Artane

PRIVATE REPORT ON ARTANE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL

2007-08-31T21:41:00.001+01:00

PRIVATE REPORT ON ARTANE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL

38 Harmondstown Avenue,
ARTANE,
DUBLIN, 5.
7th July, 1962.

My Lord Archbishop,

In a letter of 18th May Your Grace requested me to submit a report on Artane Industrial School. I have pleasure in presenting herewith the findings of my enquiry.

Due to the confidential nature of my task and the wide terms of reference I was obliged to restrict my observations to personal experience. The details are none the less factual and complete.

I am, My Lord Archbishop,

Your Grace’s Obedient Servant,

Henry Moore [signed]

Chaplain.

The Most Reverend John C, McQuaid, D. D.,
Lord Archbishop of Dublin,
Primate of Ireland

INTRODUCTION

In this report I have attempted to describe and discuss the existing situation as the Industrial School system operates in Artane. It is not a complete examination of all aspects of the system. I have, however, studied the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Industrial School system of 1936 and the Report on Youth Unemployment of 1951.

In relation to the contemporary scene, and considering the advance in educational requirements, particularly as envisaged by the recent Apprenticeship Act, it seems to me that Artane is in need of drastic revision. Government policy as it affects the financial position of the school would indicate the urgent need of an enlightened approach to the problem. A serious decline in the number of committals reacts adversely on the school’s financial position, since overhead expenses do not decrease pari passu with a reduction in direct maintenance charges. Despite this hardship certain improvements have been made, notably by the installation of a fine modern kitchen and the construction, now in progress, of twelve class halls in the old building.

The management of the school is the subject of this report. As I shall indicate, the methods employed are obsolete, proper training is neglected, and there is no attempt at adequate rehabilitation.

CONSTITUTION
The early association in the public mind of Artane with the Prison system is responsible for a misconception that persists regarding Artane and the boys in it. By agreement with the Department of Justice the authorities at Artane will not accept committals with a criminal charge. This means that the inmates are either school non-attendance cases – about one-third of the total – the majority being orphans or children in special circumstances. Many of these are transferred from Junior Industrial Convent Schools at Rathdrum, Drogheda, and Kilkenny; and so, the situation frequently arises where boys, on leaving Artane, have already spent 10 to 14 years in an institutional environment. It is readily acknowledged that all of these require specialised treatment.

GENERAL CARE OF THE BOYS

About 450 boys are resident at the school. For any measure of success it is necessary that this number should be divided into small units. Considering that the buildings were originally designed to accommodate 800 boys, proper planning might ensure the possibility of this. A fundamental defect is the manner in which the boys are admitted indiscriminately, without regard to their background, medical history, antecedents or suitability for the training which they are to receive. The very structure of the school is in dilapidated condition, colourless and uninspiring, and reflects the interior spirit. “Tibi saxa loquuntur”. The atmosphere is somewhat unreal, particularly in regard to lack of contact with the opposite sex, and this unnatural situation in a group of 450 boys plus a staff of 40 men invariably leads to a degree of sexual maladjustment in the boys.

Indeed in this respect Artane is a modern Mount Athos. The boys seem to be denied the opportunity of developing friendly and spontaneous characters; their impulses become suffocated and when they are suddenly liberated their reactions are often violent and irresponsible.

DIET: The boys are reasonably well fed. There is fair variety but obvious essential requirements such as butter and fruit are never used. Milk puddings are served but these are of poor quality and without relish. In general I feel that the boys are undernourished and lacking calcium and other components. At table I have observed the unruly indelicate manner of the boys. The services of a dietician and supervision under a female staff would considerably enhance the standards. In addition to the three meals the boys are given a light refreshment which takes the form of a slice of bread and jam. The method of serving this is crude and unhealthy. The bread is transported to the yard in a large sized wooden box and the boys are paraded to receive their portion.

APPAREL: It seems to me that this aspect of the general care is grossly neglected. The boys’ clothing is uncomfortable, unhygienic, and of a displeasing sameness. They are constantly dirty, both themselves and their clothes. The quality of the material is poor due to the fact that it manufactured on the premises. Overcoats are not supplied except where a boy can pay £3 to £4 in advance, which must come from his own pocket. It is pathetic to observe hundreds of boys walking the roads of the district on Sunday mornings even in deep winter without overcoats. Moreover, on returning from their walk they are compelled to change again into their ordinary work-a-day suit. This has the affect on the boys’ morale and their association of the Sunday is easily obscured. In the matter of the clothing, likewise, there is no individuality.

A boy’s personal clothing is as much the property of his neighbour. Shirts, underwear (vests are not worn), stockings, footwear, nightshirts (no pyjamas) are all common property and are handed down from generations. When these articles are laundered they are distributed at random, sometimes without regard to size. The laundry arrangements leave much to be desired. The boys’ stockings and shirts are renewed once a week and underwear once a fortnight. Handkerchiefs are not used. This fundamental disregard for personal attention inevitably generates insecurity, instability and an amoral concern for the private property of others. This I consider to be a causative factor in the habits of stealing frequently encountered among ex-pupils. In summer the boys do not receive a change of clothing. When I visited the Industrial School at Salthill I was impressed by the way in which the boys were attired appropriately and inexpensively for the summer season. In Artane the hob-nail boots, [and] the heavy burdensome material are as much a feature of summer attire as of winter.

MEDICAL ATTENTION: I fail to understand the indifference of Departmental Inspectors to the seriously inadequate medical facilities in the school. Apart from the twice-weekly visit of the Doctor there is no matron or nurse in attendance. A Brother without qualifications and who was transferred from the care of the poultry farm is now in charge of all medical requirements. A surgical dressing room is located adjacent to the dining hall. This dreary stone flagged and depressing room resembles a vacated dairy house. Many boys, even the older ones, suffer from enuresis and nothing is done to remedy their condition.

DISCIPLINE: In a school of over 400 boys, discipline must necessarily be firmly maintained. In Artane, it seems to me that the discipline is rigid and severe and frequently approaches pure regimentation. Every group activity is martialed, even the most elementary such as the recitation of the Angelus during recreation. The administration of punishment is in charge of a disciplinarian, but in practice is not confined to him. There seems to be no proportion between punishment and offence. In my presence a boy was severely beaten on the face for an insignificant misdemeanour. Recently, a boy was punished so excessively and for so long a period that he broke away from the Brother and came to my house a mile away for assistance. The time was 10:45 p.m., almost two hours after the boys retired to bed. For coming to me in those circumstances he was again punished with equal severity. Some time ago, a hurley stick was used to inflict punishment on a small boy. The offence was negligible.

Constant recourse to physical punishment breeds undue fear and anxiety. The personality of the boy is inevitably repressed, maladjusted, and in some cases, abnormal. Their liberty is so restricted that all initiative and self esteem suffers. This is particularly evident when they leave the school. The boys find it difficult to establish ordinary human relationships and not infrequently are very difficult to manage. I recommend a more liberal approach in the matter of outings, holidays etc. This year 150 boys will be away for August. Some to their families, others to god-parents and friends. The remaining 250 will stay on in Artane. The trade shops close for two weeks but the boys are transferred to work on the farm. This naturally breeds discontent and frustration. Some effort should be made to provide a holiday, however brief, for the unlucky ones.

The introduction of interested parties and voluntary groups would lend a welcome change to the drabness and monotony of the Institute. The more winds of change that blow through Artane the less stagnation and ugliness there will be. Here I am thinking of possible work for the Volunteer Corps or its counterpart, which some day I trust will be available for girls. Greater co-operation could be obtained from the Brothers with regard to the God-parents Guild which does invaluable work in befriending destitute children. The Guild often complains to me of the difficulty in making contacts with Artane. The question of God-parents needs to be looked into, and full use of its potential obtained.

THE BAND : In my opinion the band is the only worthwhile achievement of the school. About 80 boys are involved, but this number is only a fraction of the total. The time used, the money spent, the number of engagements annually met are, I fear, out of all proportion to the results obtained. The maintenance of the band, although approximating £2,000 annually, is a continual strain on financial resources. Further, a serious gap in the boys’ education follows from prolonged hours of practice and days missed from school. There is no evidence that even a small number continue their musical career on leaving the school. Instruments are costly and encouragement is lacking. Indeed, the Brother in charge could be most helpful in placing the boys in suitable positions. Unfortunately, he is unwilling. I feel obliged to refer to the interest taken in the band boys by a Protestant layman whose constant practice it is to accompany the boys on each and every engagement. He renders no service to the school, and in my opinion should not be present. On one occasion when I questioned the Brother concerning this matter I found him not only discourteous but impertinent.

The band is good publicity but its prestige revolves around itself. It is unrelated to the true conditions obtaining in the school.

RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE
A great deal of discussion has taken place between the authorities at Artane and previous Chaplains about the problems arising in the matter of religious observance. In my experience these problems are very real. Religion seems to make little impression on the majority of the boys. With many ex-pupils the practice of their Faith is a burden to be shunned, and they associate their religious training with repression. Indeed, many of the problems I encounter are quite alarming. I suggest that much of the trouble arises from the regimentation attached to the various religious exercises.

Up to three years ago daily Mass was obligatory for the boys. It was the opinion of the Chaplains that this excellent practice was proving too much for the boys. It was decided that the boys’ attendance at Mass be voluntary, as the early rising for 7 o’clock Mass was unreasonable. The result of this decision was that only a handful of boys attended Mass regularly. Last year the Superior decided to go back on this decision and oblige the boys to attend Mass on two mornings each week. It seems to me a great spiritual loss that attendance at daily Mass should be relegated to the voluntary whims of adolescent minds. The obvious solution would be to put forward the hour of the Mass by one hour, but at this suggestion the Superior was unwilling to change the programme.

The Rosary is recited daily in Chapel. Many of the boys complain to me of the weariness they have in attending the Rosary. This is quite natural, but I would like to see a change in the practice to give the boys an opportunity of appreciating the value of praying in small groups or even alone. Too often the Christian Doctrine classes are without enthusiasm, and lacking incentive. I altogether repudiate the use of physical punishment for failure at these lessons. At times it is excessive.

CHAPEL : The Chapel at Artane does not inspire devotion, or indeed little reverence. It is stone-flagged and untidy, the furnishings are rough, uncomfortable and unattractive. It is greatly in need of decoration. The brass ware is inferior, stained and damaged; the sacred linen is carelessly handled and arranged. Some time ago mice were discovered in the Sacristy and on opening the Corporal before Mass I noticed it to be soiled by animal excretion. A few days later the Chasuble was in a similar condition. These isolated incidences merely indicate the general tone of the Chapel. The care of the Sacristy should be entrusted to females, preferably nuns.

EDUCATION

PRIMARY: It is difficult to assess with satisfaction the extent of the problems attending the education, literary and technical of the boys. To my mind the standard is extremely low. Constantly I receive letters fro ex-pupils and at times I am amazes by their illegible form and unintelligible content. The majority of the boys are lacking in verbal ability. Last year a friend of mine took 22 boys on a camping holiday. He informed me that that although their ages ranged from 10 to 14 years, only 7 could write, and these had to be assisted. There seems to be an urgent need for some psychological assessment of the boys before grading them in classes. I believe that some of these boys are mentally handicapped and require psychiatric treatment. Unfortunately the Brothers are obliged to grade these boys as best they can. This is an undue hardship on teacher and pupil. I strongly recommend that the services of a competent psychiatrist should be sought.

TECHNICAL: It is, perhaps, in this department that the most glaring defect is noticed. At 14 the boy is admitted to the Trade shop. This year there are 150 boys in that department, but of these only 12 were eligible for the Vocational School examination. Last year, out of 18 who sat for the examination only 5 were successful. In view of the requirements of Technical education, the situation in Artane is obsolete. There seems to be no effort to train the boys satisfactorily at their trades. They might be described as juvenile labourer, uneducated and unskilled. This is evident from the variety of tasks to be done by individual boys. Vocational guidance is unknown. Boys are allotted to various trades without reference to their suitability or preference. This unhappy position inevitably engenders frustration. A factual proof of this is the way in which the boys are placed on leaving the school.

In the past two years 140 boys or so were discharged. Approximately 75% of these were placed at employment for which they were never trained. The purpose of the school is therefore defeated. The lay instructors are all of long standing in the school – some with service varying from 29 to 30 years. They are not acquainted with modern teaching methods and practice. Little encouragement is given them towards fostering an enthusiastic and progressive attitude towards the boys. Many of them that are competent are underpaid and unappreciated.

PERSONNEL : There are 26 Brothers in the Community. An analysis of their function reveals the shortage of specialised teachers who are kind and dedicated. Only 10 Brothers are directly involved in teaching; three of these in addition are attending the University. It seems to me that these men are overworked, for apart from the multitude of tasks attending the daily schedule and the prescriptions of their own religious life, they have in addition the supervision and care of a large dormitory and the supervision of recreation. Six Brothers are at the school from 15 to 35 years, and to these are entrusted authoritative and administrative positions. Clearly, a more enlightened and efficient staff is required, but in this connection the Provincial once complained to me of the difficulty in finding dedicated men. To me this is a startling revelation of the incompetency of the Brothers to conduct the school without the assistance of trained lay personnel.

AFTERCARE
The Report of the Commission in 1936 made specific mention of the lack of appreciation and responsibility in exercising aftercare by the authorities at Artane. Twenty six years does not seem to have brought about any change in this matter. The Children’s Act 1908 obliges the Brothers to exercise aftercare for two years on a boy’s discharge. This task is performed at Artane by an elderly Brother who is preoccupied in seeking employment for the boys. Within six months of my appointment I requested your Grace’s permission to use a car for this purpose. I intimated that my work was increasing in this field. I am happy to acknowledge Your Grace’s spontaneous and generous permission, and my work has been facilitated by Your Grace’s constant support and encouragement. I work in conjunction with a Praesidium established by the past pupils of St Mary’s College, Rathmines, which was requested by Father John Pierce, C.C., to undertake the running of a club for Artane ex-pupils. I am obliged to say that the Brothers’ attitude towards a Chaplain’s work in this field is uncooperative and even resentful. I am confident that your Grace appreciates the necessity of this work. The Praesidium informs me that in the past five years 80% of these boys have emigrated. It is my experience that many of these boys whom I know personally have lapsed entirely from the Faith. In Dublin I find these boys in dead-end jobs without any opportunity of advancing themselves. For some, the working conditions, especially in the country, are primitive; others are exploited for less than a living wage. Emigration in their case is a blessing. My remarks heretofore, refer to boys discharged at 16 years of age, but at least 70 boys between 12 and 14, school non-attendance cases, have left the school in the past two years. For these latter, the Brothers relinquish all responsibility in aftercare. The Superior in Salthill Industrial School is most attentive to this aspect of the boys’ training. By elaborate means and by painstaking methods he has shown what an efficient management can achieve.

CONCLUSION

In this Report I have endeavoured to illustrate, by factual information, the deficiencies in the Management of Artane. No doubt there are reasonable explanations for many of the inadequacies. It is my opinion, however, that a reappraisal of the system at Government level is necessary and a major reform of the management of Artane is desired.

I strongly recommend the introduction of female personnel, preferably nuns, who would take care of the domestic arrangements and the charge of the small boys. The school should have a patron saint by name, and the stigma of the present system should be removed from the public mind.

This Report would be incomplete without a special mention of the personal interest which Your Grace has taken in the welfare of these boys. I have been singularly impressed and I am deeply grateful for the assistance Your Grace has given me and which continues to hearten me no end.

The "House of a Hundred Windows"

2007-08-18T16:00:00.000+01:00

The "House of a Hundred Windows": Industrial Schools in Irish Writing
Michael R. Molino

Abuse suffered by children raised in Irish industrial schools, often at the hands of the religious running the schools, has been for years a problem hidden in plain sight. On occasion, such as the airing of the 1996 television documentary Dear Daughter, public indignation over stories of abuse sparked calls for government investigation and legal retribution. Public fervor over the issue of abuse, however, quickly waned; the abuse of children raised in industrial schools was acknowledged but essentially ignored. Recent stories of abuse have once again traumatized public conscience and stimulated calls for action. Recriminations against those who "must have known" about abuses but nonetheless turned away extend blame not only on those who committed offenses against children but also on those who dutifully worked within the system. Many accused of offenses, and those implicated for silent acquiescence, are members of the religious orders into whose hands the state remanded thousands of young children for more than one hundred years. Fintan O'Toole has articulated the view held by many that Irish society has for too long ignored its mistreatment of children:

[O]ne of the first tasks of this society in the new millennium will be listening to the survivors of the industrial schools in the Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse . . . . Historians have to develop a language for discussing 20th-century Ireland in which words like "slavery", "concentration camp" and "torture" are not exotic imports but belong in the vernacular. 1

Others--including former inhabitants of industrial schools, educators, and social historians--respond that critics like O'Toole overstate the case in an attempt to discredit the Catholic church. In a letter to the Irish Times, Ray O'Donoghue presents a personal, opposing view of life in an industrial school: [End Page 33]

Oh yes, there were a few nasty Brothers and I had a few bad experiences and was constantly hungry, but on the whole I feel that my time [at St. Joseph's Industrial School in Glin, Co. Limerick] was very positive and that I owe most of what I have achieved in my life to being in Glin. If I had not been sent there I feel I would have turned into a criminal, because that was my ambition before I was sent to Glin. 2

The coexistence of such seemingly irreconcilable statements in the pages of the Irish Times hints at the profound levels of shame, confusion, anger, and shock evoked in Irish society by the most recent revelations of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in industrial schools.

