,000 gallons of water Cost £131.10.0
1942
• Owing to the shortage of Fuel Oil the ESB installed their Plant in the Institution, Convent
and laundry, re-wiring the whole premises.
• Gas Stoves were erected in Hostel and Institution – as it was impossible to get fuel.
• Kooks Joy Range was also installed in Institution Kitchen, at a cost of £50 for Cooking
purposes and heating water etc.
1944
• A concrete stairs was erected at the cost of £200, making an external exit from two
Dormitories at the back of the Institution, from the back playground in case of fire.
1946
• Hostel was repainted, the dining room greatly improved by being painted cream and
light oak. The large refectory table was replaced by for small tables placed in each
corner of the room with a serving table in the centre, a new set of chairs completed
the furnishing. In 1947 a pretty green lino and cretonne curtains added greatly to the
appearance of the room.
1947–1953
• Playground equipped with swings for Seniors and Juniors, also
• in 1948 the playground was equipped with the very latest swings for both seniors and
juniors. A ‘Great Stride’ was also erected and see-saws. A fine sand pit complete with
cement table.
• A nursery was built for the babies costing approx. £3,000
• A new Lavatory Block was built costing about £2,000
• The Kitchen was equipped with all Electric Fittings.
• The Institution was re-modelled to make it suitable for the new ‘Family Group’ system
• Between 1947 and 1949 much repair work undertaken. Cost approx. £900.
• The walls around the playground had to be renewed.
• The Institution Kitchen was turned into an all-electric one – Potato Peeler – Baking and
Roasting Ovens – Stewpan etc. The floor was redone in green and cream Terrazzo
costing approx. £1,000.
• A much needed Sanitary Block was built for night use. It contained five lavatories and
a sluice. It also was done in Terrazzo.
• Two of the Junior dormitories were also fitted with a lavatory each and a footbath. The
approx. cost was £2,000.
1950
• New Nursery completed. It contains a sunny day Nursery and Refectory.
1953
• The night Nursery, Baths and Toilets were added, thus completing the babies suite
of apartments.
1953–1959
• The paths round the Convent were treated by Roadstone, the Children’s playground
had a hard court laid, and it is fenced round it can be used to advantage as a Baby’s
Pen when not in use for the other children, it is marked and equipped for Tennis and
Basket Ball.
• A new fowl house was built at the cost of £550 approx.
1959–1965
• Walls between old kitchen and little pantry knocked down. Room painted as play-room
for children from 4 years upwards.
• 1961: In St Bernadette’s house two dormitories were painted. lino laid on stairs.
• Small room fitted out for past pupils who return for visit of a few nights of weeks.
• 1962: In the children’s houses new colourful tiles went into their refectories and
corridors
• Up to this time, our heating was all by coal and coke, but in October the Convent and
school went on to oil heating.
• The school was painted in bright, lovely colours and two new toilets were added to the
baby room.
• Babies playroom was painted in bright grey colours and old benches were converted
into little seats with pretty, flowered, cretonne covers, Their bathroom was done up.
• A dormitory in each house was painted.
• 1965: Fire precautions installed after inspection by Mr Madden. Partition installed on
the top of the stairs in the Institution. The panels were to be of fire glass. All the panels
in the existing doors between the groups had to have panels of fire glass also.
• Painting of the refectories in St Bernadette’s and St Theresa’s Houses and the sitting
room in St Joseph’s house.
• A new up to date cow byre constructed. Grant to be provided by the Department.
1965–1984
• 1969: the first group of children moved out of St Joseph’s into St Kieran’s lodge.
• The school (Summerhill) was renovated and turned into a group home and the three
houses in the main building were also renovated and turned into self-contained homes
with gas cookers and fridges in the kitchenettes.
• 19th March 1970: a group of twelve children moved to Beechpark, which is a residential
area about one mile from St Joseph’s.
• In March 1970 a grant of £15,000 was received from the Department towards the cost
of the following works totalling £26,600:
— Repairs to roof and floors of section of main building £7,000

