Lest We Forget

From the August edition of Harper's (subscription only) referring to the Commission into Child Abuse report published in May.

From statements by men and women who attended Catholic Church-run state schools for the poor in Ireland, in a May report by a government-appointed commission. The 2,600-page report documents claims of abuse from more than a thousand former students at more than 200 institutions between the 1930s and the 1990s. After a lawsuit by the Christian Brothers, the order that ran many of the boys' schools, the names of clergy accused of abuse were omitted.


One time in class, because I couldn't read a couple of lines in Irish, the brother beat me. He put you in the back of the class, and he'd tell you to run to him, then he'd put his fist out and you'd run into it. As soon as you hit the deck, he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch-you know, with the side of his hand on the neck. He'd chop you, you'd go down on the deck.

I was working in the piggery. I used to be starving, the pigs used to get the brothers' leftovers, and one day there was lovely potatoes, and I took some and I took a turnip. The brother caught me and let down my trousers and lashed me. He always wore a leather, around eighteen inches long and all stitched with wax. I remember a boy who would not cry. He got fifty slaps on one hand and then fifty on the other and then another fifty. This brother got so mad that he would not cry, he kicked the legs from under him and kicked him to the ground and kicked him until he went unconscious. He was just lying there with his eyes staring up to the sky.

One day, I was on the farm and we were messing around, squirting milk at each other. The brother came over and dug his nails into the back of my ears, and then he hit me on the jaw with his clenched fists. Of course, I went down. I was in the infirmary for six or seven weeks after that. They smashed my jaw, my gum was all gone, the inside of my face was all ripped. The treatment I got was hot, salty water.

I was hit for having red, curly hair. You had to have straight hair like Our Lady. This sister was a monster. She'd drag you into the office and take her long cane and just beat you and beat you. She had a bamboo cane four feet long. She'd be frothing at the mouth. She'd say, "You curled your hair last night," and when I'd say, "Yes, I curled it," she'd stop. She had castor oil, she would press it into my head, to make my hair straight. My face would be swollen from the beatings, the oil would be running down my face.

Every night I was beaten for wetting the bed. If you pulled away, he would get hold of you and hit harder. If you fell to the floor, he would pull you up by the chin, twist your ear, pull you by the hair. After the beatings, he would play guitar and sing.

I was an animal lover. There were wild cats and kittens going around starving, and I used to sneak them into the dormitory. I had a kitten. This nun called me one night. She said, "You see that kitten you have there?" She got me out of my bed by the hair and brought me down, they had one of those stoves that you put the coal in the top. She said, "Take that top off." I had to go up on my knees. I had to put the cat in there and put the lid on it-and the screams. Then she said, "Go back to bed." The next morning, she got me out of bed and she made me rake that fire out. I think I was about twelve at the time.



Report on abuse in Dublin Archdiocese . . . pending.