UPDATE 2:
It strikes me that one of the factors to be remembered in trying to bring the Irish industrial and reformatory schools into perspective is that at that time there was a huge number of children in Ireland. This has not been mentioned in media coverage of the abuse scandal as far as I know – yet another instance of the media’s failure to provide perspective. The positivism of the report and its lack of a moral, legal and historical interpretative framework are compounded in the media coverage, which has set off a firestorm of delirious and nihilistic rage against the Church in general. But in fact Irish society as a whole was fully complicit in the rough way the inmates of these institutions were handled and in creating the conditions in which even the extreme forms of abuse chronicled in the Ryan Report become predictable.
A family of 8 would be quite normal at that time, and numbers such as 13 or 16 were not unknown. Many children were given in summary charge to foster-mothers. The country was very poor, and children and their education had to be processed cheaply. A vast army of unmarried men and women were drafted for this purpose, and generally they did a remarkable job.
Artificial contraception and abortion were unknown in that society. Redemptorist priests at the annual missions focused on coitus interruptus as the mortal sin their hearers were most likely to be committing.
Adults had to emigrate in droves. It is no wonder that some children were placed in institutions that were grim places (though not gulags devoted to systematic torture, rape and slavery as the journalists are telling us). The deep injury done those children begins with the fact that they were unwanted.
‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’
UPDATE 1: I am feeling that we have witnessed one of the most disgraceful weeks in the annals of Irish journalism. No journalist seems to have studied the Ryan report in depth. Lazy repetition of the most lurid details and lots of soapbox oratory replaced the journalists’ duty to provide critical perspective.
The report focuses primarily on a small number of Industrial and Reformatory schools, maintained by the Irish State because they were cheaper than what Britain in the same period had got around to providing for children (brothers and nuns providing cheap personnel). 161 other schools and institutions were also examined, and of these schools the report has limited criticisms to make. The vast majority of Irish schools lie outside the bounds of the report. The abuse reported by many witnesses was the usual effect of orphanage institutionalization:
Many witnesses described losing their sense of family and identity when placed in out-of-home care, they reported that separation from siblings and deprivation of family contact was abusive and contributed to difficulties reintegrating with their family of origin when they left care. Witnesses reported emotional abuse in institutions, foster care and schools when they were deprived of affection, secure relationships and were exposed to personal denigration, fear and threats of harm. When witnesses left care the failure to provide them with personal and family records contributed to disadvantage in later life. Many witnesses spent years searching for information to establish their identity.’
I notice that the report was produced by 79 women and 21 men. We are being treated to the viewpoint of sensitive 21st century women on the harsh conditions of Ireland in the 1950s. I believe that people at the time were better able to distinguish between real and grave abuse and the general harshness that was thought good for children, which is why the schools with the worst conditions were shut down.
7.14 In the years leading up to the closure [of Artane in 1969], and particularly during the late 1960s, there was a dramatic decline in the number of children who would potentially have made up the population of industrial schools. Legal adoption, fostering and boarding-out were among the principal reasons for the decline. In addition, attitudes of the public and a number of State officials had become unsympathetic to industrial schools as a means of caring for deprived children. Improvements in economic and social conditions and benefits also contributed.
Much of the report has more to do with lazy mismanagement, primitive conditions, the tyranny of the shoestring, than with cruelty. A glimpse of the conditions prevailing at the time is found here:
7.33 The Brothers working in the Institution were not instructed in childcare. Their tuition was the teacher training for national schools which was provided by the Congregation at its own Marino training college. Brothers attended teacher training in Marino for one year and were then sent out to a Christian Brothers’ school for experience for a number of years, before returning to complete their second and final years. Many young Brothers were sent to Artane as their first posting in this interim period, when they were wholly unqualified to care for children and had completed only half of their course as teachers. The Investigation Committee heard evidence from former members of staff of Artane that they were shocked by their first experience and overwhelmed by the scale of the task imposed on them.
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.717 By 1966, the number of boys of sub-normal ability had increased to the point where it was becoming an acute problem. The Christian Brothers were critical of the Department’s policy of directing these boys to Artane when the Institution did not have the specialised facilities to deal with these children.
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7.218 A total of 26 Brothers who had served in Artane gave evidence to the Investigation Committee. From their testimony, certain facts emerged about which there was no disagreement. These included:
· All the Brothers were issued with a leather strap when they arrived at the School and most of them carried it with them.
· All of them were allowed to administer corporal punishment for minor offences, yet nowhere was it set out in clear, unequivocal terms what a minor offence was. They all said that punishment was left to their judgment.
· A combination of immaturity, overwork, long hours, isolation and lack of proper supervision led to severe strain and exhaustion.
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7.223 Br Yves, who was in Artane for two years in the 1960s, agreed that he punished boys to excess, and now regretted it: ‘That’s a fair comment. When I went there I was twenty years of age, I was just out of first year training college. It was for me a baptism of fire to go into that kind of situation. I had no experience much as a teacher... If I was severe, and I was severe, it was my way of coping, and, you know, to those boys that I punished severely, I am exceedingly sorry.’
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The accounts of abuse of corporal punishment can hardly be regarded as revelations; one heard such tales even as a child. It should be noted that the order was aware of the problem and made some efforts to curb it:
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7.224 He [Br Yves] remembered being reprimanded by the principal of the School for beating a boy too harshly, and toned down his severity accordingly.
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7.66 Br Noonan was Superior General of the Congregation from 1930 to 1949. He was anxious to reduce the reliance on corporal punishment and he admonished those who were intemperate in its use. There are some grounds for believing he did keep down its excessive use during his tenure of office. Letters written by him make it clear that the management of the Congregation knew excessive and frequent use of corporal punishment was a problem from the beginning of the period of this inquiry.
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7.67 A Visitation Report in the early 1930s described an extraordinary penalty imposed on a Brother in the refectory: ‘Br Sebastien erred on two occasions in punishing boys severely. The Superior reproved him publicly and ordered him to make a public apology, on his knees in the Refectory ... Br Sebastien was honestly penitent and determined to amend. Indeed he is on the whole a good young Brother.’
..