— Levelling of field £1,500
— Completion of work on group home in main building £6,000
— Adaptation of old school £4,500
— Purchase of two houses £7,600
— Work on two group homes within main building £13,000
— New laundry for residential home £4,000
— Renovation of two buildings (Maryville and No 45 Waterford Road) £4,000
— Renovation of Chapel £20,000
— Central Heating £17,300
• A grant of £9,000 was paid at the close of the financial year 1971/72 towards the cost
of building and equipping a sports hall estimated to cost up to £20,000. Before the
work could be commenced, however, ‘it came to the nuns’ notice that plans were going
ahead for the erection on a nearby site of a parish community hall. The project at the
residential home had therefore to be left in abeyance’. The grant was then used for
other repairs in the house.
• Thereafter there is no record of the improvements, additions, renovation in each
House.
• In March 1976, ‘Avondale’, a bungalow on the Waterford Rd., was purchased by the
Sisters of Charity at a cost of £29,000.
• In 1976 St Joseph’s purchased a plot in the back garden of the Convent in Tramore.
A mobile home for the children and caravan for the Sisters was purchased. The mobile
home proved too small and confined for the numbers so a house was erected in 1978
to accommodate a maximum of forty children for holidays.
• 1984 grant of £5,000 from SEHB towards repairs to floor in Slievenamon After-Care
Hostel, Stanhope Street.

Chapter 15
St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls,

Cabra
Introduction
Background
15.01 St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls opened in August 1846 in the grounds of the Dominican Convent
in Cabra in Dublin. It is managed by the Dominican Sisters under the trusteeship of the Catholic
Institute for Deaf People (formerly the Catholic Institute for the Deaf), which is under the patronage
of the Archbishop of Dublin.
15.02 The School was established at the request of Fr Thomas McNamara, a Vincentian Priest from
Phibsborough, Dublin who was one of the founding members of the Catholic Institute for the Deaf.
In 1845 when the Institute was founded there were no Catholic schools for the education of deaf
children. The Catholic Institute for the Deaf sought to change this and, as a result, St Mary’s school
was established for the education of deaf girls and in 1856 a boy’s deaf school was founded, also
in Cabra, which was managed by the Christian Brothers.
15.03 Early in 1846 two Dominican Sisters went from Ireland to Le Bon Sauveur Institute for the deaf in
Caen in Normandy to study the French system of teaching the deaf. Two deaf pupils accompanied
them. French sign language was used at the school in Caen and the Sisters on their return
adapted this signing method to suit the English language. For a hundred years this sign language
system (also known as Manualism), which was modelled on the French sign language was taught
in St Mary’s. The boys’ school in Cabra also adopted this teaching method. In 1946, St Mary’s
changed from signing to the Oral method, known as Oralism. This consists of lip reading and
speech training rather than relying on gestures and signs. Oralism is the preferred teaching
method employed in the School to the present day.
Population
15.04 When St Mary’s opened in August 1846 it had 15 pupils, which increased to 50 in 1850. In 1952
there were 177 children in the school. In 1985 the school had 350 girls enrolled. It accepts both
day pupils and boarders. Girls were admitted to the school from the age of four years through to
17 or 18 years of age.
Management
15.05 The School is managed by a Board of Management with a Principal and Vice-Principal in day to
day charge. When it was first opened in 1846 the School was directly managed by the
Dominican Sisters.

Structure
15.06 The pupils were divided into three main groups: (a) profoundly deaf; (b) partially deaf; (c) deaf
students with other disabilities. Until 1974 boarders were divided into groups of approximately 30
according to age. After 1974 the groups were reduced in size to 16 or less. Each group had a
Sister in charge, a housemother and a sewing girl. The babies group had two sewing girls.
15.07 The School consists of a primary and post-primary section.
15.08 In 1973 a new residential school for the hard of hearing pupils, known as Rosary School, was
built. It was situated a quarter of a mile from the main school of St Mary’s. At that time it consisted
of 12 classrooms, a general purpose room, a library, a staffroom, offices, a cookery room and
store room. A school Inspection report in 1984 carried out by a Department of Education Inspector
noted that the school was ‘clean, comfortable and well-maintained’ and ‘located in pleasant
grounds’.
15.09 In 1987 a new school for deaf multiply disabled children was built on the grounds of St Mary’s. It
was known as the Marian School. It consists of four large classrooms, two shared-area
classrooms, a staffroom, a library, a large kitchen, an art room and play hall. The pupils were
grouped into eight classes according to disability, age and academic ability. By 1990 there were
seven full-time teachers employed.
Funding
15.10 Originally, the School was funded by the Catholic Institute for the Deaf. They received a grant
from the local authorities where the children came from. The school made an application to the
Catholic Institute for funding based on the number of days each child was resident in the school.
The remainder of the funding came from charitable bequests or fundraising. It was not until 1952
when the School was officially recognised by the Department of Education as a special school
that it received funding from the Department. The Department of Health later assumed
responsibility for the residential aspects of the School.
15.11 In 1960 the grant paid by the local authorities for the maintenance of the children amounted to
£80.00 per pupil per year. In a letter from the Department of Education to the Department of
Finance seeking an increase in the staffing levels dated 1st March 1960, the Department officials
pointed out that this figure of £80 was insufficient to maintain a child in the School. They also
asserted that ‘no other maintenance grant’ was provided to the nuns. Reference was also made
to the high cost of hearing equipment necessary for deaf children. For example, in 1960 a group
hearing aid consisting of a large table with plastic top, microphones and wiring for 12 individual
hearing aids cost £250.
The Investigation
15.12 Twenty one statements of complaint were furnished to the Investigation Committee. Response
statements were supplied by both the Dominican Sisters and the Department of Education in
respect of these written complaints.
15.13 The investigation into the School consisted of a review of the material produced by the Department
of Education and Science, the Dominican Sisters, the Catholic Institute for the Deaf, the Garda
Sı́ochana, the Archbishop of Dublin and the complainants’ statements. Thirteen complainants
attended for interview out of 23 who were invited to attend. These interviews took place at the
Commission’s offices and at various other locations around the country and in the United Kingdom.

