It seems mandatory at the moment to refer to all cases of child abuse as ‘child rape’. Well — I wasn’t raped but I was, as the euphemism goes, ‘interfered with’ by a representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. And rather than seek out those who were sexually abused by priests, nuns and members of religious orders in Ireland, it would, I believe, be easier to identify the minority who were not subject to a sexual advance of some kind. When I was growing up in a border county town in the 1950s and 1960s, sexual advances by priests and brothers were as common as the use of the ruler and cane to inflict corporal punishment.
In the wake of the Archbishop of Canter-bury Dr Rowan Williams’s claim (followed by an apology) that the Irish Catholic Church has lost all credibility, I conducted a discreet canvas of my former classmates from the De la Salle Brothers primary school and I confirmed that most of us had, in fact, been molested at the age of eight by one teacher — let’s call him Brother A. While complaints were eventually made, no inquiry took place, no charges were brought and life went on.
I’m now in my mid-fifties. I’ve thought quite seriously about what happened and I don’t believe I was damaged by the experience, and I know of none of my surviving fellow pupils who were traumatised. This is not to say that other victims, in other places, have not suffered awful psychological damage. But as the international outrage about the Catholic church grows, I have decided that it’s important to balance their stories by telling mine. And what I would also add is that if we weren’t too badly affected by the fumbling, I do know of pupils who were destroyed by the beatings and physical violence. It was devout Ireland and a priest or brother’s word was almost always taken over that of an upset child.
Back to brother A, who was one of eight de la Salle brothers at the school who taught boys aged from eight to 13. I joined his class at the age of eight and right from the beginning he took a shine to me, along with about half a dozen of my classmates. The only criteria for selection seems to have been looks. If you were plug-ugly or, as some of the poorer boys were, filthy, you were in no danger of the discreet summons to Brother A’s knee during class.
Brother A, a swarthy, dark-haired Errol Flynn-lookalike was popular with us boys and with our mothers. He taught us maths, English, Irish, geography, history and religious instruction. After class he organised the junior football league, selecting teams. He also ran the school’s flagelette band. Although I couldn’t play Gaelic football nor fashion a tune on the flagelette, I was both in the class team and a member of the band.
The truth is that it was considered quite a privilege to be selected for Brother A’s attention. I, like my friends, knew it was wrong but we were pretty clueless about sex. What he did we considered to be simply naughty, on a par with wetting your trousers.
Brother A’s technique never varied. A test or essay would be written on the blackboard and we all put our heads down and scribbled feverishly. Then he’d say, ‘John’, and beckon me over to his desk at the top of the classroom. ‘Can you come up here for a word?’
I would sit on his soutane-shrouded lap as he talked to me. ‘Your mother,’ he would begin, ‘is very keen for you to join the band. Would you like that?
‘Yes, brother,’ I would answer as his right hand wandered up my exposed knee towards my short trousers. ‘Well, I can arrange that,’ Brother A would murmur as his hand reached my thigh and disappeared under the hem. Then he would stroke and prod, all the time droning on about my progress in the class. I was too prepubescent to be aroused but recall an acute sense of danger. Each ‘chat’ might last 15 minutes before I was told to return to my seat.
My friends Barry and Brendan (among others) would have similar experiences throughout the week. After class we would congregate in the cloakroom to discuss and giggle about what happened. It seems interesting, looking back, that there was an unspoken rule that we didn’t tell our parents. I, like the other recipients of Brother A’s favours, did extremely well academically. But my lack of skill on the football field was there for all to see. My mother considered Brother A almost a saint for his efforts to turn me into a footballer and a musician. When she saw the band perform, she had no idea her son was merely waving his fingers over a silent flagelette.
Perversely, the boys who were not sexually fiddled with were subject to regular beatings. One, I recall, was ordered to drop his trousers in front of the entire class while Brother A whacked him on the bottom with a thin cane. The poor boy stared at us and we stared mutely back. Older pupils along the corridor received even more harsh physical punishment from another brother, Brother B. Beatings were thorough and regular. A demented Gaelic nationalist, his technique was to stand before a terrified 12-year-old, demand his answer in Irish, and when the petrified and stuttering youngster faltered in his delivery Brother B would unleash a staccato barrage of open-handed slaps on both ears. He had been known to punch boys and to draw blood with his cane.
In my final year, Brother B taught me Irish through ritual thumpings. During one winter class he failed to notice the edge of his tatty soutane catching on the wire surround of the glowing, portable oil heater in front of the class. We watched in fascination as the cloth began to smoulder and truly wished for Brother B’s total immolation. But then one apple-polisher raised his hand and declared in pidgen Gaelic, ‘Briar, briar, ta do soutane ag tine’ (‘Brother, brother, your soutane is on fire’). Needless to say we tortured Brother B’s rescuer in the playground afterwards.
We would never have let Brother A burn.
Eventually I did confide Brother A’s regular fumblings to my mother. She simply didn’t believe me. She thought it was a foul slur on an excellent teacher and devout brother. But the game was up for Brother A, even so. Other boys began to tell their own mothers and eventually one took her little darling’s claims seriously enough to complain to the head brother.
Something happened in the Easter holidays. We returned to discover that we were now in Brother C’s class. Where was our beloved Brother A? We learned that he had been transferred abruptly to the De La Salle operation in South Africa. We were genuinely upset at his departure.
Brother C also took over the running of the band, changing the instrument from flagelette to recorder. As a regular band member, I was auditioned by the new boss. ‘But you can’t play!’ he exclaimed, consulting his file. ‘And you’ve been in the band for nearly a year.’ I never told Brother C why I was in the band.