7.232 In the course of interviewing members of the Christian Brothers who worked previously at Artane Industrial School a picture of a particularly brutal form of discipline emerged. It seemed that many of the Brothers who came to Artane to teach, did so as relatively young Brothers, often indeed Artane was their first mission. As such they seem to have been both equally enthusiastic and inexperienced and were highly influenced by the views of the School expressed to them by Brothers who had been there longer than themselves. Nearly all of the Brothers that I interviewed told me that it had been explained to them by senior Brothers at Artane Industrial School that the boys would not respect a Brother who did not discipline them extremely severely, and that a Brother who would not deal out such punishment would soon become know to the boys as a “Silly Brother” – it was not clear whether there was any sexual connotation in such a nickname. One Brother related an incident where his fellow Brothers had burst into applause when he entered a room where they were, as it had been learned that he had punished one of his pupils by punching him in the face – previously he had not dealt out such harsh punishment. Another Brother recalled holding a colleague’s soutane while he beat a pupil with his fists round a handball alley – the location having been chosen so that the only path of escape for the boy was past the Brother who was meeting out the punishment. It is my conclusion that unofficially at least, a system existed in Artane Industrial School of inflicting unusually brutal punishment on pupils, that such a system was tacitly sanctioned by the more senior Brothers at the School, and that this unofficial code of discipline made it inevitable that the physical abuse of pupils at Artane Industrial School would occur. Several Brothers relayed stories of occasions on which fellow Brothers had “snapped” and had punished a pupil excessively. The actions of the subjects of these stories were always termed as being entirely out of character. It seems to me however that the level of ordinary punishment in the school was so extreme, that when Brothers punished their pupils in an excessive manner, such punishment was inevitably of the most brutal kind. The reluctance of the school to properly investigate and deal with any allegations of physical abuse, or even to report the injury of pupils to parents or the Dept. of Education, ensured that such a system would persist.
This last paragraph is from a report composed for the Christian Brothers by a Mr Dunleavy, and it shows that a kind of macho mentality was endemic among the staff. But note that this attitude would not have been all that abnormal or perverted in a society in which the corporal punishment regime was very popular. Corporal punishment was the backbone of Irish education, thought to be the necesssary instrument for the Brothers’ transformation of dockers into doctors, peasants into petits bourgeois. No one dreamed of calling for its abolition. No pupil would ever think of questioning it in principle, though he might complain of particular forms of its administration. Artane boys were inured to a more severe regime, but all pupils were insured to some degree of punishment. In general, the conclusions about physical punishment in Artane are unsurprising:
7.3111. Artane used frequent and severe corporal punishment to impose and enforce a regime of militaristic discipline.
2. Corporal punishment was systemic and pervasive. Management did nothing to prevent excessive and inappropriate punishment and boys and Brothers learnt to accept a high level of physical punishment as the norm.
3. Brothers used a variety of weapons and devised methods of increasing suffering when inflicting punishment, and in some cases they were cruel and even sadistic.
4. Brothers did not intervene to stop excessive punishment by colleagues, and there was a code of conduct between Brothers that prevented criticism of each other’s behaviour, even in cases where it was clearly extreme or excessive. All Brothers, therefore, became implicated in excesses.
5. Even where a child behaved and kept to the rules, he could still be beaten.
6. The result of arbitrary and excessive punishment was a climate of fear.
7. Artane did not operate within the Rules and Regulations for industrial schools and the precepts of the Christian Brothers concerning corporal punishment.
8. The absence of a punishment book in Artane was a disregard for a specific legal requirement intended for the protection of children. The Punishment Book was not maintained in Artane because the Christian Brothers chose not to maintain it.
9. The Department was also at fault in failing to ensure that the statutory punishment book was properly maintained and reviewed at every inspection.
10. The Department of Education failed in its supervisory role by maintaining a defensive and protective attitude towards the management and staff. Even when it conducted an investigation, the Department simply accepted Brothers’ explanations uncritically.
I imagine that no Christian Brothers school kept a punishement book; it was probably a bureaucratic paper requirement ignored in practice, and so hardly to be taken seriously as a binding statute. In point of fact, the investigators uncovered only two punishment books, kept for short periods of time, at St Patrick's Upton and St Joseph's Dundalk. This law was a dead letter, and harping on its non-observance does not help to establish perspective.
The Ryan report turns up a rather small amount of cases of sexual abuse, referring to 18 offending brothers for a span of 40 years.
Here is an interesting witness:
7.506 One witness who was in Artane in the 1940s described a sexual relationship with a Brother that he said was different from what happened with other Brothers. This relationship was a sexual affair with affection and reciprocity. It is scarcely necessary to add that it was a case of serious sexual abuse:
... I had sexual relations with him. That is the way I look at it. I will say the others abused me, but with him I would be kinder with the words because the man did look after he me, but I did do things with him that today people would stand up and scream about. But he was kind. He was probably the only person in my life up to that time. Probably the only person in my life up to that time that would give me a hug, look after me. Anyone, nobody could get to me. You know, he kept the others away. Monitors never reported me because they knew I would report them. Simple. He looked after me, I looked after him. As simple as that ... sexual abuse did take place. But at that time that was mine, I now know that it was wrong. But at the time, if he had asked me to eat his head, I would have eaten his head, as simple as that.
7.507 When it was suggested to him that this relationship appeared to form a large part of his memories of Artane, he replied:
It does, actually, because as I said, he was probably was the one person I loved at that point. I did love the man, you know. I know he done that, but I loved him. I have very fond memories of the man. But now I am 68.
7.508 In contrast, he named four other Brothers as having been sexually abusive of him. This complainant said that, at the same time that he was being sexually abused, the Brothers were emphasising the evils of sex:
They screamed about the dangers of badness and yet they were practising it on us.
The Ryan report considers the existence of one or even two sexual abusers on the staff of this huge school at one time as indicative of a chronic problem of sexual abuse. It seems to me that few boys’ boarding schools at any time or in any place would pass the test here applied.
7.5491. Sexual abuse by Brothers was a chronic problem in Artane. Brothers who served in Artane included firstly those who had previously been guilty of sexual abuse of boys, secondly those whose abuse was discovered while they worked in Artane and, thirdly some who were subsequently revealed to have abused boys. A timeline of the documented and admitted cases of sexual abuse shows that:
(a) For more than half of the 33 years under consideration, there was at least one such abuser working there;
(b) For more than one third of the years there were at least two abusers present;
(c) During one year in the 1940s there were seven such Brothers in Artane at the same time.
7.549.6. Cases and allegations of sexual abuse were not properly investigated; information was not shared in the Congregation; cases were not reported to the Department; and the Gardaí were not informed.
I suppose that would be the norm in all institutions and families at the time.
7. 549.14.The Congregation claimed in its Opening Statement that the impact of abuse on young boys was not properly understood at the time and that the response to the child was therefore inadequate. The reality is that the needs of abused children were not considered at all. It was not a case of insufficient understanding, but rather of giving priority to other concerns. For a Community of religious in loco parentis, this was a fundamental breach of their duty of care.
I suppose that at that time it was thought that sexually abused kids just ‘got over it’ – as in fact many do; the idea that all kids sexually molested or seduced by adults are ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’ was not known until very recently. The general neglect of the childrens’ emotional needs was a more pervasive problem, and again it is not a suprising revelation.