Conflicting opinions today on industrial schools also reflect a paradox in the history of the industrial school system--a system in which a charitable and compassionate commitment among the religious to offer residence education for the poor slowly deteriorated into a preoccupation with financial gain, political influence, and secrecy. Stories of child abuse, often ignored or disbelieved at the time, compounded over the years until reaching a crescendo when Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ) aired its documentary States of Fear in 1999, eliciting a formal state apology from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, on May 11, 1999 and the formation of a Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse. 3 The story of industrial schools in Ireland is, then, a history of intersecting tendencies. On the one hand, initially well-intended educational and religious beliefs and practices gave way to a self-protecting system where abuse was tolerated and abusers protected. On the other hand, the stories of child abuse, often told by adults later in life, reflect a different trajectory--from a topic discussed, if at all, only in euphemistic and muted terms to an incendiary issue where guilt is often immediately assumed. This paradoxical history, with all its ambivalent [End Page 34] attitudes, has been pointedly revealed in recent fiction and memoirs, where the stories of children sent to industrial schools are given voice and the horrors of institutional life exposed.

On the topic of education in Irish literature, no novelist surpasses James Joyce. Stephen Dedalus's encounters with various Jesuits and his gradual rejection of Irish Catholicism in favor of the life of an artist form a template for the intersection of personal impulses and religious obligations. However, Stephen Dedalus has an encounter with another group of religious whose impact upon him differs greatly from that of his Jesuit teachers. In the pivotal fourth chapter of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, moments before his artistic calling, Stephen passes a group of Christian Brothers making its way from Dollymount across the bridge linking Clontarf to the Bull Wall. Stephen has just deflected the Jesuit director's overtures regarding a calling to the priesthood and fled his father's fumbling efforts to secure him a position in the university. In both cases, Stephen rejects the efforts of male authority figures to direct his life. When Stephen encounters the Christian Brothers on the bridge, he responds differently; he experiences a sense of shame in the presence of these simple men. Angered by his shame, Stephen looks over the side of the bridge, Narcissus-like, into the water below, only to see, not his own image, but the reflection of the brothers. Stephen's reaction to this image is odd when compared to his cunningly aloof reaction to the Jesuit director:

It was idle for him . . . to tell himself that if he ever came to their gates, stripped of his pride, beaten and in beggar's weeds, that they would be generous towards him, loving him as themselves. . . . that the commandment of love bade us not to love our neighbour as ourselves with the same amount and intensity of love but to love him as ourselves with the same kind of love. 4

Unlike his father, who disparages the Christian Brothers and refers to the boys they teach as "Paddy Stink and Micky Mud," Stephen holds a view more in tune with the majority of Irish society at the time. By the early years of the twentieth century the Christian Brothers had become a dominant force in Irish education. 5

Even more unusual than Stephen Dedalus's concord with much of Irish society is his identification of the Christian Brothers as a group [End Page 35] who represent love. Stephen realizes that if the wings of art he is about to fashion fail to carry him past the nets of nationality, religion, and language he fears, he can fall safely into the net of love the Christian Brothers offer, a willingness on the brothers' part to take in even the most undeserving creature. Barry Coldrey supports Stephen's assumptions, pointing out the Christian Brothers' commitment to loving and evoking love in their students: "By 1814 the Brothers could claim that they managed their pupils more through love than fear and had removed 'as much as possible, everything like corporal punishment from their schools, a plan which is found to answer the best purpose in the formation of youth.'" 6

While Stephen's view of the Christian Brothers may reflect a common, though changing, attitude at the start of the twentieth century, a different picture of the Christian Brothers and other religious has emerged over the past twenty years. Two contradictory pictures of the Christian Brothers exist today. The first is that of nationalistic educators who trained many of the leaders of Irish independence and the first independent government. In his book Faith and Fatherland, Coldrey points out that in contrast to the Jesuits, whom Simon Dedalus identifies as the elite of Ireland, the Christian Brothers trained 125 of the rebels who participated in the Easter Rising, the Jesuits a mere five. Seven of the 14 men executed as a result of the Rising, three of the five members of the 1917 IRA executive committee, and five of the seven appointed to the Dáil in 1921 were educated by the Christian Brothers. 7 This is a picture of brothers as educators and patriots. [End Page 36]

But a second picture of the Christian Brothers has emerged--that of a congregation running industrial schools in a fashion no way resembling the loving environment Stephen Dedalus imagines. 8 This is a picture of brothers as pedophiles and sadists. The appearance of this second picture, and its power to eclipse the first, cannot be explained simply as a progression in public opinion based on new and overwhelming evidence of abuse. Today's conflicting opinions on industrial schools and those who ran them suggest a continuation, not an eclipse, of the first picture, despite the criticism and outrage that evoked the second. An understanding of these conflicting pictures demands a sensitive assessment of both the history of the industrial school system in Ireland and the stories of those who survived the worst manifestations of that system.

As Jane Barnes documents in Irish Industrial Schools, 1868-1908 (1989), the industrial schools of Ireland began with the best of intentions, having two specific goals and a clear ethic. During their early decades, the industrial schools demonstrated a distinct ability to train otherwise destitute children as craftsmen and artisans capable of earning an honest living upon release and to provide otherwise criminally inclined children a moral upbringing. The advent of the industrial schools represented an improvement over the existing charter schools and workhouses where many of these young people had been exploited. The industrial schools also strove to provide a place of trust and care resembling a healthy family life, even to the point of replacing the existing family. Herein lies one of the paradoxes of the industrial schools: students entering the schools were often forced or expected to sever ties to any existing family in order to align themselves with the industrial schools and their managers. Any failure of the industrial school "family," thus, resulted in a betrayal of the values the schools espoused.

Many of the industrial schools were run by religious groups, both Protestant and Catholic. The Christian Brothers were the most prevalent Catholic group associated with industrial schools for boys--such as the great school in Dublin, Artane, which housed as many as 900 boys at its peak, training them in such fields as farming, carpentry, weaving, tailoring, harness making, and painting. Many of the boys assigned to schools like Artane remained until their sixteenth birthday when they were released to their families or trade. Girls were not excluded; in fact, the majority of the industrial schools were designated specifically for girls, or girls and infant boys under ten years old. Most [End Page 37] of these schools, sometimes misleadingly referred to as "orphanages," were operated by the Sisters of Mercy, who ran approximately two-thirds of all industrial schools.

Jane Barnes's study of the industrial school system ends at 1908, the year the Children's Act was passed. This law compelled even more children to attend industrial schools, including those who had committed minor crimes. This change in policy blurred the boundary between reform schools and industrial schools. In her conclusion, Barnes contends that

the industrial schools represented an advance in the care of destitute, orphaned and neglected children. Before their establishment no state provision was available to this class of children other than the dubious sanctuary of the workhouse. Industrial schools, with all their drawbacks and limitations, provided for many children who would otherwise have faced a miserable existence as vagrants or workhouse inmates. 9

In his 1903 comparative study of educational systems in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Graham Balfour identifies two slight but important differences between reformatories and industrial schools in Great Britain and their counterparts in Ireland. In Ireland, children could only be sent to institutions run by persons of the same religious persuasion as the child's parents, and parents guilty of criminal offenses could not send their children to industrial schools, even if they agreed to pay for the child's commitment. Balfour concludes that the

certified Industrial Schools in Ireland are regarded as institutions for poor and deserted children rather than for semi-criminals, probably because there is no other means of compelling street urchins to attend schools. Consequently young children who are criminal in a very slight degree and in England would probably be sent to Industrial Schools, are sent in Ireland to Reformatories and the older and more criminal children do not appear in them at all. 10

In one of the earliest literary references to an industrial school, neglected and unguided children find refuge and purpose within the confines of an institutional setting. In May Laffen Hartley's 1881 short story "The Game Hen," a young woman's story is told in part through the gossip of the women who live in the clay-floor houses of Commons Lane. A strong-willed and outspoken young woman known as the Game Hen has already had twins born out of wedlock, both of whom were immediately taken from their mother and placed [End Page 38] into two different Dublin industrial schools or orphanages. In Hartley's story, neither the separation of the twins from their mother nor from each other is questioned by the neighbors. From their conversation, the Game Hen's neighbors assume either that the children will be better off or that the priest had no real choice in the matter. The sin may be the mother's, but the consequences of that sin are meted out on the children she brings into the world. Such stories of illegitimate children separated from or ignorant of family members recur today among industrial school survivors. The Game Hen's twins will probably live their entire lives within miles of each other but never know they have living relatives.

Reduced to begging, the Game Hen finds that she can either go to a workhouse or take money from the twin's father and escape to Liverpool. She chooses the latter, deserting her eight-year-old son Petie and his infant sister. A kindly neighbor woman chooses to care for the infant, but Petie is charged with vagrancy before a divisional magistrate and "sentenced to five years in an industrial school." 11

In Hartley's story, the sentencing of young Petie reveals the tacit social assumption that there was something wrong, even criminal, about the children sent to industrial schools, a form of guilt by association with the parents. Moreover, the process of sentencing young children to industrial schools like Artane clearly occurred regularly and within plain sight of average citizens. The driver who takes Petie and his police sergeant escort to Artane refers, with unwitting irony, to the young boy as a "'small commodity,'" anticipating the income Petie will generate for Artane both through the government subsidy the school will be paid for his keep as well as the income derived from the products of his labor.

Upon arriving at Artane, the police sergeant and Petie are met by an "old priest," presumably a Christian Brother, who asks, "'only one this time, eh?'" (FTC 165). Once within the confines of Artane, Petie is escorted by one of the brothers. Learning that Petie comes from Commons Lane, the brother seeks other boys who come from the same place in hopes of finding a boy to befriend Petie and mentor him in the ways of Artane. In each case, the boys the brother questions say they do not know Petie. Each boy, in turn, eagerly awaits the end of the conversation so that he can resume his duties in the shop or field. Artane has taken children who may otherwise have repeated the cycle of poverty and vice and given them discipline and pride in their own hard work. The concluding scene of Hartley's story presents Artane as a clean and organized place run by concerned brothers where boys learn the virtues of industrious labor: [End Page 39]

They had walked round the house, and came to a great building situated at its back. A door opened, letting out an extraordinary sound, a kind of low murmur, like that of swarming bees, and mingled with and rising above it the rapid click clack of sewing machines. A long hall lay before them with two rows of benches, the inner one higher than the other, along the wall, and on these benches sat about a hundred small boys, all of them under ten, some of them not yet six years old. Each had on a clean white blouse and a pair of red slippers.

Everybody was working; some tiny creatures had crochet needles in their hands, some were knitting, and others stitching. More advanced ones were tending the sewing machines, which they worked with a gravity and steadiness that was wonderful. The boards of floor were scoured white, the paint was fresh and clean, and through tall, open windows came sweet-smelling country air. All the eyes were turned on the new-comer [Petie] at once. (FTC 166-67)

Between the Children's Act of 1908 and the Kennedy Report of 1970--which signaled the end of the industrial school system--government officials investigated the conditions in industrial schools, educational reformers elsewhere in the world warned of the deleterious effects of institutional living on children, such prominent figures as Austin Clarke and Father Flanagan of Boys' Town spoke out publicly against industrial schools, and many people heard firsthand from children living in the schools about the harsh and inhumane treatment that has become the hallmark of the industrial schools. Recent accounts of children raised in industrial schools during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s have focused public awareness on just how far these schools fell from their initial goals and ethic. Moreover, these stories have caused many to question the unholy alliance between church and state in independent Ireland that allowed children of the poor and children of those deemed morally corrupt to be exploited and brutalized in institutional care run for profit by religious congregations like the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy. Of this period in the development of industrial schools, Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan conclude that the

reality is that the Catholic Church and the State in partnership made certain choices, not so much out of ignorance but more for reasons of financial expediency. The institutional model for the processing of children into adulthood by religious orders was undoubtedly the cheapest option available. From the State's perspective, any of the more enlightened approaches that they were aware of would not only have cost more, but would also have been strenuously resisted by the Catholic Church as an erosion of its power. 12 [End Page 40]

The memoirs of Paddy Doyle, Patrick Touher, and Bernadette Fahy disclose painful stories of abuse that differ chiefly in the names of the institutions where each child was confined. So, too, the novels by Mannix Flynn and Patrick McCabe present fictional, or partially fictional, accounts of children confined to industrial schools who suffer the abuse and humiliation identified by Doyle, Touher, and Fahy. Most recently the three-part documentary States of Fear presented not only victims' stories of abuse in industrial schools but information gleaned from government archives that reveal a concerted effort of both Church and State to criminalize poverty, hide and punish the children of the poor, and exploit the young for commercial gain.

Paddy Doyle's 1988 memoir The God Squad and Patrick Touher's 1991 memoir Fear of the Collar have several elements in common. Both relate stories of the physical and sexual abuse of children at the hands of respectively The Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers; both reveal the perverse allegiance victims of abuse typically have toward those who abuse them; and both demonstrate a conflict between the adult who tries to tell his story and the child whose story is being told. The conflict for Doyle comes through as early as his preface, where he states, "Many people familiar with the effects of institutional care, particularly Industrial Schools, will say I have gone too easy on them. Lives have been ruined by the tyrannical rule and lack of love in such places. People have been scarred for life." 13 Two paragraphs later, Doyle pulls his punch when he allows the story that follows to be interpreted as the consequence of an abstract force called "society," despite the frightening implications of his final words:

This book is not an attempt to point the finger, to blame or even to criticise any individual or group of people. Neither is it intended to make a judgement on what happened to me. It is about a society's abdication of responsibility to a [End Page 41] child. The fact that I was that child, and the book is about my life is largely irrelevant. The probability is that there were, and still are, thousands of "mes." (GS 10-11)

The conflict in Doyle's prefatory words is compounded in the book's title and the first edition's cover art. The original cover of The God Squad shows a noose hanging prominently in the foreground with a rosary extended through the noose--a startling conflation of sacred and profane images linked both by their physical similarity and by their psychological impact on the author. Behind the noose is a picture of a young boy with a disfigured foot, whom the reader learns later is Doyle himself in St. Patrick's hospital, one of the many hospitals in which Doyle stayed as a boy. The reader sees the young boy through the noose while the smiling boy receives a blessing from a priest whose face and torso are partially blocked by a shadow cast by the noose.

The reader learns later in The God Squad that the title refers to a group of hospital nuns who prepare patients for surgery and contact the hospital chaplain for those wishing to have their confessions heard before surgery. These nuns, Doyle's "God Squad," appear in only one paragraph of his memoir and do not in any way threaten or mistreat the young boy, unlike several of the sisters at St. Michael's industrial school, who inflict great suffering during the year-and-a-half that Doyle lives there. The priest in the photograph turns out to be a visiting East German cardinal who immediately comes to the young child sitting alone in a ward full of dying old men. The image of the rope, however, plays a prominent role in the book. The story of Doyle's father's suicide--the image of which haunts the young boy's dreams--is both the precipitating cause of Doyle's institutionalization as well as the moral stain that justifies the harsh treatment the boy experiences at St. Michael's.

On the one hand, the cover and the title of The God Squad seems to blame the wrong people for the injustices suffered by the author, obscuring the many acts of kindness offered Doyle by members of the religious. On the other hand, in the context of the story Doyle tells of people who knew about the mistreatment taking place inside St. Michael's, the cover and title suggest a chain of events starting with the sin of one person whose punishment is inflicted upon another, ending with the loss of faith by a young boy so willing to be faithful. 14 [End Page 42]

Mother Paul, the nun who dominates Doyle's memories of St. Michael's, articulates a philosophy of child rearing that recalls the original goals and ethic of the industrial school system:

When we had finished singing Mother Paul reminded us that as we had no parents it fell to the nuns to give us the guidance and grace that would make us into fine young men. Nuns were married to God she said as she raised her right hand to show a thin silver ring. Nuns did not have children in the way mothers had. "Each of you was sent to St. Michael's by God and you will be trained in the manner He would like. Mark my words, you will all one day be proud to have been part of this school." (GS 18)

The daily treatment of the children at St. Michael's falls far short of "guidance and grace." A scornful attitude is directed at him in almost every encounter with Mother Paul, and Doyle is chastised for the increasing difficulty he experiences with a lame leg and his recurring nightmares of his father's suicide. To some extent, these are special circumstances; Doyle's genetic medical condition, idiopathic torsion, would have been a mystery to any lay person at the time and was, in fact, poorly diagnosed and treated by medical staff once he reached hospital. Regarding the nightmares, the sin of suicide would have been seen as one vestige of the past best forgotten, and counseling was not an available option at that time.

