Battering brothers packed a punch well beyond the industrial schools

I repeat that I witnessed assaults regularly. I saw some boys get pretty serious beatings, although not enough to require hospitalisation, thankfully. Sometimes it happened for the most trivial of offences, such as speaking out of turn, being late for class or for being unable to answer a question correctly

A YEAR ago I wrote on this page about the Christian Brothers, saying they had left their mark, literally, on hundreds of thousands of Irish boys. I related, from personal experience, as to how they did so by choosing from a range of weapons including leather straps, metre-long wooden sticks, bamboo shoots and their fists.

I wrote about my experiences at the North Monastery CBS in Cork from 1978 to 1983, where I witnessed assaults regularly. I wrote about it because of the decision by the Christian Brothers to hand responsibility for the near 100 schools under their control – both primary and secondary – to a special lay administered trust.