Haunting Cries. Stories of Child Abuse from Irish Industrial Schools

246 Pages·2013·1.12 MB·English

by  Karen Coleman

This book is dedicated to all those children who were abused in Irish religious
institutions.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title page
Dedication
Chapter 1: Exposing the Abuse: The Ryan Report, May 2009
Chapter 2: Noel Kelly and Daingean
Chapter 3: Michael O’Brien and Ferryhouse
Chapter 4: The Girl with the Broken Heart: Teresa Gormley and the Sisters of
Mercy
Chapter 5: The Boy with the Broken Arm: Mickey Flanagan and Artane
Chapter 6: ‘John Brown’ and Upton and Letterfrack
Chapter 7: Marie Therese O’Loughlin and Goldenbridge
Chapter 8: Tommy Millar and Lenaboy and Salthill
Chapter 9: Martina Keogh and Clifden and the Magdalene Laundries
Chapter 10: Still Looking for Justice: John Kelly
Chapter 11: Maureen Sullivan and the Magdalene Laundries
Chapter 12: From Homelessness to Hope: Gerry Carey
Chapter 13: The Abusers: How and Why?
Chapter 14: Rough Justice: The Residential Institutions Redress Board
Chapter 15: A Reputation in Tatters: The Catholic Church in Ireland
Notes
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Copyright
About the Author
About Gill & Macmillan
Chapter 1
EXPOSING THE ABUSE: THE RYAN REPORT, MAY 2009
T
here is a lane in the heart of Connemara, Co. Galway that leads from the
village of Letterfrack up into a wooded area, where a small graveyard is tucked
behind the trees and hidden from the main road. A narrow gateway opens onto a
patch of ground where small headstones in the shape of black marble hearts
nestle in the grass. Each headstone carries the name of a boy and the year he
died. Seventy-nine boys are buried there in total; all were inmates of the
notorious Letterfrack Industrial School that was run by the Christian Brothers.
The first boy buried there died in 1891; the last in 1956. Their ages range from
four to 16.
This graveyard is not a place of rest. It is instead a burial ground of abuse
where the ghosts of the boys interred there seem to hover in silence as the visitor
sheds tears for their stifled cries for help. It is a place laden with such profound
sadness it provokes a speechless mix of disbelief and guilt; disbelief that
religious orders could have been capable of such gross inhumanity against
children in their care, and guilt at being part of a State that participated in that
abuse through ignorance, poverty and negligence.
Letterfrack Industrial School graveyard is a spine-chilling illustration of
religious child institutional abuse and an example of how Ireland allowed
vulnerable children to be destroyed by tormentors masquerading as guardians. A
walk along the lines of black hearts reveals a journey of suffering. Young lives
struck down year after year. In 1918 alone 10 boys died in Letterfrack Industrial
School; seven died within 20 days of each other in that year.
Those seven boys included Michael Bergin, who died on 13 November 1918.
He was 15. Michael Sullivan died seven days later. He was 14. Joseph Boxan
shut his eyes for the last time on 26th of that month. He was nine. And Thomas
Hickey was only 10 when he died on that same day. Two days later Michael
Walsh took his last gasp at just 11 years of age. He wasn’t the only one to die
that day. Anthony Edward, who was the same age as Michael, also passed away.
that day. Anthony Edward, who was the same age as Michael, also passed away.
Four days later William Fagan’s life was also cut short when he was only 13.
Today they all lie together in Letterfrack.
The Christian Brothers put these boys’ deaths down to influenza-pneumonia.
That explanation may be plausible; after all the Spanish flu of that era claimed
millions of lives worldwide. But the boys’ premature deaths occurred against a
backdrop of unremitting hardship at Letterfrack, where a climate of fear
propagated tyrannical and sadistic behaviour among the Christian Brothers
running the place. One hundred boys are estimated to have died in Letterfrack
from the time it first opened its doors for business in 1887 to its closure in 1974.
For decades stories of abuse told by former inmates of industrial schools such
as Letterfrack were dismissed by many in Ireland as the false rants of people
embittered by their circumstances. But on 20 May 2009 their accounts were
finally vindicated when the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child
Abuse1 was published. The five-volume tome is a shocking account of child
abuse that took place in religious industrial and reformatory schools and other
institutions from the 1930s up to the time of their closure.
