Irish abuse survivors meeting Pope Francis hope to receive apology

Three Irish men are among several sex abuse survivors meeting Pope Francis on Monday hoping for an apology over their ordeal at a training school for priests in the United Kingdom.

Gerry McLaughlin, of Moville, Co Donegal, was 11 years old when he went to St Peter Claver College in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, in 1964.

Having grown up in Greenock, Scotland, the son of an Irish father, his staunch Catholic family were proud of the eldest of 11 children for embarking on his vocation at the college run by the Comboni Order, formerly the Verona Fathers.

Weeks after his arrival he knew something was not right.

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“[A priest] told me I had to take a cold shower every day, that the doctor had told him… he would come down and open the curtains – I was about 3ft 1in at the time – and stand over me rubbing his hands as I showered,” says Mr McLaughlin at his home on the Inishowen peninsula.

“He would get the sponge and say, ‘I’ll soap you down’. I said, ‘No thanks’. That went on for seven weeks.”

Later in his first year at the seminary, Mr McLaughlin suffered a groin strain during a school football match. He was ordered to his room and told to lie down. Abandoning the game, a refereeing priest asked to look at Mr McLaughlin’s groin, and when he resisted he was sent to the college infirmary, run by another cleric.

His alleged abuser then locked the infirmary door before turning on Mr McLaughlin. “His cure for groin strain was for him to rub coal tar on your testicles and penis. He did that twice a day for seven or eight days.”

Despite the abuse, Mr McLaughlin, a 69-year-old father of two and IT consultant, believes he is one of the “lucky ones”.

“I hadn’t hit puberty yet. Others weren’t so lucky,” he says.

It took almost 40 years until the former pupils spoke to each other about their abuse.

At a school reunion, one after one opened up on the abuse they endured during the 1960s and 1970s.

There was something else the survivors shared in common, it emerged – a trend of marriage break-ups, alcoholism and anger issues in the decades that followed their time under the Comboni Order.

“One decided to end it all,” says Mr McLaughlin. “He went to a hotel room, with a load of pills. It was only when he took the pills out, that he just thought of his children, and he couldn’t go through with it.”

Another became a sex worker. He died “a few years back”.

Bishop of Leeds Marcus Stock apologised for the first time on behalf of the Catholic Church, despite decades of complaints.

West Yorkshire Police said its investigation into historical sex abuse at the seminary was hampered as two suspects – Fr John Pinkman and Fr Domenico Valmaggia – were dead, and a third, who is still alive in Italy, could not be extradited because of ill health.

The Comboni Order paid compensation to 11 of the abuse survivors in 2014 without formally acknowledging it happened. Mr McLaughlin said the payout – about £8,000 (€9,370) in his case – was “derisory”.

But it was never about the money for the men.

“All we have always wanted from the Comboni Order is to acknowledge it happened,” says Mr McLaughlin. “Their advice is coming from their insurers and lawyers not to admit anything, otherwise it could cost a lot of money. Jesus once said a man can not serve two masters – he must choose between God and Mammon. They have chosen Mammon. It is a bean count for them.”

The private audience with the pope at the Apostolic Palace was brokered after recent meetings with Archbishop of Malta Charles Scicluna, who has led investigations into clerical sex abuse for the Holy See.

“I’m going to ask the pope to write a letter to the Comboni Missionaries and advise them to meet us,“ says Mr McLaughlin. “But they don’t have to. The pope can’t order them, he can only ask them.

“I want him to acknowledge what happened to us, and to apologise on behalf of the Catholic Church and tell the Comboni Missionaries to do the same.”

Bishop Stock and Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols travelled to Rome “to provide pastoral support” to the men who were “abused as boys at a former junior seminary run by the Comboni Order”, a spokeswoman for the Bishop of Leeds said.

The Holy See, the Comboni Missionaries were all contacted for comment.