Finding the courage to speak out against sexual abuse, only to have your voice ignored
Anne Scully, manager of the Rape Crisis Centre in Waterford, has criticised gardaí for their handling of the attempted disclosure in this case. Picture: Noel Browne
"We all came from broken backgrounds," says Luke (not his real name), describing the life he knew in Waterford City in the early 1980s. "We had no bathrooms in our house. The toilets were outdoors.
"A lot of us were reared by our grandparents. I suppose some of them thought, 'He's a nice man and he's doing a good thing' but it wasn't like that at all."
The man, who was decades older than them, brought the youngsters, aged roughly 10-13, to the amusements in Tramore, taught them how to drive, and hung out with them. Luke says this man sexually abused a number of the boys.
He alleges, in one instance, that he witnessed him "performing oral sex on one of my friends" at the man's house in the city.
Shaking as he speaks, Luke briefly lays out the sum of his allegations at his friend's dining table. Almost 40 years after that day, Luke takes a breath and explains he has been waiting a long time to talk about something that has been hanging over him for decades.
"I do feel better now," he says.
However, he is frustrated, as he was unable to get a hearing when contact was made with An Garda Síochána on his behalf.
Two years ago, Luke disclosed to a friend what he witnessed. It had either been pushed to the back of his mind or, at more difficult points, overridden his thoughts.
Following encouragement from his friend Claire (not her real name), gardaí in Waterford were contacted on March 3, 2020. Details were supplied of the sexual abuse allegations, along with Luke's name and phone number. After a few days without a response, it was starting to "fester" for him, he said.
Claire decided to ring Waterford Garda Station on March 13.
"I rang them and I got through," Claire says. "I spoke to a female guard, I explained the story.
They felt reassured and decided to wait.
"Then another week to 10 days passed and at this point I couldn't imagine how he felt," Claire says now.
Luke continued to agonise, wondering when that call would arrive. It never came.
"Each night when I would be trying to sleep, I used to be thinking about it in my head. I just wanted to get it out and say it," he says, explaining that he eventually decided against continuing with the process and speaking to gardaí.
As no name was supplied of the alleged offender, gardaí could not have known who the man was or whether he was already the subject of an investigation.
"I had had enough of it," Luke says.
"I expected the call could be coming every morning but it never came, which I couldn't understand. I just kind of began to believe that they wouldn't believe what I was saying to them really, because they were taking so long."
Luke decided to try to shove the memories away after no contact came.
"When I was willing to go forward I thought about it every night and I was waiting to see a guard. Then I said no — I just wanted to put it in the back of my f***ing head."
Disclosing sexual abuse is an enormously difficult thing to do for the abused and more work is being done to examine the effects for people who want to come forward.
Research by Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) in 2020 bears this out. The majority of people abused in their teenage years or in adulthood reveal the abuse to someone less than a year after the assaults take place, but a stark difference emerges for people who were abused in their childhood.
Sexual abuse counsellors explain that for some survivors it takes many years to get to this stage. Some may be disclosing what happened to them for the first time and they may never have spoken the words for what happened out loud before.
Some survivors talk of racing thoughts as they prepare to tell someone, readying to begin unburdening something that had been torturing them up to that point.
A child protection researcher at University College Dublin's School of Social Policy, Social Work, and Social Justice, Dr Joe Mooney, says it has to be understood that for someone making a disclosure, "they are giving away a lot of power - even handing over part of their life story - and how that is handled can have serious impact" on the person who has come forward.
"If that disclosure is then not followed up on, a person can feel that they are not being believed, that they are over-egging what happened and it can add to the shame and stigma around abuse," says Dr Mooney.
Luke had become bound up among the youngsters in the company of the man he believes was trying to groom them after the death of a carer.
He and some of his friends, ranging from roughly 10 to 13, were from tough but deprived backgrounds and so the presence of an older man looking after young boys in the neighbourhood was welcomed.
"We kind of looked up to him, we never got money from any of our parents and he'd be giving you money for chips and things. He used to bring us to Tramore and give us money to play the machines and go on the amusements.
"Then he started to have us in his house and have sleepovers. He had his favourites there; he bought one or two bicycles."
One day, Luke and a friend were passing by the man's house when they spotted another boy's bike in the hall.
