Dozen sue St John of God cleric

A ST John of God brother at the centre of a covered-up abuse scandal – first exposed by an Irish Mail on Sunday international investigation – is being sued by more than a dozen alleged victims.

Those suing are all former pupils of St Augustine’s, a school for children with intellectual disability in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, where Brother Aidan Clohessy was headmaster for almost 25 years.

This comes as the Garda Ombudsman confirmed it has begun a probe into the original Garda investigation into Brother Aidan after a complaint by an abuse survivor who gave a statement in 2001 but heard nothing back.

After Brother Aidan was first accused of child abuse, the St John of God (SJOG) order covered up the allegations, misled a statutory inquiry, secretly paid compensation to some victims and dispatched him to Malawi without informing the authorities there of any potential risk to children.

In Malawi, Brother Aidan was allowed to run the order’s children’s programmes for almost two decades even as his order told child protection authorities here that he had no contact with minors at all.

While there, he routinely collected street children whom he housed at a specially built garage at his home where he showered and washed them. Brother Aidan and his order also lied to international donors in order to obtain more than €1m in funding for operations in Malawi – telling a German charity he had never been the focus of any child abuse concerns.

The MoS first exposed Brother Aidan in 2017 after a lengthy investigation traced several alleged victims in Ireland and Malawi.

The story resulted in funding worth millions being withdrawn from the St John of God order by international donors and the Irish Government.

Our coverage also sparked a Garda investigation and today files relating to at least half a dozen alleged victims are awaiting a decision from the Director of Public Prosecutions, which is believed to be imminent.

Now the MoS can reveal more than a dozen former pupils of Brother Aidan – who was head of St Augustine’s from 1970 until 1993 – have decided to take High Court cases against him and his order.

Those taking cases include Joe Devine, who came forward to speak publicly about his experience after he saw Brother Aidan’s photo on the front page of the MoS.

The Department of Education, which largely funded the order’s St Augustine’s school and oversaw the now-closed redress scheme for those who suffered abuse in Statefunded institutions, is also facing lawsuits.

Some survivors are also suing the Provincial of the St John of God Order, Donatus Forkan, and the recently retired Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.

As the then-head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Martin would likely have been aware of a secret Vatican investigation into Brother Aidan, although the Archdiocese has refused to comment on the matter.

That investigation – referred to as a Canonical Inquiry – was set up in 2012 as Brother Aidan was withdrawn from his mission in Malawi overnight.

No one at the order’s operation in Malawi was ever told why Brother Aidan had been suddenly withdrawn without any notice and no one there was aware of his history of abuse allegations until the MoS exposé.

Legal firms currently preparing High Court cases against Brother Aidan include Coleman Legal, a Dublin firm with a significant track record involving institutional abuse cases.

Dún Laoghaire-based Murphy Solicitors has also initiated numerous High Court cases on behalf of former pupils who came forward after our initial investigation.

One of the cruellest aspects of the alleged abuse scandal at St Augustine’s is that because pupils were intellectually disabled and often illiterate, many remained unaware of and unable to access the

Residential Institutions Redress Board Scheme (RIRB).

None of the alleged victims involved in the current legal actions have been through the RIRB.

Those pupils who did get compensation ‘Investigation into possible breaches’

from the RIRB were silenced from speaking out publicly or pursuing legal cases by the terms of the scheme which imposed criminal offences for such actions.

At the time of redress, several of these former pupils did make formal statements to Garda detectives about Brother Aidan.

But these survivors never heard back from the force until after a new investigation was launched in 2017 on foot of this newspaper’s revelations.

Now the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) is investigating the conduct of the original investigation – into Brother Aidan on foot of a complaint from one survivor.

In recent days, GSOC confirmed it is investigating a complaint made by survivor Con Carroll, who made a 2001 statement to gardaí about being allegedly abused by Brother Aidan at St Augustine’s.

Mr Carroll never heard anything more after making his original statement in 2001. And he is now seeking answers about what happened to his case.

‘The GSOC has decided that your complaint is admissible and is conducting an investigation into possible breaches of Garda discipli- and regulations,’ GSOC confirmed to Mr Carroll a week ago.

