"Misogyny And Child Abuse Have Always Been Cross-Border Phenomena"

Eamonn McCann ✒ "The Catholic Church deserves to be burdened with most of the blame. But lay people of secure position sang dumb and averted their eyes."

Jimmy called round to our house one afternoon maybe 15 years ago. We made a cup of tea and sat talking about this and that for around an hour. I had stuff to do and remember wishing he’d head off.

Jimmy had been taken “into care” as a child in Derry and lodged with the nuns. Months later, a social worker arrived, put him in a care and drove to Kircubbin in Co. Down, about 100 miles away. He was handed over to a De La Salle brother at the gate of Rubane House for Boys. The abuse started more or less immediately.

How long after he arrived?

“He took me straight into a room, he had my trousers off in ten minutes, maybe five.”

He had been collected from a Church institution by a representative of the State and delivered into the hands of his abusers in another Church institution.

A few weeks after he’d called, someone phoned and said that Jimmy had been found hanging from a fire escape on the Northern Road.

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