Nonetheless, the failure on the part of the sisters to train Doyle and the other children at St. Michael's in even basic personal hygiene and social deportment reveals an indifference to these children becoming future members of Irish society. Doyle recalls the time his uncle collected him from the school to take him on a short holiday. After meeting the uncle and sharing a meal with him, Mother Paul advises Doyle to use the bathroom before leaving on his journey:

"You have a long journey ahead of you and you can't expect to be stopping every few miles just because you want to go to the toilet." I sat there, my hands firmly gripping the seat. I clenched my fist and gritted my teeth as I willed my bowels to empty. After much forcing I succeeded and then stood up to re-fasten my trousers.

"Wipe yourself," Mother Paul snapped before she realized that I had no idea of what she meant. She took a small piece of tissue from the roll and folded it in two. "Every time you go to the toilet, you must wipe your backside. Don't forget that." In my time at St. Michael's I never used toilet paper but just pulled my trousers up when finished. (GS 67)

Mother Paul's guidance in this instance occurs only because the uncle is present and waiting to take the boy. Doyle's story makes clear that, beyond any mistreatment that can be contextualized and rationalized today, the sisters of [End Page 43] St. Michael's industrial school did not see fit to rear well the children in their charge--physically, mentally, or spiritually. Doyle acknowledges that he required extensive tutoring later in life just to earn a leaving certificate. The sisters of St. Michael's industrial school seem to have assumed that children like Paddy Doyle would not grow up to need the traits and training necessary to function in society. Doyle's story also makes clear the the taint of sin and the assumption of culpability bore heavily upon the children sent to industrial schools:

Not all the children inside St. Michael's were orphaned, many came from broken homes or domestic situations into which they simply didn't fit. Inside the school there was a clear distinction between those who had parents and those who had not. Those who did have a father or mother alive who was alcoholic were often berated by the nuns. "Is it any wonder your poor father took to drinking. The poor man must have been at his wits end trying to manage you." I don't know if any of the other children there had parents who committed the mortal sin of suicide. If there were, then like me, they were probably kept in ignorance. (GS 85)

Just as Paddy Doyle does not want to "point the finger, to blame or even to criticise," Patrick Touher, in Fear of the Collar, is reticent about implicating the guilty or decrying the treatment he and others received at the hands of Christian Brothers running their flagship industrial school at Artane. Touher's story is in many ways more troubling than Doyle's because Touher tries to cast a positive light on the events of what he calls "My Extraordinary Life." Touher struggles with the way he wants to convey his story; parts are a stilted and awkward presentation of facts, while other parts evoke a personal style that captures the voice and feelings of Artane's boys. For example, when he recounts his first day the school, Touher recalls the boy who escorts him to the dormitory. This boy speaks like a tour guide, providing factual information about the school, its history, population, the number and size of buildings, the school's goals and accomplishments. In short, the boy in this case provides a narrative device by which the adult Touher relates factual information about Artane to the reader.

Likewise, chapter fourteen, titled "Life as a Trader," begins with the story of a summer day in 1956 as Touher and other boys go off to the workshops that were Artane's source of pride and income. After relating a few stories about Joe Golden, the lay manager of the boy's bakery who treated the boys well and taught them to care for their work, Touher begins a new section: "The bakery was only one of the very busy places in Artane, essential to the smooth running of the institution. There were many others." 15 An impersonal account of [End Page 44] the various workshops follows, separated by such subheadings as "Carpenters and Cabinet Makers," "The Tinsmiths' Workshop," and "The Sawmill." Chapter fourteen ends with Touher expounding the philosophy of Artane's founder, the Reverend Brother T. A. Hoope:

The idea of each boy learning a skilled trade was the brainchild of the founder and first manager of the Artane Industrial School, Rev. Bro. T. A. Hoope. It was his vision of the school to train and educate boys for the needs of the world outside. That vision of his was achieved. Each year a great harvest of young talent was reaped as another group of boys reached the age of sixteen. That harvest was then sent out to the cities and towns of Ireland, where the boys carried on the crafts and skills they had learned in Artane. (FC 135)

Sadly, Touher contradicts his words of praise for Hoope and his ideals in the Epilogue when he recounts the difficulty he had obtaining work as a baker after his release because did not receive a diploma. Despite his years of schooling at Artane, Touher discovered that the bakers' union refused to hire anyone trained in a nonunionized house or school. Sadder still are the stories of brutality, humiliation, regimentation, and punishment that punctuate such words of praise.

Touher recounts the physical and sexual abuses exacted on the boys and their persistent sense of fear and confusion. He recalls an encounter with a brother nicknamed The Sting, who was later removed from Artane. Touher, known as Collie, and his friends are caught by The Sting after climbing over a wall to collect chestnuts. The Sting tells Touher he will deal with him that night at eight o'clock. After the brother leaves, the other boys warn Touher that The Sting routinely beats and fondles them: "'You know, Collie, he hurt me privates. As he beat me with one hand, he held me with the other hand. He had me lie across the bed sat beside me, started stroking me bottom, then beating me at times with his leather'" (FC 36). Each of Touher's friends relates similar stories of abuse by The Sting. That night, nine-year-old Patrick Touher obediently arrives at the brother's room: "The Sting stood in front of me and said, 'Well, you have to learn how to keep out of trouble now, won't you, boy?' I said, 'Yes, sir, I will in future, sir.' 'I know you will, boy, I will teach you the hard way. Take off that nightshirt, you will not need it for a while'" (FC 37). The Sting beats and molests Touher, after which the brother weeps, holds the crying boy in his arms, and promises never to beat him again. While Touher claims that he was never sexually abused again in Artane, he was--like the other boys confined in that industrial school--a victim of other forms of abuse and intimidation.

Like Doyle, Touher struggles with the contradictions of his childhood story. Despite its title, Touher's book ends with a glowing biographical portrait of Artane's founder as well as a brief account of the 1868 Industrial Schools Act [End Page 45] and a historical overview of Artane Castle. But Fear of the Collar is more than a title; it sums up the apprehensive disposition of a victim that is woven into the narrative of Touher's memoir. Each time Touher identifies one of the brothers by name he parenthetically mentions that the brother is now deceased. This practice occurs with every brother mentioned in the book--as if Touher can only bring himself to tell his story now that all the brothers involved, some of whom acted kindly toward him, are indeed deceased, or that he can tell his story now only because he no longer fears reprisal. Even when he acknowledges gradual improvements in the treatment of the boys at Artane, Touher's words accentuate a sordid history of mistreatment at the school:

. . . like a lot of other brothers, [the new brother] did not remain in the Christian Brothers. The Bucko left, and so did The Lug and The Apeman, who would have them? So they left the brothers or it left them, perhaps. Artane was slowly, very slowly changing. Not all the brothers were bad. As time went on new brothers came and they were gentler. (FC 88)

In the final chapter, Touher describes his thoughts on his last night in the school:

I was full of memories now. Odd really to think that a place so full of regimented ways and of hard tough discipline and a system as tough as nails, would mean so much to me. Artane Industrial School was in fact an institution and it was quite possible that I had by now become institutionalized, and that the system would leave a mark on me for a long, long time. I felt that I was part of the great institution and that in going I was losing part of myself. (FC 165)

A few pages later, the young Patrick Touher prepares to leave Artane for good when a car containing two new boys arrives at the school. Touher reflects that the two boys "would [soon] know that they were in a different world from where they came. A world full of intrigue, a boys' world, a world of black and white, black habits and white collars. I thought how they would soon fear the collar and all it stood for" (FC 170). The conflict in Doyle's preface and Touher's conclusion do nothing to diminish the horrifying reality both children experienced. Rather, these passages highlight the difficulty both men have as adults in formulating and conveying their childhood experiences to a public well aware of such institutions as St. Michael's and Artane, but blind to the treatment exacted on children behind the walls of those industrial schools.

Mannix Flynn's and Patrick McCabe's novels set in industrial schools differ from the personal memoirs of Doyle and Touher in more ways than their fictionality. Both Flynn's 1983 novel Nothing to Say and McCabe's 1992 novel [End Page 46] The Butcher Boy are narrated by characters who, unlike the abandoned Doyle and Touher, exist on the margins of society, in part because of family problems and in part because of criminal actions. Flynn's thinly disguised autobiographical character, Gerard O'Neill, winds up in St. Joseph's Industrial School, in Connemara, commonly referred to as Letterfrack, after a long history of petty crimes and truancy. Because his home life is characterized by chaos, poverty, and contention, Gerard is sent to Letterfrack ostensibly for criminal violations, but also because his mother cannot control him:

"Mrs. O'Neill," said the Judge, "You are a sick woman. You have thirteen other children who need looking after. You cannot spend your life running around after Gerard." The Judge turned to the Probation Officer and asked for the report. . . . "Comes from a family of fourteen, the youngest about three years of age. Father works in the cleaning Department of the Corporation. There is also a drinking problem from the father and constant marriage break-ups. The housing situation is bad and consists of one sitting room, a kitchen, a toilet and two bedrooms in which the family sleeps." 16

The court's open hostility toward both Gerard and his mother reflect a recurring prejudice against the poor. Raftery and O'Sullivan contend that the "Industrial schools were designed for the children of the poor, who were perceived as a threat to the social order. It was these children who were inevitably targeted for incarceration. . . ." 17 Like Flynn's speaker, Francie Brady, the speaker in McCabe's novel, is the product of a family in social, economic, and psychological decline. Francie is incarcerated in an industrial school because he breaks into and debases the Nugent home. He, too, is caught in a cycle of abuse and neglect that precludes any hope of normal development and maturation.

Both Flynn and McCabe employ techniques of storytelling that free them from the restraints of realism, though these stylistic choices work better for McCabe than they do for Flynn. Most of Flynn's novel entails a desolate portrait of Dublin streets, deficient family housing, and the isolated Letterfrack industrial school. The middle chapters of the novel reveal Letterfrack, known for taking criminally inclined boys, as a kind of juvenile detention center run as much by the street toughs confined there as by the Christian Brothers in charge: "This was the law of the inmates. The Brothers had their rules and the boys had theirs" (NS 66). The story of Gerard O'Neill begins on a boat sailing for England as O'Neill and his friends Padder and Mucker--whose names [End Page 47] echo Joyce's Paddy Stink and Mickey Mud--flee the authorities after a string of petty crimes. Flynn frames his novel with Gerard fading in and out of a dream state, which creates an ambiguity in the novel. Is the entire story of Letterfrack, which accounts for half the novel's content, merely a dream manifesting Gerard's fear of being caught? Have the boys fled the country before they can be caught and sent to an industrial school? If so, Letterfrack then becomes a place of nightmares where bad boys who run wild through the streets and refuse to go to school are sent. Letterfrack becomes a place of what-ifs, a place of punishment created out a child's imagination: "'1-2-3-4-5-6-7, all good children go to heaven; 1-2-3-4-5-6-7; all bad boys go to Letterfrack'" (NS 33). If O'Neill's dream, however, is a recollection of an actual stay in Letterfrack, then it is recalled in a dream state and told in a style that occasionally mixes reality and fantasy: "It seemed as if days and months had gone by since we boarded that boat and left Dublin without telling a single soul we were going" (NS 11). Such ambiguities problematize scenes like the one on the train.

Toward the end of the novel many of the boys prepare to leave the school and board a train for Dublin. The scene assumes a surreal quality as the boys play, some cowboys and Indians, others soldiers, others spies. The boys' play begins to blend, as cowboys start fighting soldiers. So, too, the play moves from imaginary to real as objects start flying through the air. This momentary scene of childhood play and imagination is broken up by a brother who enters the car screaming at the boys. In his efforts to break up the horseplay, the brother is hit by a shoe and covered with spit and debris. The enraged brother grabs a boy at random and beats him so severely that the boy is bloodied and other brothers must restrain the offender. Once the train arrives in Dublin, the brutalized child meets his parents, who are rightly horrified by the sight of their son. The boy's father curses the offending brother while his fellow brothers calm the terrified parents of other children:

"Oh Jazus, look at that poor child! What happened to him?" said one of the women to anybody. "The Brothers hit him on the train," said Fritzy. . . . "Here, hold on there," said the man that was sitting beside the boy. The man now stood beside the Brothers. Next thing, his son was beside him, crying and pointing: "It was him, Da." My heart leapt for joy, and I grinded my teeth against each other. I don't know which came first, "Yea rotten poxy bastard," or the unmerciful punch Brother Michael got right into his specky mush. The rest of the Brothers held the man back. (NS 171)

This scene in the railway station indicts both those running the school as well as those in society who turned a blind eye to the brutality. The scene in the train and the response in the station are moments of rupture when actions routinely taking place behind the walls of industrial schools become unexpectedly [End Page 48] visible outside their walls. But the surreal scene on the train, like the dream state that frames the novel, blunts such moments and raises doubts in the reader's mind regarding the actuality of events, lessening the impact of that moment of rupture.

McCabe's portrait of an unnamed industrial school takes on even greater surreal qualities. Francie Brady falls victim to the same kind of abuse his father did a generation earlier. Like his father, Francie is sent to a "house of a hundred windows." 18 Francie Brady's story is far more fantastic than Gerard O'Neill's, yet McCabe is more successful than Flynn in presenting an affecting moment of rupture that creates a rare moment of clarity for the reader, as well as a fleeting chance for Francie Brady to seek the fostering he so desperately needs. McCabe locates the entire story in the mind of his central character, a troubled boy prone to emotional flights of fancy and sudden outbursts of anger. Throughout the novel, the reader struggles to determine to what extent the events in the novel actually occur and the extent to which Francie's unique perspective controls his account of events. One point comes through quite clearly to the reader, despite the difficulty of Francie's narrative. When Francie tries to tell his best friend Joe Purcell about the sexual abuse he received in the industrial school, Joe stares at Francie in disbelief. Joe--the one character who consistently acts as Francie's anchor, his connection to the outside world--cannot bear to hear the story Francie tries to tell. Francie responds by dismissing the whole thing as a joke, a story he made up just to tease Joe:

I told him about the gardener and the Black and Tans and the bogmen and their bony arses and being locked in the boilerhouse and puffing fags and talking to the saints and St. Teresa. It sure is some laugh said Joe, what did they lock you in the boilerhouse for? I says oh nothing, just messing around, you know. That was all I was going to say but then he says it again but what did they lock you in the boilerhouse for? Then I thought the best thing about friends is you can tell them anything in the whole world and once I thought that I didn't care. As soon as I started the story it ran away with itself. There were tears in my eyes and I couldn't stop laughing the bonnet and Tiddly [Father Sullivan], I love you! and the whole lot. You want to see the Rolos he gave me I said, I must have ate about two thousand fucking Rolos Joe. Rolos said Joe, he gave you Rolos but what did he give you Rolos for? . . . . I wanted to talk about the hide and the old days and hacking at the ice . . . . But Joe didn't want to. He kept going back [End Page 49] to the other thing so in the end I told him and what does he say then he says Francie he didn't really do that did he? I said what are you talking about Joe he did didn't I just tell you? The next thing I knew I was in a cold sweat because of the way Joe was looking at me. . . . Then I said: I fairly fooled you there Joe. Tiddly! Imagine someone doing the like of that! Tiddly! Rolos--for fuck's sake! I laughed till the tears ran down my face. I fooled you I cried out. (BB 103-5)

In a novel where the real and surreal merge in Francie's mind, what the reader knows with certainty is that Francie cannot tell anyone about life in the industrial school. The moment when Francie's voice and his story are most clear is also the moment that those around him choose not to hear. It is not surprising, then, when Francie spins into a downward spiral of paranoia and violence that results in Mrs. Nugent's murder and Francie's incarceration. Because Francie cannot exist in society, he is locked up in a place where he can continually relive his few happy childhood experiences with Joe, those happy days before his mother's death and his commitment to the industrial school.