Artane was an abusive institution. But the portrayal of it as a sort of concentration camp for the rape and torture of children, presented by even so respected a newspaper as The Irish Times, is unjust and misleading. A mature critical reception of the Ryan report will be achieved when and if scholars and journalists study it in depth, and make an effort to locate its findings in the broader historical context.
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It seems that Ireland has been going through what might be called a theophanic moment during the last week. There is a concentrated collective experience of awed grief such as New York experienced after 9/11 or London after the death of Princess Diana. Questions probing deep into the past are affecting the entire nation, particularly the religious orders that ran a number of schools where grave, systemic abuse of children flourished. A moment of conversion and melting of hearts may be taking place. Nothing really new has surfaced. The facts were thrust in our face back in 1953 by a highly qualified judge, Fr Flanagan of Boys Town: http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/05/boys-town-founder-fr-flanagan-warned.html. We hunted him out of town! Sadly it is the post Vatican II Church of the newer, more open Ireland that is likely to pay for the sins of the closed Church and State of the 1950s.
We all want to have our good deeds remembered, our bad ones forgotten; but ‘the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’ In the interests of justice, we should not allow the revelations of the Ryan report, which are scalding Irish consciences, to blot out the memory of the great aspects of Irish education. Scattered among the enraged reactions are a series of testimonies from those who benefited from the dedicated work of teaching orders, such as the following letter (Irish Times, May 25):
Madam, – From the age of seven (1930) to 17 (1940) I was a boarder in a Christian Brothers-run Dublin orphanage after the death of my father in 1930. My mother died in 1938, having been left in poor circumstances after the death of my father.
During the years I was a boarder I was not abused in any way by the Christian Brothers and knew of no abuse of the approximately 100 other boarders.
I was given free board and lodgings; a good education to Leaving Cert standard. Facilities were made available for all who wished to avail of them to engage in Gaelic football and hurling; handball, outdoor parallel bars; outdoor tennis during summer months; table-tennis for indoor amusement, and every effort was made to occupy us during summer holidays (for those without a home to go to) including occasional day excursions in CIÉ buses to places of interest within reasonable distance of Dublin. As anyone will tell you, looking after 100 lively boys required discipline but, in my experience, any discipline (eg slaps with a leather) was administered without excessive severity. I speak from personal experience.
The education given so generously was first class and some Brothers gave special classes in their own free time to bright children to help them sit for scholarships.
When schooldays were over, the Brothers worked might-and-main to secure employment for school leavers. They even provided a hostel in the grounds of the orphanage where low-paid ex-boarders were accommodated until they found their feet.
I will always be grateful to them for the help they gave me and my brother at an extremely difficult time, and the peace of mind they gave my mother in the last few years of her life. So please don’t tar all these fine men with the same brush. – Yours, etc,
DONAL KAVANAGH, Dublin 12.
Some regard such letters as whitewashing and as betrayal of the victims of abuse. But in moments of mass conviction it is important not to silence the voices that introduced complementary perspectives. The silencing of such voices in the aftermath of 9/11 led directly to the horrors of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is very easy to move from justified anger and compassion to the excesses of a witch-hunt or a revenge mentality.
My school, the North Monastery, Cork, was a well-run school, and the Brothers devoted their free time to organizing sports, excursions, pageants, debates, concerts, bands, summer schools in the Irish-speaking area of West Cork, even an ecumenical meeting with a Church of Ireland school. These men led Spartan lives and most of them conveyed a sense of idealism that they passed on to their pupils. This had a very wholesome impact on Irish life.
As teachers the Brothers had the gift of making us study and actually acquire knowledge — something rare in contemporary education. We spent thousands of hours poring over classical English, Irish and Latin poetry and prose — a privilege more with-it curricula no longer accord — and the amount of maths, math-physics, physics and chemistry absorbed then — and now entirely lost — boggles the mind. It is true that students with learning disabilities or incapacity for Irish were sometimes badly handled. Corporal punishment allowed some loutish teachers to use the stick too freely.
The same story is told by countless Christian Brothers’ products, such as Archbishop Vincent Nichols. The discipline of these schools was not cruel or brutal, and it led to real scholastic success. In France today teachers are physically assaulted by pupils to the point of hospitalization; should they touch a student in self-defence they would face a legal calvary; there are psychiatric clinics in the Paris area for stressed-out teachers. Of course nothing can be learned in such an environment. The Brothers had no such problems and they took the task of education seriously.
Damian Thompson writes: 'I was educated by Irish brothers (not Christian Brothers), most of them lovely men. Some of their predecessors may have been violent and ignorant, but not one of the brothers who taught me fitted that description. Their order once ran some brutal institutions in Ireland, and it will take courage for my old teachers to face up to the inevitable besmirching of their reputation and the wiping out - in the eyes of the public - of so much of their own good work. Which is precisely what Archbishop Vincent Nichols said last week.'
It is argued that even the good Brothers were really bad, because they turned a blind eye to the abuses in Artane, as did Irish society as a whole. But perhaps the closing down of Artane had something to do with the disgust of people within the Brothers’ ranks? The rights and wrongs of the matter are beyond me, but I think most Irish people will think twice before condemning lock, stock and barrel the foremost educators of the nation.
In those days certain schools were thought of more as punitive jails than as schools, and it is chiefly with these that the Ryan report is concerned. We dumped a considerable number of children in industrial schools, and thought it natural that they would be treated with Dickensian rigor. Those were harsh times. I don’t know how many of the 216 schools examined by Ryan were gravely abusive; the report only names about 20, and not all of these 20 are found guilty of serious or systematic abuse. Someone said the report names 800 abusers -- but I do not think this can refer to actionable criminal abuse. Typical Irish mismanagement is a large part of the problem and it is still going on, especially in the handling of children in care and psychiatric patients.
Does Ryan prove that the Church is ‘a toxic, anti-human juggernaut institution’ (Ed Gleason, in the Commonweal combox)? Have today’s priests and bishops thus lost all authority? This seems to me a wild extrapolation. As well say that Irish parents in general are discredited because so many of them abandoned their children to institutions in the past. Yet again we are seeing nihilistic destructiveness and self-destructiveness replace patient work on improving the way we treat the vulnerable. Raging against the past, people are forgetting the great change in attitudes as Ireland opened up in the 1960s, matching a great change in the Church as John XXIII set about opening the windows of the Vatican.
As Seamus Hayden writes in the Irish Times, Sat. 30 May:
Madam, – Am I alone in finding my skin crawls as much from reading the overwhelming mass of letters from people baying for blood, as from reading the report on the abuse of children? All we need, surely, is a guillotine standing in front of us and a basket of knitting needles to go round.
