Conditions damned in 1970

A DAMNING picture of life in industrial schools and reform schools was presented in 1970 in the report of an investigation carried out by District Justice Eileen Kennedy.

It described the sort of conditions we have come to associate with Romanian orphanages. Among its findings were:

. Children were being cared for in a "haphazard" and "amateurish" manner by "untrained" and "inadequate" staff in unsanitary conditions" which lacked "stimulation and companionship".

. Children were deliberately "depersonalised" by being made to sleep in communal dormitories, eat in refectories and wear Institutional clothing. There were no records kept and children had no identities.

. 80 per cent of detained children were "deprived" and suffering from the effects of bereavement, separation or illegitimacy.

. Children who had "emotional scars of a deep and abiding nature" were being cared for by staff with "a lack of awareness of the needs of the child in care" and who "did not meet their needs for love and security".

. There was no psychological or educational assessment and children convicted of indictable offences were mixed with children with no criminal records and the mentally retarded were mixed with those of normal intelligence. About half the children were "backward".

. Few professionals visited the orphanages. In 1969, only 147 professionals - 36 of them doctors - occasionally visited the 29 industrial schools.

. The schools were understaffed. In 1968, ratio of full time religious staff to children was 1-50. Untrained lay workers outnumbered the religious by five to one, many of whom were former pupils. Many abuse victims describe abusive "teachers" who were grown up former pupils who had been unable to leave the orphanages and make their way in the world.