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Buncrana priest criticised in
child abuse report
02.06.09
A Buncrana-born priest
is among those criticised in the Ryan Report into
child abuse in State-run institutions.
Fr William McGonagle who died two years ago at the
age of 86, was the former resident manager of the
notorious St Conleth's Reformatory School for Boys
in Daingean, Co Offaly. He was in charge of the
school for young offenders from the late 1960s until
the early 1970s.
The recently-published Ryan Report gives him the
pseudonym 'Fr Luca' and criticises his ambivalent
approach to the corporal punishment meted out by
some of his staff at the reformatory. The
punishments included sadistic floggings and beatings
for even minor offences. In 1968 Fr McGonagle told
visiting members of the Kennedy committee, "openly
and without embarrassment", how boys were beaten
with a leather strap. Asked why he allowed boys to
be stripped naked for punishment, he replied, "in a
matter of fact way", that he considered punishment
to be more humiliating when it was administered in
that fashion. |
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Later in his statement
to the Ryan Report before his death, Fr McGonagle
said he had "no recollection" of having said these
things.
Several of the complainants who were abused at
Daingean described the screams from boys being
beaten by the brothers as "horrifying and fear
inducing".
The Ryan Report outlines how the "dreadful effects
of these screams was most |
graphically brought
home to the committee by the evidence of Fr Luca
himself".
He told the committee that one evening when he was
saying his prayers he heard "the leather" being used
on a boy. Fr McGonagle said: "I thought it was a
most revolting thing and said 'here am I inside to
praise God and Christ himself is being punished now
right beside me. It sunk into me as a kind of
horror, that it was such a contradiction to all that
we were working about". He was asked by the
committee if this had left a big impression on him
and he said: "To this day, it still does. When I
hear of anybody being beaten up, we say in the
North, it annoys me, but it is much deeper than
annoyance. It shook me. It confirmed my
determination as soon as possible and when possible
I would try to get rid of it..."
Fr McGonagle was born in Buncrana in 1920 and was
one of seven children. He was educated locally and
at St Columb's College, Derry. He left school at 16
to work on the family farm but six years later he
returned to education. He entered Mount Melleray
college and completed the Leaving Certificate. He
joined the Oblates in September 1944 and was
ordained a priest in June 1950. He spent the next 14
years giving parish missions in Britain and Ireland.
Fr McGonagle was appointed provincial of the Oblates
of Mary Immaculate in Ireland, Britain and Brazil in
1982.
After his appointment to St Conleth's in 1964, he
wrote a memorandum about the institution a year
later in which he recommended "complete obliteration
and start right from the foundations again".
Writing in 1966 of the Daingean boys, Michael Viney
of The Irish Times stated: "Theirs is a world of
overriding shabbiness and decrepitude". On a
positive note he said Fr McGonagle was a man "of
integrity and concern".
The Ryan Report also highlights "sytemic and
widespread" sexual behaviour between boys which was
"often abusive and was not seriously addressed by
management". There was also sexual abuse of boys by
some staff at Daingean. But the inquiry team notes
that the full extent of the sex abuse is impossible
to quantify "because of the absence of a proper
system of receiving, handling and recording
complaints and investigations". The inquiry team
notes that while Fr McGonagle expressed his
revulsion at corporal punishment at his institution,
"it was within his power as manager to put a stop to
it and he chose not to do so".
Regarding the sexual abuse of boys in his care, the
report team notes: "Fr Luca's procedure would have
tended to suppress rather than encourage allegations
of sexual abuse in Daingean". Singer and musician
Don Baker, who suffered at the hands of the Oblate
Brothers, recently described how Fr McGonagle did
nothing to stop his abuse. Mr Baker was sent to
Daingean as a 12-year-old for stealing a bicycle.
"He didn't administer the flogging. He handed that
over to another Brother. But he knew exactly what
was going on and did nothing to stop it," said Mr
Baker, following the publication of the Ryan Report. |
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