Terrible as it certainly was, we were all part of it. As a society, we failed to challenge those who dictated their “truth” to us. Just as, today, we fail to challenge adequately those politicians, bankers and developers who have equally abused us as a people with their dogma. Do you think none of them have indulged in perversion?
I am one of many lucky people who, despite getting the strap or the stick, got whatever education they have – a good one – from the Irish Christian Brothers.
I saw no sexual abuse, neither at the Christian Brothers’ school in Greystones, where I sat alongside former minister Michael Woods, nor at Synge Street Christian Brothers School where both of us subsequently went.
All I can do for those who suffered so grievously is listen to them and believe them. Small compensation, but, maybe, better than money. Those accused of abusing should certainly be brought to trial, individual by individual; as indeed should our corrupt politicians, lawyers and bankers.
My parents believed in the Republic, believed that all the children of the State should be treated equally, should be cherished. They didn’t have to tell us. We saw it in them daily. Let’s not tear apart a dream of a just society they, and so many like them, lived their lives for.
The coexistence of excellence and inhumanity had a lot to do with class. The Brothers shaped a burgeoning middle class that was grateful to its teachers and did not ask about the mistreatment of underprivileged boys from rough backgrounds. In Ireland today the same middle class complacency is probably covering over a lot of continuing neglect and abuse. Did the resurgent Irish middle classes make a holocaust of the underdogs left behind? Did something similar happen back in the time of the Famine in the 1840s?
Insane attitudes to sexuality that focused guilt on sexual feelings rather than on duty to others also contributed to the blindness of society. The whole country was in the grip of a Talibanesque psychosis on that score, leading to the incarceration of women in penitential convent laundries; on which see not Peter Mullan’s Hollywoodized version but the moving documentary “Sex in a cold climate” (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1732953937770017672).
The Christian Brothers were probably right to get the names of those accused of abuse suppressed (though blanket immunity is another matter). These are accusations, not proven verdicts (except in some cases), and the accused are often in their graves. That there was systematic abuse, or systemic abuse, is very clear, but injustices are surely done to many individuals in the report. Psychologists, criminal investigators and lawyers warn us that such reports are bound to contain many unfounded allegations or misremembered episodes, despite the clear outlines of the big picture.
Some reactions to the Ryan report have veered into what I would call nihilism, extrapolating from the disgusting abuse of children in a limited number of schools a blanket condemnation of the Irish Church and its educational institutions. The following remarks from a blogger on the Irish Times website will be found offensive by many, but they should prompt some critical reflection on the dangers of fomenting populist rage:
I was there. In an Irish orphanage in the 60’s.
I was absolutely NEVER badly treated. The nuns worked all day looking after hundreds of us abandoned .If money was offered for positive reports no doubt there’d be no shortage. Their dedication is being spat on by the ‘crucify’ brigade.
The government sanctioned corporal punishment in those years and it was practised with vigour in many ‘normal’ Irish homes and all state schools! Hypocrites today wringing hands and feigning ignorance! Any non-religious institution of the time would have been similar. Good and bad. They saved my life and countless thousands of others...
Stop the witch hunt and thank God the nuns and others were there to feed, clothe, wash and educate thousands and thousands of Ireland’s broken and unwanted. Some are projecting their psychological scars from that reality onto those who are not around to argue or defend themselves. Easy money.
I see a massive anti-Catholic, anti-religious bandwagon ‘let’s get stuck in’ attitude from those who were not there, not even in the country, and just delighted at an opportunity to attack the church. I was there, in an orphanage. It’s so unfair to the thousands of religious who are guilty of nothing but 24/7 dedication throughout their ‘working careers’, for which I’m sure they only received a stipend. May they Rest in Peace far from the ungrateful lynch mobs who are using up all the trees in the country to satisfy their anti- clerical frenzy. Get it into perspective... corporal punishment was the norm, there were very, very very many more good carers than bad, the government sanctioned the ‘control methods.’ I was only ‘abused’ physically and emotionally when I eventually ended up in a non-religious state school!
The emotional abuse was caused by those who abandoned us in these places..., not the overworked unpaid religious who were left to cope! The purveyors of ‘demonic clergy’ lynch mob rhetoric are obviously not interested in the thousands of kids who do not report being abused. I was one of those and in 6 years I saw none of the kinds of stuff being quoted in this report. Offering cash as ‘compensation’ should have been balanced with an offer of cash just for being there, even if you had nothing but good to report... like me!!
Is anybody listening? or is the lynch mentality too inviting? It was a hard time to grow up anywhere... Beating and humiliating kids was considered acceptable in state schools, and practised in many families. The majority of religious carers did their best in the historical context and have nothing to be ashamed of more than society as a whole at that time. They cared 24/7 for little or no reward and turned out thousands and thousands of abandoned Irish kids as good citizens. This is what they get for their life’s work. Get real out there. Can’t you see you’re being ‘worked’?
IF IT IS IMPORTANT TO PUT THE REGIMES OF PHYSICAL ABUSE IN PERSPECTIVE, THIS IS EVEN MORE DELICATE AND DIFFICULT IN THE CASE OF SEXUAL ABUSE. IN THE ROSMINIAN SCHOOL AT FERRYHOUSE, FOR EXAMPLE, A SINGLE RAPIST, "BR BRUNO," IS THE PRIME EXAMPLE IN THE REPORT AND THE REACTION TO THE SCHOOL TO HIS DISCOVERY MAY REFLECT THE COMMON ATTITUDE OF THE ROSMINIAN ORDER MORE TRULY. I SEE NO MENTION OF PRIESTS AS ABUSERS IN THIS SCHOOL, THOUGH THIS WAS CLAIMED ON THE "QUESTION AND ANSWER" PROGRAM.
FROM THE RYAN REPORT:
Sexual activity between boys
A documented case
7.522 A case in the early 1960s, that is documented in the records of the Department of Education, illustrated knowledge by the management of Artane about sexual activity among boys.
DOES SEXUAL ACTIVITY BETWEEN BOYS IN A BOARDING SCHOOL COUNT AS ABUSE? ON WHAT BASIS IS IT TAKEN UP FOR DISCUSSION IN THE REPORT?
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7.523 A former Artane boy, who was still under the supervision of the Resident Manager of Artane, was on remand in Marlborough House on a charge of indecent assault of a young girl. He had a frank conversation with the officer in charge about his sexual history and proclivities. He went on to say that he had engaged in sexual activity with three other boys on several occasions during his time in Artane.
