Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Daingean, County Offaly, Ireland · 1973

Daingean: Ryan Report finds flogging 'inhumane and cruel' in a climate of fear

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Oblates of Mary Immaculate operating a court-committal reformatory

Organization

St Conleth's Reformatory School, Daingean, Oblates of Mary Immaculate

Spiritual nexus

Boys were committed by the courts to a reformatory under the total custodial and spiritual authority of the Oblate community; the religious governance of the institution is what made the punishment regime unrefusable.

Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2009-05-20 · statutory inquiry finding

Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Commission), Ireland — statutory inquiry. The Ryan Report's general conclusions on Daingean found that 'flogging was an inhumane and cruel form of corporal punishment'; that 'there was no proper system for recording physical punishment... and it was extensively used by staff members'; that 'the severity of punishments, its widespread use, and its unpredictability led to a climate of fear'; and that 'serious complaints were not properly investigated'.

Documented coercion mechanisms

ritualised flogging
unrecorded and unpredictable punishment producing a climate of fear

Primary record

Sources

official statutory inquiry report inquiry report Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 'Report' (Ryan Report), Vol. I, ch. 15 (Daingean), para. 258 (20 May 2009).: The statutory inquiry's general conclusions on the flogging regime, the absence of punishment records, and the climate of fear.

Related record

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