Crystal-clear memories of the Brothers' cruelty

Not such happy times for pupils at the Cricklade prep school in the 1950s

Further witnesses have come forward to support allegations made by Gerard Lidgey about the brutal abuse of children by the Irish Christian Brothers at their school in Cricklade during the 1950s. 

Reading the memories evoked by Gerard at http://millstonesblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/bother-those-brothers.html  prompted a fellow former Prior Park Prep School pupil to dwell on his own recollections.

James - not his real name - is keen for others to contact Gerard and support his case against the Brothers.

  

"I think that others need to come out and describe just what went on," he writes. "The physical and mental cruelty inflicted upon pupils at Cricklade has been well documented. The more I think of the terror regime they ran, the more angry I am."

Memories of his nightmare education at the hands of the Brothers continue to haunt James.

"They are as crystal clear now - 50 years later. It is as if it were yesterday. I cannot think of a moment at that school which was not fear-filled. I think the only time one felt safe was during the cinema showing. At least then one felt that no black-robed Irish thug would lay into you with his whale-bone reinforced strap. Was there not some company in Dublin who made these instruments of torture?"

"I escaped the sexual abuse but I knew it went on. Besides the brutal Br B  I remember two other brothers who brutalised me. They were Brothers Carmody and Madigan. Beatings and savage slaps across the head were commonplace. Sometimes you hardly knew the reason for these assaults."

Like other former pupils James is sickened by his memories of punishments administered in front of the whole school like a grotesque ritual. One in particular stands out.

"What really sticks in the mind is a public beating.  For a 7- or 8-year-old it was like watching a public execution. We all filed into the Assembly Hall. On the stage was a piano stool. Soon a 10-year-old boy was led on to the stage, terrified and in floods of tears."

A monstrance used to display the consecrated wafer purporting to be the Body of Christ. The vessel used by the Brothers would have been an effective way of terrorising a devoutly Catholic small child into confessing his guilt

"What terrible crime had this little boy committed? He had purportedly thrown another boy's slipper down a lavatory bowl. He admitted his offence only after a monstrance was held up and he was told to swear on the Blessed Sacrament that he had not committed this 'crime'".

Having been found guilty he was forced over the stool and beaten with great savagery - from memory something like 30 times. He was then taken off the stage by various Brothers. I will never forget the stunned silence as the small boys took in what had happened."

James blames Cricklade headmaster Brother B - "the Head Warder" as he calls him - as the inspiration behind the generalised brutality in the school.  

But he has harsh words for the Christian Brothers-educated Head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales who has been featured earlier in these pages at http://millstonesblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/we-have-to-move-on-in-life-really.html

Pictured above is Bishop John Sherrington, Auxiliary Bishop for the Diocese of Westminster, to whom James wrote recently about his nightmare experiences at Cricklade. He responded with  much sympathy.

However, the same cannot be said of Archbishop Vincent Nichols, James feels.

James alleges that because the Archbishop was educated by the Irish Christian Brothers he would have known of the reputation of Christian Brothers like Br B and his subordinates.

"It is shocking that he has made no public condemnation. Worse still, he actually praises them."

James believes that Archbishop Nichols has given up replying to those who remind him of the wickedness of the Brothers.

"Clearly, he thinks their behaviour character-building," he concludes.

For cradle-Catholics like James his experiences at the hands of the Irish Christian Brothers have played a major part in driving him away from the Catholic Church.

"Jesus said that those who sin against children, or turn them towards sin, may as well put a millstone around their neck. That is just what the Brothers at Cricklade did. I left the Church years ago, as did so many of my peers."