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7.524 The Superintendent notified the authorities in Artane, and the Resident Manager visited Marlborough House with a senior Brother to interview the boy. In a subsequent letter to the Department of Education, the Superintendent reported that the boy ‘admitted what he had done and gave the names of the other boys whom he committed offences with in Artane’.
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ON WHAT BASIS IS THE BOYS' BEHAVIOR WITH SCHOOLMATES CONSIDERED AN 'OFFENSE'? WAS THE BASIS THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL LAWS OF THE TIME, RESCINDED IN 1993? THE RYAN REPORT SEEMS TO APPROVE AN INVASION OF BOYS' PRIVACY IN THE NAME OF A LAW WE WOULD NOW SEE AS ABUSIVE. SHOULD THE REPORT NOT MAKE A BETTER EFFORT TO PROVIDE A WIDER MORAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUES HERE?
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7.525 An internal memorandum in the Department expressed:
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very grave concern and particularly so in the case of the underprivileged children who were sent to Artane by the Courts. It is also suggested that Dr McCabe enquire from the Resident Manager whether he has traced the extent of this practice in the school and what are his proposals for dealing with the situation.
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7.526 The following month, Dr McCabe reported her interview with the Resident Manager of Artane. She first inquired about the boy who had at that stage been dealt with by the District Court, and she went on to ask about the three boys who had been implicated in sexual activity in Artane. She was told that ‘they have now left the school’. Dr McCabe then asked about the extent of the problem and what proposals the Resident Manager had for dealing with it. She noted:
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I then inquired about the supervision carried out and as far as is reasonably sensible it appears to be well done – but as the Brother intimated to me when boys are so inclined if opportunity arises and temptation is there it is very difficult to be always on the qui vive. In fact the Superior said that to have a complete supervisory system the Brothers detailed for such work would need to have no other duties but as it is now the Superior is having to teach and perform various tasks. However, he is quite well alive to such moral dangers and as far as it is possible for him will see that strict supervision is enforced. He also reminded me that there are retreats at stated intervals each year and that the Chaplain is very interested in these boys and also the Superior gives a little talk in the Chapel at prayer time.
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7.527 The proceedings in the District Court were described by the Superintendent of Marlborough House in his letter to the Department:
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Rev Brother Leon was requested by Dist. Justice Price, B.L. to attend [the] Dist. Court ... and the Justice directed him, as being the legal guardian; to have arrangements made to have the boy committed to Grangegorman Mental Hospital, so that he could be subsequently transferred to Portrane Mental Hospital for treatment and the Justice further remanded [the boy] to Marlborough House until ... he was to appear at [another] Court ...
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... the boy again appeared before Dist. Justice Price [at the other] Court. Brother Leon again attended the Court and stated that no arrangements were made to have [the boy] committed to a mental hospital; so the Justice let the boy out on his own bail of £10 and made an Order that he was to be of good behaviour for 12 months; when he was discharged. The mother of the boy was not in Court at any time.
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IS IT CLEAR THAT SENDING THE YOUNG SEX OFFENDER TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL WAS NOT ITSELF ABUSIVE, GIVEN THE ATTITUDES TO SEX AT THE TIME? COULD NOT THE BROTHER WHO REFUSED TO COMPLY HAVE BEEN PROTECTING HIM FROM AN ABUSE? THE IMPRESSION THE REPORT GIVES IS THAT THE BROTHERS WERE INVOLVED IN OBSTRUCTIONISM, BUT MIGHT THERE NOT BE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW WE WOULD JUDGE THIS SITUATION NOW AND HOW IT WAS JUDGED THEN?
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7.528 The Resident Manager was inconsistent in what he told the Department of Education.
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7.529 The Manager first told Dr McCabe that the three boys had left the School. On a visit to the Department, the Resident Manager ‘stated that he did not know the identity of the boys as Bro. Leon who had handled the matter had since died but that he would find out and reply later’. It is not easy to understand how the Manager could have given that information to the Department because he was, after all, present at the interview with the boy in Marlborough House when the names of the boys were given. Furthermore, the manager had previously told Dr McCabe that the three boys had left the Institution, so at that point he must have known the names. Finally, the Manager wrote in response to a formal request sent two months earlier and gave two names, adding that one of them was still in the School and that the other had been discharged the previous year.
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THIS COULD BE READ AS MEANING THAT THE BROTHER WAS TRYING TO PROTECT THREE BOYS, GUILTY OF NOTHING MORE THAN HARMLESS SEX PLAY, FROM A BRUTAL INTERVENTION OF THE LAW, WHICH WOULD HAVE STRIPPED THEM OF PRIVACY, CRIMINALIZED THEM, AND POSSIBLY CONSIGNED THEM TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL. IN ITS DEADPAN ATTITUDE, THE RYAN REPORT SEEMS TO TAKE THE SIDE OF THE THEN LAW, EVEN WHEN ABUSIVE.
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7.530 In conclusion:
.
· The Department expressed concern about the revelation of sexual activity between boys in Artane, and asked Dr McCabe to inquire into the extent of the problem and the proposals for dealing with it. The Manager undertook to do no more than was already in place, which, by his own admission, was inadequate. The Department did not pursue the matter.
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THE DEPARTMENT SEEMS TO HAVE HAD A SUMMARY IDEA THAT SEXUAL ACTIVITY SHOULD JUST BE STAMPED OUT. OFFICIALLY, MASTURBATION ALSO WAS THOUGHT OF SOMETHING TO BE STAMPED OUT. GIVEN THE AFFECTIVE DEPRIVATION OF THESE BOYS AND THE CRUELTY AND ANXIETY THEY WERE OPPOSED TO, WOULD SUCH CRACKDOWNS NOT CONSTITUTE A FURTHER LAYER OF OPPRESSION? DOES THE RYAN REPORT APPROVE OF THEM?
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· The Resident Manager was inconsistent in the information gave to the Department, indicating a lack of respect for the Government officials who raised the matter with him.
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LACK OF RESPECT FOR A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, BY A BROTHER SEEKING TO PROTECT BOYS FROM STATE BRUTALIZATION, SEEMS TO TRUMP THE HUMANITY OF HIS PROBABLE MOTIVES, IN THE EYES OF THE REPORT.
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· This case indicated that there was a higher level of sexual activity in Artane than the authorities there were capable of dealing with.
· It is a matter of concern that no documentation relating to this matter survived in the records furnished by the Christian Brothers.
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WHAT SORT OF DOCUMENTATION DOES THE RYAN REPORT WANT? KEEPING RECORDS ON THE PRIVATE SEXUAL LIVES OF VULNERABLE YOUNG BOYS COULD HAVE ADDED A NEW DIMENSION OF REPRESSION TO THE SCHOOL LIFE.
