Two brothers have detailed the horrific sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of priests in Blackrock College during the 1970s.
David and Mark Ryan, originally from Blackrock, are the first people to openly speak about abuse at Blackrock College.
David now lives in Co Tipperary and Mark lives in south London.
From the ages of 12 to 17, David (58) and Mark (61) were repeatedly sexually abused at various locations on the grounds of Blackrock College in south Dublin.
Their abusers were from the community of the Holy Ghost Order, now known as Spiritans.
Described as one of the most “exclusive schools in Ireland”, Blackrock College was founded in 1860 by the Spiritans.
Several court cases ensued as the two brothers fought for justice. Now grown men, they told their story for the first time in a special RTÉ Documentary on One, which was broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 this evening.
“My parents were very proud that I went to Blackrock College, they thought it was a fantastic school,” Mark said.
“My father had to leave school when he was quite young, he really wanted the best education for his children, they thought Blackrock College was it for me.”
In September 1973 Mark began his secondary education at Blackrock College. During his first year, one of the teachers took a special interest in him and gradually began to sexually abuse him.
The priest who abused him was a Holy Ghost father named Fr Tom O’Byrne, who was originally from Limerick and began teaching in Blackrock College in 1967.
The abuse took place during private swimming sessions at the pool on the school campus.
“I was befriended by one of the teachers there, a priest, he saw that I had an interest in basic maths and computers and there was a little computer society,” Mark said.
The priest gifted Mark his own computer, which was a rare occurrence in 1970s Ireland.“I now realise I was being groomed, it’s a relatively new thought for me and when I see things now my understanding is my parents were being groomed,” he said.
“This particular priest, I’m going to call him the perpetrator because this is what actually happened, he used to invite me down swimming in Willow Park, which was the primary school connected to the secondary school.
“It had its own swimming pool, a Friday or Saturday evening, go down for a swim, which was fantastic in its own way being able to go for a swim. That’s part of the grooming, being chosen, made to feel special, coming up to our house, my parents thought he was fantastic.
“From 12, being touched, and I just felt uncomfortable with it, there was nothing sexual or anything like that in the beginning, but just a hand on the arm, and I didn’t really like it.”
Mark said Fr O’Byrne then began to act differently once the private swimming sessions became more regular.
“He’d wear strange togs which were different shapes and things like that and had no real back on them, I’d say that’s a thong now,” he said.
“Just touching and feeling and ‘why don’t you try these ones on?’, changing into different things at the edge of the swimming pool.
“He had a camera and he used to take photos as well, I was down at the swimming pool by myself, so there was nobody else there.
“Other times being down there, older boys had gone swimming beforehand, and I remember I was in one changing room with him, and these guys were all in the space next door and they were talking about him and saying he was a ‘bender’.
“I can remember that, but I didn’t know what it meant.”
At the age of 14, another priest from Blackrock College also began to abuse Mark. Throughout his abuse, he never told anyone.
“He was very funny and strange as well, I really didn’t like him, at one stage, he was with my perpetrator, and I’d had an operation in Vincent’s Hospital, and it was to remove varicose veins in my scrotum,” he said.
“And the main perpetrator came along to visit me, and I remember him pulling the curtain back and he was very interested in looking at my stitches and the wound.
“And then I was back at school, this was actually in the swimming pool in Blackrock College, he was down swimming as well and, ‘oh Mark, do you want to show off your scars’, and things like that to this other priest.
“And both of them examining me and looking at me.”
The abuse continued during Mark’s third and fourth year at the school.
“I was very scared, very unhappy, this was part of my life, so abuse was not part of my vocabulary,” he said.
“He was my teacher for maths, he taught me Latin as well, he taught me religion, a person of authority. I look back now, and something was very wrong in how he looked after his body.”
Mark’s abuse in Blackrock College began to stop when he started pushing back.
“When I was bad in class or something like that, I wasn’t the best student, ‘well going to tell to your parents’, and I started pushing back, ‘no you can tell my parents’,” he said.
“’I don’t have to tell your parents if you pull your trousers down and sit on my knee’, this is not right, I felt very, very uncomfortable but I didn’t know anything else.”
Mark’s 12-year-old brother David then started to receive invitations from Fr O’Byrne to private swimming sessions on the grounds of Blackrock College.
“I thought he was safe all the time because he was with his friends,” Mark said.
David said Fr O’Byrne then started to take pictures and grope him and his friends in the pool.
“There were a few of us that would go down and I was interested in swimming at this stage anyway,” he said.
“In the beginning, he’d always lock the door, and he’d always come out in a pair of very skimpy thongs, and he’d bring us into the pool and take photographs of us and he’d get us to wear his other ones that were very skimpy.
“And this went on for a while, we’d get into the pool, he’d always try come underneath us and make us lie out on our back and he’d be underneath, but he’d actually be groping us underneath with his hands.
“It was very uncomfortable, but no one did anything and if you went down for a shower afterwards, he’d be totally naked.”
At this stage, Fr O’Byrne was nearly 60-years-old. When David was 13, he began to receive the full attention of Fr O’Byrne, often swimming with him on his own.
“Because I had this thing in my head that I wanted to become an Olympic swimmer, so I carried on swimming, I was on my own and this is when it started getting really bad,” he said.
“He’d make me sit on his knee and grope me and make me get naked in the shower with him. I was getting really uncomfortable with this, but I didn’t know what to do.”
Another priest then also began to abuse David at this stage of his childhood. David’s second abuser was a different man to Mark’s second abuser.
There was a photography lab at Blackrock College, which allowed Fr O’Byrne to develop all the photographs he took of the young children.
“He preyed on me, he knew I was easy prey, and he did target me because I would never say no,” David said.
“When I think back on it, how he violated my whole body, the abuse, what he actually did to me...It was awful. If I said no, I could get hurt and that I did not want.”
For many years neither brother spoke of their abuse, until early 2002 when clerical child sexual abuse filled the news headlines.
This led the brothers to reveal their abuse, first to their parents, and then to one another.
They made statements to the gardaí which led to multiple charges being brought against their abuser.
By then, Fr O’Byrne was 82-years-old and still living on the grounds of Blackrock College.
He denied the charges made against him and launched a legal case, seeking to halt criminal proceedings.
In 2007, the courts decided that the criminal case against the brothers’ abuser should be halted. Fr O’Byrne died in 2010, having never had to face trial.
In 2012, the Spiritans issued a general apology having been heavily criticised in an audit reviewing child protection practices.
This audit also detailed how serial abusers within the Spiritans went undetected and unchecked, giving them unmonitored access to children during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
The number of children who were sexually abused on the grounds of Blackrock College is unknown.
Responding to questions from the RTÉ, Fr Martin Kelly, the current Provincial of the Spiritans, stated that the Spiritan records now indicate that 233 people have made allegations of abuse against 77 Irish Spiritans in ministries throughout Ireland and overseas.
In relation to Blackrock College, 57 people have alleged they were abused on the Blackrock campus.
The Spiritans have made multiple monetary contributions to people who have alleged abuse at the hands of Spiritan community members - and since 2004 the total amount paid by the Spiritans, in settlement of claims of abuse, and towards support services, amounts to over €5m.
The Spiritans have made settlements with 12 individuals relating to abuse at Blackrock. All settlements have been funded from Spiritan congregation resources.
It has been the practice of the Spiritan Congregation to cover legal fees incurred by its members in connection with their legal representation in criminal cases.
This practice arose in circumstances where members did not have the personal money to do so.