JOE O'Driscoll still becomes distressed as he recalls the six years of sexual abuse he suffered while in the care of the Brothers of Chanty" in Lota in the 1950s and 1960s "A nightmare I will never forget," he says.
Now 53 and widowed, and toughened by a life working on construction sites in Scotland, he still breaks down when he starts to describe what happened him in Lota.
An orphan who never knew his parents, he was born in Dublin in 1943 and brought to Lota two or three years later. He is not sure exactly what age he was when he came to the home.
He recalls little of his early years in the home but his experiences from the age of 13 revisit him frequently more so since his wife Eileen died two years ago and he finds himself dwelling on the past and its unwelcome memories.
"It all happened in the pavilions where we stayed," he says as he produces a wrinkled envelope of old photos from the sleeve pocket of his anorak.
He takes out the pictures. Small 3 in by 2 in grey and sepia prints of young boys with crew cuts and short trousers and knitted jumpers, playing in the grounds of Lota or out on country walks.
"The pavilions were big dormitories with maybe 16 or 20 lads. The first one we stayed in was the Main House. Nothing happened there - we were too young for that carry on. It was when we were coming into teen age it started."
Joe flicks through the photos, proudly pointing out himself. First in short trousers when he was maybe eight or nine, tall for his age. Then later on in his teens, sticking out even more from among the other boys, a gangling six footer. He laughs as he points to his lug like ears.
He describes where the abuse took place, in two of the home's five dormitories. In each case, it was perpetrated by brothers in charge of the dormitories and the boys' welfare. "The abuse started when I was 13 years old," he says.
He stops at a photo of some of the brothers, cassocked and huddled together for the camera. He points to four of the smiling faces and names his abusers and tells how they summoned him and other boys to their rooms after lights out.
He looks for Brother Y but can't find him in the photo. Brother Y he explains, regularly abused him while he was cleaning out the furnaces in the basement of one of the pavilions. "Each pavilion used to have their own furnace and cellars and Brother Y was in charge of the furnaces. He used to say `C'mon Joe, come down with me and stoke up the fires'.
"Ten o'clock, I would have to go down and clean out the clinker and then when everything was finished, he would lock the door and start playing with you and if you didn't do it, he would give you a good hiding.
Another brother missing from the photograph made him drop his trousers and whacked him with a cane when he refused to masturabate him and perform oral sex on him, he says.
The details come back to him. The physical peculiarity of one of the brothers. The smell of wine from another as he tried to kiss him. The smell of a particular brand of soap from a third. "I can smell it still," he says as he tries to remember its name.
"Palmolive!" he cries triumphantly. "That was it, Palmolive. I told Eileen never to get Palmolive because of him and she never did. She knew what they did to me, you see. We had no secrets from each other."
And so it went on. First in one pavilion where he spent three years, and then in a second where he spent another three. Until he was 18 when one day he decided he would not take any more.
"Brother Z came up to me and asked me to do it to him and I told him I wasn't doing it any more and I was going to tell the superior. He picked up a brush handle and came after me so I headbutted him on the nose. It was self defence."
He skips the immediate aftermath of that incident to reveal it earned him a trip to a hospital in Dublin. Again, he's not exactly sure of its name or where it was.
"It was there I heard they were going to send me to Grangegorman. I knew what that was about so I escaped. I left the hospital and stayed a few days in a hostel until I got on a boat to Holyhead.
"Do you know how I got across? I had no money but I offered to mind some cattle and hand them over to a fellow in Holyhead. I had to sleep with the cattle down in the hold. God, the stink was terrible. I stank something terrible but I didn't care. I had got away."
