HowIrelandturnedablindeye tofamedpriest’sdirewarnings
THIS week marks the centenary of Fr Edward Flanagan’s initial efforts to deal with the plight of delinquent and homeless boys in the United States. He burst onto the international scene in 1938 with the release of the movie, Boys Town, featuring his help of homeless boys.
Born in Leabeg, Roscommon, in 1886, Edward Flanagan was educated at Summerhill College, Sligo, before emigrating in 1904. He studied for the priesthood in the USA, Italy, and Austria. After his ordination in 1912, he began his first parish ministry in Omaha, Nebraska, where he became deeply involved with homeless men. He managed to acquire facilities to house up to 1,000 of them. When those men joined the armed forces after the US entered the first world war in early 1917, Fr Flanagan began to focus on homeless boys.
On December 12, 1917, he opened his first house for boys. As their number increased, he purchased a farm near the city and established Boys Town, in which he preached and practiced love, rather than correction. He popularised the slogan — “There is no such thing as a bad boy.”
Banish the rod and cherish the child, was his philosophy. The boys were not fenced in and free to leave at will.
In 1938 Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer released the movie Boys Town. Louis B Mayer, the head of MGM, had initial doubts.
“It will never sell,” he said. “There’s no sex and no songs.”
But Spencer Tracy, who starred in the movie, persuaded Mayer that the nation was ready for the movie. “Our nation needs this,” he argued.
The movie duly captured the public imagination and went on to win three Academy Awards, with Tracey capturing the Oscar as best actor for his portrayal of Fr Flanagan.
After the Second World War President Harry Truman sent Mgr Flanagan to Europe and Asia to assess what could be done for homeless children. The Monsignor duly inspired a further 80 Boys Towns around the world.
However, he was highly critical of the industrial school setup in this country. “We would be better off if many of our State industrial schools, as they are now set up, with punishment and segregation from society, were eliminated,” he insisted.
“I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character,” he told a gathering at the Savoy Cinema in Cork. “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.”
“The publicity may jolt our Government out of its attitude of smug complacency,” Maud Gonne MacBride remarked.
But Justice Minister Gerald Boland was dismissive.
“I am surprised,” he said, “that in these circumstances an ecclesiastic of his standing should have thought it proper to describe in such offensive and intemperate language conditions about which he has no first-hand knowledge.”
With the Minister so dismissive, the outrages perpetrated in Irish industrial schools and reformatories were ignored.
The level of abuse in Tralee at St Joseph’s industrial school — locally known as “the Monastery” — was as bad as anywhere.
The problem with the Christian Brothers was that if there was a serious complaint against a brother in a day school, he would be transferred to an industrial school, where parents had little influence.
Moving problem brothers to industrial schools, and quietly shifting paedophile priests from one parish to another was criminal stupidity, because it amounted to affording a virtual licence to abuse children.
In his book Holy Terrors, published in 2009, Michael Clemenger wrote about physical and sexual abuse in the Monastery from 1959 to 1967. Some of the boys complained to the gardaí about this abuse, but the authorities turned a blind eye.
Richard Johnson, the local District Justice, actually warned the Department of Justice that the abuse was so serious in Tralee that he would never again commit a boy, or a girl to either of the industrial schools. He went on to write a play — “The Evidence I Shall Give” — about the abuse of a girl in the girls’ industrial school, across the road from the Monastery.
Nearly all those who grew up in that era of corporal punishment would probably have experienced, or witnessed, physical abuse in school. Things were worse in the industrial schools, especially with the sexual abuse.
“I saw boys being taken from their beds at night but, like everyone else, I pretended not to see it,” Clemenger recalled. “It was a big secret that everyone knew about but no one, neither Brothers nor boys, ever spoke about.”
“The Brothers behaved with profound cruelty, both physically and sexually, against us,” he added. One of the brothers flattened him and kicked him unconscious. One kick in the testicles required corrective surgery.
Another day he ran afoul of Brother Conor Lane, because he was gyrating to some radio music. Lane stripped and whipped him with a bamboo until he passed out. It was not the first time there was a serious question about Lane’s behaviour.
The boys were convinced he had actually murdered Joseph Pyke in February 1958. Lane beat Pyke mercilessly in front of all the boys in the dinning hall, because he was not eating his dinner. He burst a boil on the back of Pyke’s neck with the blow from a leather strap.
At the time Pyke was suffering from double pneumonia and had apparently lost his appetite. He died in hospital of blood poisoning four days later.
Bursting the boil could have caused the fatal septicaemia in Pyke’s rundown condition. He had no known relatives, so nobody in authority gave a damn. No post mortem, or inquest, was ever held.
Lane was formally charged with sexual abuse and physical assault in Tralee in 1999. The Director of Public Prosecutions also decided that he should be charged in connection with Pyke’s death, but Lane died before being brought to trial.
After his release from the Monastery in February 1967, Clemenger told the Dean of Kerry, Monsignor John Lane, about the physical and sexual abuse. “You should forget about those things that happened and just look to the future,” the Dean told him.
A few weeks later Mgr Lane made international news by denouncing the planned appearance of the busty American actress, Jayne Mansfied, at a cabaret in Tralee’s Brandon Hotel. Mansfield’s appearance was promptly cancelled.
Clemenger was appalled by
THE HORROR OF IGNORING FR FLANAGAN’S WARNINGS AMOUNTS TO CRIMINAL INDIFFERENCE ON THE PART OF THE STATE
this hypocrisy.
“Such was my outrage I wrote a long letter to the bishop’s house in Killarney, expressing my disgust and outrage at the duplicity of both the parish priest of Tralee and the clergy in general,” he noted.
“I also provided specific details of everything that had happened to me in St. Joseph’s Industrial School, the physical and sexual abuse, from 1959 to 1967.”
“Needless to say,” he added, “I never received a reply.”
On reflection, we now know the horror of ignoring Fr Flanagan’s warnings. This amounted to wilful criminal indifference on the part of the authorities responsible.