{"id":32979,"date":"2025-09-20T15:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/32979\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T15:57:14","slug":"john-boyne-how-writing-the-elements-helped-healed-the-legacy-of-sexual-assault-as-a-schoolboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/32979\/","title":{"rendered":"John Boyne: How writing The Elements helped healed the legacy of sexual assault as a schoolboy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nIn a brave account of the abuse he suffered at school, John Boyne writes that it became the genesis of his series, \u2018The Elements\u2019\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"John Boyne spoke to garda\u00ed about incident\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SF John Boyne (5).jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">John Boyne spoke to garda\u00ed about incident<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">On a Thursday morning in February 2021, I rode my Vespa into Dublin city centre. Covid was still at its peak, and the rules were that you couldn\u2019t travel more than a few kilometres from home, so I was stopped several times along the way by garda\u00ed, but when I told them where I was going, they let me pass.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I was making my way towards the Central Criminal Court to attend the sentencing of John McClean, a teacher from Terenure College who\u2019d been convicted of abusing 23 boys under his care. (I was present as a support person to a close friend who was one of his victims.) McClean was my form master when I was 13 and my English teacher for my Leaving Certificate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a brave account of the abuse he suffered at school, John Boyne writes that it became the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6992],"class_list":["post-32979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-people-culture-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}