A very Catholic education

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.