Education
Primary education
15.14 On 21st April 1952, Sr McEvoy, Prioress of St Mary’s wrote to the Department of Education
seeking recognition as a special school. She insisted that due to the nature of deafness small
class sizes were necessary and that ‘there can be no mass teaching of deaf children, each child
has her own separate problem’. She felt that 10 to a class would be ideal but ‘twelve may be
allowed under stress’. Sr McEvoy also emphasised the importance of speaking:
Another point of difference is the fact that it is a residential school. The time spent outside
class – play, meals, etc. – is as important for the education of these children as the time
spent in class; our’s is now an up-to-date oral school and in consequence the children
must be kept speaking at all times, and not allowed to use sign language. This work is
done by a qualified matron. She would have to be included in the recognised staff, as
well as a Principal and a Vice Principal.
15.15 A report for the Department of Education in 1952 noted that there were 177 pupils in the school
aged between four and 18 years. The staff consisted of six nuns and six lay teachers who were
assisted by five deaf adults. Two of the nuns were fully trained as teachers of the deaf and
the remaining staff members had experience in teaching the deaf but their qualifications were
‘approximate to the qualification of untrained teachers’. The report commented that the premises
and equipment were excellent and ‘that the whole direction shows an enthusiasm, vision and
progressiveness which should make the institution a model not alone for this but for other
countries’. The Department felt that a staff of 12 teachers would be needed for the recognition of
the school together with a new set of minimum qualification requirements for teachers, assistants
and Principals. The teacher pupil ratio was to be 14:1. The Department sought the approval of
the Department of Finance for these proposals on 1st August 1952.
15.16 The Dominican Sisters generally accepted the Department’s proposals, but they were concerned
about the high pupil–teacher ratio. In a letter to the Department of 17th September 1952, Sr
McEvoy pointed out that there should only be a maximum of 10 deaf children to one teacher in a
class. She asserted that this was a ‘matter of universal experience’. She also took issue with the
Department treating them as a national school and reminded them that the Sisters had never at
any time applied for recognition as a national school and stated that they had ‘declined to do so
for many years, because we believe that many of the Department’s regulations for National
Schools are incompatible with the proper running of a residential school for deaf children’. She
again reminded the Department that ‘Our application was for recognition as a special school, and
we understood before making the application that your Department had initiated a scheme for
special schools’.
15.17 In 1955, the Department of Finance sanctioned the pupil teacher ratio for the school at 10 pupils
to one teacher which was to be calculated on the basis of the number of children ‘in average
attendance’ in a year. On 27th January 1960 the Department of Education wrote to the Department
of Finance seeking to change the requirement of staffing levels based on the number of children
in attendance in a year to the number of children enrolled in the school in any given year. The
reason was that the numbers of children in attendance often fluctuated due to illness and
hospitalisation. The Department also pointed out in this letter that:
...The authorities of the Department of Education of the Deaf at Manchester University
have been reported as being of opinion that St. Mary’s is one of the leading schools for
deaf in the world and that there are only two others – one in Holland and the other in
America – to compare with it.
15.18 The Department of Finance refused the request and stated that the staffing levels in the school
were ‘already liberal comparing favourably even with the special quotas for other categories of
handicapped children...’. The Department of Education replied by letter dated 1st March 1960 and
argued that the only correct basis of comparison of staffing levels could be made with deaf schools
in other countries and not with other special schools. They pointed out that in deaf schools in
England there was one teacher to every eight students on the rolls and such a similar basis
operated in the United States. In English deaf schools, children were not removed from the school
rolls even when they were in hospital, unlike their Irish counterparts who had to remove their
names from the rolls when in hospital. On 22nd March 1960, the Department of Finance
capitulated.
15.19 School Inspection Reports show that in 1985 the average number of pupils in each class was
between seven and eight. In 1986 the pupil teacher ratio was 6:1.
Post-primary education
15.20 In the late 1950s the School began providing secondary education. At that time the number of
students was quite small and the School was able to meet the needs of these students either
within the primary staff quota or with minimal extra teachers. It operated along the lines of the
secondary top model where primary teachers taught primary classes in the mornings and taught
various subjects to students for the Intermediate and Leaving Certificates in the afternoons. From
the mid-1960s the demand for post-primary education grew. The School responded to the demand
by employing more teachers. The Department of Education was not directly involved with the
provision of post-primary education and it was only with the publication of the 1965 Report on
Mental Handicap that the State gradually became more involved not only in the provision of special
schools and services for the learning disabled but also in the areas of education of the deaf and
the blind.
15.21 A Departmental Committee was set up to review the education of hearing-impaired children and
it began its work in the late 1960s. The Committee’s report, the first official Irish Government
report on the subject, was published in 1972.
15.22 The report made some general recommendations about the desirability of the two Cabra schools
co-operating in the provision of services. The Principal of St Joseph’s at the time who was a
member of the Committee dissented from the opinions of the rest of the group on the question of
co-operation. Although, some attempts at co-operation were made during the 1970s, no significant
developments occurred. By 1989, 24 full-time permanent teachers were employed in the post-
primary section of St Mary’s even though the post-primary section of the school did not have
official status as a proper post-primary school. Technically and administratively the school
operated as a special national school for the hearing impaired with a post-primary facility.
15.23 The Department were anxious that serious consideration be given to the amalgamation of both
schools at least at post-primary level. In their view, the post-primary sections of both schools were
overstaffed and not understaffed as contended by both school principals.
15.24 In correspondence between the Department of Education Special Schools section and the
Manager of St Mary’s commencing in February 1965, the Sisters pressed the Department to
sanction an extra teacher and a financial contribution towards the cost of a prefabricated building
in which they proposed to establish a special class for emotionally disturbed deaf girls. The
Department had no objection in principle to this proposal provided the staff pupil ratio was
maintained at agreed levels.

