Conspiracy of silence – how one boy took on the evil-doers
In each college, I and colleagues witnessed senior students buggering ten and 11-year-old boarders.
Colleagues refused to be involved in reporting the incidents, so I took it on myself to tell the presidents of the colleges what we witnessed.
I was savagely reprimanded for even mentioning the subject and warned never again to discuss it with anyone. Naively, I had suggested the reverend presidents should go along and see for themselves the activities before expelling the culprits.
Nevertheless, at my ‘tender’ age, I had the effrontery to say: “If I am discriminated again by you or by any of your priests when I finish in this college, I shall tell the world what buggeries were permitted to go on here.”
Thereafter, presidents and priests went out of their way to be exceptionally courteous to me. Obviously, they knew buggeries took place and apparently ignored it. I realised I was being bribed to keep my mouth shut.
I completed my third-level education in American and Canadian universities, and in Cambridge. Years later I returned to Ireland. I met up with colleagues who had been with me in each college and was both amazed and alarmed to learn that several of the perpetrators and participants were now ordained priests.
I failed to comprehend how, and why, presidents and priests who were aware that numbers of their seminarians had penchants for buggery endorsed the progression of such individuals to ordination. Consequently, it has been no surprise to me that clerical paedophilia has constituted a monstrous social and criminal degradation of so many of our innocent youth.
I am devastated, though not in the least surprised, that the prevalence of such perversity was feloniously ‘covered up’ at curate, parish priest, monsignor, bishop, archbishop and cardinal levels, instead of being subjected to legal retribution. I always have been, and shall remain, a practising Catholic.
Now in my old age, I am saddened and dismayed that my long cherished Catholic Church has ben besmirched by a proliferation of sexual scandals perpetrated by a minority of priests.
I hope and pray that this widely publicised clerical criminality will not dissuade my grandchildren and great grandchildren from practising their Catholic religion throughout their lives.
Edwin Cussen,
Wilton House,
Wilton Avenue,
Bishopstown,
Cork.