The brutality of Letterfrack cited in the Ryan Report exposed Ireland’s
dreadful history of child neglect. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse were
systematic there. Punishments were meted out for minor misdemeanours. Boys
were battered by Brothers who abused their positions of power and vented their
anger on children too poor and vulnerable to complain. Inmates who absconded
in winter were hauled back, stripped of their clothes, hosed down in the yard and
left to stand in the freezing cold in their underpants for hours; other absconders
had their heads shaved and were subjected to perverse forms of solitary
confinement, which meant their fellow inmates couldn’t talk to them until their
hair had grown back. Bed-wetters were ordered to drag their wet mattresses out
into the open yard where they were humiliated by their fellow inmates. Boys
were lashed with leather exposing the abuse straps, tyres, fists, legs and
whatever other instruments of torture the Brothers could get their hands on. They
were made to work as child slaves on the bogs and in the workshops and they
were never paid for any of their hard labour. The Christian Brothers who didn’t
participate in this sadistic type of cruelty colluded in it by remaining silent. Few
spoke out against their superiors and even when they did their pleas were largely
dismissed. The reputation of the Church and the Congregation took precedence
over any form of justice for the children in their care.
One former resident of Letterfrack told the Ryan team about the reign of terror
that pervaded the school when he was there in the 1950s and early 1960s.
From the time you went into that you lived in fear, you were just constantly
terrified. You lived in fear all the time in that school, you didn’t know when you
were going to get it, what Brother was going to give it to you, you just lived in
fear in that school.2
Another former resident described how ‘it was awful, it was very very cold, it
was very very lonely, but the worst thing about it all, it was so scary’.3
Letterfrack’s endemic violence cultivated a culture of bullying among the boys
themselves with peer sexual abuse at the extreme end of the spectrum.
… you had to fight for survival because there was a lot of bullying and a lot of
stuff going on. You had to be on your guard all the time because there was
bigger kids and stronger kids, different kids and different types. Rough kids and
bad kids; there was all different types.
Yes, it was dog eat dog. It was survival, you had to do everything to survive,
you know. You had to fight, scratch, you had to do everything for survival.
There was no love or affection or caring from anyone, you know. And there was
no one to talk to, you just had to form your own way of survival.4
Letterfrack was one of 21 religious institutions extensively documented in the
Ryan Report. Its publication shocked the Irish nation; people reeled with
disbelief as they read about the staggering levels of physical, sexual and
emotional cruelty children endured in these ghastly places since the 1930s. The
Report shook the already battered reputation of the Catholic Church and it
highlighted the negligent role the Irish State played in the incarceration and
abuse of children. In the weeks following the Report’s publication, people tried
to comprehend how vulnerable children could have been treated in such an
appalling way. Ireland was swamped by a tsunami of shock and grief.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse marked a watershed in
contemporary Irish history. It validated the stories of religious brutality that
former residents of these institutions had been describing for years and it raised
numerous questions about the Catholic Church, the Irish State and Irish society.
People wondered what kind of a country they were living in and even the most
committed Irish Catholics questioned their faith. The Report was the result of a
nine-year investigation into the treatment of children in institutions run by
religious orders from the 1930s to the present day. The nuns and Brothers who
abused their power in these hellholes were exposed as sadists and rapists, bullies
and misfits. The Ryan Report showed how the lives of thousands of people had
been destroyed in these pious prisons, supposed to be institutions of care. The
Report blew apart the smokescreen of moral perfection that the religious orders
had hidden behind for decades and it illuminated the hypocrisy of their self-
had hidden behind for decades and it illuminated the hypocrisy of their self-
righteous preachings.
