Hourigan says his life was ‘left in ruins’ after repeated rapes by Christian Brother

SIEGE man Jim Hourigan told the Irish Examiner by mobile phone last night how his life was left in ruins after he was repeatedly raped as a postulant in the Christian Brothers.

Speaking by telephone from the rented house which he barricaded himself into before emerging last night, Mr Hourigan denied he had doused himself in petrol.

“All I want is justice,” he said, claiming his civil action for damages had been held up for more than five years.

The delay, he said, was over medical records — given to a solicitor — not being furnished to the Redress Board.

However, he said the papers had been released yesterday by a legal firm in Limerick.

Mr Hourigan, 55, dismissed rumours the siege emanated from a dispute over non-payment of rent.

“I want to make public the injustices I’m continuing to suffer over the abuse from the Christian Brothers.

“The message I want to send out is that I am looking for justice and not attention. What has happened to me has gone beyond that.”

The separated father said he had not taken food since he commenced his protest at lunchtime on Wednesday.

“I only took a small drop of milk which was left over. I am not drinking the water in case it is tampered with.

“I don’t trust anybody. I have blocked the toilets in case they put gas through the mains.”

The only items of food he brought into the house were biscuits and dog nuts for his terrier pup and cat.

“My life has been left in ruins,” he repeated.

“I joined the Christian Brothers when I was 13. I was recruited while attending Adare CBS. I was a postulant at the Ignatius Rice centre in Dun Laoghaire and while I was there for the first two years, in 1964 and 1965, I was repeatedly raped and sodomised by a Brother.”

Mr Hourigan said that a man had been sentenced in January 2002 for sexually assaulting him but the civil case had not been progressed as rapidly.

“My life was left in ruins and when I left the Brothers, I became an alcoholic and a workaholic.

“I worked for 12 years with Electrical Rewinds in Limerick, with five of those in an apprenticeship.

“I set up my own businesses but there was an awful lot going on in my life at that time — I was working hard and drinking hard but I was working to pay for the drink.”

Regarding the siege, he said: “I want to apologise to all the people in Roscrea and especially my former wife Eileen and children in Limerick and my extended family for what has happened.

“But I had to let people know what had happened to me and why it was happening,” he said.

His children, aged from 22 to 17, telephoned Mr Hourigan and appealed to him to end the siege.

He revealed he secured more than 180 litres of petrol in recent weeks and saturated the house with the fuel. He also acquired cylinders of gas from a premises nearby.

Mr Hourigan said the protest was not about money and added that any compensation coming to him, he wanted to go to victims of abuse.

Referring to a legal bill which he received on Wednesday, Mr Hourigan said, “He [the solicitor] is not going to get one f**king penny in fees, it’s going to go to the people who have been abused and he’s getting nothing.”