Ireland: Tralee's known abuser was never reported to the Gardaí — a twenty-year non-prosecution pattern

Proceedings

1. 1953-01-01 · official finding on a documented non-prosecution

   Ireland — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report, 2009), Vol. 1 Ch. 9 (Tralee). The Commission found that a Brother recorded under the pseudonym Garon operated a 'bizarre ritual of bathing boys and being bathed personally by them' in the shower rooms at Tralee for a period the Report describes as twenty years. A junior Brother, recorded as Lisle, repeatedly reported Garon's conduct to three successive Resident Managers; the Commission found that Garon's behaviour 'went on for many years, and was known to three Superiors, but they did nothing about it,' and that nothing was ever recorded of these complaints in the surviving discovery material. No Garda referral, charge or prosecution of Br Garon is recorded anywhere in the chapter. The Commission separately documented a second Brother, recorded as Marceau, against whom a complainant described sustained fondling in the classroom over a period of time; no prosecution of Marceau is recorded either. The Christian Brothers' own submission stated there was no reference in any surviving correspondence, annals or Visitation Report to boys being sexually abused by Brothers or staff at Tralee — a claim the Commission's own findings on Garon and Marceau directly contradict.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• a junior Brother's complaints absorbed and buried by three successive Superiors rather than escalated
• boys' inability to report a Brother's conduct without fear of being disbelieved and punished
• the institutional monopoly on which adult supervised communal showering, with no independent oversight