Paul Hopkins: My recall of the '60s with the Christian Brothers

The 700-page Scoping report on historical sexual abuse at religious schools in Ireland is so candid in its shock and horror that some chapters begin with a content warning. These chapters are the harrowing accounts from those who endured and survived extreme sexual violence and abuse.

"Reading these accounts of abuse may be extraordinarily difficult, particularly for those who have been abused or whose loved ones have been abused,” the report warns.

It found there were 2,395 allegations of sexual abuse in 308 schools recorded by the 42 religious orders that ran the schools. The allegations were made of 884 distinct alleged abusers.

The scale of abuse is staggering. It happened between the 1960s and the early 1990s, with the highest number of reported incidents occurring in the early to mid-1970s.

Memory can be a funny thing. A memory may be of something that didn't actually happen the way we remember it, but that does not invalidate it as the way we remember, recall, something is how the human brain works – of how we remember.

My schooling was in the 1960s, at a school run by the Christian Brothers. Corporal punishment was allowable then. In Ireland, all forms of corporal punishment of children have only – believe it or not – been definitively outlawed since the passing of the Children First Act in 2015. Law in the republic inherited the pre-independence common law and statutes modelled on English law. These included allowance of "physical chastisement" by teachers and, under the Children Act of 1908, of "reasonable chastisement" by parents and those in loco parentis. That said, school corporal punishment was prohibited in 1982 by then Minister for Education John Boland.

I was 'biffed' on the open palms of my hands with 'the leather' until they turned bright red and stung mercilessly, bringing me to the verge of tears. My memory is that, in my case, it was not frequent – though, as I say, memory can be a funny thing. Maybe I was a "good boy". However, many 'favoured' boys in my primary classes were daily 'biffed' on their hands and on their buttocks, and slapped across their little faces by the heavy hand of a Christian Brother. And, so often, for no particular error of any kind. I remember seeing one brother fling one boy from one end of the classroom to the other after a heavy beating.

Corporal punishment was endemic in my schooling of the 1960s. And you would never tell your parents because they would think, well you must have done something wrong. Ireland was that dark place.

Yes, I saw other 'things'; was even once or twice the victim of such 'things'.

One Brother would call a boy up the top of the class, put his arm around him while the boy answered a question, and then slip his hand down the back of the boy's short trousers. That happened to me – not often but then again memory and all that. But I certainly saw him do it frequently to the same 'favoured boys'. Or if there were, say, five boys put out to 'stand in the line', he would go from one to the other squeezing their crotch.

Nobody said anything. Nobody dared. Or, on reflection, back then we had no words for it all. And, compared to the myriad cases cited by Scoping, it would seem we had it relatively easy – although my memory has no recall of what might have gone on in the class next door.

Over half of those accused in the religious orders' records are now dead. The overwhelming majority of allegations relate to the sexual abuse of boys.

The report raises questions about the conspiracy of silence in schools, with many survivors explaining that the abuse was an open secret. In some schools, children tried to stop each other from being left alone with known abusers.

It remains to be seen if having called-for public hearings could affect the willingness of some religious orders to co-operate with a commission of investigation. While the Scoping report found the majority of religious orders were willing "at least in principle” to co-operate with a future inquiry, some had put conditions or caveats on their willingness to provide testimony or key documents.

Scoping recommends that the Government ask religious orders to contribute to a redress fund. But my understanding is that such conversations have not yet started, and it is not yet known what kind of contribution can be expected from the religious orders.

If any...