Dear Rev Br M,

THIS letter contains things I intended to say to your face when the right opportunity arose. That opportunity never occurred. It is said that one’s schooldays are the happiest days of one’s life. My former classmates and I would beg to differ. Certainly, we enjoyed some great times but, during our first two post-primary years, your pernicious activities rendered our lives miserable.

I refer, of course, to your fondness for administering corporal punishment. You were not alone in using the leather as it was the standard treatment for misdemeanours in those times. Even we recipients accepted that six of the best was fair enough if we had misbehaved. We were less accepting of being punished for mistakes in class, or homework, because lack of ability should not have been punished. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the mistakes occurred because of the poor quality of the tuition received.

Most of your teaching colleagues administered the punishment dispassionately and only when deserved. They all adhered to the limit of six strokes of the leather, three on each hand. With some of them, days or even weeks passed without them using the leather. The same could not be said about you. I cannot recall 10 minutes passing in any class of yours without you punishing some boy for some offence, either real or imagined. Often you would punish the same boy more than once within a very few minutes, thereby circumventing the limit of six strokes. As we had you for the final period before lunch each day, you were able to require a pupil to stay behind for further punishment when you ignored the limit of six altogether.

Clearly you enjoyed beating pupils because you did so with an evil grin on your face, using the greatest force you could muster, and you always prefaced the punishment with the remark: “I will enjoy this more than you will.” To make matters worse, you also expected the recipient of the punishment to say: “Thank you, Sir.” If the pupil failed to thank you, you would administer a further six strokes.

I could list many occasions when your punishments strayed well beyond reasonable chastisement and when cruelty became the only accurate description, but I will confine myself to four.

On one Monday, about two minutes into the class, you said: “M, talking in class.” That meant M was to come to the front of the class to be punished for talking. He duly received six. A few minutes later, you repeated the process. In all, during that 40-minute class, you called M up six times. He received a total of 42 strokes, the final six because he did not thank you. That he was by this time sobbing was obviously deemed insufficient excuse. We all knew that M had not been talking. Some of us even knew why he was being singled out for such cruel treatment. The previous afternoon, his father had made a complete eejit of you on the hurling field, scoring 2-9 while you were trying to mark him. At the end of class, you required M to remain behind for further punishment.

The second occasion was when I had the temerity to correct a rather glaring error on your part. A couple of minutes later came the call: “O, talking.” I duly received the first of five batches of six. I was required to remain behind so that you could administer a further 10 strokes on each hand and a further 20 with a heavy leather belt on my buttocks. “Never, ever make a fool of me again,” you said. You also required me to come to your room at the end of school for a further 10, 10 and 20.

The third occasion possibly showed you at your worst. You overheard S describing you as a sadistic bastard. So during class S received eight batches of six. He was required to remain behind when you administered 10, 10 and 20 telling him that you would show him what a sadistic bastard could do. You required him to come to your room after school when you administered a further 12, 12 and 24. The following day, you gave him another eight batches of six followed by 14, 14 and 28. You again told him to come to you after school. S did not report to you that afternoon. He had had enough and simply could not face another horrendous beating. Having failed to report to you, he was aware that he would be in worse trouble the following day so, that night, he ran away from home.

His absence the following day led to the fourth occasion. You vented your spleen on the rest of us. You lined us up and went along the line administering six to each of us. Four times you went down the line not even sparing B, who was still recovering from a broken wrist. During each of the third and fourth runs, if any boy cried, you immediately gave him a further six, saying: “I will give you something to cry about.” M was required to remain behind to receive the 16, 16 and 32 you had intended for S while C was told to report to you after school. C followed S’s example and did not report. He feigned sickness the following day.

This second act of defiance did not improve your temper. For the first time you produced the belt in class and told us that we would all have sore hands and sore arses by the time you had finished. You had given two boys 10, 10 and 20 when the school secretary came into the room to tell you that the Brother Superior wanted you to come to his office immediately.

That was the last we ever saw of you. Later we learned that S had been found and had told his parents and the police about your brutality. His parents had arrived at the school to complain. One might have expected that you would have faced prosecution or, at the very least, been barred from teaching. But, no! All that happened was that you were transferred to another school.

A couple of years later I met some pupils from that school. They informed me that you had continued to inflict pain and misery on young boys until fate intervened and you suffered a stroke which left you semi-paralysed.

Sometimes I wonder whether you are in some way mentally deranged of whether you are simply evil. Perhaps you used sadism as a substitute for sex. Who knows? I also wonder whether you ever feel any remorse for the pain and misery you inflicted. The physical pain was bad enough but imagine, if you can, the mental state of a young boy who has received a brutal beating at lunchtime and knows he faces a similar beating at 3.45. Imagine, also, the boys who, because of the punishment they were likely to receive from you, feared going to school to the extent that some recommenced bed-wetting.

Do you ever regret the disgrace brought upon the once respected Order by your actions and those of some of your colleagues? Do you ever regret betraying the ideals of Edmund Ignatius Rice? Do you ever regret betraying your confreres, the majority of whom were decent men who gave of their best? Of course, those of your confreres who taught in the same school are not entirely blameless. After all, the sound of the leather echoes through a school. Your confreres knew what was happening but chose to ignore it. That is to their shame.

To paraphrase Johnny Cash: “May all the world regret you ever lived!” Name and address with the Editor