By Mark Tighe
The Sunday Times
May 23, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6350520.ece
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An inquiry has uncovered sadistic physical and sexual abuse of young boys
When Michael Viney, a journalist from The Irish Times, visited Letterfrack in 1966 as part of a series of articles examining industrial schools he found himself pleasantly surprised by what he saw.
“The boys looked healthy and well-dressed and were happily noisy and talkative,” he wrote. The school’s remoteness was his main concern.
“Given a traditional system, with all its crudities and imperfections, the present Letterfrack is not the worst place a boy could find himself, even if a Dublin lad, a long way from home, is apt to look askance at all those wild mountains and squelchy bogs.”
But such impressions were qualified by other observations. He wrote about the dilapidated buildings, the fact that not enough money seemed to be available for the children’s care and also how those in charge had no formal training.
More ominously, he said the institutions were “places of refuge for inadequate or misfit religious” who were “not the most suitable men to have the care of children”.
Viney has been singled out by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) for his pioneering series of articles that breached “the iron curtain” surrounding Catholic-run industrial schools.
But with all his close observations, Viney’s one hour visits to a few industrial schools were not enough to uncover the rampant child abuse that lay beneath the happy facade.
“I am glad I was a bit critical,” he said last week. “I wish to hell I had dug harder but I didn’t realise what there was to dig for.”
In truth, the Ireland of the 1960s had little interest in finding out how religious orders were treating the thousands of mainly working class children in their care. Viney’s series prompted just one reader’s letter and there was no follow-up.
“The word paedophile, I don’t know if it had been invented then,” he said.
His articles, the CICA report states, were met with “eerie silence from other Irish newspapers” and this “may reflect the absence of interest in the subject by the public”.
Last week, however, almost 10 years after it began its investigation, there was a a media stampede for copies of the five-volume report from the CICA.
The report reveals an avalanche of shocking facts about the endemic child abuse that took place in 50 industrial schools between 1936 and 1974. It confirms the horror stories told by those who attended the schools, stories which had generated public scepticism.
One of those schools was Letterfrack, a Christian Brothers-run institute that stands out in the five volumes of Judge Sean Ryan’s report.
Situated in Connemara on the west coast, the isolated school was home to the worst child abusers in the system. Three quarters of the boys in Letterfrack came from distant Leinster, a factor that “caused or exacerbated almost every difficulty”, the commission said.
“The isolated environment in Letterfrack nurtured an institutionalised culture separate from society and other institutions. It also led to another unforeseen problem: those people who chose to abuse boys physically and sexually were able to do so for longer periods of time, because they could escape detection and punishment by reason of the isolated environment in which they operated.”
For two thirds of the time covered by the report, Letterfrack housed at least one Christian Brother who sexually abused boys.
At the time of Viney’s 1966 visit, Letterfrack’s cook was Brother Maurice Tobin. In the report he is called “Brother Dax” because the commission decided not to identify any of those who had allegations made against them or those who made complaints.
In 2003, Tobin was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail for sexually abusing 25 boys, but it was only last week that the full horror of his 14-year reign of terror was revealed.
His story is similar in pattern to the thousands of other incidents highlighted in the report. Religious authorities turned a blind eye to violence and abuse because, as the commission makes clear, their only interest was in protecting their own reputation.
The commission’s remit was to examine cases of abuse from 1936 onwards, but it made an exception for one man who attended Letterfrack from 1924 to 1932.
The case of Peter Tyrrell, given the pseudonym Noah Kitterick in the report, demonstrated how the dismissive attitude of the Christian Brothers to complainants allowed abusers in their ranks to freely target children over decades.
Tyrrell is believed to be the first industrial school student to document his abuse in writing. In his memoir, he recalled serving in the British army in the second world war and described a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp as “heaven on earth” compared to Letterfrack.
In 1953 he wrote to the superior of Letterfrack complaining that three named brothers were “a disgrace to the Christian Brothers”. He said that Brother Vale (named Perynn in the report) took great pleasure in beating boys for no reason. “He would lock the [pantry] door and make me undress,” he wrote. “He would then sit on a stool and would put me across his knee and then flog me savagely. He would then punch me until I was unconscious.”
