by Lily O'Brien
Once there, they brought us into an interrogation room and they asked us what we had done all night while in the caravan. We told them that we had all just had fun talking, and then we all fell asleep, with the girls and boys at separate ends of the caravan. Then the door of the interrogation room opened and in walked the head nun from St Joseph’s, and she had a member of the social services following close behind her. They both sat down and then she asked us question after question and the police officer kept quiet. And because she never got the answers she wanted, she said that all three of us girls from St Josephs would have to go to the hospital, because everyone thought we had all been raped by the boys. They said that we had to have an internal examination as they thought the boys had raped us during the night. I went mad, telling them that we had all slept at different ends of the caravan all night and that nothing had happened between us. Then the police said they would have the boys from the village arrested and they would charge them with rape if we refused to go to the hospital for the examination. We had no choice but to agree under protest; we didn’t want to go to the hospital as nothing had happened, but we had to, so that the boys wouldn’t get charged with raping us and put in prison.
When we arrived at the hospital, the police took us into a room and we all had to take our clothes off and lie on beds with our legs open wide. It was horrible, and there were lots of other people standing in the room looking at us, and I knew they all didn’t need to be there, but they were and they all stood watching the three of us, as we lay on the beds next to each other with our legs open wide, waiting for the doctor. We waited for what felt like hours, with everyone taking turns to walk past and look at us, and then a doctor came into the room and everyone in the room stood around as he examined us, by putting his hands up between our legs and giving us an internal examination with something that looked like a long ear bud.
Within seconds, it was all over, but everyone still kept looking at us and then the doctor told us that we could get up and we closed our legs and got off the tables. Then the nun began to speak, and she told the doctor that we had all spent the night in a caravan with a group of boys and that we had sex with the boys. But the doctor could see that we were all still virgins and he knew that nothing had happened between the boys and us, and he told the nun that everything was ok and that we could all go home.
She looked disappointed and she was furious with the doctor for not finding anything wrong with us. She shook her head in disappointment as she left the room and, as she walked away, all the other people in the room followed behind her. The doctor looked over at us and he smiled, then he told the nurse to help us all get dressed while he went outside to speak to the nun; and when he came back, he said that everything was going to be ok and that we could all go home.
We were so happy to be getting out of the hospital, but then the nun came back in with some of the people and they all quickly surrounded us and escorted us out of the hospital and into the back of waiting cars. They were stopping us from talking or mixing with other people on the way out of the hospital, and then they drove us home.
The next day, the nuns began telling everyone in the home that I had gone mad and that they needed to call a psychiatrist to come and see me; now they wanted to get rid of me and put me away forever. So they began to fabricate things up about my behaviour, just to get their own back on me for wasting their time and making them all look stupid in the hospital, and they did everything possible to get me put away. They even called doctors and psychiatrists to have me physically and mentally examined, and they were going to use all the reports they got to have me taken away and locked up forever.
However, halfway through their examination schedule, I ran away again; and this time, I hitchhiked all the way to a place called Tramore, where the nuns had a beach house next to the sea. I knew they were not using it at the time, so when I got there I broke a window and climbed inside and I had an old sleeping bag with me, so I made myself a home. I was going to stay there for as long as I could, but I still wanted Simon and the nuns to know that I was ok. So every day I would get up early and thumb a lift about fifty miles away from the house and then I would call the nuns by reversing a call from a phone box, letting them know that I was ok and still alive, then I would thumb a lift all the way back to the house. The nuns were furious with me on the phone, calling me names and telling me they were going to kill me when they got hold of me.
However, I still rang them every day for the next four days, until eventually the police found me and took me back to the nuns, and they did their best to have me put away for good. They even sent Simon away to another institution just to get at me, but it didn’t work and they had to bring him back again as the other institution could not control him. I knew this was my last chance to keep Simon and me together, so I made a plan to run away with him and never come back.
However, the nuns never gave me a chance to escape again. They kept Simon away from me as much as possible and they concentrated on getting psychiatrists to commit me to a mad house; and after a couple of weeks, the reports flooded in. The nuns wanted everyone to think I was nuts, but it would have been much quicker if they had just bribed someone to take me away, but they were too tight with money to pay someone to do it. That’s all they wanted, power and money.
Reports
Report 1
ST. XXXXXXX. RESIDENTIAL HOME
XXXXXXXXX ROAD
KILKENNY.
Dear. Xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx Date.xxxxxxxx83
REPORT ON LILY O’BRIEN. D O B. 4-1-197X
Lily commenced secondary school in September, but as a result of her troublesome and disruptive behaviour, she was dismissed after six weeks.
Lily can be withdrawn at times. She seems to live for the next cigarette.
She is full of self-pity, easily offended, and sulky. Her use of abusive language is sex-orientated. Her dress sense is also sex-orientated, she is vain and figure conscious.
