A CARETAKER who returned to work in a Donegal school where he had previously sexually abused a child and went on to molest and rape four more boys there will be sentenced later this month.
The boys, who were aged between 10 and 17 years at the time, were sexually abused on an almost weekly basis, some for as long as four years.
The man groomed them by supplying them with alcohol, cigarettes and money. He would also make them watch pornography with him, with one boy reporting to gardaí that the man had shown him child pornography.
The man told one victim to imagine it was “a girl doing it to you” while he abused him after supplying him with whiskey.
Two of the boys later told gardaí they were abused by the man in the school after he got them so drunk they were afraid to go home to their parents.
Another said he woke up from a vodka-induced sleep to find himself lying naked and feeling sore and bleeding.
The 55-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victims, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 38 sample charges which included 17 oral and anal rapes, 18 sex assaults, one indecent assault and two charges of production of child pornography on dates between July 1st, 1990, and September 31st, 2005.
The charges in relation to production of child pornography occurred when the man took photographs of two of the boys while they were naked.
Mr Justice Paul Carney remanded the man in continuing custody and adjourned sentencing to next week.
The man had earlier been convicted in a district court in Donegal for two incidents of indecent assault at the same school in 1985 and 1986. He was registered as a sex offender and received a six-month suspended sentence.
Garda Denise Casserly told Patricia McLaughlin, prosecuting, that the man was not identified in the local papers at the time and he returned to work in the same school, where he went on to abuse the boys four years later.
Each of the men, now aged between 24 and 30, stated in victim impact statements before the court that they had turned to alcohol, drug and solvent abuse to escape from the reality of their situation.
Some of them said they had tried to take their own lives, with one young man saying he had deliberately crashed his car and later his motorbike into a wall because “I just wanted to leave this world because I thought it was one so cruel”.