Bernadette Fahy's 1999 memoir Freedom of Angels and the RTÉ documentary States of Fear approach the industrial school in new ways, combining personal testimony, historical background, and cultural and political analysis. Fahy, who participated in the 1996 documentary on Goldenbridge Orphanage titled Dear Daughter, published her memoir when the public controversy over States of Fear was still at a high pitch. 19 Fahy charges the Irish church and state with collaborating to criminalize poverty, and to use it as a justification for institutionalizing children in an attempt to control what was seen as the moral laxity of the Irish poor: "When nuns and staff told us, 'You'll turn out like your mother,' they meant it as an attack on us, pointing out an inherent, irredeemable flaw: our birth." 20 The result is a nature versus nurture paradox that kept the offspring of poor families, single parents, or overextended households trapped in an cycle of fear, confusion, and inevitable sin:

Perhaps the nuns believed that the less we knew about sex, the less likely we were to become curious about it and, worse still, actively engage in it. After all, their principal aim was to protect us from moral danger . . . In contrast to their theoretical teaching, in practice they continually punished us for being the product of our parents' sin and predicted that we would "turn out" just like our mothers. (FA 114) [End Page 50]

Such paradoxical teaching only exacerbated the fear and confusion felt by young women in such institutions as Goldenbridge who were the victims of sexual abuse, because any knowledge or experience of sex was grounds for transfer to a Magdalen asylum.

Fahy tells her story with more confidence than Doyle or Touher, and she is able to place her personal experience within a larger context of judicial inequity and educational corruption. Even so, Fahy still has moments when, like Doyle and Touher, she seems to fear telling her story. Twice, early in her book, Fahy mentions that one particular event stands out as her most painful and debilitating experience at Goldenbridge. These two statements dramatically foreshadow an important revelation that Fahy clearly wants to make. When that moment arrives in her story, however, Fahy buries it in the middle of a long paragraph, almost as if the humiliation she felt then still stings. The reader, recalling her foreshadowing an important event, one in particular among many, must stop return and reread the passage and deduce that the experience in the room known as the "Rec" must be the event Fahy hinted at earlier in her memoir. So acute is the pain of the event that Fahy can more easily anticipate its telling than actually tell it.

All of these texts have commonalities, the most obvious of which is the brutality levied against children at the hands of brothers, sisters, and lay people working in industrial schools. But other commonalities arise as well. One of the most troubling is the fact that, for these children, the customary distinction between public and private is erased. Industrial school children were not afforded the common freedom of privacy; showers and baths were events performed in front of others; and even the bathrooms were open to display. At other times, particularly among younger children, whole dormitories were awakened at night and the children were forced to use chambers pots or the bathroom at the same time. Rarely are the children of industrial schools permitted the freedom of simply being alone. When events do take place in private, they are often traumatic, as when is a child called away from the group into the private chamber of a brother or nun and is sexually or physically assaulted. So rare, in fact, is a private moment for Paddy Doyle that, when he finds himself alone in bed during a trip to his aunt's house, his fear prevents him even from getting out of bed to use the bathroom. When he defecates in the bed, his enraged aunt vows not have him back in her house. In an industrial school, privacy equates to an empty stairwell, or to confinement in a hot boiler room or dark closet, where the child could be beaten. In the end, children of industrial schools develop no clear sense of a private self, only an institutional self. [End Page 51] Bernadette Fahy makes this pointedly clear: "One of the few things we could call our own was our identity number. . . . mine was 138" (FA 29).

In the light of recent novels and memoirs, it is ironic to think of the skeptical and aloof Stephen Dedalus finding the Christian Brothers representative of the love he so clearly lacks. Such a view of the Christian Brothers may have held at the time of Joyce's novel, but an alternate view has been forged in the conscience of contemporary Irish society. Beyond such contrasts, though, Joyce's novel is helpful in another way, for Portrait is a bildungsroman, a story of development and initiation in which a young man grows up, develops a sense of himself, assimilates the tenets and teachings of his culture, and then reaches a point where he can accept or reject the culture that shaped him. These memoirs and novels of institutional life make clear that the children of industrial schools were afforded no such opportunity. They were raised in an environment where the two key ingredients of a bildungsroman, self and culture, were not distinct entities that interplay during the course of childhood and adolescence, but, rather, a melding of the self with the institution and its inviolable rules. An obliterated distinction between private and public spheres results in young people growing up without a clear sense of self; what is private becomes sinful or painful to the individual lacking the opportunity to evaluate, accept, or reject the teachings of the institution.

The characters in these texts, whether real or fictional, suffer from the same fate: they must struggle to see themselves as members of Irish society, and can only haltingly assimilate into society outside the confines of the industrial school. Such simple things as eating and conversing with others proves alien and disconcerting to them. As Gerard O'Neill laments at the end of Flynn's novel, "You don't know the face in the mirror and the face in the mirror doesn't know you" (NS 171). Rather than assure the moral rectitude of at risk children, the industrial school created undereducated, underachieving, alienated adults who find only a tenuous place in Irish society. It is no wonder so many of them--like the fictional Francie Brady or the real Mannix Flynn--spend part of their adult lives in prison, while others try to free themselves from a prison of silence.

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Notes

1. Fintan O'Toole, "Cooney Has at Least Posed the Right Question," Irish Times, 26 November 1999, p. 14. See also the following articles by O'Toole: "Attitudes that Led to Abuse Entrenched in System," Irish Times, 14 May 1999, p. 14; "Evading the Unpalatable Truth about Sexual Abuse," Irish Times 10 December 1999. 14; and "Letterfrack Reports Show Controlling Mentality," Irish Times, 21 January 2000, 14.

2. Ray O'Donoghue, "Memories of Industrial School," Irish Times, 15 November 1999, p. 17. See also the following articles for examples of the counterargument: Risteard Mac Conchradha, "'States of Fear' [Letter to the Editor]," Irish Times, 27 May 1999, p. 17; Brian Gogan, CSSp, "'States of Fear' [Letter to the Editor]," Irish Times, 31 May 1999, p. 17; Patsy McGarry, "Priest Criticises 'States of Fear' for Giving only One Side of Story," Irish Times, 2 July, 1999, p. 7; Patsy McGarry, "RTE Stands by Child Institution Expose Series Assertions in State Funding are Defended," Irish Times, 20 August 1999, p. 9; Maria Byrne, "'Suffer the Little Children' [Letter to the Editor]," Irish Times, 6 December 1999, p. 17; Breda O'Brien, "A Search for the Truth Does not Question Reality of Child Abuse," Irish Times, 10 January 2000, p. 14.

3. The documentary was modified into the book Suffer the Little Children, coauthored by the show's producer, Mary Raftery, and a Trinity College lecturer, Eoin O'Sullivan, whose area of expertise is the industrial school system. On May 11, 1999, the taoiseach issued the following apology: "On behalf of the State and of all the citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue." At the time this article went to press, the Commission to Inquire into Childhood Abuse had not issued its first report.

4. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Signet, 1991), p. 180.

5. Joyce, A Portrait, 74. As Séamas Ó Buachalla contends the Catholic Church experienced a direct reversal of power and influence during the course of the nineteenth century, connected directly to its growing influence in the field of education: "While the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Irish Church Act of 1869 made far-reaching legal changes, it was mainly in and by the education system that the Roman Catholic Church extended its sphere of power and influence during the century. That church's position of weakness in the early decades, a residual of the penal laws, was transformed by the seventies into a position of strength and influence in Irish life. The process of transformation was promoted and catalyzed mainly by a prolonged campaign involving a series of resounding victories on education issues carried by the church against various governments." Séamas Ó Buachalla, Education Policy in Twentieth Century Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound, 1988), p. 36.

6. Barry Coldrey, "'A Most Unenviable Reputation': The Christian Brothers and School Discipline over Two Centuries," History of Education, 21 (1992), 278. While admitting that negative opinions of Christian Brothers are often deserved, Coldrey attempts to explain why the industrial schools seem to be the site of so many cases of abuse: "In institutions Brothers and boys had one another's company around the clock. The work was especially tiring and stressful; recreation away from the institution was rare; holidays few; and the boys' moods and reactions differed from those with a stable family background. Bedwetting among younger inmates, the result of basic insecurity and poor toilet training, was a pervasive problem, and no solution appeared to offer itself except primitive aversion therapy. It was likely that stress would lead to violence" (285). See also Coldrey's "A Mixture of Caring and Corruption: Church Orphanages and Industrial Schools," Studies, 89 (2000), 7-18.

7. Barry Coldrey, Faith and Fatherland: The Christian Brothers and the Development of Irish Nationalism, 1838-1921 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), pp. 248-74.

8. The Christian Brothers (C.B.S.) are not considered an order but a "congregation," though the terms order, congregation, and occasionally institute are used synonymously.

9. Jane Barnes, Irish Industrial Schools, 1868-1908 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989), p. 147.

10. Graham Balfour, The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903), p. 114.

11. May Laffen Hartley, Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor (London: Macmillan, 1881), p. 161; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (FTC 161).

12. Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools (Dublin: New Island, 1999), p. 15. Harry Ferguson presents the industrial schools within the larger context of child care and neglect, challenging Raftery and O'Sullivan's conclusion of systematic abuse of poor children: "Oddly, the links between the industrial schools and child protection are ignored [by Raftery and O'Sullivan]. Cruelty and neglect are not even mentioned in the context of noting that at least 80% of children admitted to the schools were categorized as being there due to 'lack of proper guardianship' . . . . the sheer scale of the child protection movement in Ireland can be seen from the fact that between 1889 and 1955 the NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] dealt with 478,865 Irish children. However, the numbers of children actually removed from parental custody was low, relative to the large numbers dealt with, amounting to less than 2% of the children annually coming to the attention of the Society. Thus, while the Society's work was overwhelmingly with the poor, it was still only in exceptional cases that children were taken from parental custody." See Harry Ferguson, "States of Fear, Child Abuse, and Irish Society," Doctrine and Life (2000), 24.

13. Paddy Doyle, The God Squad (Dublin: Raven Arts, 1988), p. 10; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (GS 10).

14. The cover art described here appears on the first edition of the book, published in 1988 by Raven Arts Press. Recently, Transworld Publishers of London reprinted the book, probably in response to the public interest sparked by States of Fear. The cover art to this edition differs from the original, showing a head and shoulders shot of the author as an adult, the same photograph that appeared on the back cover of the first edition. Also, Doyle recently learned that the man he always assumed was his father, whose suicide precipitated Doyle's stay in St. Michael's, in fact may not have been his father. This question has yet to be resolved. See Maria Pepper, "On the Trail of His Past," Wexford People, 22 March 2000.

15. Patrick Touher, Fear of the Collar: Artane Industrial School (Dublin: O'Brien, 1991), p. 129; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (FC 129).

16. Mannix Flynn, Nothing to Say (Dublin: Ward River Press, 1983), p. 37; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (NS 37).

17. Raftery and O'Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children, p. 64.

18. Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy (New York: Delta, 1992), p. 71; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (BB 71). In an interview, McCabe refers to the narrative technique employed in The Butcher Boy as "social fantastic." See Christopher FitzSimon, "St. Macartan, Minnie the Minx and Mondo Movies: Elliptical Peregrinations Through the Subconscious of a Monaghan Writer Traumatised by Cows and the Brilliance of James Joyce," Irish University Review, 28 (1998), 176.

19. Louis Lentin produced the television documentary Dear Daughter, based on Christine Buckley's time at Goldenbridge during the 1950s, which was aired in April 1996.

20. Bernadette Fahy, Freedom of Angels (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1999), 122; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (FA 122).

http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/new_hibernia_review/v005/5.1molino.html

Leaving Artane Leaflet

2006-05-24T09:18:00.000+01:00

1 Don't miss Mass on Sundays or Holydays of Obligation.

2 Go regularly to Confession and Holy Communion.
They will keep you straight and make you a man.
Say a Rosary every night. It will keep Our Lady on you side.

3 Stick at your work.
Don't change from one employer to another in a hurry.
Don't allow yourself to get "fed up".
Only useless people get "fed up".
If for sufficient reason you want to change from your employer
give me at least two weeks' notice and I shall help you to get another place.

4 Don't waste time.
If you lose your job go after another one at once till you get one.
A long time out of work will make you unfit for work.
Take a pride in your work. You cannot be proud of work badly done.

5 Learn to be good-humoured and agreeable. You will then be acceptable to others.
Don't be quarrelsome or grumbling. Try to acquire good manners. A book on Politeness will help.

6 Don't become a slave to the "Pictures".((( ESPECIALLY JESSE JAMES ???)))

7 Avoid liquor. You are well enough without it.

8 Don't bet. You haven't a lot of money and you have better uses for it than betting.

9 Have respect for your own person and the persons of others.
Your body has to put you into Heaven. Don't let it put you into Hell.

10 The only one who can make a man of you is yourself,
and then only by God's help, for which you must pray daily.
And make Our Lady your refuge at all times.

Your friend, Brother Flannery

Artane boys faced music and straps

2005-09-20T20:10:00.000+01:00

In Croke Park the Artane Boys Band will strike up, as much a part of the All-Ireland tradition as the final itself. Patrick Walsh was in the band once. He told his story to Patsy McGarry It was cold in Croke Park on April 12th, 1966. Thousands had gathered there with the President, Mr Eamon de Valera, and the Taoiseach, Mr Seán Lemass, for a pageant marking the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising.

Also there was inmate number 14723 from Artane industrial school. Patrick Walsh was on his first outing with the Artane Boys' Band. He was 12 and played B-flat clarinet. He had joined the band for safety. When he arrived at Artane in 1963 his two older brothers, John and Frank, who were already in the band, took him aside and made him agree to join. He had to, they said, if he was to avoid being beaten. Boys in the band proper were an elite. They were untouchable.

It wouldn't do for them to arrive in Croke Park with black eyes, bruises or broken limbs. Patrick's brothers began to teach him how to play the B-flat clarinet. They presented him to Brother Joseph O'Connor, who was in charge of the band. "OK," he said, "he's in." Patrick, two of his brothers and their sister, Mary, had been in industrial schools since August 1955. They were from Churchtown, Dublin, but their parents' marriage had failed. They were detained by order of the Dublin Children's Court and were to be held by the State until they were 16.

Each was "charged" with "having a parent who does not exercise proper guardianship". Patrick was not yet two. His "sentence of detention" would continue until his 16th birthday, September 25th, 1969. Before entering Artane, Patrick had never encountered violence. There, however, boys were beaten with straps on the slightest pretext, he recalled.

"A classroom of 25 11-year-olds and every single one of them crying for mercy. Every day. Can you imagine the sound that makes. I can still hear it in my head . . . for not understanding a Gaelic word, or not being quick enough with responses to some mathematical problem." The man in charge of the infirmary would get extremely agitated when boys came in clutching their stomachs after being punched by Christian Brothers. He was afraid of appendicitis. Patrick recalled two funerals of boys who had been rushed to the Mater Hospital with "acute appendicitis".

Not yet in the band proper, Patrick was also beaten. Records say that between October 1963 and October 1964 he was detained in the infirmary five times. Each followed bad beatings.
One of the most savage he witnessed was of a boy who attempted to escape. He was brought back by gardaí. "Is it any wonder we as children associated the State [through the Garda] with that sort of thing?" said Patrick.

He remembered when a group of boys went to Clontarf Garda station to complain about beatings at Artane. Gardaí brought them back back to the school, and all were flogged. "We always dreamed that one day the State would step in to stop it, but they were just dreams. Wishes. Hopes."

Attempts at escape continued and there was one outstanding moment when a boy tried to get something done about the terror at Artane. Anthony Burke was 15 when the minister for education, Mr Brian Lenihan, visited the school in 1967. Mr Lenihan was shown around spruced-up classrooms, pristine dormitories and neat workshops Then it was time to go. The boys had assembled on the school steps behind the brothers. Anthony Burke stepped forward. He said to Mr Lenihan: "They beat us every day. Stop them beating us." The brother superior put his arms around Anthony Burke's shoulders and smiled, with a "what-a-laugh" attitude, as Patrick recalled. Mr Lenihan turned to his chauffeur and said: "Get me out of this f---ing place." It became a catch-phrase among the boys. "Get me out of this f---ing place," they would say, and keel over. Then brother superior banned it.

Poor Anthony Burke. As soon as Mr Lenihan left, the brother superior dragged him inside and, along with one of the most savage brothers in the place, punched and belted him along a corridor in front of all the other boys saying: "Can you believe the lies that this dirty bastard said to the minister about being beaten every day? Imagine! People being beaten every day? Can you believe it?"

Anthony was sent to Letterfrack.

Letterfrack had "an awesome reputation", said Patrick. The brothers decided to dispatch his brother, Frank, there after a bout of mischief. Patrick contacted their mother in London. She had been denied access to all her other children when she fled her husband, to London, with their fourth child, baby Gerald. Once, illegally, she visited her three other boys at Rathdrum school. She was allowed to see them briefly, one at a time, and told not to come back again. The boys saw her again in June 1966 when the Artane Boys' Band visited Blackpool. She had arranged with Patrick that Frank should be outside a church near Artane at 5 p.m. on a given day. She picked up Frank in a taxi and took him to the airport.

