Christian Brothers want abuse use survivor to return n revealing documents nts
Call on State to step in and protect vital historical evidence
A SURVIVOR of abuse at St Joseph’s Industrial School in Glin is calling on the State to intervene and save the priceless documents relating to the horrific Christian Brothers’ regime there which he removed when the school closed in 1973.
Survivor Tom Wall is being threatened with legal action by the Order if he does not ‘release’ the collection of documents in a move he said ‘insults’ him and all his fellow survivors.
He was ordered to burn all documents when the Brothers quit the building in 1973, but says he was allowed to take material of particular interest to his own past. He handed everything in his possession to the University of Limerick in 2015 as a resource for historians and other survivors.
Within weeks of the handover, he was slapped with a solicitor’s letter on behalf of the Order demanding the return of the material. Negotiations between Mr Wall and the Order failed to reach conclusion since, with the records now effectively ‘ blocked’ from scrutiny by the public at UL.
Mr Wall is now threatened with ‘remedies in law’. He is being supported in his call for the State to step in and take ownership of the cache by Limerick TD Niall Collins who called the legal threat ‘nothing short of contemptible’.
SURVIVOR of the notorious industrial school at Glin Tom Wall is being threatened with legal action by the religious order at whose hands he suffered physical and sexual abuse over documents from the school he handed over to the University of Limerick in 2015.
It’s a threat Mr Wall describes as an ‘insult’ to all survivors of a school that figured prominently in the horrific revelations of the Ryan Report.
The 800 individual documents Mr Wall moved from the school on its closure in 1973 has been judged one of the most important existing portfolios relating to life in the industrial school system, outside of archives held by religious orders.
He donated all the material to UL in 2015 to help historians better understand the deeply troubling system.
But the Christian Brothers order immediately moved to recover the material, claiming that it is the rightful owners of the documents. Now, after an exhaustive process involving solicitors on all sides, the order has directed Mr Wall to relinquish his claim on the documents and return them to the order or face legal action.
Fianna Fáil TD for Limerick Niall Collins this week branded the legal threat as ‘nothing short of contemptible’.
Mr Wall was the youngest boy ever admitted to St Joseph’s Industrial School in Glin at just three years of age. He survived more than a decade of sexual and physical abuse before being discharged to work as a farm boy at the age of 16. He later returned to the school and at the age of 24 helped the remaining religious close the building for good in 1973.
“I was ordered by the Superior Brother Murry to burn all the documents that he gave me, but was told that I could keep any that I particularly wanted. As I was looking for my own file I therefore held back some of the documents that I had been told to burn and I put them in the attic of a house in Glin where they remained for the next 40 years.”
UL said the documents represented an ‘opportunity to shine a light into the darkest corners of our country’s recent past’ on accepting the cache two years ago.
Within a month of donating the documents, Mr Wall received a letter from a solicitor acting for the European Province of the Congregation of Christian Brothers that stated: “For the avoidance of any doubt, this collection is the rightful property of the EPCCB. Mr Wall does not have legal ownership... in the event the collection is not returned to our client we will have to advise our client of the remedies available to them in law to secure the return of the collection.”
Negotiations between Mr Wall and the EPCCB have since failed to reach an agreement.
Among the collection are documents which show how the order organised apprenticeships for boys on leaving Glin with the boys’ pay going straight back to the institution, Mr Wall said.
He fears that if the order succeeds in getting the collection no one will get the chance to study their contents.“I firmly believe these documents should be kept in UL where they can be preserved and viewed and will be a record for future generations. It is an insult to me as a survivor and the many other survivors who were abused by the Christian Brothers that they can now claim ownership of these documents after a lapse of 40 years.”
Mr Wall fears the order could ‘destroy’ the collection. He is now calling on the State to intervene in the dispute and take ownership of the collection for the benefit of public knowledge and the ongoing trials of other survivors.
Deputy Collins supports this proposal. “It is beyond belief that the Christian Brothers, having previously sought to burn the personal documents of former residents, would now threaten legal action against the person who sought to protect them and correctly involved UL.”