Darren’s abuse by the priest ended when he was 11.
His story remains one of the worst I’ve heard
In this extract from his new book, the former Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent recounts the story of a victim of child sexual abuse
I belong, very much, to the “weep alone” brigade when it comes to emotional issues. But I couldn’t help it then, even though Darren and I, drinking our coffee, were surrounded by so many people at tables nearby. I kept seeing the small boy, not the man before me, being brutalised.
His recollection of incidents of sexual abuse by Fr Tony Walsh were vivid, detailed and told with the calm delivery of a man who had been over the ground many times. By then, having talked to many other abuse survivors, I was somewhat familiar with the consequences such abuse would have had for Darren in his life as a young adult.
I recognised the destructive pattern already: the addictions to drink and drugs, the utter turmoil, the confusions, broken relationships, the low self-esteem, the suicide attempts. Even so, I remain amazed at the resilience of survivors – women and men – who survive all that to live calm, ordinary, fulfilling lives. Wounded, but unbowed.
Angela, whose warm embrace was as big as her heart, was the “go-to person” for many of us in the media reporting on the abuse of children in Ballyfermot parish and beyond. She and I spoke frequently, and through her I met Darren and others who had been abused as children by priests. Many did not want to discuss what they had been through publicly and that was always respected.
Trust was crucial and losing that trust in just one case would be enough to end it where all others were concerned. And Angela was key to that trust. If she trusted you, then these people would too. She was like a great mother hen, fiercely protective of her damaged “charges”, with a typical no nonsense, down-to-earth Dublin sense of humour.
Some agreed to speak to me about what had happened to them as background for articles I was writing. Darren, on the other hand, agreed to be interviewed by me for The Irish Times. So we arranged to meet in the Stephen’s Green Centre, which he knew and was not too far from the paper’s offices. His story remains one of the worst I’ve heard.
In June 2018 Darren spoke eloquently at Angela’s funeral in Ballyfermot’s St Matthew’s Church. I was impressed by his composure as he spoke from the altar and remembered how he was panicking the first time he went to see her.
“She came out to the door to me and, the little nod – ‘Howya’. I says, ‘Can I have a talk with you?’, and she said, ‘We’ll have a cup of tea and we’ll go somewhere private.’ And we just started talking. That was 21 years ago. To say I was humbled and honoured to have her in my life would be an understatement.”
There were “many people like me in the Ballyfermot area,” he said.
Angela’s son Derek then spoke of how, in setting up a support group for clerical child sex abuse survivors in Ballyfermot, she “mothered” so many in the area.
“Myself and Gary are her sons, but there’s a lot of sons and daughters out there my ma helped, that she mothered through the years.”
He remembered one Christmas morning when the doorbell rang and a stranger asked, “Is Angela there?” and she said, “Bring him in, bring him in”.
Said Derek, “I thought it was just another visitor till he sat down and Ma starts bringing out the dinner. There was an extra plate there and I said, ‘I suppose I’d better get to know ya’. It was, he recalled, “very typical. It was kind of funny in a way, the seriousness of what she dealt with. After a while it became normalised in our house”.
So extreme had been Darren’s abuse by Tony Walsh that the former priest was sentenced in December 2010 to a total of 123 years imprisonment. Five of the 13 counts, for buggery, attracted sentences of 10, 12, 14, 16 and [another] 16 years each. The remaining counts, for indecent assault, brought sentences ranging from four to nine years each.
As Walsh was to serve his sentences concurrently, 16 years was the maximum time he would spend in jail for those crimes. Four years of that were suspended when a psychologist’s report said it was unlikely that he would offend again. It was the most severe sentence imposed on a clerical child sex abuser in Ireland.
Walsh remains in jail and is likely to be there for many years to come because he has since been sentenced in connection with the abuse of other children. In more recent cases he has begun to plead guilty.
At the trial for his abuse of Darren McGavin, Walsh pleaded not guilty. Sitting in that courtroom, one of the most remarkable things I observed throughout the hearing was the ex-priest’s demeanour of complete indifference; there was not a hint of remorse.
He was also tried in connection with the abuse of a second Ballyfermot man as a child. This man had asked us in the media not to name him in our reports because he had just told his two sons days beforehand about what had happened to him as a child and one son was unable to handle it.
The rest of this story can be read at The Irish Times at the following link:
What Walsh did to Darren McGavin as a small boy is unbearable to recall,
Note: the description of what Walsh did to McGavin gets rather vivid and disturbing to read. Caution is advised for vulnerable readers.
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