The Report’s executive summary confirmed a legacy of reprehensible neglect
and brutality in the institutions investigated. Ryan concluded that the
incarceration of children in these miserable places was ‘an outdated response to
a nineteenth century social problem’.5 They were like Dickensian prisons where
children went to bed hungry because the food was inadequate, inedible and
badly prepared. Ryan declared that schools depended on ‘rigid control by means
of corporal punishment’6 and that the harshness of the regime was ‘inculcated
into the culture of the schools by successive generations of Brothers, priests and
nuns. It was systemic and not the result of individual breaches by persons who
operated outside lawful and acceptable boundaries.’7 Fear was the instrument of
control in these institutions where, in many schools, ‘staff considered themselves
to be custodians rather than carers’.8
Witnesses to the Ryan investigation team spoke of scavenging for food from
waste bins and animal feed.9 Bullying was widespread in boys’ schools, where
the younger inmates were frequently deprived of food as the older boys grabbed
their rations. Children were badly clothed and they were left in soiled and wet
work clothes throughout the day. Accommodation was cold, spartan and bleak
and the children slept in large unheated dormitories with inadequate bedding.10
Sanitary conditions were abysmal and little provision was made for menstruating
girls. The children received completely inadequate education in these tyrannical
institutions. The Ryan Report found that in the girls’ schools, children were
removed from their classes in order to perform domestic chores or work in the
institution during the day.11 Instead of providing basic industrial training, the
institutions cynically profited from the children by using them as child labour on
farms and in workshops.
The Report showed how a climate of fear pervaded these industrial and
reformatory schools where physical abuse was systematic. The Brothers and
nuns engaged in excessive beatings, sometimes with implements designed to
deliver maximum pain. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing
where the next beating was coming from.12 Girls were frequently left shaking
with fear for hours in cold corridors as they waited for their veiled executioners
to deliver their frenzied lashings. Absconders were treated with particular
ferocity. Their heads were shaved and they were flogged savagely for daring to
escape from their sadistic custodians. The Report exposed how the Department
of Education failed abysmally to investigate why children were absconding from
the schools. Had they bothered to do so, they could have revealed decades of
abuse and prevented thousands more children from enduring lasting damage.
Ryan concluded that sexual abuse was endemic in the boys’ institutions and
that the Congregations protected sexual predators and covered up their crimes to
safeguard their own reputations. A culture of silence meant paedophiles were
able to abuse with impunity and their behaviour was rarely brought to the
attention of the Department of Education or the Gardaí. And even on the rare
occasions when the Department found out about the sexual abuse, Ryan stated
that it colluded in the silence:13 ‘There was a lack of transparency in how the
matter of sexual abuse was dealt with between the Congregations, dioceses and
the Department.’14 Paedophiles were shunted on to other institutions where they
continued to prey on vulnerable children. When faced with accounts of abuse by
former residents, Ryan declared that some religious orders remained defensive
and disbelieving even in cases where men and women had been convicted in
court and admitted to such behaviour: ‘Congregational loyalty enjoyed priority
over other considerations including safety and protection of children.’15
The shameful cover-up went further. In some cases former Brothers with
histories of sexual abuse continued their teaching careers as lay teachers in State
schools after leaving the religious orders.
Emotional abuse was widespread in these despotic establishments. Children
were belittled and humiliated on a daily basis. Bed-wetters were forced to parade
their soiled sheets in public. Ryan found that private matters such as bodily
functions and personal hygiene were used as opportunities for degradation and
humiliation.16 Children were told they were worthless and their families were
denigrated. The psychological fall-out was enormous. Young girls and boys
lived in constant fear of being beaten. Witnesses told the Ryan team how they
were still haunted by the cries of other children being flogged excessively.
Sibling bonds were smashed to smithereens as brothers and sisters were
separated from one another. The remote locations of some of these austere
institutions made it almost impossible for family visits and the unfortunate
children unlucky enough to end up in these places felt abandoned by their
parents and family members.
Particularly vulnerable children, such as those with disabilities, were also
abused in institutions like St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys in Cabra in Dublin.
Ryan described St Joseph’s as a ‘very frightening place for children who were
learning to overcome hearing difficulties’.17 The Report found that corporal
punishment was ‘excessive and capricious’ there and that the boys incarcerated
in St Joseph’s suffered from sexual abuse from staff and older boys.18
The Ryan Report dominated the headlines over the days and weeks following