The Provincial of the Rosminian Congregation in Ireland has told the Child Abuse Commission that the disciplinary regimes at St Joseph's Industrial School in Ferryhouse, Co Tipperary and St Patrick's Industrial School in Upton, Co Cork were wholly inadequate. Fr Joseph O'Reilly told the public hearing in Dublin into the two schools that the regimes were also fundamentally flawed and at times brutal.
Fr O'Reilly said that corporal punishment was at times excessive, but he said it was also excessive elsewhere. He agreed that there was a considerable amount of corporal punishment in both institutions. However, while prefects appeared to deliver it spontaneously at any time, he said some others in the wider school community also delivered a 'slap or clatter' regularly.
Fr O'Reilly said that the fact that 17 boys received 20 blows each on one day in 1954 at St Joseph's was grossly excessive. He also described as regrettable the fact that boys were punished for bed-wetting. Fr O'Reilly also acknowledged that there was a considerable quantity of sexual abuse at both institutions.
He acknowledged that no complaint was made to gardaí until 1995. And he accepted that no attempt was made to understand the impact of such abuse on the boys. But he said he did not accept that the response of the Rosminians was about covering up. |
