‘People were blind to reality faced by visually impaired children’: Abuse survivor of a special school speaks out

Michael O’Keeffe first witnessed the beating of a child when he was a boy attending St Joseph’s School for the Visually Impaired in Drumcondra on the northside of Dublin.
The retired academic who specialised in lecturing students in special and inclusive education was born with a mild visual impairment in 1959 and sent to the Dublin school from his home in rural Limerick at the age of eight.
Doctors had “constantly said to my mother that this child should be ‘sent away’”, he recalled. And so he was.
He and his mother took the train to Dublin and St Joseph’s in Drumcondra, run by the Rosminian religious congregation. He said he “settled into this new environment fearful and lonely”.
The first year there “was okay apart from witnessing a young blind boy, aged possibly eight who frequently wet his bed” and was “beaten and made to wash his own sheets”. He had never seen a child being beaten before.
Within a few years, he himself was abused.
Weeks after the publication of the recent scoping inquiry into the three decades of sex abuse at schools, Dr O’Keeffe has decided to come forward and tell the story of his own physical and sexual abuse at St Joesph’s, which he attended for 10 years from 1968.
The retired assistant professor at DCU’s School of Special and Inclusive Education did not speak to the scoping inquiry, but has said he would co-operate with the Commission of Investigation recommended by it.
Few people who have attended special educational schools have spoken publicly of their abuse in the schools.
The scale of the abuse at special schools merited specific mention by lawyer Mary O’Toole SC in the 700-page scoping inquiry report, published on September 3rd.
The report found “a particularly high number of allegations in special schools”; there were 590 allegations of abuse made against 190 individuals in 17 special schools.
The scoping inquiry was told of six abuse allegations against six alleged abusers at the Rosminians-run St Joseph’s.
Recalling his own time in a special school, Dr O’Keeffe said that from 1969 to 1974 he experienced “a terrible time” at the Drumcondra school. Of staff there, “most were kind but there were exceptions”, he said.
The late Br Summerling “ruled over this group of 30 boys in the residential quarters”. He was “a brute of a man who instilled fear and meted out severe beatings to young blind and visually impaired boys”.
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In 2003, this brother was named in High Court proceedings taken against the Rosminians by a man who claimed that “on diverse dates between 1977 and 1988 while in residential care at St Joseph’s School under the care of the defendants, he was repeatedly sexually abused” by Br Summerling and a layman there. Both accused were deceased by then.
The case was settled out of court.
Dr O’Keeffe recalled a blind classmate, then 10 years old, being beaten by Br Summerling with “a cane about a metre in length and [he] beat this boy from head to toe while in a state of rage. We were all made to witness this.”
It was “common for a young boy to receive a slap across the face for some minor breach of a rule. If you weren’t on the receiving end, another boy was”. If there was “a tear or a hole in your jumper, you were given six of the best from a leather strap. The same happened if you broke your glasses”.
It was the case that members of the religious order “must have heard these beatings and screams of pain as they walked along corridors but said nothing”, said Dr O’Keeffe.
“They too played a complicit part in allowing this regimental regime of cruelty to continue.”
Once he was himself taken into Br Summerling’s bedroom.
“The door was locked. He said that I was going to be punished for daring to sit up after Communion,” he said.
“As was the norm, I was required to remove my trousers and to bend over his knee. He beat me with a wooden hairbrush. I also believe that incidents like this provided him with sexual gratification.”
He remembers “the shame and humiliation” he felt then as an 11-year-old.
On another occasion he and another boy were taken by Br Summerling into the TV room. “The door was locked, [we were] asked to remove our trousers, bend over two chairs and he beat us with a thick leather strap.”
Br Summerling also taught the boys swimming.
“Once the class was over, we had to remove our togs and place them on a radiator at the far end of the swimming pool. He then made us swim one more length of the pool naked and to parade in front of him on our way to the changing room. On Saturdays he made the boarders in his care take a communal shower observed by him,” he said.
He remembered how “a group of men were always present in the school on the nights when public events such as bingo and ‘the blind disco’ were taking place,” he said.
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“Br Summerling allowed these men to take out boys to their houses or on social outings. I was spared from this. An aunt of mine had arranged for me to visit a family in Santry whom she knew and trusted.”
The Rosminians employed former residents from their reformatories in Clonmel and Upton in Co Cork to carry out odd jobs and run errands at St Joseph’s.
“One of them took a liking to me and I was sexually assaulted by him on a number of occasions. I neither had the power or the language to tell him to stop,” he said.
In his own “50s and 60s” Dr O’Keeffe “reported this abuse to the religious order but my complaint received little attention as the perpetrator was deceased”.
He describes himself as “a survivor of abuse in a special school” who was “sent there for an education and not to be abused and humiliated”.
“My deceased parents put their trust in the system and sent me to the school, but the State and the religious order let them down,” he said.
The abuse “led to depression and ill-health”, while “my peers, aged from 10 to 14, experienced similar treatment from one heartless religious brother and possibly are still suffering some 50 years later”.
At pains to make clear that St Joseph’s today is a very different place, he said that “now it is totally changed for the better” and has “developed into a very progressive educational facility”.
Commenting on experiences endured by the likes of Dr O’Keeffe as a child, Dr Margaret Kennedy, a consultant on disability, abuse and child protection, said there is “a suspicion that disabled children are protected by their impairment and therefore not likely to be abused”.
“This is a myth. They are three times more likely to be sexually abused than non-disabled children,” she said.
This was illustrated in the scoping inquiry report, which found that a quarter of all 2,395 allegations of child abuse outlined in the report were in special schools.
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Dr Kennedy said there is also greater difficulty for special needs people when it comes to the legal system investigating their allegations of abuse.
There is “an ableist view that such children cannot give evidence. It’s prejudiced and discrimination, but it’s alive”, she said.
Reflecting on his experiences as a child at St Joseph’s, Dr O’Keeffe, who preferred not to be photographed for this article, said: “All of those who failed to protect young blind children were themselves blind.”
The Rosminians “never said ‘stop’ to the molesters and abusers. The State failed to deliver proper quality care to a vulnerable group”, he said.
The departments of Health and Education “failed to ensure that blind and visually impaired children were not ill-treated in institutions that they promoted”.
“I’m sure there were other people who knew what harsh conditions were like in the ‘blind asylum’, but refused to blow the whistle,” he said.
In the 1960s and 70s, when he attended St Joesph’s as a boarder, “all of these people were ‘blind’ to the reality faced by blind and visually impaired children,” he said.