The religious order that ran St Joseph's industrial school in Kilkenny has denied any knowledge of sexual abuse in the school until a Garda investigation in the mid-1990s.
Sr Una O'Neill, superior general of the Religious Sisters of Charity, told the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday there was no indication on any of the school's files of abuse having taken place.
In 1995 gardaí informed the order they were investigating allegations of physical and sexual abuse against four former members of staff. The cases ranged in dates from the 1950s to the 1980s.
The inquiry heard that in 1954 a Department of Education inspector recommended that no prosecution be taken against a person accused of sexual abuse after the local parish priest counselled against such a course of action.
The inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, commended the priest as a "sensible and shrewd pastor" after he promised instead to talk to the man and "put the fear of God into him".
The priest also opposed informing the bishop about the man, a painter employed by the school, on the basis that the latter was old and deaf and would be upset by the allegations.
The priest argued that while he felt the man deserved "penal servitude" any inquiry would bring grave disrepute on the school. The painter, a married man in his 60s, was dismissed.
Asked if this incident did not form part of the "folklore" of the school, Sr O'Neill said she doubted this as such matters were not talked about in the 1950s. No one she had spoken to, including staff and former residents, had given any hint as to what had happened.
Sr O'Neill accepted that David Murray, the first male childcare worker to qualify in the State, had engaged in "appalling and depraved" abuse of children at the school in the 1970s, and had totally abused his position of trust.
However, she said there was nothing to indicate his behaviour was of concern while he was in charge of the boys. This was quite consistent with the activity of paedophiles who tended to exercise control over their victims in secrecy, she said.
In December 1997 Murray pleaded guilty to buggery and gross indecency involving 10 boys during the 1970s.
In the following year another care worker, Myles Brady, pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault on boys at St Joseph's. He was sentenced to four years in jail and died during his sentence.
In October 1977 Brady was the subject of a complaint by another care worker, who alleged that he was not emotionally stable enough to give care and that the situation in his group was not safe.
Sr O'Neill said that because Brady and Murray were both male and qualified, the resident manager of St Joseph's, Sr Joseph Conception, would have believed they could be trusted.
Subsequently, following an allegation that Brady had "interfered with" a boy visiting the school, he was dismissed.
Sr O'Neill said she accepted that Brady had beaten boys and subjected them to "an appalling litany of sexual abuse".
She said that what was said to Sr Conception about Brady "would not have been couched in terms that would have given her to understand that Brady was inflicting sexual abuse on the boys".
Noel MacMahon SC, for the inquiry, said that while Sr Conception would say she hadn't known about the allegations of sexual abuse, other evidence would contradict this.
Asked what action that order had taken to ensure the two men were not put in positions of authority after they left St Joseph's, the witness said Sr Conception had notified the department of Murray's dismissal.
"She did what she thought was appropriate. She would never have done anything that would have harmed the boys." As for Brady, she had no knowledge, though it was understood he returned to England.
A fifth case of abuse at St Joseph's, involving a female care worker who left in the late 1980s, has also come to light, the inquiry was told. Sr O'Neill said she had struggled for 10 years to understand the two "realities" of St Joseph's but was unable to reconcile the good and evil that were found there. The inquiry will continue its investigation into St Joseph's in private.
