By John Manning - Drogheda Independent - 11.09.2024 - [IRELAND] - [Public Inquiry]
“I remember just being scared; school was just fear, there was no learning, or education, it was just being afraid”.
Gerard Murray is now 54 and having been abused by two figures of authority in Drogheda in his youth, feels full inquiries into what happened to him and others is the only way forward.
“It’s funny how you remember the little things; I was in Second Year, and I remember it was a sunny day and a teacher came up into the classroom and actually called me by name,” says Gerard, who still lives with his family in Drogheda. “The principal wants to see you in his office”, he said, and a big cheer went up in the classroom, as it was well known amongst the students what was going on.”
It was 1985, and the principal at the time was Brother Daithi Kennedy, who died in the late 1990s. Gerard was a slight, shy young child, and said he had no inkling of why he was being summoned.
“I knocked on the door before walking in, and I just remember the sun shining into his office, and he walked around and locked the door behind me,” says Gerard. “He had venetian blinds on the windows too, so he closed those as well, so nobody could see him, and he walked over to me and put his arms around me.”
The older man ruffled the boy’s hair and said “you’re getting to be a tall boy”.
“That was when he pushed himself against me and I could feel his penis rubbing up against mine through his cassock, and I just froze. “I knew it wasn’t right and that whole feeling of what Shine did to me when I was only four came back; just a total fear.”
Brother Kennedy continued for a few moments, then shocked Gerard even more with what followed.
“He squeezed me tightly and then put me down, saying ‘no, you're no good’, before unlocking the door and telling me this would be our little secret, now go back to class and don’t say anything,” he says, a tremor still in his voice 40 years later.
He just let me go, but I noticed I had a fear from then on – every day I had school - which was horrific, because I didn't know whether it was going to progress into anything more”.
He said he adopted an air of normality in school; a ‘persona’ so nobody would know.
“And even though it didn’t happen to me again, it never went away, as a while later, I walked into the woodwork classroom to do a message and in a closed off corner, Brother (Pat) Grogan was standing really close to an older student, who had a really embarrassed look on his face and Brother Grogan spoke to me without turning around and I left.”
Brother Grogan died of a sudden death in the late 1980s.
“There was a toxic kind of masculinity, hyper masculinity, in that school and there was constant bullying,” recalls Gerard.
“There was mental and physical abuse in that school, and the sexual abuse then from the Christian Brothers I mentioned, it was horrible, absolutely horrible.
“I tried to hang around with some of the bigger, tougher lads to get through it.”
Gerard’s school - St Mary’s CBS secondary school - was named in the recent scoping report as having four alleged cases of abuse, committed by two different alleged abusers.
“I had a friend in school, and he came to me, he was crying, he was saying, Kennedy keeps touching them up, and I said why don't you report it, but he said he couldn’t,” says Gerard. “You're kind of resilient as well when you're young, but as I’ve gotten older, it has affected me really badly.”
Five years after the abuse Gerard did report it to the Gardai, but they said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ at the time.
In the years afterwards, Gerard struggled with mental health problems and homelessness, turning to alcohol and drugs at times for solace.
“I tried to take my own life and ended up in (St Brigid’s Hospital) Ardee when I was 18, locked in a room with grown men. “I bottled it up for years, in terms of alcoholism and anger issues, and a range of different suicidal thoughts, but you need to talk to somebody,” he says.
“Thousands of people are walking around carrying the mental scars of abuse, and we need to improve the mental health services to cope.”
The Minister for Education has announced that a Commission of Investigation will be established, and Gardai are continuing to appeal to anyone who wishes to report a crime relating to Historical Sexual Abuse in Day and Boarding Schools Run by Religious Orders to contact them. “I would kind of be wary of the Government saying the right words, but I want to see action,” he adds. “I would welcome an inquiry, but it needs to be broadened too, to take in Michael Shine too, with his own inquiry.”
Gerard has benefited from therapy for decades and has the support of his wife and children now, but knows others may not have been so lucky.
“On a national level, lessons have to be learned from this,” says Gerard. “Children are still being taught in religious institutions, but I feel the church should have no dealings with education anymore.”
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm.