NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV
The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has heard two conflicting accounts of life in St Patrick’s Training School in west Belfast.
The first witness who gave evidence about the college, was sent there in the 1960s.
The witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the HIA inquiry on Monday a number of De La Salle brothers were very violent and said he was terrified of them.
Once, he said, a brother hit him on the head with a bunch of keys for no reason – and he could not hear properly for a week.
He detailed how on another occasion a brother accused him wrongly of being late home and he had to sleep on the springs of his bed, naked and without a cover or mattress.
The witness also described how he was raped and sexually abused by some of the brothers both in the training school, at a holiday home in Glenariff and at the cinema.
He said he would never have dreamed of telling his parents as they would have thought he was telling lies and “in all likelihood would have given me a clip on my ear”.
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