Michael Clemenger (72) was sent from Dublin to St Joseph’s Industrial School in Tralee when he was eight and remained there until he was 16, in 1967.
During his time in the care of the State, he was sexually abused by four Christian Brothers and physically abused by two others.
He has sought a re-investigation of the death in 1958 of 16-year-old Arthur Joseph Pyke, who suffered fatal injuries at the same school.
Mr Clemenger did not witness an attack on Pyke, but the boys who did all reported a similar version of events — that he collapsed following a kick to his chest by a Christian Brother in the dining hall while he carried a plate of potatoes. He died in hospital.
While Mr Clemenger did not personally know Pyke, he was deeply affected by his death, and for over two decades has made an annual visit from his Co Meath home to Rath Cemetery in Tralee to mark the anniversary of his death.
Mr Clemenger has long campaigned for a more thorough investigation into how Pyke died, and said that remembering him has helped him deal with the sexual and physical abuse he suffered at the school.
The Ryan Commission Report in 2009 said the last 20 years of St Joseph’s Industrial School were particularly brutal.
Specifically in relation to Pyke, the report found “time had elapsed” and differing evidence from doctors, brothers and boys who witnessed the attack made it “impossible to make a ruling” on whether the kicking he received was instrumental in his death.
Mr Clemenger said he does not accept the official finding that the cause of Pyke’s death was septicaemia. He met detectives this weekend to discuss re-opening the case, as well as detailing the sexual and physical abuse he himself suffered.
He contacted gardaí in recent weeks after they released a special phone number and email address through which victims of sexual abuse in schools could contact them.
The move, by specialist officers from the Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB), followed the publication on September 4 of a scoping report into allegations of abuse at schools run by religious orders.
The report, commissioned by the State, found there were 2,395 allegations of sexual abuse in respect of 308 schools. Allegations were made against 884 people.
Mr Clemenger is among more than 500 people who have contacted gardaí. He is willing to outline again the abuse he suffered, including repeated rapes and frequent serious physical assaults.
He went before a redress board in 2004 and was awarded a significant sum for the abuse he suffered. The fact that he lost a testicle as a consequence of one attack was a factor in his award, as it meant he could not father children.
“I told my wife when we first met that I couldn’t have children and she later said, ‘I’m not marrying you for kids, I’m marrying you for love’,” he said. “Going through redress was like being raped all over again. I will now go through it all again with gardaí, mostly for the sake of Arthur Pyke.
Mr Clemenger said he feels an affinity with the dead teenager, as he was raped and fell unconscious after an attack by the same Christian Brother responsible for putting Pyke in hospital.
“I’ve always had a terrible guilt that I survived attacks by that same Christian Brother, but Arthur Pyke died. I’m going to be asking gardaí to do something to recognise the memory of Arthur Pyke,” he said.
“The Christian Brother responsible is now dead, but others are still alive. I would hope that it is in the powers of gardaí to re-investigate and give some formal acknowledgement about the circumstances of his death.”
One of the four brothers who sexually abused Mr Clemenger is currently before the courts on child sex abuse charges. This man has already served time in prison for raping children.
Another of the abusers is also still alive, and Mr Clemenger will again outline to gardaí the abuse he inflicted on him as a child. It includes being forcibly stripped naked and raped alongside other boys, and being raped in a bath with several others.
“The attacks were sadistic, those men were cruel. I live with the memories every day,” he said. “I was there because I was an ‘illegitimate child’. We were constantly told we were nothing, that no one cared about us because we were born on the wrong side of the tracks.”
He said a number of boys took their own lives at St Joseph’s as a consequence of sexual abuse. Mr Clemenger himself made an attempt to end his life shortly after his release from the school.
He said that at the time he “imagined being reunited with Arthur Pyke”.
In recent years, he wrote an account of his childhood abuse at St Joseph’s entitled Everybody Knew. The book has sold nearly 95,000 copies worldwide.
Last May, a plaque was unveiled by Kerry Co Council, acknowledging the suffering of hundreds of boys who passed through St Joseph’s from 1871 to 1970.