‘No gagging order’ applies to settlements already approved by Spiritans

Spiritan provincial Fr Martin Kelly said confidentiality “no longer applied” where settlements with the congregation took place following abuse allegations and that where the 12 men who had concluded such settlements were concerned “no gagging order applied”.

Safeguarding officer with the Spiritans Liam Lally said that of the €5 million paid out in settlements by the congregation to date “the vast majority of that goes in compensation to survivors. The only element in it that is not going to survivors directly is the amount we have paid out to counselling. “He said that of the “€5 million something” paid out “at least €5 million has gone to survivors”.

Fr Kelly and Mr Lally were speaking at a press conference in the RDS held with four former Spiritan pupils at the Blackrock campus, each an abuse survivor, to launch an independent restorative justice programme which will be facilitated by Tim Chapman, a leading practitioner in the area. The programme will be funded by the Spiritans.

Asked whether he would support a public inquiry into what happened at Spiritan schools, Fr Kelly replied: “the answer is yes”.

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John Coulter, one of the abuse survivors behind the initiative, said the programme would be “run independent of Spiritans”. Though funded by the congregation this “has not compromised Tim’s independence or the ability for the process to be independent of the Spiritans”, he said.

John Coulter, Corry McMahon, Louis Hoffman, Philip Feddis (on Zoom from Brazil), had been abused while pupils at Willow Park/Blackrock College. They were, said Mr Coulter “representative of a large group of people, many of whom we know, abused in Spiritan schools”.

Their “restorative process is under way this past 20 months”, he said and that they had their first meeting with Blackrock College principal Alan McGinty “in the school, on the 21st of April last year”. They asked him “to facilitate a meeting with Spiritans. It happened on 18th of May [2021].”

Louis Hoffman recalled how, when he was 13 and at Willow Park school, Fr Senan Corry “brought me into a room, took my hand and put it on him. I screamed.” In 1997 Fr Corry was among four Spiritan priests who attended his father’s removal in Dalkey. No one in the family had invited them. He was very angry at this and told his brother what had happened. “And David [his brother] said, ‘he tried to abuse me as well’. So that was the beginning for me.”

In 2012 he read a report about the conviction of Spiritan Fr Henry Moloney for the abuse of two boys at St Mary’s in Rathmines. “I tried to get the campaign going.”

Land sold for €16m

In 2020 he read that the Spiritans had sold land at Blackrock for €16 million. The Blackrock Union has a Facebook page. This article was shared with this group. He commented on the page that “I hope some of this money that they get is going to be used to help the victims, not me, the real victims of what went on. And then other people started coming in.”

He decided “to set something up where people had a chance to speak without being censored”. He set up a Facebook page, Blackrock, the Spiritans, time to say sorry. “And people piled in”, including John Coulter and Corry McMahon.

Mr Coulter recalled how “over an eight-week period from January 2021, 38 people posted reports of abuse.” Many in the Facebook group were “from the 1979 Leaving [Cert] year”. In all “25, 60-year-old men from the class of ‘79 had posted stories of abuse. The class size in Willow Park, which is where most of this abuse took place, was 120 people; 25 boys out of 120, that’s 21 per cent reported stories of abuse”.

Mr McMahon spoke emotionally about his abuse as a 12-year-old boy by Fr Aloysius Flood and Fr Corry, “that was 50 years ago.” He said “the Belvo [Belvedere] story broke, the Terenure story broke, the George Gibney podcast was out”. It spurred him “to get in contact with Philip and Louis again and say that maybe the stars have aligned and that the world is ready for a crack at it and we started the conversation”.