Raw tales from Blackrock College are as disturbing as anything from the Magdalene laundries

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and Joe Duffy opens Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) with a grimly familiar note of caution: “You might not want young ears to hear this.” By Wednesday, in light of the content on the previous day’s show, Duffy has upgraded his advisory level. “The same warning again,” the host says. “Definitely not suitable for young ears.” Even this caveat seems inadequate, however. The accounts of child sexual abuse at elite Irish schools that follow are almost too much for any ears, adult or child, so appalling are the details.

That’s not to say the stories told by Liveline’s callers shouldn’t be heard. On the contrary, the latest catalogue of horrors to emerge from Ireland’s religious institutions – in this case the Spiritans, the order that runs Blackrock College and Rockwell College – is another critical reckoning with our murky past, underlining how abuse was perpetrated and hidden at even the supposedly highest strata of Irish society. And while the shocking story is initially broken by Documentary on One: Blackrock Boys (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday), it’s an issue tailor-made for Liveline’s open-source format, which has provided a public platform for long-silenced survivors ever since the first revelations of widespread clerical abuse began to emerge.

[ Gut-wrenching, essential radio: Blackrock College sexual abuse accounts are tough to listen to ]

The experiences in this latest instance are as disturbing as anything from the industrial schools or Magdalene laundries. Mark and David Ryan’s devastating account of how they were serially yet separately abused by the Blackrock College teacher Fr Tom O’Byrne (and other unnamed priests) anchors Documentary on One. Stark yet compelling, the programme also meticulously outlines how the Spiritans, previously known as the Holy Ghost Fathers, covered up crimes and paid for the legal defence that ensured O’Byrne avoided prosecution in later years.

The specifics of the crimes are stomach-churning, as indeed is the omerta displayed by clerical authorities. When Edward complained about sexual assaults by one priest, wasn’t believed. ‘In those days a priest’s word was sacrosanct,’ he says. ‘I never got over it’

Though the documentary chronicles dreadful incidents, complete with trigger warnings from its narrator and producer, Liam O’Brien, the Ryan brothers’ tale is laid out in spare yet structured form. Liveline, with its unfiltered real-time contributions, is more viscerally raw. Another former pupil, Stephen, recalls how he was first abused at the age of nine by a teacher, Fr Aloysius Flood. (“I’d rather not call him by his title,” he insists.) Throughout his time at Blackrock College and the adjoining Willow Park primary school, he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Flood and two other priests. Stephen unflinchingly describes the violations he suffered, though, as with the Ryan brothers, the foul controlling tricks used by his abusers are also troubling: “They make you feel so ashamed, so guilty, it’s actually frightening.”

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It’s tough stuff, as Duffy recognises. “I’ll give you a second to catch your breath,” he says to his caller, and possibly his listeners too. But as in other cases of institutional abuse, these are just the first disclosures. The next day the host hears two more Blackrock past pupils, Aidan and Edward, share their own unspeakable experiences. The specifics of the crimes are stomach-churning, as indeed is the omerta displayed by clerical authorities. When Edward complained about sexual assaults by one priest, Senan Corry (who had also abused Stephen), he wasn’t believed. “In those days a priest’s word was sacrosanct,” Edward says. “To be honest, I never got over it.”

[ Dublin brothers relate how both, unknown to the other, were abused by priests at Blackrock College ]

The toll on the victims has been deep and long-lasting: Edward became a heroin addict, and Aidan was racked with depression and suicidal thoughts. As they talk, Duffy’s guests sound tentative, even occasionally fragile: though they speak vital truths, the ordeal of revealing such traumas in public clearly takes a lot out of them. It makes for uncomfortable listening.

Given the gravity of the subject, fretting about listeners’ delicacies seems irrelevant, if not borderline offensive

Similarly, the graphic descriptions of sexual assaults can be overwhelming, particularly as they are broadcast during daytime. (In this instance, Documentary on One is moved from its usual Saturday-afternoon slot to a 6pm transmission time on Monday, presumably for maximum impact.) Duffy’s mournful warnings notwithstanding, the material has the potential to upset not just children but even unsuspecting lunchtime listeners. It’s important, indeed necessary, for callers to feel they can be open when unburdening such awful incidents on air, but it’s hard to imagine such material being broadcast so extensively on television before the 9pm watershed.

[ Spiritans expect additional survivors to come forward as 233 men allege abuse against 77 Irish priests ]

In fairness, Liveline is hardly the only daytime radio show for which parental discretion is advised. In her midmorning show, Jennifer Zamparelli (2FM, weekdays) revels in adult, if not necessarily grown-up material, from gleefully racy asides to her weekly slot with the therapist Rachel Cooke, covering subjects so sexually frank as to make a sailor blush. At least Zamparelli’s fruity material is delivered in knowing style. Today with Claire Byrne (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) regularly deals at length with health conditions in, ahem, intimate areas. During such items the po-faced repetition of technical terms for genitalia can cause even the most mature and medically savvy listener to wince.

The issues discussed on Liveline are of far greater sensitivity and societal import. Given the gravity of the subject, fretting about listeners’ delicacies seems irrelevant, if not borderline offensive. Even so, Duffy must surely be alive to the possibility that people can become so shocked – or worse, numbed – to such terrible stories that they turn off, metaphorically at least.

[ How cover-up by Spiritans in Ireland led to child abuse in leading Sierra Leone school ]

But one suspects it’s a risk that he, and the Doc on One team, are willing to take. For one thing, the contours of radio are different from those TV. On radio, daytime is prime time: airing such explosive revelations at night might spare the feelings of some, but with a fraction of the listenership. Moreover, to bring these survivors’ joltingly graphic, emotionally charged accounts to a wide audience is public-service broadcasting in the truest sense. The stories highlight, “not for the first time”, as Duffy notes, the way social respectability and institutional self-preservation provided cover for vile deeds over decades. It may be difficult to hear, but that’s the warning we should really heed.