Since September, she has absconded on a few occasions overnight, and once for a period of four days. This would appear to be a cry for attention. She could not understand why people would be annoyed with her for doing same. When in the presence of Garda, she is aggressive and uncontrollable, tearing, biting, and kicking. She likes to believe she is untouchable in this situation.
Regarding her brother Simon (who is in care in St. XXXXX) she is warm towards him, and he is quite often her ‘partner in crime’. Her sister Daisy is held at length. She is very unlike Lily, in that she is cool and calculating, and knows where her comforts are. Lily has no real friends as she has little respect for herself or anyone else. She feels very much rejected. In the past, there has been little or no contact with her family in England. At present, there is a renewed contact, but this can have an upsetting effect on her. She would like some contact with her father, but would not like the staff or any of the other children to see him. This would embarrass her.
When in good form, Lily can be very pleasant. She is gifted with her hands, and has made some beautiful patchwork items. Her cooking skills are very good, and she is particular about cleanliness as she cooks.
The resident manager.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_________________________________________
Report 2
Xxxxx xxxxxxx health board.
Case conference report: Lily O’Brien. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date of Case conference report 7.1X.1983
A case conference was held today involving myself, Mr. Xxxxx, sister superior, and one of the care staff from St. XXXXXXX. Lily had been seen on 2Xth XXXXX 1983, which I suggested that she be psychologically assessed and have an E.E.G. xxxxx xxxxxxx psychologist saw her on 4.1X.83, with a finding of a full-scale I.Q. of 74, which places her in the borderline range, and she felt that she was in need of remedial work, as well as a therapeutic programme. The E.E.G. has been done, and the report is due, but is not yet received. Application has been made to facilitate her in Cork, but there is up to one
month’s waiting list including a brief visit by Lily. In the meantime, attempts will be made to try and engage Lily in a series of activates which will allow her to look forward to further developments, e.g. a visit to her father this week, horse riding at the weekend, and the possibility of a weekend with a staff member. At the moment, she is a bit withdrawn, sleeping in, and doing little beyond smoking. There is really no programme easily at hand to inject her into in the short-term; the same would apply to any consideration of Sarsfields court, which would be for a three-week assessment only. And there is little likelihood that she will be got in there quickly, and I would think that the recommendation would probably be much the same as is ordinarily planned for her. Generally, it is agreed that Lily is an acting out angry girl who behaves, rather than discusses or engaging in any kind of interception. My own estimate is that six months of a programme would be an absolute minimum, and would probably constitute the adjustment period before anything meaningful would go on with her. In answer to the specific question, I feel that she should be permitted some kind of contact with her brother and sister who should continue on in St. XXXXXXX. Finally, the results of the E.E.G. may have some real bearing on possible therapeutic interventions here. I trust that most points were raised.
Dr. X. XXXXX.
Consultant psychiatrist.
_____________________________________________________________________
Report 3
Report from doctor xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx to social worker. 1983
Dear Mr. XXXXX,
Thank you for your detailed social report on Lily, which I received at St. Patrick’s in time for seeing her on Thursday evening. I’ll not restate the details of history, which are well known to you, but would like to add just a few items that came out in my conversation with her. She regards her earliest years in the family as the best in her life and, by her reminiscences, makes it sound very like the freedom of the open road with little discipline, but a strong family feeling. Further, she gave me a history of a significant head injury leading to hospitalisation. She placed this at about age three years, and she gives a history of lifelong headaches since then. Her most significant emotional attachments appear to be to her brother, Simon, and an older brother in England. For assessment she was interviewed in a sitting room/office and was noted to be casually dressed, not an unattractive young lady, but one who presented herself as older, worldly wise and hard. Initially, she reviewed some of her recent escapades in a rather defiant manner, showing the tattoo on her arm and making her dislike for the personnel at St XXXXX very apparent. Interestingly enough, she caught herself up on the verge of using various profanities without actually saying any. Having gotten this out of the way, she settled a bit and we were able to talk in more give-and-take fashion. She came to the point of acknowledging that there were some personnel that she did not get along with, but would always get more animated when talking about the trouble she has been in. Pursuing some of these events, it became apparent to me in her telling that when she loses her temper, she sometimes has no recollection of what went on thereafter. Her thought process is not bizarre, although it is coloured by her anger at not getting her way, that is, freedom to do what she wishes. She seems prepared to fight any restrictions, even the reasonable. She seems oriented. Her judgment is impaired, both historically and at the time of interview in that being a little less hostile might have served her cause a little better. She has little insight and projects most of her difficulties onto others, taking little responsibility for her own actions, believing them to be provoked by others. In short, she presents the sort of mental status that one would expect from a conduct-disordered child and she is best labelled as an un-socialised aggressive reaction. It is further my impression that she probably cannot be coped with in St XXXXX and I would make the recommendation that she be considered for a smaller hostel-like setting for pre-delinquents; the good shepherd in Cork may be such a facility. I am further concerned about her angry episodes coupled with a history of injury, headaches and suggestive amnesia and on sight made the recommendation that she be sent for an E.E.G. If it were positive, it just may be that medication might be a partial answer to her problem in controlling her aggressive outbursts. Finally, in view of the fact that it has been over four years since she was last psychologically assessed and this might be essential to any placement attempted, I would further recommend that she be reassessed in the near future. At the moment, I do not see her as a candidate for medication. The treatment of such children lies in the area of greater control, smaller setting, positive role model and a fairly stringent program.
