Defence Forces Tribunal hears about officer's 'out-of-the-world, excessive' abuse of recruits

Gerard Guinan, General Secretary of PDFORRA, recalled an alleged incident by an officer who forced one recruit to eat 'smoking' cigarette butts also allegedly had cigarettes forced into the ears and nostrils of another recruit. File photo: Paul Mealey

An army officer alleged to have forced one recruit to eat “smoking” cigarette butts also allegedly had cigarettes forced into the ears and nostrils of another recruit, the Defence Forces Tribunal has heard.

Recruits were allegedly encouraged by the officer to laugh and photograph the incidents.

Tribunal witness Gerard Guinan, who enlisted in 1989 and joined the 34th Platoon at the Apprentice School in Devoy Barracks, recalled: “He was encouraging people to laugh and jeer. Looking back, it was Lord of the Flies.

“You were just happy it wasn’t you being laughed at.” 

Mr Guinan, who is now the general security of the representative body PDFORRA, referenced this among a number of “out-of-the-world, excessive” abuse of recruits by an officer, who can only be referenced as 2LTB.

There were so many incidents that recruits, who Mr Guinan referred to as “child soldiers” because most were aged between 16 and 18, couldn’t wait to get home at weekends.

Once, when a rumour swept through the platoon that weekend leave was to be withdrawn because one recruit had failed to “keep up on a run”, recruits ran for the front gate before it could be confirmed officially.

”We all ran for the gate, but when we got to the gate, they closed the gate,” Mr Guinan recalled.

He recalled an incident that emerged in an earlier tribunal hearing which saw recruit Padraic Lenaghan being allegedly ordered to eat cigarette buts. This was after the officer 2LTB caught recruits smoking in their dormitory.

Mr Guinan recalled how some of the cigarettes had been half-stubbed out seconds before the officer found them in an ashtray under Mr Lenaghan’s bed and were still smoking.

Mr Guinan recalled: “2LTB told him to take out the ashtray, which had cigarettes still smoking.

”He told him ‘take a butt out, put it in your mouth, chew it and swallow it’. 

He then told him to open his mouth and he then told him to take out two more cigarettes and to swallow them. 

Mr Guinan also recalled fellow apprentice Oliver Mullaney being subjected to “a lot of petty bullshit” and “really personalised abuse” two days before he killed himself.

He also recalled how recruits were asked to stand at attention for so long that, after more than two hours of standing in the rigid position, one recruit collapsed and landed face down on the parade ground tarmac.

”His limbs were stuck in a rigid position, and his head and chin collided with the ground," he claimed. ”He just went over. We all ran to help him, but we were told to get back.” 

Anybody who tried to help him were told to “get the effing away” from him, he recalled.

He said the officers eventually turned the fallen recruit over, and he said he “gave an animalistic, guttural howl”. He was “somebody in real pain and terror”.

Tribunal's establishment

Mr Guinan was the latest witness in what is the first module of public hearings, which opened in Dublin on June 3.

This module, which ends on July 10, is investigating whether complaints of abuse in the Defence Forces were “actively deterred or whether there was a culture that discouraged the making of complaints of abuse”.

The tribunal was established in 2024 after a March 2023 report on a review of allegations of abuse against personnel within the Defence Forces detailed brutal and “sadistic” abuse, including the rape and sexual assault of both male and female soldiers.

The review itself was set up after revelations of abuse emerged in RTÉ’s Women of Honour exposé.