That night the brother superior shone a torch in Patrick's sleeping face and asked him who the woman was who had been seen picking Frank up. Patrick said he didn't know. The brother superior raided Patrick's locker and found letters from his mother. However, Patrick had removed her address from them all. The letters were placed on a table in the brother superior's office as two gardaí interrogated Patrick. They said they could charge him with assisting an unlawful flight. Then the brother superior threw the letters in the fire. "They were very important to me," said Patrick.

He was not sexually abused at Artane. But he was aware of the activities of some of the brothers and one layman in this area. The layman had grabbed him one day but had to let him go immediately when a group of boys came along. The same layman used to take selected, usually illegitimate, boys out for trips in his mini-bus. After one such trip six of the boys had to be taken to the Mater hospital for treatment following brutal sexual abuse. He was then barred from Artane.

Some boys would be taken to some brother's private rooms at night. Or to a cubicle in each dormitory, where a supervising brother slept. No one talked about what happened in those cubicles. Artane was shut down in July 1969 when Patrick and the band were on a tour of Boston and New York. They returned to find the place empty. Patrick was taken in by a woman in Mullingar, where he was until 1971. He is now a successful businessman in London. His brothers are also in London. None of them has played the clarinet since leaving Artane.

Patrick has come to believe that "you can judge the nobility of a people by the way they deal with children". I have to say I didn't see much nobility in the Irish." He does not consider himself Irish. He is 46 today. The Artane Boys' Band is no longer run by the Christian Brothers.

Patsy Flanagan Never Went Home

2005-09-20T19:16:00.000+01:00

This is the death certificate of Patsy Flanagan

who died while incarcerated

at Artane Industrial School, February 1951.

Patsy Flanagan is one of the many unaccounted for deaths in the Institutions in Ireland. Patsy died in hospital after what was probably a violent incident in Artane Industrial School. Much of the so-called testimony on the events leading to Patsy's death is so obviously false - criminally false.

What is so obvious and undisputed about Patsy's short life and violent end is that in the great scheme of things as preached by his jailors, the Christian Brothers, Patsy didn't count for much - only what his labours could produce for these jailors.

He Lived - He Worked - He Died

And those responsible for his violent end STILL parade with the mask of religiousity and moral probity.

But they HAVE blood on their hands - at the least Patsy Flanagan was refused proper medical attention for one and a half hours, crucial time that could have saved his life. At the worst Patsy Flanagan was murdered - plain, simple and awful murder.

Angry on Ultimate Disposal has asked searching questions on Patsy's death, and made very telling points worthy of Maigret. These points, ALL THESE POINTS, must be addressed at the Commission if the truth leading to the events surrounding Patsy death is to FINALLY come out.

ARTANE HEARINGS FULL

2005-09-18T10:55:00.000+01:00

A R T A N E

ARTANE 7 - Reynolds: I Know Mental Case Brother

2005-09-18T09:52:00.000+01:00

Q. I think it is true to say, when one goes through the visitation reports, that occasionally there would be criticisms made of a particular Brother, this is within the Order?
A. Yes.

Q. Of Christian Brothers themselves, that they would make criticisms of a Brother if he wasn't adhering to his religious vocation properly or practices, or if he was too strict or harsh on the boys, is that right?
A. Correct, and I give some examples of that.

Q. Yes.
A. The visitation itself was a rigorous exercise through which the Congregation carried out what it saw as its role in ensuring that everything was as it should be, both within the community itself and within the school or whatever institution was in question. There was a report written which didn't come back to the community, it went to the relevant Council, the Provincial Council. A covering letter came back to the superior or manager highlighting some of the positives, but generally highlighting the negatives and the things that needed to be attended to. There was follow up on those to ensure that it happened.

Q. Do you think the follow up was adequate?
A. I would say in general yes, in other instances no. A lot of that would depend on the individual person. In some that I could point out, I would certainly say in one that I quote, the 1952 visitation report was certainly one that was carried out that I have quoted quite liberally on, in which a lot of views were expressed and I would say it was responsible for a lot of the discussion that took place among the Brothers themselves through the 1950's and eventually led to significant changes in the running of the institution.

Q. Do you think that the suitability of a Brother to remain in the school would be something that would be addressed in these reports and followed up?
A. It would, and I have no doubt that Brothers were changed out. I have read all the reports and reading through them, one of the things I said to myself at times was that if the visitor was putting that in writing now about a Brother, he might want to consult his legal advisers before he would write some of the things that are written.

Q. I want to draw your attention to one such matter, and before the Chairman gets too apprehensive, it is redacted, there is no name in it. At page 48 of the book which you have there, there is a visitation report for 1958/59, and below the heading "Poultry Farm" the next heading says: - "The arrival of Brother ..., who is a mental case, created the problem of trying to get him something to do." - Then he lists a few different catastrophes he was involved in. Then if one moves on to page 51 in that book, you will find another reference in the second paragraph on that page: - "Brother ... is seemingly a mental case and it is very difficult to place him." - If you go on to the next page, page 52, that is a visitation in 1963, some considerable time later. I know it is not entirely helpful because the names of the Brothers who were there at the time are blanked out, but you may take it from me that that Brother's name is still there as a member of the Congregation in 1963, having been referred to in those less than flattering terms in 1958/59.
A. I would say a number of things about it. First of all, obviously I know who the Brother was, I knew the Brother and I would not agree with the description of the visitor, but so be it. Secondly, I would say that he wasn't a teaching Brother and I don't think the criticism was in relation to the mental soundness of the person. I think the main criticism was here
was somebody that was sent in and he does not seem to be able to fulfill any role, so essentially I think the visitation report said that he was a negative quantity in the place. I would take that certainly I presume not in the community and from religious observance, but from the point of view that his work rate wasn't very good and his contribution wasn't adequate in the eyes of the visitor. As you wisely say, why not take him out. The simple fact of the matter was he was left there, they tried him in a number of situations, they didn't work and eventually he was moved on. During part of that time incidentally, the Brother in question was studying in university, he wasn't a full-time member of the staff.

Q. I will be coming back to this later, Brother. There are examples of some Brothers who were there a very long time, some as long as 30 years, not many, but there are some there over 20 years, 25 years or 30 years. Was there any fixed policy in the Christian Brothers about ensuring a regular turnaround of Brothers?
A. There wasn't, I would say, in relation to industrial and residential schools, because people with experience and who were seen to be successful were left there. I think it is also worth noting that many of the primary and secondary school principals nowadays are also there in that once you go into the job, that is it, and there is no system of sabbaticals or anything like there, you are there in the job for that duration.

Q. I am not suggesting that there wasn't a regular turnaround, because we have been furnished with the dates when Brothers were there, and they clearly show that a great many of them were there only for two or three years at a time. I am just wondering was there any policy on this?
A. From reading it I would say the teaching Brothers were probably transferred more frequently and moved along, but part of the reason for that was that the system within the Brothers was you had a primary school in Artane and the system within the Brothers at that stage was, and right up until recent enough times, that every Brother who trained as a teacher trained first as a primary school teacher and then the decision afterwards as to whether or not he wanted to move to secondary school or remain in primary was largely left to himself. Those who were moving, who were deciding they were going to go would be applying to go to university and so on, and they would be moved rather more quickly so that they would attend studies and move into secondary school. A lot the principals, all of the them -- well, not all, and I am trying to think of names at the minute, but most of the primary school principals were there for a longer duration, but they were also people who were committing their lives to primary school education and hadn't any desire to move out of it.

ARTANE HEARINGS 6

2005-09-18T09:43:00.000+01:00

Q. Yes. I think there were other administrative staff in Artane as well, the trades area, the farm, the kitchen?
A. Yes.

Q. The band and the infirmary, they all had designated people to run those?
A. They had. Some of these, their management role would be smaller than in others. Obviously there was a farm manager, who was a Brother, whose role was a very significant one. The Brother in charge of the band was strictly an administrative role, not a musical one as such. There were musical directors and so on and teachers who taught music. The same in the infirmary, there was a Brother who generally looked after the nuts and bolts issues in the infirmary, but you had the medical officer, the doctor and the nurse who looked after all the medical affairs.

Q. What forms of inspections was the school subject to?
A. Three really, three forms of inspection. Number one, from the Department of Education, the primary school was under the normal inspection of the Department of Education for Primary Schools. They were really three types of inspection. You had a general inspection in primary schools where an inspector or a group of inspectors came to a school and spent a period of a day, two days, three days a week, depending on the size of the school. All classrooms were visited and so on. Teachers were inspected at their work and all the various documentation was inspected, at the end of which a general report was issued. They inspected individuals then who were in their first year of teaching after completing training college. You had to do a two year probationary period really and there were inspections during that, at the end of which you were certified as a qualified national teacher. Then there were casual inspections.

An inspector was advised to spend about a fortnight a year in his district calling into schools and so on. In relation to the other half of the Department then, you had inspections by the Department of Education's Industrial School branch. From my reading of the documentation, it would appear that the medical section of that was carried out well and vigorously, but there seems to be little evidence that any other aspect of the institution was adequately inspected by the Department. I would have to say the primary school one, there is plenty of evidence there that it was inspected quite well. I would say in relation to the Department of Education and the institution, that included medical issues as in strict illnesses or injuries, general health, food and clothing, but I would say other aspects of it were not well, and that is referred to in the Kennedy Report and I think the Kennedy Report stated that the experience of other European countries would show that you would need at least six people in Ireland to provide that type of inspection that was needed.

The third time was there was an inspection by the Congregation visitor. The Congregation visitor was a member of either the Provincial or the general Council who came along and also spent, again depending on the size of the community and the ministries that were going on there, anything from three or four days to a week or more. His role was a double role; it was pastoral on one level, he would have met all the Brothers and met the community and so on, but it was definitely inspectorial in relation both to the religious observance in the community and in relation then to the operation of any ministries that were there, which included personnel, how the work was done, buildings and general conditions.

ARTANE HEARINGS 5

2005-09-18T09:35:00.000+01:00

Q. At the top of page 12 of the submission, you give some indication of the workload of the Brothers' teaching.
A. Yes.

Q. Could you just tell the Commission about that?
A. The teaching Brothers were also responsible for supervision. Whereas, the disciplinarian had overall responsibility for supervising people, obviously one person wasn't going to be able to supervise anything ranging from 400 to 800, depending on the students in the yard. There was a rota of Brothers who supervised during break times and so on, who supervised the dormitories in the morning when the children were rising, at night when they went there and prior to going to bed and preparations and so on,and a supervision rota for that as well, then the dining room. All aspects of supervision required the assistance of the other Brothers and that mainly was the lot of the teaching Brothers simply because they were active and young and able for it. Essentially they were providing what was almost a 24 hour seven day a week service.

Q. Did they get any holidays?
A. They did, they would have got a month's holidays in each summer and shorter breaks during Christmas and Easter.

Q. I would like you to comment on an item that appears in one of the visitation reports, this would be a report of the Christian Brothers' own inspectorate who would visit from time to time. It is at page 58 of that book of documents you have. One of the comments made in this particular report, which is dated May 1968, just a year before it closed, it says:
"There was a feeling among them that we do the work, that it has some basis. It does not help that some of the senior Brothers have little sympathy for the younger Brothers who have very long hours in a very wearying day's work for the most part seven days a week. They have some justification for their belief that they are being watched and criticised by the older non-teaching Brothers." This suggests that within the community themselves some of them felt they had a very heavy workload.
A. They had a very heavy workload, that is true. I think the reference there was, and I referred to it in some other section of the submission, that a lot of the older brothers who had retired and so on, they were still people who looked back to the Artane of the 1940's and the 1950's, and when the younger generation then were moving along and did bring in change bit by bit, sometimes it was resisted because people thought that the system that they knew was tried and tested and that it shouldn't be changed,and so on. As you can see from the submission, gradually change did come in and significant change in the late 1950's and early 1906's and right through the 1960's.

Q. The disciplinarian also had a very onerous day, would that be right?
A. Yes.

Q. You talk about this in the summary at the end of paragraph 2.6 of the submission.
A. Yes.

Q. It is on page 13. You say: "The role was an onerous one because of the many and varied duties associated with the post."
A. Yes.

Q. Did that impose any stresses or strains on the disciplinarian, do you think?
A. Well, on individuals obviously I don't know because I don't know the individuals, but it certainly was an onerous task, the same as the principalship of the school, either primary or secondary, is an onerous task. The disciplinarian was responsible for order and safety, for organising home visits, for organising Godparents, for ensuring that boys didn't abscond, for discipline. The one thing I want to say is that in one sense it is a misnomer because the issuing of sanctions wasn't the primary role of the disciplinarian, the primary role of the disciplinarian was the care and welfare of the pupils outside of school time. It did, of course, entail dealing with recalcitrance and issuing punishments and so on, but that wasn't the primary role. The discipline in question was a positive discipline rather than a negative one.

Remembered Horrors

2005-09-18T09:20:00.000+01:00

Remembered horrors of a religious education

The Christian Brothers

Ron Blair’s one-man play The Christian Brothers deals with a significant social issue - education in a religious school and a system of teaching that he exposes as violent and incompetent. First produced in 1975, the work has consistently resonated with audiences who recognise in it their own school experiences. While the play deals with a specific type of schooling, it also raises a number of more universal questions about education. Ron Blair was born in 1942 and attended a Roman Catholic Christian Brothers’ school in the Sydney suburb of Lewisham. He hated his education and reportedly wrote the play to get it out of his system, presenting the order’s teaching methods as narrow, authoritarian and brutal.

For the current production, the Sydney Theatre Company has brought most of the play’s original team together, including director John Bell, designer Larry Eastwood and actor Peter Carroll as the unnamed elderly Christian Brothers’ teacher. Carroll’s performance is masterful and has been deservedly acclaimed by local critics. He brings an unrelenting energy to the role—at once brittle and smug then launching into angry rages. Carroll, who was also educated by the Christian Brothers and has played the part many times, has said that he strongly identifies with the teacher and his situation. The play is set in the 1950s. The teacher fronts his (imagined) classroom of boys, lashing out with his leather strap, verbally abusing his students and constantly warning them they risk eternal damnation—all in the course of a series of Poetry, History, French and Physics “lessons”.

A jittery character, the Brother’s teaching technique consists of extracting the prescribed correct answers from his students on pain of the strap. The play culminates with the class clown, a rebellious student represented by an empty chair at the front of the stage, being beaten to a pulp. The Christian Brothers not only reveals how damaging such a regime is but also delves into some of the reasons for the teacher’s behavior. Blair focuses attention on the teacher, invoking considerable sympathy for him, while moving the audience emotionally backwards and forwards from shock, to laughter, to fear.

The play’s opening scene immediately highlights the Brother’s central flaw. Carroll enters the classroom—the setting is deliberately sparse: a large blackboard, a crucifix, a lift-up desk and one wooden chair—dressed in the white collarless shirt, black soutane and trousers of the Christian Brothers order. He recites Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”, which has, as its central point, the understanding that humans are not simply spiritual entities. We only live by embodying flesh. Without ears to hear, the nightingale would sing in vain.

But these conceptions are at odds with a religious worldview that divides everything into two categories: good and evil. Particularly antithetical, as far as the Brother is concerned, are the spirit and the body. This is one of the major themes of the play: the Brother’s unease with his own body, his sexual anxieties and frustration. He is bound by the church’s vow of celibacy and subject to all of the psychological pressures that flow from an unnatural lifestyle enforced in the name of giving glory to God. The pledge of chastity has very material roots in the desire of the feudal Church to ensure that its wealth and property were not dissipated to the progeny of the clergy. But the God-fearing Brother, convinced that the worst punishments in hell are reserved for the fallen, considers that even thinking about sex is sinful. As for his students, it is his moral responsibility to warn them against “impure thoughts” or “touching themselves”. The tensions caused by such views initially provide some amusing moments.

Beginning a history lesson on the French Revolution, the Brother turns quickly from the subject of hunger to lust. This reminds him of a lewd picture from a tabloid magazine that he earlier confiscated from a student. He sets it alight in front of the class, timing its burning with a stopwatch and grimly reminding his charges that they face an eternity of hell for a minute’s pleasure leering at the picture. A French language lesson follows with the Brother conjugating the reflexive verb deshabiller, “to undress”. Becoming increasingly agitated, with pieces of breaking chalk flying across the room as he stabs at the blackboard, the Brother begins: “je me deshabille, I undress myself, tu te deshabilles, you undress yourself...” The tension rises until a vulgar interjection from one of the students leads to four cuts from the Brother’s strap and another round of prayer.

But the play reveals another side of the teacher. In the Christian Doctrine lesson he confides in the boys, telling them about his own school days and why he became a Brother. Lonely and impressionable, he was flattered by his teachers, who were also Christian Brothers. Under pressure and in a state of adolescent hysteria, he imagined a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “The most beautiful woman I have ever seen. All around her body was this light, emanating out of her in a slow, steady stream, giving off a sort of hum, like high tension cables. She was wearing a mantle of blue light and she smiled at me and nodded.” The next day he applied for entry into the Christian Brothers. However, as the tone of the play darkens and, in a fit of rage, he beats the rebellious student, the Brother admits that his visionary experience is wearing thin and hardly sustains him now. He wonders aloud about what it might be like with a wife and a mortgage but knows there is no escape and declares that “there’s nothing more comic than an old man who is both broke and looking for a wife”. Yet, “...just to see her one more time... Just once. Then all his doubts and terrors would be gone and he would be young again.”

A pitiable figure, he takes a tin of blue paint from his desk, turns the overturned chair upright and proceeds to paint it, while chanting a litany to the Holy Virgin. The student is either dead or comatose.

This strange behaviour points to another element in the play. It is not accidental that TheChristian Brothers is a monologue. It is bound up with the Brother’s attitude to his students. Education for him is a one-way process. The students are simply empty vessels into which he pours “knowledge”. Or, as he says at the end, they are objects to which he gives “an undercoat, a primer, and then a first coat to be going on with”. The students have only to memorise the facts and regurgitate them when required. Any other response is unwanted and probably sinful. The teacher’s attitude to his students is shaped by the religious belief that they are born in sin and have to be taught to be good. There is nothing of value within them. In fact, any creative spirit they possess has to be suppressed. This authoritarian outlook explains the Brother’s violence towards the students; necessary, he thinks, in order to maintain control and get them working.

He regards his students as neither children nor young men. In the lesson on Keats, he reads out two lines of the poem, directing the students’ attention to the particularly evocative images they contain. This sets the students thinking. But the Brother is so insensitive, so mechanical and distant even from his own lesson material, that upon catching the student in the chair “daydreaming” he gives him three lashes with his strap. He ridicules students when they give unwanted answers. In the reviews of the play and in the Sydney Theatre Company’s program notes, there is a tendency to dismiss the authoritarian school regime as a thing of the past. The program, for instance, devotes an entire page to listing the Christian Brothers “thriving new ventures”. What the play reveals, however, was not exceptional and continued well beyond the period in which it was set.

Beginning in the early 1990s, a number of former students publicised documentary evidence of widespread sexual and physical mistreatment of students by the Christian Brothers over decades. A West Australian psychologist investigated the Christian Brothers and found that a staggering 52 percent of boys at their institutions had been sexually abused and 88 percent physically abused. The Christian Brothers first denied the charges, and then, after being forced to hold their own investigations, tried to minimise the extent of the practices.

These revelations, coming 20 years after The Christian Brothers was written, only make the play more compelling and the questions that it raises crucial.

The play also has a broader significance to the current situation. In conditions where resources for public schools are being cut back, governments are boosting “discipline” to clamp down on the social problems and tensions within classrooms. Progressive educational concepts such as child-centred learning, the development of natural talent and the encouragement of self-expression are under attack, and suspension, expulsion and corporal punishment are being brought back. In raising issues that go to the heart of education, Ron Blair’s play not only challenges the Christian Brothers’ order, but is a healthy antidote to conservative views on educational practice now gaining ground in Australia and elsewhere. The Sydney Theatre Company’s staging of The Christian Brothers is an important and welcome artistic contribution to any serious discussion on this subject.

ARTANE HEARINGS 4

2005-09-18T09:02:00.000+01:00

Q. Was the Resident Manager invariably a Christian Brother?
A. Yes, for the total period.

Q. How would he be appointed?
A. He was appointed by the Provincial Council normally for a period of six years.

Q. What other people would be in the hierarchy of management of the school?
A. One I think that is possibly sometimes neglected was he had a bursar who looked after all that end of things, because obviously all of that area had to be catered for and accounts were kept and so on. Then you had the principal of the primary school. The principal of the primary school was exactly the same as the principal of any other primary school at the time or, for that matter, the principal of the primary school now. There was no Board of Management. At that stage in all primary schools there was a system of unitary management.

In other words, an individual was a manager, and that was the Resident Manager and he was also the manager of the primary school. For the running of the institution outside of primary school, you had a person known as the "Disciplinarian" and his role was also a Brother for the entire duration of the period of relevance here, also for that 30 year period. He was responsible for the day to day management of the students outside of school hours. So for the total time outside of school hours, he was the person in charge there.

Q. I think he was responsible for the general welfare and safety of the boys in all matters other than educational and medical matters?
A. Yes, correct, and for supervision and so on. To an extent if somebody was injured in the yard, or whatever it was, then that child was referred to the infirmary.

Q. To go back to the Resident Manager for a moment, was the Resident Manager a member then of an Association of Resident Managers of industrial reformatory schools?
A. Yes, he was the Resident Manager for all the duration and for quite an amount of the time was an executive member as well. He was also the superior of the local community of Christian Brothers. Then there was an Association of Managers of Industrial Schools under the management of the Christian Brothers, a smaller and less formal one than the Association of
Resident Managers of Industrial and Reformatory Schools. It really met once or twice a year, normally it met in the morning prior to the afternoon meeting of the Resident Manager.

Q. What sort of things would be discussed at those meetings?
A. Mainly looking through the minutes. Finance, unfortunately, was the main item on the agenda.

Q. In the national umbrella group, the Association of Resident Managers of Industrial and Reformatory Schools, what would they do?
A. In relation to all aspects of running an industrial school and particularly in matters that concerned the Department of Education, it was a sort of umbrella group. Rather than having the Department dealing with each individual industrial school, they acted as an umbrella group for the managers of industrial schools and they dealt with all areas of relevance.
Again, finance forms a large portion of the minutes of those meetings.

Q. What about the teaching staff in Artane?
A. Up to about 1947 the teaching staff consisted of 20 something Brothers and then up to I think 46 or 47, there were six lay staff as well on the primary school. Generally they were phased out. From there on in, from 1947 until it closed, it was practically all Brothers with the exception from 1966 or 1967 afterwards in which a remedial teacher was appointed to the staff of the primary school. She was the only lay person on the staff at that stage, the rest were all Brothers.

ARTANE HEARINGS 3

2005-09-18T08:47:00.000+01:00

Q. Allowing for that, if I might generalise for a moment, what is the position of the Christian Brothers regarding the complaints that there was excessive corporal punishment and that there was sexual abuse? Without asking you to agree that every complaint was valid, in overall terms what is the position of the Christian Brothers?
A. The position of the Christian Brothers is that there were instances of both perpetrated by individual people, but the overall picture that has been given of Artane as an abusive institution is not correct, in fact the opposite is the case.

Q. We will come back to this in more detail later obviously, but to try and get some general observations out of the way first of all. I think your statement and submission is divided into a number of areas. The first deals with the early years and then you deal with management and administration, funding and finance, admission and daily routine, and discharge procedures in Artane?
A. Yes.

Q. Then issues of general welfare, such as food and health issues, then education and then you deal with a special inspection in December 1962, which was an inspection Archbishop McQuaid had put in place which the Christian Brothers were unaware of at the time?
A. Yes, it was an inspection that the Department of Education put in place as a result of events.

Q. Of course, you are quite right. The Archbishop had set up an investigation unknown to the Brothers and then following on that, there was another investigation by the Department?
A. Yes.

Q. We will be coming back to that. Then you deal with the issue of deaths of boys in Artane in the period under review?
A. Yes.

Q. Then the final years and closure. Your last section deals with the issues of both physical and sexual abuse?
A. Yes.

Q. Just to go to the particular areas of the statement and submission, can I ask you this; in general terms was the somewhat potted history and brief history which I gave of the institution correct? Was there anything you would disagree with in terms of the chronology of events?
A. No, I think that is fine.

Q. We know it started around the time Archbishop Cullen asked the Brothers to get involved and it ended in 1969?
A. In the early years the Brothers already had the property in Artane, it was intended for a novitiate and a training house for the Brothers. When the request came from Cardinal Cullen, the proposals in relation to the novitiate were shelved and the property was then used for the industrial school.

Q. Yes. The school was there to provide education, I think, up to Primary Cert level and then some further education evolved as well, is that right?
A. Yes, I would say there were three things. There was a formal primary school, which would be the same as any national school throughout the country and was under the Department of Education and so on and subject to Department of Education rules and regulations for primary school and for inspections. Then there was a trades training section or department, not a vocational school, but a training in trades. In addition to that, there was, I would say, part of the training in Artane was for the welfare, care and the health and so on of the pupils, and there was a lot of emphasis at that stage on physical care, on matters of hygiene and so on, on a way of life and practice of life and on seeking to be good at whatever you were doing. That sort of character building was very much a part of it as well and, I would say, was characteristic of Artane, and it is referred to frequently in the submission.

Q. On page 9 of your submission you deal with the subject of management and administration. You say that on the establishment of Saorstát Éireann, the Department of Local Government and later the Department of Justice became responsible for the administration of industrial schools?
A. Yes.

Q. Then this task was passed on in 1924 to the Department of Education?
A. That's correct, yes.

Q. Did that remain the position?
A. Yes, it remained the position. My understanding is, and I am not as well up on the legalities of it as obviously yourself and other people, that the Department of Health would have responsibility for health and particularly for contagious diseases like tuberculosis and so on. Generally speaking the main agent of the Government that was dealing with Artane was the Department of Education under two branches; the Primary School branch which dealt literally with the primary school in Artane, as it did with any other primary school in the area, and the Industrial School section which dealt with all other aspects of the institution.

Q. You then deal with the issue of local management of the school. I think the day to day management was the responsibility of the Resident Manager?
A. Yes, the overall responsibility was that of the Resident Manager, in other words, on the day to daybasis, the buck stopped with him. Then within each section, primary school, the trades, the farm, the band, the infirmary and so on. There was a person in charge of managing that and reporting, as it were, in management terms to the Resident Manager. On the ground they ran their thing and he was the overall boss, as it were.

ARTANE HEARINGS 2

2005-09-18T08:35:00.000+01:00

BROTHER MICHAEL REYNOLDS HAVING BEEN SWORN WAS EXAMINED, AS FOLLOWS, BY MR. McGOVERN

THE CHAIRPERSON: Sit down, Br. Reynolds.
Thank you very much.

MR. McGOVERN: Good morning, Br. Reynolds.
A. Good morning.

Q. I understand that you are the Deputy Leader of St. Mary's Province in Ireland?
A. That's correct.

Q. One of two provinces of the Christian Brothers?
A. Yes.

Q. You were appointed to the province leadership team in March 1998 and then to the position of Deputy Leader in April 2002?
A. That's correct, yes.

Q. I think you have been instrumental in preparing a statement to the Commission, is that right?
A. Yes, correct.

Q. That sets out in broad terms the position of the Christian Brothers on the issues which have arisen giving rise to this Commission's work?
A. Yes.

Q. Can I ask you were you yourself at any time in Artane as a Brother doing work there?
A. No, not in the industrial school, no.

Q. I think you are familiar with the layout?
A. I am familiar with the buildings and the place as it is now. As it was within 12 years of its closing, from there on I was familiar with it for a number of years.

Q. On the first page of your statement you say that the contents of the submission is based on certain material, would you tell the Commission what that material was?
A. The main sources are the archives of the Christian Brothers, but the province archives which are located on the North Circular Road in the Provincial Headquarters and the archives in Rome. All of the documentation used has already been discovered to the Commission. In addition to that, speaking to Brothers and others who worked there, including former residents, and from various other documents I have referred to that are in the public domain and so on, and various other reports with which people are familiar.

Q. In compiling this submission and in making some of the comments that it does make, was any regard had to the written complaints which were submitted by any former residents in Artane?
A. Let's say it was written in the consciousness of all of these but not specifically in relation to any individual complaints. I would be reasonably familiar with the overall picture also that is presented in the complaints, yes.

Q. You make comment about newspaper reports and radio and television reports. What is your general comment and the comment of the Christian Brothers with regard to media reports in recent times on Artane?
A. My general view on that is that from the late 1980's onwards the picture that was presented at Artane was one that was predominantly negative and I would certainly say that the record shows that that is not true. I would say it was seriously unbalanced and I would say that it probably in a sense has conditioned the public mind, the mind of the public to that.
Certainly the main tenor of my submission would be that taken in the round and in the whole Artane was quite a positive place that made a great contribution to people who were in need. That is not in any way to belittle -- certainly the Congregation does not wish to add hurt to anybody who was abused there, we apologised for that in March 1998 and we repeat that apology to anybody who has been abused. Nonetheless, I think there is need for balance at this stage because the Congregation's position is that Artane in the whole and in the round was a very positive institution.

Q. Your statement is a lengthy one and I am not going to take you verbatim through it. Obviously the Commissioners have the statements and will consider everything that is in it. There are certain aspects of the contents of the submissions which I would like to take you through and there are some areas, such as funding, which have already been covered to a certain extent in the public hearing in Letterfrack, also involving the Christian Brothers. There are certain particular details you might want to address with regard to that. I think one of the concerns that the Brothers have that emerges from the submission is to contextualise the various matters which have been complained of, is that correct?
A. Correct. I think it is very difficult for everybody in the sense that Artane, as you have already said, closed on 30th June 1969, which is quite some time back. So the lapse of time alone makes it difficult to present a picture. The picture of Artane that is presented and is now in the public mind to a large extent does not help. A lot of the Brothers who worked there are now deceased and, therefore, we haven't the benefit of their direct evidence. A lot of those who are still alive are well advanced in age. They are people who worked there in the 1940's and the 1950's. Even the 1960's is a long time back. The other concerns we would have is that in relation to all of this, it is almost putting an onus on people to prove their innocence, which is really an inversion of the normal process. Therefore, it makes everybody's task, including the task of the Committee, quite difficult.

The other thing in relation to context is that many of the attitudes and behaviours that were acceptable at that time in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's would now not be acceptable, and I accept that. I instance in the submission the industrial school system itself is now gone, but it was the system of the time with its imperfections and so on. The other one I instance is corporal punishment that at that time was common enough in family homes, in schools and so on, and that now has been abolished in schools in Ireland since 1982 and obviously is not acceptable, but within its time it was part of the system.

ARTANE HEARINGS 1

2005-09-18T08:15:00.000+01:00

THE HEARING COMMENCED, AS FOLLOWS, ON THURSDAY, 15TH SEPTEMBER 2005

THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning everybody. Now, Mr. McGovern.

MR. McGOVERN: Good morning, Chairman, Members of the Commission. This is a public hearing into Artane Industrial School. The hearing will follow the same format that has been used in the past year or so when investigating other institutions and will be in line with statements made by the Commission on the question of procedures to be followed. This means that the evidence regarding Artane Industrial School will be heard in three phases.

Phase 1, commencing this morning, will consist of the hearing of Br. Michael Reynolds, Deputy Leader of St. Mary's Province, Ireland, one of the two provinces of the Christian Brothers in Ireland. This province would have had responsibility for the northern half of the country, north of a line from Dublin to Galway and would have included Artane. Brother Reynolds' evidence will be based upon a submission which aims to describe life in Artane in the period coming within the remit of the Commission, including the Congregation's view as to how the institution operated and what life was like there, and is intended to serve as a general background information on the institution. I would like to make it clear, Chairman and Members of the Committee, that it is appreciated that some, or perhaps even all, of the evidence which he gives will not be accepted by some who were present in the institution at the relevant time. If there are issues raised which require resolution or clarification, they will be returned to in Phase 3 at a later stage. When this brief public hearing comprising Phase 1 has been completed, Phase 2 will begin. This will involve the hearing of evidence from a number of persons who have filed statements with the Commission outlining abuse suffered by them at Artane.

The Committee have prepared a schedule of hearings involving relevant witnesses who may have evidence to give with regard to the institution. These hearings will commence on Monday, 26th September and are expected to conclude in mid-December. These hearings will take place in private as provided for in the legislation governing this Commission of Inquiry. After the Committee has had an opportunity to consider the evidence given in both Phase 1 and Phase 2, it is proposed to return to a public hearing which will deal with any contentious matters outstanding or any other relevant issues concerning the management and operation of the institution. At that stage the Investigation Committee will deal with issues which have been identified in Phases 1 and 2.

A decision has been made to leave over these contentious issues until Phase 3 since by that time the Committee will have had an opportunity of hearing evidence from persons who were in the institution at the relevant time rather than now, when the Committee can only have a limited picture as to what contentious issues are likely to arise. When a clear picture emerges as to the issues to be dealt with in Phase 3, interested parties will be notified and informed as to the procedures which will be adopted.