Yours truly. Consultant psychiatrist. Xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx
_____________________________________________________________________
Report 4
Report - Lily O’Brien. D.O.B. 4-1-1970. Today’s date 26-1X-1983
Since arriving back in September, Lily’s behaviour has constantly deteriorated. She started with what appeared to be good intentions with regard to school. This turned out to be ‘the sooner we get started, the sooner we finished’. She is just putting in time in school, and the sooner she reaches sixteen, the better is her attitude. In school, the teachers find her quite troublesome and abusive at times. She constantly seeks attention and can be very cheeky, so much so that the other girls tell her she should not act as she does. To gain attention, she might start to say the prayer (at beginning of class), just as everyone has finished. Or answer out of turn, or answer after the question had been answered. The teachers she likes most are those she is most troublesome with. She seems to be aware that these teachers would like to do something to help her. The teachers who pay her no attention, but just get on with the business of teaching, are the ones she hates.
Signed key worker. Xxxxxxxx
House parent. Xxxxxxxx_________________________________________________
However, all the reports had no effect, and the nuns’ plan didn’t work, as I knew how to play them all at their own game, and I did my very best to behave myself while I was being interviewed by all the doctors, and I never told the doctors as much as I really wanted to. I did my very best to hold back on the obscenities and eventually the nuns gave up, and all they could do was pray for me to quickly grow up and to get as far away from them as possible, and all I wanted was the same thing. God, they hated me and I hated them.
CHAPTER 10
Going Home
I was going to be old enough to leave the home soon, so I made the decision to go back home to London England, as I wanted to be with my mum, and I asked the nuns if I could send a letter to my sister who lived in London and they said yes. I couldn’t send a letter to my mum, as she couldn’t read. I was sending a begging letter from me to her, begging her to take Daisy, Simon and me into her house if we left the institution. And the other reason I sent the letter was because the nuns were at the point of splitting us all up, and I was afraid that I would never see Simon alive again.
In the letter, I pleaded with my sister to send a letter to the nuns if she agreed to take us, and I wrote to her once a week every week for months, hoping she would reply; but nothing, no letters, no phone calls, not a thing from anyone in my family. In my last desperate attempt, I wrote to my mother, telling her that I hated her for sending us away when we were small children and I said that I never wanted to see her again, but it didn’t work and no one ever replied.
The penny finally dropped, no one wanted us, and I felt so sad and I did not know what to do next. We were abandoned, unwanted children. Finally, I approached the head nun of St Joseph’s and a member of the social services, to see if they could do something for us and they said yes. They said they would send my mother an official letter on headed paper, asking her if she would take us in, as we were now at an age to be considered for release. God, it made us sound like prisoners and it was not far from the truth. The nun sent the letter off to our mother in London, explaining that her three children were now twelve, thirteen and fourteen years old and they we
re now ready to go home to her.
My mother received the letter and after getting someone to read it to her, she thought it might be a good way for her to get more money out of the government, London’s Brent council and the social services. She thought she could get more child benefit and a raise in her unemployment benefit and income support if she brought us over, and then told the social services that we were staying with her. So she took the letter the nuns had sent her, she went to Brent social services with it and she asked them if they could help her and they said, ‘Yes, of course we can’; they said that if we were all staying with her then they would arrange all the extra benefits for her. And because she was unable to read or write, she asked London’s Brent social services to send a letter back to Ireland, and she asked them to arrange everything for her and they did. They sent letters to the head nun at the institution, and between all of them they made the arrangements with the courts for us to be released and sent to England, and all done without anyone ever stepping a foot inside a courtroom or speaking to us.
We never knew a thing about what was going on, until two days before we left the home when the nuns told us that we were all leaving together. God, we were so happy. I had always told Simon that I would never leave the home without him and now I was going to keep my promise to him. The nuns were happy we were leaving, so they gathered up all the children that were left in the home and they had us all stand together while they took a group photo of us. And we could tell that the nuns and staff could not wait to get rid of us; and for the rest of the day, the nuns walked around as if God himself had arrived.