The Brothers

 

In 1965-66 I left Scoil Fatima, which was run by the Mercy Convent nuns. The nuns did not take boys after Second Class so I went to the Marist Brothers' National School in Temple Street. It was an all-boys school then and I walked there and back each day with the Morrisons, Sean ,Gerard and Martin who lived up the street in number 10. The school was called St. John's and the Headmaster was Brother Phelim.He is second from the left. 

Beside him at the end is Brother Bonaventure who taught me in Third Class and was a very kindly, holy person. He always said the class prayer in a way that sounded as if he was giving each word his complete attention.

I moved from Brother Bonaventure to Mr. Mc Devitt who chain smoked, and smelled of alcohol regularly. I don't remember much good about him. I didn't want to be taught by Brother Agnellis because he had a reputation for being very cross and I was a sensitive, quiet child by all accounts.

I don't know when Brother Phelim started encouraging me to be a Marist Brother. It was probably when I was eleven years of age.

 I know when I got a teacher Mr. Frank Mc Gill I started to do well in school.

 My best friend was John O' Neill who lived on the Strandhill Road. I was very disappointed when his family moved to Clontarf, Co. Dublin because he was my first friend from outside of the Doorly Park gang of the Morrisons and Paul Hamilton. John always finished second in the annual class examinations and I finished first twice. But we were not the top stream. That was Mr. Curran's class.  I had the difficult choice to pick from the prizes that Brother Phelim brought around for the boys who finished in first, second and third place. One year I got a gun that fired corks at targets of jungle animals. 

Brother Phelim had a large can of boiled sweets that he distributed from his office one at a time to a queue of boys who did little jobs for him at lunchtime. I often got one for nothing. Sometimes he would keep me back and give me information on the college in Athlone where you went to become a Brother. He gave me prayers to Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the Marist Brothers. 

If I arrived late for school (which I did often) I was sent to the headmaster's 

office "Isteach go dti an oifig" (Go to the office!) and given a wee slap on the back of the head. There, punishment was the cane for the queue of latecomers. Usually two slaps on each hand....at least. I was always left until last and sent back to class, unpunished. I don't know why. Brother Phelim continued to encourage me to become a Marist Brother. I was invited up to the Brothers' House one Saturday or maybe two and shown the plush living room. I discussed the idea of becoming a Brother with Mam who was not that keen. I know she thought I was too young to make a decision like that. On one occasion I remember her walking up the school hill, looking beautiful in a brown heavy coat with a fur collar, to talk to the headmaster.

 I continued to be very happy in the school.

 I especially liked the choir with Brother Einard in my final two years. 

 Some of my happiest memories are performing with the choir in Feis Shligigh and Feis Cheoil. I would love to get my hands on the reel to reel recordings that Brother Einard (above) made of us singing songs like The Trout, The Dying Swan, Oklahoma and Brachan Lom. We also participated in the Marist Past Pupils' Union Concert in the Gilhooley Hall in aid of the Lourdes Invalid Fund which Mam came to and I remember cosying up to her and eating eating a bag of Emerald sweets while watching the other acts. Happy days.

 Brother Christopher arrived and started the school marching band. It added a new aspect to music in the school and lots of the boys joined enthusiastically. Brother Christopher was like the Pied Piper. I didn't join the band for some reason that I can't remember.

I left St. John's in 1969.

In June 2005 Brother Agnellis was jailed for abuse.

The following is an account on the database of Paedophile/Abusers in  Ireland/U.K.

"A former Marist brother has been jailed for three years for sexually abusing two former pupils at St John’s National School in Co Sligo during the 1970s.

 

Known as Brother Agnellis, Peter White of Celbridge Abbey in Co Kildare pleaded guilty to eight sample charges of abusing the two boys who were aged between nine and eleven at the time.

At Sligo Circuit Court, Judge Miriam Reynolds said the torture perpetrated by White was unfathomable. 

She said the boys were subjected to serial abuse by White who would follow them out to the school toilets and abuse them.

White, now 74, also admitted to hanging children by their anoraks on a hook on the back of the classroom door.

He agreed he was over physical with the boys and described himself as a hard man at the time.

His trial was told that he had inflicted “unfathomable torture” on the two small boys entrusted to his care. White followed the boys into the school toilets where he indecently assaulted them. Trial judge Miriam Reynolds said that he had used his cunning and his position as a teacher to terrorise these children in the classroom, where they should have felt protected and safe. 

The children ranged in age from six to twelve and came from all walks of life. Many were from regular middle class backgrounds while some had to work a regular job after school slaughtering pigs, delivering bread or newspapers to keep money coming in for their families. Many of these working children wound up illiterate at the end of the junior schooling. Some wound up as the victim of a perverse group of paedophiles.

Five out of ten teachers in the school were actively sexually abusing  the children in their classes between 1967 – 1977.

Patrick Curran (Lay Teacher) 

 

Sentence: 12 years in prison, later reduced to nine on appeal.

In July 2005, Patrick Curran was found guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of indecently assaulting nine boys he taught at the St. John's school between 1966 and 1984. Described by the trial judge as a “determined paedophile”, Curran taught at St John’s National School from July 1966 until he was asked to leave when the allegations came to light in 1999.

Curran had denied an initial 237 counts of the indecent assault of 10 boys between September 1966 and June 1984.

At his trial, he described himself as a “gay person” with a sexual preference for old people over the age of 65.

Brother Christopher

Sentence: 12 months

Convicted and then sentenced in May 2010 of 35 charges of sexual abuse against four young boys between 1968 and 1977.

He stood trial on four occasions on charges of abuse at the Sligo school. He was initially found guilty in Sligo Circuit Criminal Court.

But that conviction was later overturned in the Court of Criminal Appeal. Two further trials for the same crimes collapsed. He denied all the charges.

Over the years, five of those ten teachers – some brothers, some lay teachers – were convicted of repeated and multiple charges of sexual abuse of their students. One teacher had an initial 500 counts of child sex abuse against him.
 In one case the abuse came to light after the student murdered his father who he suspects had been accepting money in return for letting his son get abused.

While exceptional in its concentration of abusers, this is an example of what can go on right under parent’s noses. It is also great demonstration of how pedophiles groom and choose their victims, preying on the weak, the quiet and withdrawn pupils with problems at home. The perpetrators claim that there was no collusion between them, no sex ring.  A judge described their targeting of boys as taking “advantage of vulnerability, someone who was poor, hungry, neglected, deprived, weak and from deplorable home circumstances.” Judge Kennedy describing Martin Meaney at sentencing 01/30/08. "Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. It happens everyday to some extent even in a town like yours. You don’t know about it because we live in a state of unconscious social denial – “it’ll never happen here” and can miss the sometimes glaring signals that abuse is taking place. Moreover we miss the abuse because these young victims are bound to their abusers by a bond of secrecy.

 Most never tell of their abuse and those that do, do so long after the episodes have ended."

 

St. John's is is now a Co-educational National School.