"The blinds [were] closed but he didn't have the curtains closed, so we could look in through a little gap.
On other occasions, Luke has alleged that some kids would sit on the man's lap, such as when he was supposedly teaching them how to drive. "You could see clearly that he was on an erection," he said.
"We came from deprived backgrounds. We had no bathrooms in our house, the toilets were outdoors. He used to leave us have showers in his house. He'd leave the door open and come in and use the toilet while we'd be having showers. What he was doing I'm not too sure.
"It's just as I got older in my life I realised what was going on. I never spoke about it with anyone though.” Luke has wondered why he wasn't abused while others were, and believes it may be partly due to him being "a bit more wild" when he was young.
"He eventually barred me from his house. I maybe had ADHD when I was younger but it wasn't diagnosed because it wasn't a thing back then. We were just classed as bold or whatever."
He decided to speak out after reading an article in this newspaper reporting on a separate case about an ongoing investigation in Waterford. A longstanding children's charity called Children's Group Link has been under Garda investigation following a complaint of historical sexual assault at the organisation.
The group has not responded to requests for comment and continues its work. The allegations Luke is making do not concern this group or anyone involved with it - but it got him thinking.
Luke volunteers with groups in Waterford alongside Claire, and was concerned that the alleged abuser could still be "involved with young kids".
The has established that the man Luke's concerns relate to maintained a role involving children for some time following initial details being supplied to gardaí in March 2020.
In her more than 30 years of helping and counselling sexual assault survivors, Anne Scully is in "no doubt" that the lie of the land has changed for the better for people coming forward.
However, Scully, who oversees the Waterford Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre in the city centre, has criticised gardaí for their handling of the attempted disclosure in Luke's case.
"I would expect there would be some follow-up from gardaí and it's baffling that there wasn't," she says. "While it's a second-hand account of abuse, a statement could still be taken as 'soft information' which could then lead to a wider investigation."
The alleged perpetrator was "in his position for a number of years and may still be a danger", particularly by having access to children in his later work, she says.
Under child protection legislation introduced in 2015, "if you have knowledge of a crime against a child you have an obligation to report it to Tusla," Ms Scully says.
"It would not be unusual that the person who wants to make the statement would not be in a position themselves to pick up the phone. When you take into account that this type of information would have held such power over the man who wanted to make this report, over a period of decades, when he wanted to come forward he absolutely did all he could and the matter should have been followed up."
The situation facing sexual abuse complainants has "really improved" in recent years, she says, particularly on the back of more and more successful investigations and prosecutions for sexual abuse crimes. There has also been greater cooperation between Garda investigators and RCNI offices, with which the Waterford group is affiliated.
As for Luke, he maintains that an explanation from gardaí is required: "I think it is a serious matter. It's not like somebody has broken somebody's window. Why didn't they get back? It's understandable to want to know that. It's my part of the story here."
In research published by Joe Mooney last year on retrospective disclosures of childhood sexual abuse, he found that there are a growing number of retrospective abuse cases, with an average of 238 referrals being made every month to Tusla in 2020.
It also found that 74% of people disclosed more than 10 years after their experiences of abuse. Gardaí were ranked the second most likely category of professional to be told, the report added, behind only mental health professionals.
In a separate case, a Garda Ombudsman report released last week showed that gardaí failed to properly investigate information supplied by colleagues in Manchester Greater Police, in relation to sexual abuse allegations.
The allegations were first referred to gardaí by Greater Manchester Police and a "comprehensive report" was sent to gardaí.
But GSOC found that very little was done over a protracted period to carry out an investigation, or to deal with the suspected offender, meaning he remained a risk to children.
When An Garda Síochána was contacted and provided details about Luke's case and attempts to conduct an interview, a spokesman said: "In the absence of more specific details of those at the centre of these alleged matters, we cannot progress your query further at this time."
When asked about Garda vetting procedures, where information has been supplied on an alleged perpetrator - but where no conviction has been secured or investigation opened - a spokesman said that under the National Vetting Bureau (Children & Vulnerable Persons) Acts 2012 to 2016, "information relating to a sexual assault allegation" could be considered 'specified information' and therefore could impede Garda vetting approval for an individual.
- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.
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