IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Ryle Dwyer
THE Christian Brothers were in the news again this week in relation to a colleague who was apparently handy with his fists.
He got into trouble over assaulting children in Clonmel, so like the other misfits in the order, he was transferred to an industrial school where the children were unlikely to have any parents with clout in the community.
He continued his reign of terror in St Joseph’s in Tralee before he was sent to the Glin industrial school where he broke a boy’s jaw. He was then banished back to Tralee for six more years.
I grew up in Tralee where local boys essentially had no contact with the boys in the industrial school, known locally as the Monastery. We heard stories about their mistreatment. Most of us had no trouble believing those stories as a result of our own experiences of both physical and sexual abuse.