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Another investigation
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7.531 Br Romain spoke about an investigation into sexual activity among boys that occurred during his time in Artane, during the late 1960s. He said that up to a dozen boys, who were all in the same domestic economy class, had complained of being sexually abused by older boys in the School. Br Jeoffroi, who was a young Brother in Artane at the time, instituted an investigation. The witness said that ‘everybody knew about it’, when asked whether the pupils and staff generally knew of this investigation. Br Jeoffroi interviewed all the boys but the witness was not in a position to give further information. He did not know if boys had been punished or not – he only remembered the fact of the investigation.
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Complainants’ evidence
.
7.532 Sexual activity between boys in Artane appears to have been a common feature during all of the relevant period. Part of this activity consisted of sexual abuse by older boys with younger boys, in this report referred to as ‘peer abuse’. Many complainant witnesses, however, were reluctant to discuss sex between boys generally, and particularly the question of peer abuse. Nevertheless, the Committee was satisfied on sufficient evidence and reasonable inference that both these features of sex between boys were present at all relevant times.
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WHY DID THE COMMITTEE THINK IT APPROPRIATE TO ASK SUCH QUESTIONS?
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7.533 A witness spoke about an unwelcome approach:
.
I was working in the tinsmiths and this boy attacked me and threw me on the floor and lay on top of me. At the time it was a sex act. I didn’t know it was a sex act at the time. Like I said, I never even saw my aunty’s ankles. Of course I didn’t know that, that’s what it was. That’s what he was doing. It was reported. When Br Cretien asked me, “yes, I was attacked”. He still gave me six, right on the hand, not anywhere else, directly on the hand. He said he had to punish both of us. That boy never came near me again. I believe he was punished again for other acts which he did to other boys.
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7.534 Another witness explained the reason for fearing becoming known as a sexually active boy:
.
You know, there was two things that you never did in Artane. One was you never touched another boy in a sexual area. Me personally never did anyway. Another thing is that you never told of it if it ever happened to you because then you’re open, you’re open season then. If you are open season that means the boys get you. So you don’t tell anybody, you keep your mouth shut and that’s it ... Nobody, except a priest. I told nobody. I am sure it happened to other boys and they told nobody either because you didn’t tell. You know, I mean, you were a soft touch then.
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7.535 A further witness was embarrassed about his sexual activity, even though it was by consent:
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Well, it is probably a bit embarrassing, but to be honest with you I was actually involved in that myself. It was just sort of playing around basically ... No, it wasn’t very frequent but it happened every now and then. But it was very common in Artane, it was very common that boys would be playing around with each other ... Most of the time, 99% of the time it would be a case of just two boys messing about.
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AGAIN, IS THIS THE SORT OF THING THAT THE RYAN REPORT SHOULD BE WORRYING ABOUT?
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7.536 He went on to comment on the Brothers’ awareness, and on the prevalence of one particular form of common sexual activity:
.
... you have got to appreciate in places like Artane, well it wasn’t very, very common but quite a lot of times boys would be masturbating each other. If another boy that wasn’t, you know, doing that would find out they would say it was badness.
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7.537 Another witness recalled an admonitory talk by a Brother:
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... and the Brother who was giving the speech, God knows who he was, turned around and says “right, we know what you boys are doing, you have got to stop it”. This Brother in particular said, “We found over 300 children playing with each other”. Now there was only about 450 in the school. We were all standing there listening and that and, I don’t know whether they ever stopped or not.
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7.538 A witness spoke of the enormous interest of the Brothers in ‘badness’ and the sin of impurity:
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Badness was the sin of impurity. They had the sixth commandment. I remember Br Jules used to say there is more people in hell because of the sixth commandment, the sin of impurity. They were absolutely bonkers on this. When we were growing up, young lads, 14, 15, you are getting feelings, you are getting wet dreams and things like that ...
.
As I say, they must have thought that must be one of the reasons of so called badness. It meant boys messing with one another, thought, word or deed or whatever. They regularly wanted to know if you spoke, swore, told bad jokes. They had a mania for this sort of thing.
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THE RYAN REPORT SEEMS UNABLE TO MAKE ANY STABLE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PEER ABUSE AND SHARED SEX EXPLORATION. IT SEEMS TO SHARE THE OFFICIAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE TIME THAT ADOLESCENT SEXUAL ACTIVITY IS 'BADNESS' AND IT INDICATES NO SYMPATHY WITH BROTHERS WHO WERE MOVING BEYOND THIS VICTORIAN AND JANSENISTIC ATTITUDE.
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Congregation’s approach to peer abuse
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7.539 The Congregation in its Opening Statement said that it was aware of the possibility of sexual abuse among the boys themselves. Precautionary measures were taken to ensure that such abuse did not occur, including careful supervision of the boys at all times but particularly in the dormitories. The Statement referred to a 1946 Visitation Report which expressed concern about the danger of a lack of proper control in the infirmary, on the grounds that failure to ‘exercise proper control over the boys who are confined there when convalescing ... may be a source of serious danger to their morals’. The Statement said that, although Brothers who worked in Artane confirmed that such abuse occurred, there was no documentary evidence available to the Congregation concerning individual cases of peer abuse. The only documented case of peer abuse appeared in records disclosed by the Department of Education and Science.
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Brothers’ awareness of peer abuse
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7.540 Brothers testified to their awareness of peer abuse, but their accounts differ as regards its prevalence, the Brothers’ obligation to look out for it, and the punishments meted out.
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7.541 One Brother, Br Saber, who was in Artane for 10 years in the mid-1940s and 1950s, spoke about his awareness of sexual abuse both involving boys with boys and Brothers with boys. However, he stated that there was no sexual activity during his time in the School, which he attributed to Br Tyce, the Resident Manager, and to the sodality.
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7.542 Br Boyce, who was in the Institution at around the same time, said that he was aware of the possibility of peer abuse, or ‘badness’ as it was known, but that he never came across it, and his knowledge of the subject came not from the Brothers but from overhearing boys’ conversations. He confirmed that he ordered the boys to sleep with their hands crossed, but said that it was nothing to do with masturbation, it was just the custom.
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IN ITS DEADPAN DISCUSSION OF MASTURBATION THE RYAN REPORT COULD SEEM TO BE COUNTENANCING THE IDEA THAT THIS TOO IS AN ABUSE TO BE REPRESSED.
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7.543 A Brother who was in Artane during the 1950s stated that he never heard of any type of untoward sexual activity, either amongst boys or staff, the possibility of boys masturbating was never mentioned and he never punished for it.
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THE RYAN REPORT DOES NOT MAKE CLEAR WHETHER IT WOULD REGARD SUCH PUNISHMENT AS ABUSIVE OR AS CORRECTING ABUSE.
