NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times
Gerry Moriarty
Mon, Oct 6, 2014
A 77-year-old Co Tyrone man has described as a “hell hole” and “hell on earth” the De La Salle Rubane House boys’ care home in Kircubbin, Co Down, where he spent two years as a teenager in the early 1950s.
The witness, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was one of the first boys to enter the new care home in 1951 and that right from the start he suffered abuse.
“I don’t remember the good times because I had so many bad times,” he told the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry in Banbridge, Co Down, today.
Although the witness had a happy childhood in Australia, she said feelings of “abandonment and isolation came to the surface” when she got engaged.Witness suffered feelings of ‘abandonment and isolation’
His step-brother, now aged 70, who spent almost two years in the home from August 1958, also told the inquiry that he was locked in a special pen for cattle, which he described as a “cattle crusher”, and then raped by one of the brothers.
The inquiry is investigating alleged child abuse at total of 13 Northern Ireland institutions from 1922 to 1995.
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