Nature of allegations
15.25 The complainants’ statements alleged physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and emotional
abuse.
15.26 Twenty complainants alleged excessive corporal punishment by nuns, teachers and lay staff using
a variety of implements. The complaints included allegations of punishment for using sign
language by being slapped and having hands tied behind the back.
15.27 Allegations were made of sexual abuse by visiting priests and the Congregation admitted that
such an allegation was made against a priest, who left shortly after that and never returned.
15.28 Nineteen complainants alleged neglect in respect of one or more of the following: education, food,
accommodation and medical care.
15.29 All of the complainants alleged emotional abuse in respect of prevention of use of sign language,
segregation from other children based on hearing impairment, fear, bullying or humiliation.
Response of the Dominican Sisters

15.30 In their respondent statements, the Dominican Sisters stated the following in general terms:
• They accepted that corporal punishment was used but denied that children were
‘beaten’.
• They stated that Oralism was the preferred option from 1947 and that signing was
discouraged.
• They denied that a child was physically punished for signing but accepted that a child
may have been slapped if they persisted.
• They did not respond to specific allegations of abuse against individuals due to the
passage of time which they contended made it prejudicial to them.
15.31 The Department of Education decided in 1990 that their policy should be pragmatic and flexible
and open to all aspects of education of the deaf including the communication issue. They decided
they would have a caring and flexible system of education of every deaf child from an early age
and certain modes of communication should not be seen as mutually exclusive or as having
inherent or distinct qualities which made them better than others. Special schools should be
encouraged to base their methods on real needs of the children not on any particular approach
to the education of the deaf. Regular reviews of programmes of work and individual progress
would be undertaken. With regard to post-primary education the Department saw the way forward
to amalgamate St Mary’s and St Joseph’s in Cabra into a single community-type post-primary
school.

