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The wearin' of the mean

From statements by men and women who attended Catholic Church-run state schools for the poor in Ireland, in a May report by a government-appointed commission. The 2,600-page report documents claims of abuse from more than a thousand former students at more than 200 institutions between the 1930s and the 1990s. After a lawsuit by the Christian Brothers, the order that ran many of the boys’ schools, the names of clergy accused of abuse were omitted.

One time in class, because I couldn’t read a couple of lines in Irish, the brother beat me. He put you in the back of the class, and he’d tell you to run to him, then he’d put his fist out and you’d run into it. As soon as you hit the deck, he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch—you know, with the side of his hand on the neck. He’d chop you, you’d go down on the deck.

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SEE ALSO: Abused children; Case studies; Catholic Church; Catholic schools; Child abuse; Institutional care

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