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	Daingean Reformatory Destruction Won't Remove Hurt By Declan McSweeney Offaly Express May 27, 2009 http://www.offalyexpress.ie/15744/Daingean-Reformatory-destruction-won39t-remove.5307283.jp AN Offaly woman has called for the old St Conleth's Reformatory, Daingean, to be put to use as a place for peace and reconciliation. Speaking after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (otherwise known as the Ryan Report), she stressed that it would be unrealistic to expect local people to have been able to do anything to help boys incarcerat ed by the State in St Conleth's, when boys who went as day pupils were being sexually abused a few miles away by the late Donal Dunne, principal of Walsh Island National School. St Conleth's made Daingean's name well known for the wrong reasons. Some of its past pupils managed to make a success of their lives, despite their experience of ill-treatment, the most famous being the singer Don Baker. Others fell by the wayside, most notably 'The General', Martin Cahill. The Offaly woman, who does not wish to be named, was herself a past pupil of Dunne's in the Sacred Heart School, Tullamore. Referring to St Conleth's, she stated, "We can't forgive what happened in those walls" but she did not agree with those who wanted it pulled down, saying this would not remove the hurt. "I remember some right b*******s there, their word was law, you couldn't challenge it, society in general let children down." However, she stresses that day schools also witnessed violence on a regular basis. She recalls that in Kilmurry NS, when she was a pupil there, the principal at the time hit a boy with a golf club on the back of his legs, giving him a severe beating for not knowing his spelling. She felt for the inmates of St Conleth's, as it was very difficult for their parents to come down from Dublin to see them, at a time when few had cars. She stresses that not all Oblates were bad, and has good memories of Father Cleary, Father McAuley and Father Cronin. "You remember the good ones," she stressed. She feels the building should be put to good use, in a way that would promote healing. "They didn't level Auschwitz," she pointed out. Regarding the case of Donal Dunne, she recalls that he made girls in the Sacred Heart School kneel down and say the Rosary if they did not know their lessons. "I wouldn't say it, I thought I'd be thrown out," she states. When she was about 14, she recalls that talking was beginning to be heard that Dunne had interfered with boys, but at that age, "I was so innocent I didn't know what that meant." Now in her forties, the woman recalls that Dunne taught Honours Irish, and because of the incident with him, she ended up doing Pass Irish. Dunne would "intimidate, belittle and degrade" the girls, she said, but she consoles herself that they did not experience the sexual abuse which his male past pupils went through. Dunne had "a Pioneer pin on one lapel and a cumann pin on the other" she recalls, adding that he wore a "big black cloak" in class, which frightened them. "If we couldn't stop children who went home every day from being treated this way, how could we stop it being done to children who were incarcerated by law?" She is still amazed that the Sisters of Mercy allowed Dunne to teach in Tullamore. "The nuns knew what he did and they took him in, he should never have been allowed in the door of that school. If the rumours had got around, they must have known," she told the 'Offaly Express'.
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