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7.544 Br Laramie, who was also there in the 1950s, stated that he was aware of the term ‘badness’, which was code for sexual activity. He said that the boys and various religious magazines used the term. Although the Brothers were aware of the issue, he could not recall any specific incidents involving boys.
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7.545 Another Brother who was there throughout the 1950s said that he remembered the term ‘badness’ as referring to peer abuse and that all staff would have been aware of the term. Despite this, he said that he never encountered any incident of badness nor had to punish a boy for it. However, he was contradicted by a colleague who remembered having to punish a boy who had been referred to him by this Brother who insisted that punishment was necessary:
.
I was in charge and he reported to me that [the boy] was interfering with other boys and he kind of said to me you will have to do something about it. As I understood it then that when some boys were interfering with other boys, they would be punished and one of the punishments they would get would be on the backside with the leather. I wasn’t too keen on doing it, I had a certain reluctance about it. I didn’t do anything for a while. Then Br Gaspard came back to me again and told me that this was going on and that I had to do something about it. I just brought him to the boot room. My memory now, I am working from memory now and it is a long time ago, my memory is that he had his nightshirt on him, he bent down, I gave him three or four smacks of the leather on the – not on the bare backside and he ran out the door and I was glad to see him go.
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7.546 Despite having to mete out this punishment, his recollection was that sexual activity between boys ‘wasn’t a major crime’, although Brothers were told to be vigilant.
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DOES THE RYAN REPORT THINK IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SEEN AS 'A MAJOR CRIME'? ALTHOUGH THE RYAN REPORT FOUND ONLY 18 BROTHERS INVOLVED IN SEX ABUSE OVER A PERIOD OF 40 YEARS, IT SEEMS TO THINK THAT THE FAILURE OF THE BROTHERS TO STAMP DOWN EFFECTIVELY ON SEXUAL ACTIVITY BETWEEN THE BOYS IS TO BE DEPLORED, BECAUSE IT ALLOWED A CLIMATE IN WHICH BROTHERS, TOO, MIGHT INDULGE IN SUCH ACTIVITY.
RECALL THAT AT THAT TIME SEXUAL MISBEHAVIOR WITH MINORS FELL UNDER THE CATEGORY OF MORTAL SIN, EQUAL TO OTHER SEXUAL BEHAVIOR SUCH A MASTURBATION THAT WOULD NOT BE REGARDED IN SUCH A GRAVE LIGHT TODAY. MOREOVER, ADULT CONSENSUAL SEX WAS REGARDED AS CRIMINAL IN SOME CIRCUMSTANCES, AND THE LAW DID NOT STRESS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ILLEGAL SEX WITH MINORS AND ILLEGAL SEX WITH ADULTS. BOTH THEOLOGY AND THE LAW TENDED THUS IN PRACTICE TO MAKE SEXUAL OFFENSES WITH MINORS JUST A VARIETY OF SEXUAL OFFENSES IN GENERAL.
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7.547 A Brother who was in Artane in the 1950s stated:
.
We were always being alerted to be on the look out, to be a presence in places where the boys would be, and I think we did that to the best of our ability. But we would be aware that things happened and there were normal healthy young fellas at that time so we tried to be as protective as we could be in that area by being a presence around the place.
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We would have been alerted to be on the lookout, to be there, to be careful and to make sure that people are not injured in a situation like that, or that damage is done to them. So, that we would be there as a protection. It would have been—we would be, I suppose, on the alert and keep moving around and wherever.
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THE RYAN REPORT MAKES NO COMMENT HERE. SHOULD THE BROTHER'S REMARKS BE SEEN AS HUMANE AND SENSIBLE? COULD THE RYAN REPORT NOT DO MORE TO ESTABLISH A HUMANE AND SENSIBLE OUTLOOK ON ADOLESCENT AFFECTIVITY AND SEXUALITY AS THE FRAMEWORK OF ITS OBSERVATIONS?
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7.548 He said, however, that although the Brothers were aware of it, they would rarely talk about it. He denied that he would have discussed the matter with the boys in order to find out who was abusing whom, on the grounds that it was ‘none of my business’. He stated that if he became aware of an incident ‘I would have to hand that over to somebody at a higher authority level ... I would probably go to the Disciplinarian’.
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WOULD THE RYAN REPORT MAKE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEXUAL BULLYING AND OTHER SEXUAL ACTIVITY, OR WOULD IT THINK ALL BOYS FOUND TO BE SEXUALLY ACTIVE SHOULD BE SENT FOR PUNISHMENT?
MY SUSPICION IS THAT THE RYAN REPORT IS RADICALLY SKEWED IN ITS APPLICATION OF MORAL AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS. ON THE ONE HAND IT APPLIES THE MOST UP TO DATE NOTIONS OF CHILD CARE, EMOTIONAL SENSITIVITY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF CHILDREN TO A TIME WHEN EDUCATION WAS CARRIED ON IN A MORE PUNITIVE STYLE, WHICH WAS TAKEN AS NORMAL. ON THE OTHER HAND WHEN IT COMES TO SEXUAL PROBLEMS THE RYAN REPORT SEEMS FIRMLY INSTALLED IN THE REPRESSIVE DEMONIZATION OF ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY THAT IS EXPOSED BY MICHEL FOUCAULT IN THE FIRST VOLUME OF HIS 'HISTORY OF SEXUALITY.' SEE ALSO THE HUMANE REMARKS OF OTTO FENICHEL IN LOS ANGELES, 1938: http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=DlYVAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=fenichel+los+angeles+1938+masturbation&source=bl&ots=X07YD_uAVD&sig=ZV57y8peUYKGn2wAuN0oiylDSC4&hl=en&ei=oLQsSszgMtOIkQWV-_T0Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA83,M1
ISOLATED, SMALLER LETTERFRACK SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MORE OF A HELL-HOLE THAN ARTANE. THE HAVOC WROUGHT BY A FEW SADISTIC AND SEXUALLY ABUSIVE INDIVIDUALS WAS EXTENSIVE. THE CORRESPONDING SECTION ON LETTERFRACK IS CLEARER ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PEER ABUSE AND RELATIVELY INNOCUOUS SEXUAL PLAY:
Peer abuse and sexual activity between boys
8.462 The management of the School was under an obligation to ensure that children lived in a safe and secure environment. The failure to detect and prevent physical and sexual abuse constituted a clear failure to provide children with a safe and secure environment in which to live. In addition, the failure to prevent peer abuse by way of sexual bullying also represented a management failure.
