THAT'S MEN:Circumstances conspire to make us what we are, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
COULD I have been like them? That's the question I asked myself at No Escape, Mary Raftery's haunting drama documentary on the Ryan Report.
The “them” in question were those Christian Brothers and other religious who were cruel to children in their care in institutions.
I had gone to the Peacock production reluctantly and only because the Arenaarts programme on RTÉ Radio One had sent me. Surely, I already knew enough about what had gone on in those grim institutions?
Well, no, I didn’t as it turned out. I had known a good many of the facts, but the flavour of what happened behind the walls of industrial schools, reformatories and orphanages into the 1970s was what I had missed in reading media reports.
The Peacock production of Mary Raftery’s work (which runs until Saturday) gave me that flavour and raised that disturbing question. Could I have stripped boys naked, beaten them with hurleys, punched them in the face for looking the wrong way at me?
We are the product of circumstances punctuated by personal choices, so the answer is yes, I could have. I hope I wouldn’t have but I could have.
There are factors which could have pushed me towards this behaviour had I worked in one of these institutions. Other factors might have helped to pull me away from it.
I grew up in a family in which there was no corporal punishment. That wasn’t as unusual as you might think in the 1950s and 1960s. Don’t let apologists for violent people tell you mistreatment of children was the norm. It was in some households but in many it was not.
Moreover, I went to a Christian Brothers’ school in Naas in which corporal punishment was fairly mild compared to what was going on even in other schools.
So had I joined up and found myself assigned, say, to Artane, wouldn’t all that have helped keep me from excesses?
Yes, but on the other hand the Peacock production relayed evidence from a Brother who said newcomers were warned by the old hands that they had to be hard on the boys or they would be seen as “silly”.
After the first time this Brother punched a boy in the face, he walked into a room of other Brothers to a round of applause. That’s powerful conditioning and, no doubt, was meant to be.
Then there’s the desensitisation. Every time he saw another Brother beating a boy with a hurley he would become a little more desensitised to the deed and to the screams.
Perhaps, it would become reasonably easy to hold down a boy while he was being beaten like this in front of others. Eventually, perhaps, I could be one of the Brothers who dragged boys, already stripped naked and beaten in front of the other boys, into a room and savaged them with hurleys until they were unrecognisable, for the crime of escaping.
I wouldn’t start out as a monster, but I could end up as one. The road to evil is paved by small, doable actions, each taking you further out into the sea of depravity.
Personal choice comes into this. At many points I would have a choice to make so I would retain moral responsibility for my own actions.
Still, the system of conditioning and desensitisation would make it easier for me to make the wrong choice. So would the system of cover-up.
If I wanted to sexually abuse boys I would know that the worst that could happen would be a transfer to a teaching post in a day school.
The management system would see to that. And the Department of Education, in its reckless, shameful way, would allow it to happen.
The lesson is that you cannot leave it to the individual to do the right thing in a rotten system and then throw up your hands in horror when that individual chooses to do terrible things.
And if, as the Irish State did, you turn your back on what happens behind high walls, then terrible things will, indeed, happen.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy