Terenure College, Dublin
In The Village magazine.
Gemma O’Doherty reports that several former pupils of Terenue College have come forward claiming they were sexually and physically abused in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ms O’Doherty writes:
Terenure College is one of a growing number of fee-paying Irish schools who may have to confront decades-old abuse in the coming years, as survivors gain the courage to come forward and seek redress and compensation.
The financial implications for private colleges which find themselves exposed to historic claims could prove catastrophic. Some may face the prospect of having to sell off valuable chunks of their campus or even closure.
But many victims believe the time has come to blow the whistle, regardless of the consequences.
They say their ‘alma maters’ should no longer be allowed to hide from the dark secrets of their past, which have shattered so many lives.
[One said:] “As a survivor of the violence and sexual abuse at Terenure, it saddens me to think that success on the rugby pitch was put ahead of child protection.
“When past pupils admire with pride the trophy cabinet in the college containing the Leinster Schools cups, they should be aware that they were won at the expense of innocent boys whose lives were destroyed by perverts disguised in brown Carmelite habits and grey suits.
“A few bad apples in the barrel yes, but nobody ever cast them out. Why not? The public, who subsidise private schools, have a right to know what happened. We can’t keep brushing abuse scandals under the carpet.“
Add Blackrock College and St. Michaels to that list.
Really Derek? You know something? If you do, have you reported it to the Gardai?
Oh come on, its just like how nobody knew what the priests, laundries so on were up to. When really everybody knew.
Yes, therefore if someone actually does know something they should report what they know to the Gardaí.
Unless of course, Derek doesn’t actually know anything.
Also unless AGS are in some way implicated.
beware Derek, Andrew will report you to opidus dei…
I’m not religious at all dav. If I know of any abuse I’d report it and I am merely suggesting Derek does the same.
Yes, Blackrock College definitely. They settled a case in Willow Park already. Watch this space….
That’s complete BS. What years were you in Blackrock College?
I was class of 95 and I knew about it, as did many other students. The matter was hushed up and paid off. Bit like the Annabel’s case, only less public.
“…..it saddens me to think that success on the rugby pitch was put ahead of child protection……”
I think that’s overstating things a little, dearies. Terenure haven’t won the cup for 14 years.
As Hugo says, “Rock boys forever!”.
Chin, chin!
Ah yeah, sexual and physical abuse of thousands of boys. Hilarious! I know I laugh about it every day.
1,000’s of boys?
Just another attempt to smear fee paying schools. This story has nothing to do with the fact that Terenure is fee paying and everything to do with Irish society back then and it seems every other society as can be seen from the various scandals. Yet some person is having a dig at the people who are the bedrock of Dublin and Irish society. If this were really about the abuse nobody would have mentioned ‘fee-paying’.
Lol poor little lamb
ah pete ffs
You’ve got it a bit ‘your own name’.
Oh Pete. It is wholly relevant that Terenure is a fee paying school. The college obtains substantial fees from parents who think it’s a great place to send their kids and from alumni who (I assume) had a pleasant time there. All of whom are presumably totally unaware that a portion of those fees is being used to buy the silence of abuse victims. I’d say that’s pretty important, wouldn’t you?
Also, bedrock of Dublin and Irish society? Give me a break. If you really cared about the victims of abuse, you wouldn’t dismiss this story so easily with your sad little classist diatribe.
There isn’t a school in the country were a child wasn’t abused, let’s be honest. All fertile hunting grounds for rapists.
I presume you’re including the Educate Together schools in that sweeping statement.
yes, paddy – the priests and brothers at all the Educate Together schools throughout the 40s, 50s, 60s… were all up to all sorts
They were the worst actually sure them ones are godless altogether
Derek might have meant Willow Park instead of Blackrock. Back in the seventies there was the lay teacher caught with a pupil in a Dublin hotel who fled to Liverpool to escaped justice and died there. Hushed up by the media. Another one who used to take one or two of his favourites on ‘field trips’ who disappeared without explanation in the mid/late seventies. A religious brother who kept my younger brother back after school hours. When I got home and told my mother, she raced off in the car in a panic to get him. There was another one mentioned as being brought before the courts about 10-15 years ago that might have been hushed up.
Only one I can recall for Blackrock was a boarder waking up during being molested in his bed in the early eighties. That was blamed on a transient who’d been living in the attic.
eddie baylor rip.
Yep I don’t think Willow Park was ever named in the few press reports
I knew about Eddie Baylor. a right evil sadist. He scared all the kids. I had no idea about the other cases. if it happened in willow park, it happened in blackrock college.
To be fair while I was at Blackrock there was never a problem for me or anyone I knew.. Hated the place but drink and ageing rubbish priests were the issues. Left the place and went to a school with girls and different faiths. As they say in the country, happy out.
I had just left blackrock when the story broke.
was he the tennis coach?
remember hearing about him
Willow Park, but also Blackrock. There was a priest there all Blackrock boys know about. Also, but this is ages ago, John McQuaid (later Archbishop) molested students.
Give me a clue
He was known to the recently deceased Sean Dunne. Not that Rocky was involved.
What about that Rugby trip to South America that was kept under wraps?
Gemma O’Doherty – hardly a voice of credibility – how about an article on bullying and abuse in fee paying girls’s schools?
Or the media.
You don’t think Gemma O’Doherty has credibility?
Very wrong if so.
Gemma has confirmation bias. The main perpetrator in her article died in 1993 and is claimed to have done these awful things 40 – 50 years ago. What were the current teachers and priests in the school doing then? Most of them weren’t even born. No excuses for what happened but I don’t understand how the leafy suburbs, captains of industry references are in any way relevant to the reporting of abuse by priests.
It’s because of the middle class hypocrisy ye dope
Sorry but you’ll have to expand on that point.
YOu know what – I won’t bother
That’s all the clarity I needed – thanks.
This isn’t investigative journalism. There is not a single fact that can be validated. She’s a bit player in a whistleblower scandal that’s it. Just another INM journalist…
“When past pupils admire with pride the trophy cabinet in the college containing the Leinster Schools cups, they should be aware that they were won at the expense of innocent boys whose lives were destroyed by perverts disguised in brown Carmelite habits and grey suits.”
WTF has this got to do with rugby? No dodgy types in the GAA, then? No apologists there, Donal Og Cusack? So this was all tog-out action to the ROCK level of jocularity? BS.
It was at the expense of perverts who wouldn’t allocate equal time to teach and instil a passion for science, technology, maths, coding and modern languages. Get real you tool.
It has everything to do with the type of lace curtain fake poshness practiced by many in ireland’s middle class of which the dovish attention paid to rugby is a prominent and noteworthy aspect
Really?How about comparing Munster Rugby to Leinster Rugby. Sweeping statements are redolent of your own misunderstanding of context, nuance, and fact.
What are you on about Paddy? You don’t think they’re both two cheeks of the same bottom?
perhaps it’s just trolling etc but I’m a bit surprised that an article about child sex abuse in a school has elicited such aggressive defensiveness/denial
it’s odd, to say the least
The truth hurts
I am not trolling, but have personal reasons for asking this: does anyone know if there have been comparable whisperings re Belvedere, specifically in the early to mid nineties?
A friend passed some remarks, re a teacher who took a special interest in him back then, once. They were, on the surface, innocent. But I just got this funny, odd, gut feeling that there was something amiss in the anecdote. He recently had a total mental breakdown and is barely coherent these days.
I’m chasing a hunch. But it’s stayed with me.