Alison O'Connor: Why must we again hear the same old gory story of clerical sex abuse?

Three decades on and yet little has changed

Fr Sean Fortune, the Wexford cleric who committed suicide while awaiting trial for 66 charges of sexual abuse against 29 boys. Picture: PJ Browne

Where to begin with a story that just never ends? It is almost 30 years ago since I, as a young journalist, first spoke to someone who had been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

Three decades on it has been honestly nauseating to listen, first, to the very fine RTÉ Doc on One, Blackrock Boys, and the subsequent horrific outpouring all week of other boys, now men, of their own abuse at the hands of clerics.