Special report: ‘I was fought every step of the way, and that is as painful as the rapes’

Sean O’Donnell is one of many who the State wrote to, instructing him to drop his civil case against it or be pursued for thousands of euros in legal costs. He tells Jess Casey the effect this has had on his life.

Sean O'Donnell, who from the age of 11 was raped almost daily. Photograph Moya Nolan

Last December, Sean O’Donnell drove to Cork from his home in Dublin to visit the grave of the man he says repeatedly raped him when he was a child.

If his abuser, his former teacher, had been alive when Sean made his first formal complaint to gardaí in May 2018, he would have been prosecuted. But he died, 13 years prior.