Tyrrell sent a second letter to the superior a few days after his first, saying he wanted Letterfrack to be closed until improvements could be made and the perpetrators of abuse brought to justice. He received no response. All the brothers he named were Christian Brothers in Letterfrack. Vale in the 1930s, like Tobin in the 1960s, was in charge of the boys’ kitchen which gave him the opportunity to rape and abuse them.
Despite the brothers knowing about Vale’s abuse, (he quit after being discovered in 1941), the complaint was not taken seriously. Convinced that conditions had not changed since his time there, Tyrrell campaigned for child abuse in Letterfrack to be investigated. He wrote letters to Eamon DeValera, the statesman, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and even to the News of the World. They either did not reply or said that he was complaining about events that had happened a long time ago.
In 1967 in London, suffering from depression, 51-year old Tyrrell set himself on fire on Hampstead Heath and died.
Brother David Gibson of the Christian Brothers told the commission why his congregation did not take Tyrrell’s complaints seriously: “I think people were saying this couldn’t happen in the Brothers and I think there was general horror, disbelief [and] denial.”
The commission, however, discovered that the Christian Brothers had records of at least 20 brothers who worked in Letterfrack who were found to have abused boys or had serious and credible allegations made against them.
“All of the industrial schools run by the congregation had experienced abuse, and so it was not correct to claim ignorance of this problem,” it concluded.
The inquiry’s investigation into Letterfrack shows how, from the outset, the religious orders displayed a wilful disregard for warnings like Tyrrell’s.
When the Letterfrack school was first proposed in 1884 it was rejected by Earl Spencer, the Lord Lieutenant, because “in a wild remote district like Letterfrack it is very improbable there would be any genuine cases for committal”.
Following continued pressure by the archbishop, he was granted permission for a 75-boy school, a limit that was doubled by 1887. The school was expanded again to 190 spaces in the early 1900s to make it economically viable.
Boys from Dublin, many of whom were committed to Letterfrack because they were poor or destitute, found themselves far from home without any prospect of visits because of the expense of travel.
Those sent to Letterfrack were considered to have the least amount of education of all those in industrial schools and so should have been given the best teachers. Instead, the Christian Brothers developed a policy of sending inexperienced brothers to the school which was considered a terrible assignment among the order. But as well as the trainee or recently graduated brothers, many of those assigned to Letterfrack had already been accused of molesting students in day schools.
The report concluded that this demonstrated the order’s attitude that “sexual abuse was something that happened from time to time, which was unfortunate and potentially embarrassing for the congregation and the institution”. It had to be handled in a way “that lessened the risk of publicity and even prosecution of the offender”.
One brother said he “shed bitter tears” after being told he was being assigned to the Connemara school. “The fact that it was so far away from every place, it affected me more I’d say than it would affect a boy,” he said.
The inquiry reveals that the school, which had two main dormitories with 80 beds each, had a culture of violence where students could be hit for the most minor transgression.
Brothers adopted a defensive attitude to ward off violence from aggressive boys. Brother Sorel (a pseudonym) said he was warned: “Whatever you do don’t smile, walk along with a very serious face.”
The school was meant to take boys aged from 6 to 16 but took children from as young as two-and-a-half. This meant that brothers who were trained to be teachers were effectively expected to behave as surrogate parents to up to 20 infants.
Sorel, who prepared some of the Christian Brothers’ responses to the inquiry, said dealing with infants and those who soiled their beds was particularly difficult.
“It was a problem every morning and I used to detest it. I felt like running away myself several times, having to face it coming down in the morning. It was terrible, the stench and the smell.”
The brother eventually snapped and one morning forced a boy to eat his own excrement. Sorel admitted to the charge and said that the incident had “haunted him all his life”.
The inquiry concluded that the stresses of the job had forced Sorel into behaving in a shameful manner. It pointed out that this was the second such incident of “abuse of power” that it recorded.