At this public hearing, evidence will be given by Br. Michael Reynolds, who is Deputy Leader of St. Mary's Province, Ireland, of the Congregation of Christian Brothers. Since 1956 the Congregation of Christian Brothers in Ireland was divided into two provinces for administrative purposes; St. Mary's Province for the northern part of the country, north of a line from Dublin to Galway, and St. Helen's Province for the southern half of the country, south of that line. Artane comes within the area of responsibility of St. Mary's Province. Reformatory schools were set up under legislation in the mid-19th Century to provide for the needs of juvenile offenders.

It soon became clear that an alternative system was necessary in order to provide for the care, protection, education and training of children who were not guilty of any offence but who, because of destitution, neglect or lack of adequate parental care were deemed to be in need of residential care. This is how the industrial school system came into existence. The system which operated in Scotland and England was extended to Ireland under the Industrial Schools Act passed in 1868. These schools were to provide for children who in present day terminology would be 'put into care'. Historically there was a difficulty in getting most local authorities to contribute towards the maintenance of children in industrial schools and an ongoing complaint of those managing these schools was the inadequate level of funding provided by the Exchequer.

After the passing of the Industrial Schools Ireland Act, 1868, Cardinal Cullen, the then Archbishop of Dublin, approached the Christian Brothers to ask them to assist in running the task of running these institutions and, having acceded to this request, Artane Industrial School opened its doors to its first pupils on 28th July 1870. The school was established under the 1868 Act with the intention of catering for neglected, orphaned and abandoned Roman Catholic boys. Its original intake was of three pupils and it rapidly grew in size to a point where it was housing 700 boys in 1877 and reached its certified size of 825 boys before the end of the 19th Century.

During the 1940's the numbers in Artane were close to 800 and ranging from a low of 794 pupils to a high of 818. The average was 802. The 1950's showed a very significant decline in numbers; the total ranged from a low of 422 in 1958 to a high of 762 in 1950 at the beginning of that decade. The average in the 1950's was 620 pupils. The decline in population continued in the 1960's with a numbers ranging from 392 in 1960 to 24 in 1969. The average number during that period was 286 pupils.

These figures do not include voluntary or Health Board admissions which were low and only amounted to 262 boys for the entire 30 year period. Thirteen were admitted in the 1940's, 113 in the 1950's and 136 in the 1960's. Reasons for boys being committed to Artane included begging, not having any home or settled place of abode, having a parent who did not exercise proper guardianship, not attendance at school, destitution or being orphaned or involved in petty crime. From 1954 children guilty of criminal offences were not admitted to Artane.

This was because it was felt that it was not beneficial to have boys who had committed crime mixing with boys who were there for other social reasons. The vast majority of boys admitted to Artane came from Dublin and most of the rest of them came from other parts of Leinster. The school continued to operate until the decision was made in 1967 that the institution should be closed. This decision was influenced by a number of factors, including changing attitudes towards childcare, the industrial schools system and the inadequacy of State funding for such institutions.

The school finally closed on 30th June 1969. Most of the boys in Artane were either discharged or transferred to other institutions. Some 22 pupils remained on in order to pursue their secondary education in St. David's Secondary School which was nearby. Chairman, that is just setting out a brief history of the school and the type of boys who came to be there over the period of its operation. I now propose to take Br. Michael Reynolds through the statement which the Christian Brothers have submitted to the Commission.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, very good.

SOME SNIPPETS FROM A DEBATE IN 1942

2005-09-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION IN THE CHILD DETENTION CENTRES

Dáil Éireann - Volume 83 - 20 May, 1941 - In Committee.
Children Bill, 1940—From the Seanad.

Mr. Hurley:> I should like to avail of the opportunity again to ask the Minister to take some cognisance of the conditions of service of teachers in a particular school—Artane. Even if the Minister is not able to remunerate those teachers fully and properly, I cannot see why he has not power to secure that their conditions approximate to the working conditions of even an agricultural labourer, who is supposed to be the lowliest-paid member of this community. I referred to those conditions before. Deputy O'Sullivan has referred to them to-night. These lay teachers work from 6.20 in the morning until 9.30 at night, with a few miserable breaks during the day. In other words, they have no day to themselves out of the seven days of the week. That goes on without a break for the whole year, with the exception of a few weeks’ holidays. Surely that should be the concern of the Minister for Education. I also ask him to inquire into the conditions of lay teachers of primary subjects in the Greenmount Industrial School, run by the Presentation Brothers. He will find that these teachers get the minimum salary of the ordinary primary teacher. He will also learn that these teachers work from 9 O'clock in the morning until 12, when there is a break. They resume work from 3 to 6, and then are completely finished. Why cannot this wonderful institution in Artane do something in the way of relating those conditions to their teachers? Members of the Fianna Fáil Party know the conditions of service of these teachers. They are not constituents of mine but I have sympathy with them owing to the conditions under which they work. They are constituents of some Fianna Fáil Deputies, who could tell the Minister the conditions as well as I can. Surely, we should not sit dumb in this House while such things obtain in this great Christian institution?

The Minister told us that no new expenditure should be incurred, on the dictum of the inter-departmental committee. I wonder if that dictum was fully observed in every Department of State? Why are these unfortunate teachers singled out for economy, despite the fact that we have the Minister’s own promise in this House—a promise not wrung from him but freely given—that their conditions would be improved? I am disappointed that the Minister has not, in some way, shown sympathy with these teachers in the conditions under which they work by making some gesture towards the implementation of the principle enshrined in this amendment.

Deputy O'Sullivan raised another point which I would like to emphasise —that is, that the children in those schools are as entitled to have teachers teaching them without the worries of bad conditions, bad remuneration, and bad terms of service, as the children in any other category in the State, as, for example, the students in the universities. They are part and parcel of this community, and I do not see why they should be segregated into a class and, in other words, told that any kind of teacher of any kind of education would suffice.

That does not apply to the universities. With all due respect to some members of the House, the university professors are pretty well paid; they do not work long hours. The students feel they are entitled to that kind. I submit that these children in industrial schools are Irish children—part and parcel of the Irish nation—and certainly the teachers should have the very same conditions, remuneration, and terms of service as the teachers in the primary schools. That is not a very big thing to ask. Therefore, I may say that I am specially greateful to the Seanad for giving us an opportunity to discuss this very important question. I tried to get something in about the conditions in Artane Industrial School in the Children Bill—in a kind of underhand fashion, I think—but I wish now to say, definately, that I am supporting this amendment. Unless we can get from the Minister some intimation that he will consider, and in some fashion implement, the principle therein, I intend to call for a division upon the amendment.

Mr. Costello: The evil of this particular grievance of the teachers can really be traced to the system. These industrial schools are dependent, in the first place, on the number of pupils that are in them. If the number of pupils falls their revenue from the State falls. Consequently, they are dependent entirely on the supply of unfortunate children sent to these schools.

Mr. Dillon: Can anybody conceive of this Government going down to a parish in Clare, in the middle of the Taoiseach’s constituency, and saying: “The children in this parish are not entitled to the same standard of education as is supplied to the children in every other parish in Ireland. Unqualified teachers, underpaid and working longer hours than teachers in the schools in other parishes, are good enough for them, and if they do not like it they can lump it”?. What is the difference between the children in a parish in the Taoiseach’s constituency and the orphan children in industrial schools in this country? This is the difference: that the children in a parish in the Taoiseach’s constituency have parents and the parents of these children have votes, whereas the children in an industrial school have no parents and therefore can bring no pressure to bear on a member of the Fianna Fáil Party.

Mr. T.Kelly: Some remarks that were made by the Deputy who was speaking when I came into the House have prompted me to intervene in this debate. His remarks echoed attacks that were made many years ago on the Christian Brothers in Artane. It must now be 35 or 36 years ago since a British Government inspector—of the old Local Government Board—made charges in connection with the administration of the Artane Industrial Schools in a report to the corporation.

Fr. Moore's Report to Archbishop McQuaid 1962

2005-09-17T09:26:00.000+01:00

EXCERPTS FROM Fr. Moore's Report
to Archbishop McQuaid
on the Conditions
in Artane
in 1962

The boys are badly clothed.
They have no overcoats unless they can pay for them out of their pocket-money.
They have no vests and no change of footwear or socks; sometime's a boys shoes are too small and give him sore feet.
They have no handkerchiefs.
There is no such thing as a boy having his own shirt or pyjamas - after washing, articles of clothing are distributed at random;
Bed clothes are inadequate.
The boys are undernourished.
The medical facilities are appalling.
There is no resident nurse or matron.
The Brother who is in charge of the infirmary has no experience of nursing - he used to be employed on the farm.
The surgical room is unsuitable for the purpose [infirmary] and the room smells.

Dáil Éireann - Snippets

2005-09-17T09:23:00.000+01:00

Dáil Éireann - Volume 94 - 20 June, 1944
Mr. Byrne: A few weeks ago, the Minister's attention was drawn to the 800 children before the Dublin School Attendance Committee for non-attendance at school, whose mothers in most cases said they either had not boots or clothing to send the children to school. Now these children do not go to school, but are taken up and sent to an industrial school, where they are provided with boots, clothes, food and shelter. If the unfortunate mother had had a voucher to get boots for them, and a little coat, the children would have the parent now to look after them, and give them home comforts, instead of overloading our industrial schools. Our Dublin children are sent down to Waterford and Cork, where their parents cannot see them for some time.

Seán MacCárthaigh: I must again refer to what Deputy Byrne said about the industrial schools. I mentioned it here recently. He was speaking about those children being removed from their families so that their families could not see them for some years. I know definitely that, year after year, when transport was better than it is now, the Very Rev. Provincial of the school to which he refers in the County Cork paid out of the school funds the railway fares for those children to go to their homes.

Dáil Éireann - Volume 101 - 12 June, 1946
Mr. Allen (for Mr. O'Connor) asked the Minister for Education if he will state how many children were committed to industrial schools, in the year 1945, on the grounds that their parents were unable to maintain them; and the total amount, paid out of public funds, to such schools, for the maintenance of such children.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Little) (for Minister for Education): During the school year ended 31st July, 1945—the latest date to which complete returns are available —the number of children committed to industrial schools on the statutory grounds that their parents were unable to maintain them was 242 (89 boys and 153 girls). The total amount paid out of public funds in that period towards the maintenance of these children was £9,438; this amount was paid on the basis of a capitation grant of 7/6 per head per week from the State and a similar sum from the local authorities responsible under the Children Acts for the maintenance of the children.

Dáil Éireann - Volume 103 - 07 November, 1946
Mr. Dillon asked the Minister for Education if he will state the number of children, other than those who have been committed for juvenile delinquency, at present in industrial schools; how many such children are boarded out; what is the cost, to the local authority, of children in such schools; and what is the cost to local authorities of boarded-out children.

Minister for Education (Mr. Derrig): On the 30th September last (the latest date to which figures are available) the total number of children under detention in industrial schools was 6,446, of whom 6,176 were committed for reasons other than juvenile delinquency; only one of these children is boarded out; the cost to the local authorities of children in industrial schools for whose maintenance they are responsible was a contribution at the rate of 7/6 weekly per head up to the 30th September last; a revised rate of 8/- weekly is payable as from the 1st of the present month; the cost to the responsible local authority of the one child boarded out is a contribution of 7/6 weekly, payable to the manager of the school from which the child was boarded out.

Christian Brothers Admit Abuses At Artane - I Think?

2005-09-16T08:53:00.000+01:00

PIC: Reynolds, apparently a "christian" brother

Artane not an abusive institution, says Brother. A senior leader of the Christian Brothers has said that the congregation accepted there were instances of physical and sexual abuse carried out by individuals at the industrial school in Artane in Dublin. However, Brother Michael Reynolds, deputy leader of St Mary's Province, said the idea that Artane was an abusive institution was incorrect. Giving evidence before the Investigation Committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday, Brother Reynolds said that, in the round, Artane was "a positive institution".

He said there was archival documentation verifying six cases of sexual abuse at Artane. There was also documentary evidence of 11 cases of excessive physical punishment and 14 cases of neglect. Brother Reynolds said that there was inadequate understanding of sexual abuse in the 1930s and 40s as well as a lack of awareness of the long-term psychological damage caused by abuse. He said that the congregation had viewed the issue as a moral problem and failure rather than a crime. He confirmed that in none of the six documented cases of abuse at Artane had the Garda been informed, even where the perpetrator had made an admission. He strongly denied that the Christian Brothers had engaged in a cover-up.

He said that, in the documented cases in Artane, action had been taken swiftly and in most instances the Brothers involved had been dismissed from the congregation. However, he accepted that these cases had not been adequately dealt with by present-day standards and that the effects on young people concerned had not been addressed sufficiently at all. The committee was told of a letter written in 1938 to the provincial of the Christian Brothers, which maintained that the person who had abused a child "was more to be pitied than censured".

Asked about the letter, Brother Reynolds said he had no idea what it meant but that he did not agree with it. A second letter, from 1959, maintained that a Brother who had been found to have been involved in abuse was aware that "the collar had saved him from jail". Brother Reynolds said that the most serious documented case of physical abuse involved a boy who had his arm broken. The Christian Brother involved had been transferred from Artane to another school. Brother Reynolds said that this case had been handled badly by the congregation. He said that, in recent years, media coverage of the school, which operated from 1870 to 1969, had been seriously unbalanced.

The Christian Brothers said that boys were well-cared for at Artane, with nourishing food and good clothing, and that the school regularly received favourable reports from the Department of Education. The death rate among students was lower than the national average. Brother Reynolds maintained that the primary school provided an excellent education although there was ongoing debate about the value of training for trade provided. The Christian Brothers said that sporting and cultural activities were well catered for. Televisions were installed in the 1960s and a swimming pool was built in the mid-1960s.

The committee heard that, in the early 1960s, the then chaplain at the school had drawn up a highly critical report on Artane for the then Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. This report criticised the regimented atmosphere in the school and highlighted episodes of physical abuse. A subsequent Department of Education investigation refuted these allegations. Counsel for the Christian Brothers Patrick Hanratty said there were significant question marks about the reliability of the chaplain's report. He also revealed that the chaplain had himself subsequently been convicted of sexual abuse.

Crime & Punishment in Artane

2005-09-15T15:46:00.000+01:00

Dail Eireann - Volume 145 - 23 April, 1954

Adjournment Debate. - Punishment of Schoolboy in Artane Industrial School.

Captain Cowan: I gave notice this morning that, on the Adjournment of the Dail, I would raise the matter of a boy who received injuries in Artane Industrial School on the 14th of this month. I want to state briefly to the Dail the facts as they were reported to me. The boy concerned is aged 14 and a half years old. He has been in Artane Industrial School for one and a half years, and, during his period there, his conduct has been satisfactory. On the 14th of this month he was punished for some boyish altercation with another boy. Apparently, as I am informed, before the punishment was inflicted, the doors were locked, the windows closed and the punishment, which was the normal punishment, was inflicted in the presence of all of his classmates. The punishment, I am informed, consisted of a number of slaps on the hand from the punishment leather that is generally used for that purpose, but on the completion of that punishment the boy was ordered to submit to further punishment with the edge of the strap and he refused to accept that punishment.

The Brother in charge sent for another Brother to come in. Apparently the boy who was being punished felt that the Brother was being brought in for the purpose of compelling him to receive this additional punishment to which he objected. Whatever his boyish mind was, he ran from the place in which he was being punished, lifted a sweeping brush, which was apparently standing in a corner, and held it up as a protection. At this stage, the second Brother arrived and seeing the bush in the boy's hands, snatched it from him, struck him on the head injuring him, struck him on the back injuring him, struck him on the arm and broke his arm.

That happened on the 14th and the boy was taken to hospital on the 16th instant when his arm was set in plaster and is still in plaster.

The mother of the boy, although she lives not too distant from the school, was not informed of the injury the boy had received, but she heard about it during the week-end. She sought to see the Superior but was refused permission to do so.

In regard to that, I should perhaps make it plain that, so far as I am informed, there was on that particular point apparently some misunderstanding but she sought the Superior during that week-end and did not see him. She saw him on the first occasion on Tuesday of this week when the Superior admitted to her that the boy had received the injuries I have mentioned and that he had been taken to hospital. She did not see the boy. Whether he was then in hospital or not, I am not in a position to say but she did not see the boy. She came to me about half past eight yesterday morning. I communicated by telephone with the Superior and she was then allowed to see her boy.

She was shocked at the state in which she found him. Yesterday was the 22nd; the incident occurred on the 14th and eight days afterwards, on the 22nd, she saw the boy. I immediately, having heard her story as to what had happened, sent a telegram to the Minister asking him to investigate the matter and I stated in that telegram that I would raise the matter on the Adjournment of the Dail, and you, Sir, have kindly given me permission to raise it now.

These boys, who are sent to these schools by the courts, are all the responsibility of the Minister for Education, and the Minister for Education, as I understand it, must answer to this House and to the country for the conditions under which the boys sent there by the courts are kept, the conditions under which they live, the conditions of punishment and matters of that kind. I think the House and the country will want to have from the Minister an assurance that an incident such as has occurred in this case will not be permitted to occur again.

