Most alleged abusers at Blackrock investigated by gardaí were Spiritan priests

Gardaí revealed earlier this week they were not planning to take any further action in the majority of cases of alleged child sex abuse at Blackrock College and Willow Park School in south Dublin.

Fifteen of the alleged abusers were Spiritan priests, while three others were lay teachers or general staff. It is understood the Garda investigation was hindered by “missing files and lack of information generally on the side of the Spiritans,” as one source put it.

More than 140 people have made allegations of sexual abuse against the 18, the great majority of whom are deceased. Gardaí have confirmed there will be no further action in most of these cases, but a small number of investigations remain active, where alleged suspects are still alive.

Among the lay teachers or general staff investigated by gardaí were Edward Baylor and Br Luke McCaffrey, both deceased.

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Baylor, a former Christian Brother, was a lay member of staff at Blackrock College and its junior school Willow Park from 1974 to 1986. He had previously taught at Christian Brothers schools throughout the UK before moving to Ireland, where he joined staff at Willow Park. He was convicted of child abuse in July 1988 and had “left our employment as soon as he was arrested on suspicion of abuse”, the Spiritans said.

Speaking to The Irish Times, John, not his real name as he does not wish to be named, attended Willow Park and Blackrock from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s. He has previously spoken about his abuse by Br McCaffrey but said “Edward Baylor [known as Eddie Baylor by us boys] took a keen interest in tennis and I remember being told by an older boy never to travel alone with him.”

They boys would sing a ditty to the tune of “knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone”, he said. “Five foot two, eyes are blue, Eddie Baylor’s after you.”

John recalled the brutality suffered by a student who later took his own life as an adult, something many of his peers believe was related to his treatment as a child at Willow Park.

“Sitting in class one day, in the old two-person wooden and metal school class benches, the boy was pulled out of the chair with such force by a priest that he flew across the room and his head struck the hard mosaic tiling, leaving him crying in a bloody mess. He was told to get out. Every boy in the room was in horror at the sheer level of violence meted out to, targeted at, that boy that day and on such a regular basis. He seemed to have been despised by a number of priests.”

The boy concerned “was eventually locked in the library and threw a chair through the window to try to escape. If memory serves, he was then expelled from the school.

“It was utterly tragic, and I find it difficult to fathom what it would take for one so young and innocent, from an otherwise healthy background, to feel compelled to throw a chair out a glass window, which was four or five feet from ground level. He was always terrified in school. I now realise I was too, but he perhaps had it so much worse.”

John himself “suffered repeatedly” at the hands of McCaffrey.

“I still, in my dreams, wake up shouting: ‘No, Br Luke. Please, Br Luke, please Br Luke,’ – the exact words I used to always say to him,” he says. “I was anally raped by Br Luke. I was frequently fondled by Br Luke, aged nine or 10. I was also forced to fondle Br Luke.”

In later life, he says, he “could never hold down a job, a steady relationship and have alienated all my friends, systematically”.

“I have not met anybody socially in years, and am effectively a recluse, bar walking the dog. I am forever apologising to people for things I haven’t done wrong. I have never been convicted but have always felt like a criminal,” he says.