The other was in Artane, the largest industrial school in the country, where a brother had forced a boy to lick excrement off his shoe.
As in the case of all six schools run by the Christian Brothers, public beatings and humiliation were used to frighten the boys.
One witness described a severe beating he received for absconding. The brother turned off the radio that was playing in the dormitory and invited the rest of the boys who were in bed to “now listen to some music”. As he was battered in an adjacent room the boy’s screams were heard throughout the dormitory.
One witness said: “You nearly preferred to get it yourself because listening to somebody getting bashed, in a sense it is worse than getting it yourself.”
In 1954, Letterfrack was designated exclusively for boys who were convicted in the criminal courts. This was despite the protestations of judges and, to a lesser extent, the “defeatist” departments of Justice and Education who were against boys from Dublin being forced to go to distant Galway.
The Christian Brothers told the inquiry the decision was “in the best interest of the boys” because it “removed boys from corrupting influences”.
One benefit of this move was to remove the infants from Letterfrack. A side effect, however, was that a large number of non-offenders, there because they were playing truant from school or were being neglected by their parents, were now detained in a young offenders institute. This situation continued until its closure in 1974.
“The fate of these boys in Letterfrack was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of industrial schools,” the report concluded.
Many of the actions of the Christian Brothers who worked in Letterfrack are described as “sadistic” by the inquiry. Beatings were delivered by horsewhip; boys’ heads were shaved or they were hosed with cold water if caught running away.
But the management of the order was deemed to be even more culpable than the bullies and the abusers of the boys.
When Brothers who sexually abused boys were discovered, the management simply moved them to other institutes, leaving them free to strike again.
In contrast, lay workers who were found to have transgressed against boys were reported to gardai.
The inquiry strongly admonishes the Christian Brothers for fighting nearly every allegation of abuse and violence, even when its own staff confessed they were guilty as charged. This behaviour was found to have been “unnecessarily distressing for complainants”.
Edmund Garvey, the head of the order, last week appeared to give the order’s first unqualified apology for the abuse and its handling of complaints.
It is too late, however. There were once 1,300 Christian Brothers in Ireland and 4,000 worldwide. Its numbers have now dwindled to 250 in Ireland with another 50 around Europe. There have been no new vocations in 20 years. Advertisements for new members have received no response. Considering the damage done by the order its demise is unlikely to be mourned.
Viney expressed little surprise at the extracts he read from the commission’s report last week. “When you think about it, places like Letterfrack were a claustrophobic Siberia for difficult priests and vulnerable kids. The authorities didn’t pay attention and the whole approach taken was inadequate to say the least. When I visited I knew there was something wrong. I just couldn’t put my finger on it,” he said.
Now, everyone knows precisely what — and how horrifying — that something was.
Innocent brothers caught up in abuse trauma
The Christian Brothers’ stance before the inquiry was that its institutions were not involved in abuse. The commission found that only when there was documentary evidence to prove an allegation was the congregation likely to make concessions. The congregation emphasised in its submissions the impact that publicity and lobby groups had on the reliability of evidence from those making allegations. “There was a clear implication by the congregation that active association with a lobby group was indicative of a lack of objectivity on the part of a witness,” said the inquiry.
The inquiry concluded that abuse was endemic in industrial schools but also found that a small number of complaints “were deliberately manufactured for the purpose of compensation”.
One brother had an allegation of abuse made against him which was never pursued by the complainant. The brother told the inquiry of the distress caused by the complaint “hanging over him” for four and a half years.
Another brother accused of sexual abuse said the allegation was “hurtful” and that he had never been accused of anything in 40 years as a teacher.
“I feel deeply hurt that these allegations come from a period in my life where I literally cared for the uncared for,” he said.
Two years after the allegation was made the director of public prosecutions (DPP) said he would not be bringing charges and the man was reinstated to his teaching job.
“This . . . has impacted on me and on my family,” said the brother. “It has impacted also on a true and loyal staff, that any one of those could find themselves where I am today. This has got to be stopped. How? I don’t know, but it will have to be halted.”
