Children warned not to tell social services of their plight

Children warned not to tell social services of their plight

5 November 2014

A FORMER resident of Rubane House has said he was warned not to tell Social Services of abuse at the home.

The man, now in his 50s, said boys told him soon after he arrived that if he reported to ‘welfare’ when they visited he would get a “kicking” from the Brothers.

One of four children, he repeatedly played truant from school after his father’s death, which led to the short stay at Rubane with his brother in the early 1970s.

Giving evidence at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry yesterday, he said: “I knew from the start of my time in Rubane not to report anything.

“The other boys always said that if you told welfare they would just tell the Brothers and you would get a beating. Every time a social worker asked you just said everything was fine.”

Outlining a series of alleged violent assaults, he said his first experience upon arrival at Rubane was being locked in a room and slapped.

His first Friday in the home, he told Banbridge Courthouse, resulted in a more serious assault. He said he was in a table tennis room when he heard a bell ringing, but didn’t realise what it was. He later found out it was the call to go to Benediction.

“Two Brothers whose names I cannot remember came in asked us what we were doing and started to beat us,” he said. “They kicked, punched and slapped and dragged us outside.... I was left with a hand mark on my face and bruising to the left hand side of my torso.”

The man said he also vividly remembered the look on another boy’s face when they were caught smoking in the dormitories shortly after arriving.

“There was such a look of terror on [his] face that I told the Brother that it was me who was smoking,” he said.

“[The Brother] trailed me out of bed and when I refused to my pyjama bottoms for him he hit me across the face with a leather strap and beat me all over.”

He also recalled an incident when a joke played by one of the boys in the dormitory went badly wrong. He explained that one of the Brothers had a routine in the morning where he would shake his keys and say ‘wakey wakey’. He said this was imitated by one of boys late at night and several woke up automatically thinking it was morning, with those who regularly wet the bed carrying their sheets into the bathroom as usual.

“[One of the Brothers] came flying and hit them with a strap. I remember hearing the whacks and the squeals,” he said.

He also outlined a number of incidents in which he was hit over the head with a large object by a teacher and a nun who worked at the school, and one occasion “nearly knocked unconscious.”

Counsel to the inquiry, Joseph Aiken, noted that the Brothers found his accusations hard to believe.

The De La Salle order said that both the nun and another Brother accused by the witness were against corporal punishment.

The account of the man’s arrival at the home was also disputed.

Asked again by Mr. Aiken why he did not feel able to report any of this to a social worker, he said: “One of the first things one of the guys told me is if welfare asks if anything is wrong and you say there is something wrong they will tell the head Brother and you will get a kicking.

The man, in his early teens at the time of his three month stay, said he did not suffer any sexual abuse at Rubane but was “haunted” by the fact he didn’t try to stop it amongst the boys themselves.

“One day I was out for a walk and heard a commotion in the the wood behind this chalet,” he said. “I saw a boy being beaten by five other boys with bracken and sticks.”

He then went on to describe how the boy being beaten was then sexually abused.

“I was so disgusted,” he said. “I walked away. It haunted me and I questioned myself as to why I didn’t step in and stop it. However, I knew if I tried to stop it I would probably end up getting the same.”

Concluding his evidence he said he went home at Christmas with his brother and refused to return. He was then sent to St. Patrick’s Training School.

“St. Pat’s was alright compared to Rubane and I have no complaints about my time there,” he said.