A boy looked after by Sisters of Nazareth nuns at a home in Derry used to faint regularly during morning Mass because of hunger.
The
Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry heard the boy, who has been
giving testimony in person, was woken some time after 6am daily to serve
at morning Mass.
But he often passed out because he said he was always
hungry.
The inquiry, which is investigating treatment of children at care homes across Northern Ireland before 1995, heard the witness confirm that while some nuns were pleasant, another was “a hateful bitch”.
She had “a built-in anger and hatred,” the witness told inquiry chairman Sir Anthony Hart.
“You
could have no relationship whatsoever with her. You could say she was
under pressure, but she really didn’t have to be because the boys were
doing a good job in running the place and she should have had the life
of Riley.”
He confirmed his statement, given
earlier to the inquiry team, in which he referred to this nun as “a
bully and very contolling”.
“She was the sort of
person who made you feel like you were always doing something wrong and
you were a problem. There was no love in her at all.”
The
witness told the inquiry that he had been placed in the home at
Termonbacca in Derry when he was an infant. His earliest years were
happy enough, he said.
But when he was older he was moved from the
nursery to another dormitory where the older boys “had a playing field,”
he alleged.
At night the senior boys would walk up and down between the beds and batter us on the legs.
“I
just lay there silent out of fear,” he told the inquiry. He said boys
were called out by the senior boy and “used for his entertainment”.
He
said he didn’t want to elaborate on that – “it doesn’t leave much to
the imagination”.
He alleged that the nuns never checked on the boys on
the beds and she must have heard the names being called out but did
nothing.
He told of an occasion when he was called
to the laundry and saw his friend there who had been stripped naked. He
was also made to strip naked.
“We were touched sexually but we were not
made to touch them sexually the abuse never went further than that.”