The Boys Club

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The location of the hostel in Eccles Street, Dublin 1. It was demolished when the Mater Hospital was built

The Irish Mirror yesterday revealed that Gardai believe they’ve uncovered a paedophile ring run by clerics while investigating a hostel for boys which operated in the 1960s and 1970s

The half-way house – which opened under the name “The Boys Club” in Eccles Street, Dublin 1 – is the subject of an investigation by the Sexual Crime Management Unit.

Via The Irish Mirror:

More than 700 vulnerable teenage boys passed through the hostel over the space of a decade and it’s feared most were preyed on by clerics….

…A man who was was born in a mother and baby home and was sent to the hostel from an industrial school where he was raped from a young age.

He said: “The abuse that took place in the hostel was an extension of the abuse I suffered in the industrial school but it was far more intense and pressurised.”

He added priests used the home as a “hunting ground” and “passed boys around like pieces of meat” bribing them with cigarettes and money to keep quiet.

The man claims he was also warned on several occasions to “keep his mouth shut” or he would “end up in the lunatic asylum in Dundrum”.

A typical ploy used by senior clerics was to send their car and chauffeur to the hostel to collect a particular boy who would then be driven to a nearby location and abused.

The victim, who is now 65, said: “A priest or seminarian tended to come with somebody who knew the hostel… they might depart with a boy.

“The seminarians would chat me up. If there was a disco going on I would dance with them and I would be groped. This happened even in the toilet.

“In hindsight there was a selection process. There were a lot of B&Bs in the area, it was close to Gardiner Street and nobody would dare stop a priest.

There seemed to be a constant stream of priests and student priests coming in, this was normal to me.

“I get it now – it’s beginning to hit me. I denied it for years.”

The Mirror adds that several of the priests who are implicated “are still alive and are expected to be interviewed by gardai”.

Gardai probe claims of clerical sex abuse at Dublin hostel of horrors (Sylvia Pownell, The Irish Mirror)

Pic via The Irish Mirror

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6 thoughts on “The Boys Club

  1. eoin

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    “Gardai probing a hostel for boys which operated in the 1960s and 1970s believe they’ve uncovered a paedophile ring run by clerics.”

    What’s the basis for that claim by the journalist “Sylvia Pownall”?

    The only reference to the Gardai in the piece is “Detectives [officers attached to the Sexual Crime Management Unit] are taking the claims [implicitly the claims are from one alleged victim only] seriously.”

    The only evidence is the hearsay of one alleged victim.

    Knowing how the media-Garda loop works, I’d be cynical about the story unless more victims came forward.

  2. postmanpat

    Jesus, if some of the priests are still alive then the victims should arrange a lynching rather than get the police involved (to just interview them let them off)

    1. Dr.Fart MD

      i asked my dad did he ever get abused by priests and he said no, if i found out this happened to him id dedicate my life to tracking them all down and punishing them extremely horribly.

  3. Darren

    Homophobes (male) borrow guidance from a fear of the self. It is this fear of oneself which articulates cruelty as a form of pleasure. Violence abuse etc. Now that we know this let’s be sure that this character of man is not obscured by either time or the sheer horror of the crimes and exploitative measures which altogether priovide for us now a climate in which a story like this can be taken for what it’s worth. The truth is we have no reason not to believe that such conditions could survive unchallenged in the heart of our modern cities.

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