Lifting the lid on school sex abuse
Author writes of Brother's abuse of young boys
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A DROGHEDA author and poet has lifted the lid on sex abuse by a Christian Brother in St Joseph's national school in the 1960s.
Terry McHugh claims he was the victim of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Brother PS O'Riain (Brother Patrick Ryan, now deceased) and has chronicled his experiences within the lines and pages of his book of poetry ' The Baby's Not Settling'.
Terry says the abuse began when he was 9 years of age and continued until he left for secondary school in 1965.
'People may wonder why I have decided to write about this now, over 40 years after it happened, but the way I look at it is, if we are going to have a cleansing of the institutions in Ireland, we have to do it properly,' he says.
'There may be a perception that sexual abuse only happened in boarding schools or orphanages but it was in day schools too, and here in Drogheda.'
Terry took the doughty step of naming the former teacher in his book as he recalls the memories in two poems, 'What I won't remember when dementia calls' and 'Ode to a Classroom'.
One memory in particular, of getting 'a special prize' from Brother Ryan for being first in an exam, is outlined in both.
'I won't remember being punched to the ground by Brother ******* when I was 10 before replying with an alphabet of expletives. Or the paedophile Brother Ryan presenting my first prize with malign intent'.
– What I won't remember when dementia calls
'Brother Ryan's classroom stood apart from the rest.... The primary exam results in his hand. First place brings esteem only to be stripped of clothes and dignity. Gratification over, he sends his student home with his prize: a blue fountain pen'. – Ode to a Classroom. 'I was never one for winning prizes so I remember being very happy that I had done so well in the exam, but I never could have imagined what this man would have done, stripped you and pleasured himself at your expense. The details are all there in the book for people to see,' says Terry.
'I knew it was happening to other boys, but you never told anyone. There was a feeling you were alone. You didn't have the language to tell anyone anyway.
'There was a desperate shame attached to it anyway, and you just locked it in a dusty vault, until the lock rusts and falls off when you least expect it.'
- Alison COMYN