A former brother in his 60s, who was married with two children, was accused of wrong-doing in 1997, 40 years after he left his institution.
“It was eight years of torture and disappointing because I felt I had dedicated myself when I was in Artane to the people there . . . and I was the same in every school I was in. And this was a horrible way to finish my career.”
Seven years after the complaint against this man was made the DPP finally made a decision not to prosecute.
Father Michael Mernagh, who earlier this year walked from Cobh to Dublin to highlight the church’s inadequate response to complaints of child abuse, said the report was a watershed moment. “I think it’s a defining moment in Irish history,” he said last week.
While it detailed instances of kindness by brothers, the scale of confirmed abuse has shocked even those who, in the past, were sceptical about the claims made by children.
Let Our Voices Emerge (Love), a group which questioned the scale of abuse by religious congregations, issued a statement yesterday withdrawing support for the religious congregations.
“Through our own experience in the industrial schools we came forward in good faith to support the congregations, we have now discovered our good faith was betrayed. We feel the Catholic Church in Ireland have betrayed not only us, but also our fellow inmates,” the organisation said.
Inquiry's recommendations welcomed
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse held two inquiries involving just over 1,500 witnesses.
Its investigation committee heard allegations and then sought to verify the complaints by examining evidence and hearing the response of the religious orders involved.
Its confidential committee heard uncontested evidence of abuse from 1,090 men and women in relation to 216 schools and residential settings. These witnesses said the main reason they gave evidence was because they wanted the abuse they experienced as children to be recorded. They said they hoped their testimony would assist in the future protection of children.
In conclusion, the inquiry found that children were subject to “institutional abuse” which was exacerbated by the management of the congregations and the “deferential and submissive attitude” of the Department of Education towards them.
Judge Sean Ryan made 21 recommendations that aim to alleviate and address the effects of the abuse on the victims and to prevent the future abuse of children.
The first recommendation was to create a memorial to those who suffered, bearing the inscription of Bertie Ahern’s 1999 apology to the victims of abuse.
Congregations were told to examine how the interests of the orders came to be placed above those of the children in their care. Ryan said that counselling, educational services and family tracing services should be made available to all of the former residents of the institutions.
Seeking to prevent future abuse, Ryan said that all childcare policy should be “child centred”, and national policies in this area should be reviewed regularly.
Any breaches of the rules need to be reported and sanctions applied.It was recommended that inspectors of facilities must be independent and provided in adequate numbers. Inspectors must also “talk and listen to children”. Those in care must have a consistent care giver and children should be allowed to communicate concerns without fear. Only in exceptional circumstances should children be cut off from their families.
John Kelly of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, said he accepted all of Ryan’s recommendations.
“I endorse what he says,” said Kelly. “A lot of them are obvious but they need writing down so we can be reminded of them.”
Kelly said there was a need for a “proper children’s ombudsman” and that Ryan’s recommendations suggest the need for a bill of rights for children.
Those who suffered in institutions were “glad the inquiry has validated their complaints”, he said.
“He has put things together in a way we could never do and has shown that the religious orders were lying through their teeth when they tried to say abuse was not going on or that they knew nothing about it. There was so much evidence from victims that he couldn’t find any other way.”
Kelly’s biggest gripe is that those who have had findings made against them will never be brought to justice and are hidden behind pseudonyms.
“No one is going to be held accountable,” he said. “The worst thing is that everything in this report is under privilege and can’t be used in a prosecution. That means there is one law for the religions and another for everyone else. That has to stop. While [the commission] acknowledged and vindicated us, that is all they have done. [The religious orders] are getting away scot free.”
Kelly said because Ryan had shown that members of the religious orders lied about what they knew the state should withdraw privilege and prosecute those who were found to have abused children.
On the proposed memorial, Kelly said he would like to see two separate monuments.
“There should be a quiet place for the victims but we don’t need to be reminded of what happened,” he said. “I’d like another place that would show that evil perverts got away scot free. It should show that religious orders were allowed to get away and what their crimes were. Let them feel the shame for the rest of their lives.”
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