De La Salle Brothers

The De La Salle Brothers were responsible for the De La Salle Boys’ Home at Rubane House near Kircubbin, an institution to which Michael and Tucker McConville were sent after their mother’s disappearance and their removal from Belfast. In the book, the home’s open grounds and recreational facilities are set against accounts of violence and abuse, complicating the promise of care suggested by the word “home.”

The home at Rubane House

In March 1973, after Michael and Tucker were summoned to court in Belfast on a shoplifting charge, a decision was made to move them from Nazareth Lodge to the De La Salle Boys’ Home, twenty-two miles away in County Down. The property was a converted Victorian mansion, with newer cottages for the children, on 250 acres near Kircubbin. Its school, swimming pool, tennis courts, football pitch and billiard table offered a striking contrast to the brick-and-concrete confines of Belfast from which Michael had come.

Those facilities do not, however, define the children’s experience there. The account of Rubane House describes physical abuse: children were pummelled with fists and strapped with belts. The boys’ home was not simply a refuge in the countryside; the testimony gathered about it records the violence that could take place within an institution charged with their care.

Testimony and acknowledgement

Several McConville children gave testimony to the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry about conditions at the home. Their transcripts were publicly released with individual names redacted to preserve anonymity. Billy McConville chose to waive that anonymity when he gave evidence, making his account an exception to the convention observed for the other children.

The book also records that the De La Salle Brothers later admitted widespread sexual abuse at Kircubbin during this period. That acknowledgement places the children’s accounts within a broader record of abuse at the home, while the distinction between individual testimony and the order’s later admission remains important: the evidence describes both specific violence and a wider pattern of sexual abuse.

Care, control, and the meaning of home

The institution’s physical setting carries a sharp narrative contrast. A vast estate with sports facilities might suggest space and opportunity after the crowded streets of Belfast, yet the children had been transferred there by welfare authorities and had little control over where they lived. The later testimony makes clear that country surroundings and institutional amenities did not guarantee safety.

The De La Salle Brothers’ role in the book is therefore tied to the gap between an institution’s stated function and the experiences recorded by those placed in its care. Rubane House appears first as a destination for children displaced by family loss and state intervention; testimony about beatings and the Brothers’ subsequent acknowledgement of widespread sexual abuse give that destination a darker significance.