John McClean abused 23 boys while a teacher at Terenure College. He was appointed to head up UCD’s rugby academy

Via Gavin Cummiskey in the Irish Times (full article at link below):

…Everyone in south Dublin rugby circles knew McClean.

If this reporter heard the rumours about him when I was still a teenager in the late 1990s, can the decision makers back then honestly say the same whispers failed to reach their ears? If the answer is ‘we heard nothing’ then there is a far deeper problem than we already perceive it to be.

…Despite decades of sexual assault, John McClean wielded enormous power as UCD director of rugby. Terenure College and UCD must explain how he was able to skip from one rugby institution to another unchecked.

In the summer of ‘96 McClean the coach toured Australia with the Ireland schoolboys, some of whom have since become central figures in the professional game, before taking up his new job on the Belfield campus.

….If he had already admitted to abusing one boy – as court records show – then Terenure would have warned the IRFU and UCD before he ascended to one of the most influential positions in Irish rugby, right?

….His victims, one of whom described him as “evil personified,” and the public deserve to know precisely what happened between the summer of 1996 and the beginning of that first UCD term in the autumn of 1997. If for nothing else than to ensure that history does not repeat itself…

The Offload: John McClean questions can no longer be silenced (Gavin Cummiskey, The Irish Times)

Earlier: Blocking A Victim

RollingNews