Chapter 16
Mary Immaculate School for Deaf

Children
Introduction
Background
16.01 In July 1955, at the request of the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid, the
Provincial Superior of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross of Liege, met officials from
the Department of Education with a proposal to establish a school for deaf boys aged between
three and 10 years in Beechpark, Stillorgan, County Dublin.
16.02 These proposals were subsequently formalised in a letter from the Provincial Superior to the
Department of Education seeking recognition of Beechpark, Stillorgan as a residential school for
deaf boys between the ages of three and 10 years.
16.03 The Department having obtained the necessary sanction from the Department of Finance gave
recognition to the School on the basis of the Congregation’s proposals on 10th April 1956. The
School was named ‘Mary Immaculate School for Deaf Boys’. The School patron was the
Archbishop of Dublin and it was owned and managed by the Congregation of the Daughters of
the Cross of Liege. The School closed in 1998 due to lack of pupils.
16.04 The property in Stillorgan had been purchased by the Sisters for the purposes of opening a school
for deaf children. However, the property was in a state of disrepair and needed work done so, in
the interim, the School operated from St Gabriel’s Hospital in Cabinteely.
16.05 It appears that the impetus for such a school came from some parents of profoundly deaf children,
who approached the Archbishop, seeking the establishment of a school for younger children, as
St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys in Cabra run by the Christian Brothers only took boys from the
age of seven years upwards. St Mary’s in Cabra run by the Dominican Sisters only catered for
deaf girls.
16.06 The School was recognised as a special national school. It catered for profoundly deaf boys
between the ages of six to nine years and served as a preparatory school for St Joseph’s School
for Deaf Boys in Cabra.

Original residential school and school between 1956 and 1962.
The school from 1962.

The Investigation
16.07 The Investigation Committee was unable to conduct a full hearing into this institution. The principal
difficulty was in obtaining statements of complainant witnesses. Protracted correspondence and
discussion failed to produce agreement as to arrangements for taking statements that would be
considered satisfactory. Twenty-one complaints were made to the Investigation Committee and
20 written statements were furnished. The legal team interviewed all the complainants.
16.08 The result is that the investigation into the School was confined to a review of the discovered
material produced by the Department of Education and Science, the Congregation of the
Daughters of the Cross of Liege, the Garda Sı́ochana, the Archbishop of Dublin and the
statements furnished. The discovered material was limited in nature. A review of the discovery
documents furnished did not provide any contemporary evidence to substantiate complaints. The
school log, which was carefully maintained, recorded activities and outings. Progress reports on
the children were maintained. The reports of the Department of Education Inspectors on the
teachers were satisfactory. There are no records of complaints by parents to either the School or
the Department of Education.
16.09 A Garda Investigation into allegations of sexual and physical abuse at Beechpark was carried out
in 2001/2002 but the Investigation Committee received information from the Chief State Solicitor’s
Office that no file was sent to the DPP as the allegations concerned common assault and were
statute barred.
Education
16.10 The school followed a primary school curriculum with emphasis on speech, lip reading and the
acquisition of language.
16.11 The policy in Ireland at the time was to teach children through the ‘oral/ aural’ method which was
widely used throughout Europe for the education of the deaf.
16.12 The Congregation accepted that Oralism had its critics and did not suit every child in the school.
They say that if a child was struggling, an assessment conference was convened and a decision
made as to how to cater for the needs of the child. Complainants alleged that children were
punished and beaten for using sign language. In their Statement the Congregation stated that
children were not beaten for signing. They accepted that children were discouraged from signing
and may have got a slap on the hand and/or been reprimanded verbally for doing so.
Nature of the allegations

16.13 Twenty statements of complaint were furnished by the complainants. Allegations were made
against six members of the Congregation and two members of the lay staff. The school opened
in 1956 and closed in 1998 and the complaints span most of that period.
16.14 Sr Ernesta1 occupied a senior position in Beechpark for nearly one-third of its existence. She was
described as a very strict authoritarian nun. She enforced the rule against signing and it was
alleged that she slapped children who signed. The complainants also said that their education
suffered because of the enforcement of Oralism.
16.15 All of the complainants who were present during Sr Ernesta’s regime described being lined up in
the morning to go to the toilet and expected to ‘perform on demand’ and were punished if they
1

did not do so. Many of them complained of being given laxatives for this purpose. This routine
was carried out every day and the children did not have privacy with regard to their toilet routine.
16.16 A number of the complainants described the food as poor and basic and that they were forced to
eat it. A number of complainants stated that the food was fine, much like home-cooked food, and
they could ask for extra helpings.
16.17 Five other nuns were criticised, but most complaints were about Sr Ernesta. She was the nun
who slapped for signing, enforced the toilet regime and force fed those who would not eat. She
slept near the dormitories and supervised the children at night.
Response of the Congregation to the allegations