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A MAJOR REASON FOR THIS WAS THE MONOCHROME 'MORALITY OF THE SACROSANCT SEMEN' (CONGAR) THAT CATEGORIZED ALL SEXUAL ACTIVITIES UNDER THE SAME HEADING OF MORTAL SIN (OR BROKEN VOWS). AS IN ISLAMIC COUNTRIES TODAY THE VICTIM OF A SEXUAL AGGRESSION WAS AS LIKELY TO BE PUNISHED AS THE PERPETRATOR.
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8.463 The Brothers inadequately understood the distinction between consensual sex and bullying, predatory sexual acts by bigger boys on smaller. This behaviour could be overtly violent and non-consensual, or implicitly non-consensual in the nature of assault because of the age difference or physical difference between the boys. Failure to protect boys from sexual assault constituted a serious management failure where it occurred.
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8.464 According to the Christian Brothers, a number of Brothers who taught in the School remembered occasions when sexual activity between the boys was discovered. The phenomenon of sexual activity of one kind or another amongst pupils in industrial schools was a feature of life in Letterfrack. The documentary material disclosed a number of instances of sexual activity in the 1930s and 1940s.
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8.465 In 1940, the Visitation Report referred to the fact that a number of boys were punished for improper conduct. This appears to have been discovered during the course of the investigation into Br Perryn. In 1941, the Visitation Report refers to the fact that:
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Unfortunately for years there has been much immorality among the boys. Onanism and Sodomy have been frequent, and these practices take place wherever the boys congregate, in the play field, lavatories, schools, kitchen and in the grounds. Formerly, the boys were allowed to go out by themselves and then the practices were frequent. Boys wandered away among the fields and roads and immoral practices were carried on.
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8.466 The Visitor stressed the importance of tight supervision as the only means of curtailing this activity. He noted that:
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A monitor is in charge though one of the monitors was recently carrying on immoral conduct with some of these juniors in the dormitory.
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8.467 He noted that the Superior had arranged that a Brother should take charge of the boys at all times.
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8.468 The issue arose again in 1945, in correspondence between Br Aubin and the Provincial, in which Br Aubin criticised the Disciplinarian, Br Maslin, in being overly severe in his punishment of the boys. This case has been discussed above and was a clear indication that sexual activity between boys was a persistent problem in Letterfrack at that time.
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8.469 One Brother told the Committee that, as Disciplinarian, he was aware of the problem of sexual activity. He said that he was instructed to guard the moral welfare of the boys and to prevent such behaviour. He understood that this was a danger to be guarded against in every boarding school. He came across a number of incidents of sex while in Letterfrack. One day, he saw the tailor leave his shop, so he went in and discovered two boys engaging in sexual activity.
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CLEARLY UPPERMOST IN THE BROTHERS' MINDS WAS THE QUESTION OF SEXUAL PURITY, NOT THE ISSUE OF ABUSE. THE RYAN REPORT SHOULD MAKE SOME DISTINCTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS HERE, ALSO TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE MENTAL FRAMEWORK OF THE TIME, WHICH IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF TODAY.
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8.470 He said that the Disciplinarian would be more aware of the sexual behaviour of the boys. The Resident Manager might have been informed by the Disciplinarian, but this knowledge was not often shared with the rest of the staff. The witness was philosophical in retrospect: ‘It is the fairly human failing boys, you could just expect that it would occur again and you just hoped it wouldn’t’.
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8.471 Another Brother said that, while he never actually witnessed any sexual contact between the boys, he did recall hearing Br Anatole giving the boys a lecture about the Devil’s work, which he presumed was peer abuse. He said that he often saw beds pulled together when he came in to wake the boys up but he never suspected anything untoward. He remembered Br Malleville telling him to be careful of one boy who was coming from Artane because he was a homosexual. He thinks in retrospect that he was telling him to make sure that boy wouldn’t be at the other boys. He did recall an incident where a boy approached him and told him that two boys were engaging in sexual activity.
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8.472 Br Sorel said that he was aware of the possibility of peer abuse. He recalled one incident where one boy tried to anally rape another boy. That boy reported the matter to Br Guillaume, who punished the offender in front of the other boys in the washroom. He feels that this beating ensured that the message got through to the boys that they were not to engage in such activity.
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WAS THE MESSAGE THAT GOT THROUGH ONE ABOUT THE EVIL OF ABUSE OR JUST THE ALREADY WELL-KNOWN MESSAGE ABOUT PURITY?
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8.473 Br Karel stated that, although the Brothers were aware of the possibility of sexual activity between boys occurring, he had not witnessed it:
.
Interfering with each other. Never in my time there did I see or did any of us observe an instance of that. It seemed to me, in my opinion, that that just didn’t happen there. If it did, I wasn’t aware of it and nobody else ever mentioned it to me.
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8.474 One complainant said that another 14-year-old boy sexually abused him. He was a big boy and he abused the witness on a regular basis for four years. The complainant said that he could do nothing except cry and let it happen. He never complained. The abuse only stopped when the other boy left the school. A number of other boys abused him as well, and he stated that he had a number of relationships with other boys when he got older:
.
I didn’t do what he did. I didn’t go around and attack and ambush kids or abuse them or rape them ... But what I am saying is I did have one or two – somebody I could talk or sit or read comics and we did have some sort of a – sort of a relationship ... I don’t know if I was 13, 14, 15, I don’t know. It is just, you know, there was one or two that you would play ball or games or roll around in the hay, you know, just things like that.
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8.475 Another witness said that Br Noreis would ask the boys to write down on a piece of paper the names of any boys who were engaging in sexual activity:
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He would bring them and sit them down on their desks. Everyone got a sheet of paper and a pencil and we were told to write down if we knew of any boys who had been, shall we say, sexually active with any other boy. Well, I always wrote the same thing down, I don’t know what you mean. This always went on a Saturday night. You always missed out on the cinema, because that was the one day that we had a movie. After all these boys had done whatever writing they were doing the paper was collected and we were all sent off to the dormitories, and for the rest of the night you could hear the screaming where boys who had misbehaved were dragged down in their night clothes and flogged by Br Noreis. That went on quite often.
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HERE WE SEE CLEARLY THAT A REPRESSIVE ATTITUDE TO THE BOYS' SEXUALITY, NO DOUBT WELL-INTENTIONED AND GUIDED BY THE MORAL LIGHTS OF THE TIME, BECAME VERY INTRUSIVE AND ABUSIVE, AND DISTRACTED ATTENTION FROM THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL BULLYING (PEER ABUSE).
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8.476,
- Peer sexual abuse was an element of the bullying and intimidation that were prevalent in Letterfrack and the Brothers failed to recognise it as a persistent problem.
They punished boys for sexual activity without recognising that younger boys might have been victims of abuse. Because they knew they faced punishment these victims did not report.
