Paul Grealish: ‘Today I was in court to get justice for my 10-year-old self’

A victim of child sexual abuse whose attacker was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Tuesday has said there is “something seriously wrong” with the criminal justice system that the process took 10 years.

In 2013 Galway businessman Paul Grealish filed a criminal complaint against Christian Brother Thomas Caulfield (77) who had abused him when he was nine and 10-years-old at St Patrick’s Christian Brothers School, Tuam in the early 1970s.

Mr Grealish, who had been in fourth class, was abused in front of his classmates. Years later, he would consciously avoid meeting them so as not to be reminded of what had happened.

In an interview on Prime Time on Tuesday night, he said the delay in the trial had suited him on mental health grounds but that it highlighted a problem with the system.

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[ Christian Brother who indecently assaulted schoolboy jailed for 20 months ]

It was an “incredibly long time. And it does retraumatise you when there are false dawns and then disappointments,” he said.

“[But] I thought it was a blessing in disguise for me personally that the trial was delayed because if it went to trial a few years ago I was less able to cope with the demands of it.

“So it was a blessing in disguise but nonetheless there’s something seriously wrong with the criminal justice system if 10 years after you sign for your statement, that’s when you might get your result.”

Caulfield, with addresses at St Patrick’s Street, Castlerea, Co Roscommon, and The Bungalow, c/o Rainey’s, Mountgarry, Swords, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty last year to three sample counts of indecent assault.

Mr Grealish recalled his first interactions with him at school where Caulfield physically assaulted other boys but “in my case it got much worse than that”. He was openly abused in class, an experience that “destroyed” his childhood.

Later on, he explained, following a brief encounter with some friends in which one of them brought up the abuse, Mr Grealish made a conscious decision to avoid anyone he went to school with. “It was like getting hit by a sledgehammer.” He slipped into depression.

“I understand now what was wrong with me; that the very worst thing that could possibly happen had happened where someone opened that door in my memory which I thought was firmly locked forevermore.”

Mr Grealish initially opted for a civil action against his abuser in 2005, having been left, he explained, with little faith in the institutions of the State to deal with a criminal complaint.

Four years later he was offered a settlement without apology and was told the defence would call his ageing parents – whom he had not told about his experience – as witnesses if he did not accept it.

“That was like game over. That was like, they had quietened me,” he said.

However, in 2013 he received a letter from the HSE referencing the vetting of Thomas Caulfield for a teaching position in which his civil case had been flagged. That experience prompted him to finally bring a criminal complaint.

A decade later, he said he was happy Caulfield had been given a custodial sentence.

“Today I was in court to get justice for my 10-year-old self.”