16.18 The Congregation acknowledged that the School followed the oral/aural method of teaching the
deaf. This they said was considered at the time the best way to educate the deaf. Consequently,
the children were discouraged from signing and may have got a slap on the hand and/or been
reprimanded verbally for doing so. They do not accept that children were beaten for signing.
16.19 They accepted that between the years 1961 and 1971 there was a ‘toileting routine’ in the morning.
They do not accept that the children were punished or humiliated or made the object of public
derision during this ‘toileting’ process. They acknowledged that some children may have
unconsciously been worried about it. They accepted that today this routine would not be
considered ‘best practice’, but in the late 1950s and in the 1960s it was not questioned. It ceased
in 1971 when the children were divided into smaller groups. The Congregation stated that as a
general rule laxatives were not arbitrarily given to any pupil, only when necessary if it was
considered a child was constipated. This was done under the supervision of the school nurse who
liaised with the school doctor.
16.20 The Congregation stated that the food was wholesome and plain but in the early years it did not
have the variety that was available from the 1970s. They believed that children were well
nourished and did not accept that children were force fed.
16.21 The Congregation acknowledged that Sisters carried keys for safety reasons from the late 1970s.
Prior to that, the keys were hung high over the doors. They accepted that a Sister might have had
a key in her hand while trying to get the attention of a profoundly deaf child who may on a rare
occasion ‘have got a tip of a key on the back of his hand to gain his attention’. They accepted
that this could be painful and not ‘good practice’ and may remain in the memory of the person
concerned. They denied that keys were used to deliberately hit the children.
16.22 The Congregation supported Sr Ernesta in denying allegations that she beat the children or hit
them with a stick or ruler. The School was small and the staff were a closely knit community. If
she had beaten the children, Sr Ernesta would have been reported to the Manager of the school
for mistreating pupils and abusing her position as Principal. Rules and regulations were necessary
even if they appear harsh and unreasonable by the standards of today. Changes were made
during 1971 which led to a more lenient regime. Most of this forward thinking and planning was
the ‘brain child’ of Sr Ernesta.

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Chapter 1

Institute of Charity: St Patrick’s,

Committee’s investigation into Upton and Ferryhouse

1.18 Fr O’Reilly at the public hearing referred to this apology:

The management system and staffing

1.36 Fr O’Reilly told the Investigation Committee:

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 5

Selection and training of the Prefect

The evidence of former Prefects to the Investigation Committee

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 7

The Rosminian approach to allegations of abuse in Ferryhouse and Upton

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 9

The leather straps

10 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

1.70 Without coins, the strap weighed 11oz (311grms).

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 11

St. Patrick’s Industrial School, Upton

The original building

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 13

Closure of the School

Number of boys in Upton

Year Number of boys committed

Number of Children Under Detention in Upton

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 15

Concessions made by the Rosminians

The role of Prefect

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 17

18 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

2.39 When asked whether he found a ‘different way’, he replied:

Documentary evidence – the punishment books

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 19

The 1952 to 1963 book

Contents of the punishment books

20 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

Date Offence Punishment

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 21

Date Offence Punishment

19 Sept 1954 Immorality – wretched 20 over pants [each]

19 Sept 1955 Immorality – wretched, yet not 20 over pants

19 Sept 1955 Immorality – not so extensive 15 over pants

19 Sept 1955 Bad conduct – immorality 10 over pants [each]

19 Sept 1955 Immoral talk 3 over pants [each]

28 Sept 1956 Immorality [2 boys] 4 over pants and

31 Jan 1959 Immorality under the eyes of 10 over pants [each]

04 Mar 1960 Immorality with others 10 over pants

08 Mar 1960 Immorality with others [2 boys] 10 over pants each

04 April 1960 Immorality with others 10 over pants

9 Jan 1962 Immorality with others while 20 over pants

22 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

Impact of 1952–1963 book

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 23

2.69 One former resident was asked to describe Br Alfonso. He said:

The letter of Br Giovani

Evidence of complainant witnesses

26 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 27

28 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

Internal survey carried out by the Rosminians

CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II 29

Conclusions on physical abuse

Order’s approach to allegations of sexual abuse

30 CICA Investigation Committee Report Vol. II

The Rome archive