I am informed that the Brother who injured the boy was barely past 21 years of age, not much older than the little boy who was injured in the fashion I have described. I think the House will want an assurance from the Minister, and the country will want an assurance from him, that punishment, if it is to be inflicted on those sent to industrial schools, will be inflicted by some person of experience and responsibility. If punishment were to be imposed in a fit of hot temper, it would be exceptionally bad and, in fact, as in this case, it would be dangerous.

I regret very much that I have had to mention or raise this matter in this House. I have lived for many years convenient to Artane Schools. For many years, whenever I was asked, I have been a subscriber to the funds of the schools. I have seen their boys week after week passing my house, looking exceptionally fit, well clothed and happy. All of us have seen their magnificent band playing on big occasions in Croke Park and it would be regrettable that an incident, such as I have mentioned in this case, should be permitted under any circumstances to occur in a school of that kind.

I myself personally am satisfied that it is an isolated instance. I am satisfied that the superiors will take appropriate action against the Brother concerned. The very fact that the incident did occur shows how necessary it is that this House, through the machinery of the Department of Education and through the Minister charged with that responsibility, should have the closest supervision of schools such as this, where children, many of them without parents at all, are sent to be brought up.

This incident, when I heard it yesterday morning and heard the details subsequently, profoundly shocked me. I am perfectly certain that the fact that it has been raised in this House, that the Minister has investigated it, will ensure that no similar incident will occur in the future. It will be a guarantee to the parents and relatives of children who are in these industrial schools that this House and the Minister and the staff of the Department will jealously guard and protect those children while they are under the care of the State in these institutions.

Minister for Education (Mr. Moylan): I think Deputy Cowan has been quite reasonable in admitting that this is an isolated incident and that in general his appreciation of the work of the Artane School and of the condition of the children there has not lessened. The boy was hit and his arm was broken. I would be as much concerned as the Deputy is if I thought it was anything other than a very isolated incident and in one sense what might be called an accident. I would not tolerate cruelty to any boy or misuse of any boy in any institution.

I visited Artane and found the boys were healthy and well cared for. I visited the schools there and it struck me that there was great evidence of very earnest endeavour, even of notable achievement, in the schools. It would be very difficult to improve the conditions under which the schools operate, certainly without a very substantial subvention from this House for the upkeep of the schools and for the development of what may be essential and necessary there.

I would like to remind the House that the community provided the lands in Artane, the building and the equipment from their own resources; and they did this in a Christian endeavour to ameliorate certain conditions the development of which had not been provided for in any way by anyone. I cannot conceive any deliberate ill-treatment of boys by a community motivated by the ideals of its founder. I cannot conceive any sadism emanating from men who were trained to a life of sacrifice and of austerity. They are also trained to have great devotion to a very high purpose.

The point is that accidents will happen in the best regulated families and in this family there are about 800 boys. Many of them were sent to Artane because of the difficulties of their character and because of a good deal of unruliness of conduct. These boys are difficult to control at times. Maybe it is essential now and again that children should be punished. I am not all at one with the people who claim that children should never be punished, but I think the punishment should be administered, as Deputy Cowan says, by a responsible person in conditions of calm judgment. I do not know how the edge of the strap is used, but I will make an inquiry into that.

I think it would be an evil thing for the school, for the character of the children, for the future of the children, that any misuse should arise in any school like Artane. Because of the unfortunate background of many of these boys, possibly due to evil social conditions, Deputies must realise how careful the handling of them as a group must be and how far from easy it is to ensure the working of such an institution. I deeply regret that there should be such a happening and I appreciate the anxiety of the boy's mother. Apart from my high regard for the Brothers concerned, the community concerned, there is also a very constant system of inspection for all such institutions. I personally have visited practically all of them and I make personal and constant inquiry as to what is happening in them. I know in that particular school how deep is the anxiety for the children's spiritual and physical welfare.

This is an isolated incident; it can only happen again as an accident.

I hope it will never happen again. I have not neglected full inquiry into the working of these schools at any time. There are conditions that should be created in all these schools, they are deficient in many things; but that will cost a good deal more money from the State than the relatively small amount that is paid now. These things are essential from the point of view of the children. Unfortunately, this year I have not been able to make provision for the things I need in those schools; but Deputies will remember that in future a wider provision must be made if these schools are to serve the purpose they ought to serve in the nation.

This is an isolated incident. I wish to express my sympathy to the parents of the child and I can assure them that nothing of the like will happen again. While giving this as a guarantee to parents and knowing the difficult conditions under which the school is run, I would point out to parents that any guarantee I give them of full protection for their children is no licence to any of the children to do what they like.

Artane, A Little Child & The Pope

2005-09-15T15:35:00.000+01:00

When war refugee Maria Hrela found to her horror that her only son was being savagely abused in Artane Industrial School, she went right to the top with her complaint - to Pope Pius XII himself. And soon afterwards a Bishop arrived at the notorious north Dublin Detention Centre to check on how Bruno Hrela was being treated.

The highly-unusual Vatican probe into conditions endured by Bruno at the harsh Industrial School over 50 years ago, may figure in the inquiry into Institutional Abuse set-up by the Government.

Bruno, who is now in his 60's is fully prepared to testify at the Inquiry about the horrific physical and sexual abuse meted out to him and other children at Artane during the 1950s. Bruno is also prepared to testify how his Mum managed to spark of a high-level Vatican inquiry into his harsh treatment at the hands of the notorious Christian Brothers who owned and managed Artane Industrial School.

Tragically after the inquiry Bruno's treatment worsened and he was savagely and unmercifully beaten by the Brothers because of his Mum's attempt to expose the savage treatment of children in Artane Industrial School.

Bruno's family came from Croatia and they fled, with many other refugees, to Italy. Bruno's Dad had been killed during a bombardment of their hometown, Karlovacs, during the Second World War. Bruno's Mum took him and his two sisters to live in poverty in Rome. She was a devout Catholic and, despite their dire poverty, attended daily Mass in St. Peter's in Rome. It was there that she met a Croatian priest linked to the Vatican and it was arranged for the family to go to Ireland. Bruno recalled: " ...it was thought that we would be better off in a good Catholic country like Ireland ..."

Bruno's Mum rented a flat in Marino Dublin. His sisters were accommodated in convents. But she tried to hold onto Bruno and he was sent to a Christian Brothers day school in Marino. On his first day he witnessed a group punishment when the entire class, including Bruno, were beaten because someone made a noise and didn't own-up to it.

Bruno was traumatised by this incident as nobody had ever laid a hand on him before. He could not understand how someone could beat him and other children for no reason. And Bruno had travelled through war-torn Europe, he saw Nazi-occupied Paris and the Partisan guerrillas opposing them, but nobody had used violence against him until he ended up in holy, Catholic Ireland.

Bruno reminisced: "I could not believe the cruelty and brutality I was witnessing. The Brother had a leather strap and a cane. The experience struck total fear into me. And I didn't have a word of English."

But, unfortunately, much worse was to follow.

Bruno's Mum worked as a milliner (hat-maker) and earned a pittance of 2 pounds 10 shillings a week in Grafton Street and walked to and from work to save money on bus fares. But she could not afford to feed Bruno and he was brought to Artane Industrial School. He recalls the trauma of being brought there by a social worker. He described his first look of Artane as 'bleak'.

To his great dismay, he recognised one of the Brothers at Artane as the man who had savagely beaten him and an entire classroom of children on his first day in a schoolroom in Ireland. It was not a good omen.

Bruno, who is a mechanical engineer and a father of six living in London, says that during an approximate two-year stay in Artane, he was savagely beaten, terrorised, physically injured and also sexually assaulted.

"It was a system of deliberate cruelty. It was like a Nazi concentration camp." he says

SOURCE KF

Letting the record speak for itself ....

2005-09-15T13:28:00.000+01:00

Brother slams negative view of Artane school - 15 September 2005 12:42 - A representative of the Christian Brothers has told the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse that from the late 1980s a negative picture of Artane Industrial School was painted and that media coverage was seriously unbalanced. - Brother Michael Reynolds, the deputy leader of St Mary's province of the Christian Brothers, said that taken in the round Artane was a positive institution. He said he did not want to belittle the pain of anyone who had been abused and repeated an apology made by the order.

However, he said the onus was on people to prove their innocence and this was an inversion of the normal process. When questioned about corporal punishment by counsel for the inquiry, Brother Reynolds said there were incidents of severe punishment but it was not any more strict than in any other primary school in the country at the time.

SO according to gibbo the rise and fall of the christian brothers is down to " a negative picture of Artane Industrial School [that] was painted and that media coverage was seriously unbalanced."

And he actually goes on to state "incidents of severe punishment [in Artane] were not any more strict than in any other primary school in the country at the time."

So if I go through the Dail archives I will find many many debates about children being beaten by teachers, children having limbs broken by teachers, parents denied knowledge of their children's injuries and being denied access to their hospitalised children by teachers. ???

WATCH THIS SPACE GIBBO

Christian brothers Methods of Teaching 2

2005-09-03T15:08:00.000+01:00

From the Christian Brothers Instruction Manual

The Christian Brothers issued public apologies in the press and elsewhere for inflicting years of physical and sexual abuse on the schoolboys put in its charge. They were always a strange lot, religious brothers, and the Christian Brothers were the strangest of the lot. The whole thing about the Christian Brothers brutality wasn't an unfortunate byproduct, it was a selling point. The use of canes, straps, rulers and belts was something to be proud of, to boast about, to advertise.

Frequently they were wielded by run of the mill sadists, occasionally by out and out madmen. ... famously remember the boy who was challenged to own up to something he hadn't done. He was hit repeatedly on the hands whilst the demented Brother demanded he owned up. His hands were visibly swelling before finally he falsely owned up just to stop the beating. He was then given another 12 for having lied in the first place.

This became a real scandal when three days later the same Brother was knocked unconscious by his victim's older brother on the Gaelic football pitch. Revenge like that was rare, and severely punished. There were also the 'weirdos', as they used to be called, who would mix corporal punishment with fumbling and fondling in a way that was never quite blatant, and often only became clearer in retrospect, as it was usually reserved for younger boys.

Their apologies, however, are not unique. They follow a succession of priests who have been exposed as child abusers. They follow nuns who have half heartedly apologised for the misery, humiliation and violence they bestowed on girls [and boys] in their care.

Written by famous Irish politician. The Catholic Church in Irish society is not without power today, but it's a power that has dwindled beyond belief from the days of my childhood. Then their crimes would never have been exposed, and they certainly would never have apologised for anything. So their apologies are those of a waning church. Written by famous Irish politician.

Christian Brothers - Methods of Teaching 1

2005-09-03T15:02:00.000+01:00

From the Christian Brothers Instruction Manual:>

Brother Thomas Cuthbert Ford is a former math teacher at Bergen Catholic High School who lives quietly in a Hackensack apartment and performs modest charity work for his religious order. But Ford is a brutal man who beat five boys at a orphanage. Ford stands out in the memories of former residents of the Orphanage, particularly for the way he beat a youngster named Edgar Hartery with a belt in a shower room. "What he did to that young fellow was brutal. There's no doubt about it, It's certainly child abuse. Everybody remembered what Ford did. This is not corporal punishment. This is cruel." said one former resident.

But lawyers say Ford's actions were not criminal but forms of corporal punishment, a common practice at Catholic institutions. His victims remember him as a cruel man whose brutality stood out at the Orphanage. Hartery said "Ford just nailed me with the thick black belt, he hit me everywhere. Across the back, the arms, the legs, the whole body. When he stopped, he just walked away. The other boys in the shower room were petrified."

Victim Ronald Piccard, described Ford as "a coldblooded animal" who blackened his eyes, bruised his face, "and seemed to enjoy it."

THE HARM OF INSTITUTIONS 2

2005-09-03T14:58:00.000+01:00

High child to caregiver ratios also limit the physical experiences of children who may be restricted to a room for extensive periods of time, may spend very little time in interaction with any caring adult and are unlikely to have treatment for any physical special need they have.

Nutritional deprivation or contamination of food or water with toxins such as lead or mercury can also impact development and health. Children WILL experience sexual or physical abuse and infectious diseases and parasites are easily transmitted in the collective living conditions of an institution. Children who have spent an extended period of time in institutions are often developmental delayed and retarded in growth due to physical and emotional deprivation.

Children will often have three different "ages," a chronological age, a developmental age and an emotional age, which may vary widely from one another. In many institutions, babies were left lying on their backs for extended periods of time and preschool aged children were restricted to a cot or room for most of the day and therefore had poor gross motor skills. Even older children were likely to have had limited opportunities for physical or fine motor activities and thus, will and do compare poorly to children in families.

However, children often experience enormous catch up growth developmentally and physically if their circumstances change for the better, and can benefit from the assistance of physical therapy and early intervention services.

It is also worth considering that although there is often rapid improvement if circumstances change for the better, some children will have permanent damage as a result of their early experiences. Children's emotional age will be related to the quality of relationships the child has had in the institution. If the child has not had sensitive care from a primary caregiver their emotional growth will be severely retarded. Many suggest that the emotional age of the child is linked to the length of time they have been in a family.

# Institutionalised children are denied the opportunity to form a consistent relationship with a caregiver in their early years and are at serious risk for developmental problems and long-term personality disorders.

# Many insecurely attached, institutionalised children lack empathy, seek behavior in negative ways, exhibit poor self-confidence, show indiscriminate affection toward adults, are prone to noncompliance, and are more aggressive than their non-institutionalised counterparts.

# Insecurely attached children rebound from adversity far less effectively than securely attached children.

THE HARM OF INSTITUTIONS 1

2005-09-03T14:54:00.000+01:00

The experience of children in institutions - Institutional neglect - The experience of a child in an institution is very different from that of a child in a family. Institutions have high child to caregiver ratios - in Ferryhouse it was one prefect in charge of 100 children, and do not allow for individualised attention; the institutions were also be lacking in heating, cooling, space, toys and nutrition.

The physical and emotional deprivations of institutionalisation can result in a raft of problems including: a range of health issues, trouble with forming relationships (attachment difficulties), physical and developmental delays and language and sensory integration issues. The most serious deprivation of institutionalisation is the lack of a consistent and sensitive caregiver with whom the child can trust and form a healthy attachment.

Development of trust and a secure attachment normally occurs through interactions in which a primary caregiver meets a child's needs in an appropriate manner resulting in reduction of discomfort and in feelings of relief. This cycle of need -> distress -> gratification -> relief -> need is ordinarily repeated many thousands of times in the first years of a child's life but is absent or very greatly reduced in the experience of institutionalised children.

The absence of this attachment cycle in the early years of a child's life can be incredibly damaging and impact their ability to develop relationships and function in society.

Artane: A Boy's Hell

2001-09-23T15:18:00.001+01:00

ARTANE Industrial School was set up in north Dublin in 1871 to take in orphaned or abandoned boys or those who were involved in petty crime. Even such a minor offence as skipping school was enough for a boy to be sent to Artane. More than 15,000 youngsters passed through the gates of the Christian Brothers run school between 1871 and 1969. The school housed around 700 boys at any one time. They stayed there until they were 16 and only they and their abusers knew of the sexual assaults and beatings they were forced to endure. No one knew of their pain. No one knew of their suffering. No one knew of the torment.

But in the 1990s, victims of the abuse started to speak out about their years of torture. The worst period of abuse was in the 1950s and 1960s were victims said they were systematically abused both sexually and physically. As a result, the Gardai launched an investigation into the activities of Christian Brothers at the industrial school.

A flood of victims came forward to give statements and named over 20 Brothers they claimed were involved the abuse. Their stories of institutionalised violence stunned the nation. Even more shocking were claims from former pupils that 241 boys had died in Artane in its 89 year history. Their names were put on a memorial next to those dead Christian Brother teachers from the school - but unlike the Brothers the dates for when the boys died were never given.

It was also claimed that pupils found bones while playing in the grounds. Eyewitnesses later told how Christian Brothers gathered up the bones, smashed them into pieces and took them to another part of the grounds to be burned. So horrific were the stories of abuse, that in May, 1999, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made a historic public apology to the victims. Last year Education Minister Michael Woods has also vowed to lift the lid on the full horror of Ireland's child abuse scandal.

He set up the Truth Commission under the chairmanship of High Court Judge Mary Laffoy, giving him a remit to examine accusations of sexual, emotional and physical abuse at State-run institutions. The inquiry, which is still sitting in Dublin, is divided into two parts - a confidential committee which hears victims' stories and an investigative committee to hear claims of abuse. The inquiry has powers to hear sworn evidence, compel witnesses to testify and punish anyone who refuses to co-operate.

Copyright 2001 MGN LTD

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