When contacted by the MoS this weekend, an SJOG spokesman said the order had ‘no comment to make at this time.’

The order has previously apologised for childcare failings and said it would ‘cooperate fully’ with Garda investigation s into Brother Aidan.

I WET THE BED. HE BEAT ME THEN HE TOUCHED ME,’ CLAIMS EX-PUPIL

JOE DEVINE knows what he will say in court.

The one-time resident of St Augustine’s will tell of the first night he wet the bed and the alleged punishment handed down by Brother Aidan Clohessy. ‘He took me into the bathroom and he pulled down my pyjamas and he walloped me across the a*** and then touched my testicles,’ Joe alleges.

‘He said, “You’ve got a nice fine pair”. They were his words. He said, “You don’t have to tell anyone about this”.’

Joe quickly learned not to wet the bed anymore. But that wasn’t enough. ‘If I didn’t do something properly, like making the beds properly, Brother Aidan would punish me by slapping me. He would tell me to pull my trousers and underpants down.

‘Once in the gym he put me lying down in the store room where the mats were. He put me lying across the mats with my trousers and underpants down and then he beat my backside.

‘When I was lying facing away from him he said, “Don’t move, keep your head frontways. Do not turn your head – keep it straight”. He gave me four slaps across the a*** with the strap. He took a long time with the fifth one and then he came up and put his hands in around me, then I started screaming. That’s when he touched my behind altogether.’

Joe is one of several former residents of St Augustine’s who is waiting for a DPP decision on the two-year Garda investigation that began after the Irish Mail on Sunday exposed Brother Aidan.

Now represented by legal firm Coleman Legal, Joe is preparing to sue regardless of the DPP’s decision. One way or another he is determined to seek justice and to tell his story.

Joe, who cannot read, never spoke about what happened until he saw Brother Aidan’s face on the front page of this newspaper. Now he wants the whole world to know.

For his part Brother Aidan maintains he is innocent. ‘I don’t think anybody is guilty until they are proved guilty,’ he told the MoS when we confronted him in 2017. ‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ he reiterated.

Brother Aidan was the principal of St Augustine’s school for boys with special needs from 1970 to 1993.

Prior to that he worked at the St John of God’s St Raphael’s campus in Celbridge, Co.

Kildare. He is a colleague of SJOG Provincial Donatus Forkan. The pair were professed together in 1960 and today they are both housed in the order’s comfortable residence in Stillorgan.

The first abuse complaint against Brother Aidan was made in 1985. But this was dismissed internally and gardaí were not informed about it until 27 years later.

In 1993, Donatus Forkan sent Brother Aidan to Mzuzu, a remote city in northern Malawi, presenting him with a bronze statue of St John of God on his departure.

As Brother Aidan set about establishing new facilities for street children in Malawi – and

His order received complaints of abuse housing street kids in a garage in his compound – his order back home continued to receive complaints of abuse.

Some of these complaints were secretly settled through the Redress Board, something the order never told its funders or the authorities in Malawi.

The order, meanwhile, told Brother Aidan not to work with children and reassured the health authorities here that he was ‘no longer involved with service to children’.

In truth, the opposite was the case. Brother Aidan continued to work and live with children in Africa. When we traced some of these children, they spoke of Brother Aidan routinely collecting them from the streets and forcing them to wash in his presence at his compound.

By 2006 Donatus Forkan had risen to become the Prior General – the worldwide leader – of his order. Based in Rome, he was responsible for approving millions in compensation and legal fees to protect accused SJOG brothers in Australia who would later be jailed.

In 2010, Brother Forkan and Brother Aidan celebrated their Golden Jubilee together, and Brother Donatus went on one of his frequent trips to Malawi, staying in Brother Aidan’s compound.

Children who stayed there at the time remember the visits.

In 2011, Brother Donatus was back in Malawi again to watch Brother Aidan surrender the statue given him in 1993, to newly professed African brothers taking over the helm.

Then in 2012, as Brother Donatus left Rome to become Provincial in Ireland again, Brother Aidan was quietly withdrawn from Malawi in the wake of a Vatican investigation.

By the time he was withdrawn, Brother Aidan was facing 14 allegations of abuse in Ireland – a number that has now risen significantly.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•