Crest of the Congregation of Christian Brothers

Crest of the Congregation of Christian Brothers
Neither Christian nor brotherly is how their victims see them

Millstones

This site focuses on allegations of abuse, physical and sexual, by the Irish Christian Brothers at schools in the UK. The majority of the Brothers were no doubt good teachers and kindly men, but a number of them should not have been allowed to be near children. Generally it appears that there was a culture of violence ingrained in the Congregation of Christian Brothers; it is unfortunate that so many teachers stood by and did nothing. As an ex-pupil has commented: " They could hardly claim to not know what went on; the sound of whole classrooms of kids being strapped could be heard very clearly in corridors and adjacent classrooms." If you would like to contribute and/or join the Millstones Facebook group email me mr.downes@gmail.com



Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Almost 60 years on, a mystery solved














It's been some time since I posted anything on this site, which I suppose means that my mind has been taken up with happier activities. Like DIY, house re-decoration and so on. Plus there's my work as volunteer press officer for the local museum, which has been thoroughly absorbing.

But a fellow-victim of the Christian Brothers at Prior Park Prep School, Cricklade, emailed me yesterday with the answer to a tiny puzzle which featured in a previous post at http://millstonesblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/cricklade-childrens-daly-terror.html

There I described how the weirdly sadistic headmaster Bro B had punished a boy with a bedwetting problem by dressing him up in a sailor suit and parading him from classroom to classroom with a good strapping in front of each class. Well I'd been wondering what kind of weirdo would have gone out and hired a sailor suit specially for this occasion.

It turns out that on the Friends Reunited site at http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/album.page/album?albumKey=304597&albumType=SchoolAlbum&member_key=0&mediaKey=0&commentPage=0 you can see the above photo taken of a pageant staged at Cricklade in 1952 to mark the accession of Princess Elizabeth to the Throne. The photo was uploaded on to the site by ex-pupil Michael Cross. And in it I see at least ten little boys wearing sailor suits, as well as someone dressed as Britannia.

So, mystery solved. Br B obviously had a storeroom of costumes somewhere in the school which he kept for years after the event. I wonder who else was subjected to a humiliating ritual which involved dressing up to satisfy this twisted man's fantasies.


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