‘He was never lost…’ Kilkenny man among victims to feature in Landmark RTÉ documentary tonight

A powerful RTÉ documentary Leathered: Violence in Irish Schools will be broadcast this evening, Wednesday 30 October 2024.

The documentary sheds new light on the use of corporal punishment in schools and the impact that the culture of violence it incites has on generations.

It features a series of first-hand stories from victims of corporal punishment in schools across Ireland, many of whom have spoken publicly for the first time and who have suffered throughout their lives as a result of their treatment.

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Kilkenny native among victims to speak out Eoin Costello, who narrated the documentary of a day when silence fell on his classroom at Kilkenny school: “I saw this shadow on the glass door at the entrance of the room.

“He literally walked with his fists closed, punching, then punching… and then he turned on his heel and walked out… It never went away. Forty years. The impact of the punch he took to the face never went away.”

The RTÉ documentary critically re-examines the scope and scale of physical abuse in thousands of religious and non-religious schools. IT It also raises new questions about the level of official record-keeping when it comes to the treatment of children in schools across the country.

Former Independent Senator Jillian Van Turnhout, who led the campaign to ban corporal punishment in the home in 2015, said: “Perhaps no one saw this as important enough to register, to make a report, when it got to the Department for Education.

“For example, in the 2009 Ryan Report we clearly showed that cases of physical abuse were twice as likely in industrial schools as sexual abuse. So why are we not seeing similar levels of reporting corporal punishment in schools?”

New figures released by the Department for Education to RTÉ documentary makers for the first time show that between 1962 and 1982, just 108 allegations involving teachers’ physical abuse of students were recorded by the Department.

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More than three-quarters of these allegations involved other types of abuse; Eighty-seven of the allegations were at the primary level, where four-year-olds attend school, and twenty-one were at the secondary level.

During the same period, millions of students passed through the State education system. In 1962 alone, 570,380 students were enrolled in publicly funded primary and secondary schools.

By 1982, following the introduction of free secondary education in 1966, this figure had risen to 766,864.

The Department for Education also revealed to RTÉ that there were a further nine allegations during the five years (1982 to 1987) after the ban on corporal punishment in schools was introduced in 1982.

This brings the total number of allegations of physical abuse received between 1962 and 1987 to 117, showing that allegations of physical violence in schools did not disappear after the 1982 ban.

Teachers in Irish schools remained immune from prosecution for “corporal punishment” until 1997.

Corporal punishment in schools was banned by Ministry decision in 1982. Until then, under Ministry of Education rules, only certain student teachers were allowed to physically punish their students at primary and secondary levels. In practice, many other teachers regularly used violence to maintain discipline in the school, often going far beyond what school rules allowed.

Experts interviewed in the documentary say the small number of recorded allegations reflects the culture at the time and also reflects the state’s poor record-keeping.

The recent publication of the Scoping Inquiry report into historical sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders has again highlighted the State’s historic failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens.

At a time of growing public pain and anger, the Government has announced plans to launch a comprehensive State Inquiry. But some of those who contacted the Inquiry also sought to highlight the physical abuse they faced while attending schools across the country. They were told that the alleged abuse was outside the scope of the Investigation team.

Dermot Flynn, who previously contacted RTÉ Radio 1’s Liveline’s Joe Duffy about his experiences at Blackrock College and Willow Park school, revealed he recently received a €100,000 settlement from the Spiritan Order for physical abuse he suffered at the school. “When the Scoping Inquiry was announced I thought it would be a great opportunity for us.

“And I filled out their surveys, contacted them via email. Then I got the bombshell news from them saying that you know you weren’t sexually abused, that we really didn’t want to know about your case. That made me feel like ‘the physical abuse wasn’t that big of a deal, even though it had affected my whole life.”

Jillian Van Turnhout: “I don’t see how you can separate abuse as if there’s a hierarchy of scale, so you can say that sexual abuse would definitely count as part of compensation. However, if you have been subjected to physical abuse, definitely not.”