{"id":540484,"date":"2026-07-09T05:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T05:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540484\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T05:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T05:54:10","slug":"former-christian-brothers-1970-abuse-confession-letter-concealed-for-decades-dail-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540484\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Christian Brother\u2019s 1970 abuse confession letter concealed for decades, D\u00e1il hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A letter of confession by a former Christian Brother<\/a> who indecently assaulted 19 boys at a national school in Limerick<\/a> in the 1960s was concealed for decades, forcing survivors to fight until 2021 for compensation, the D\u00e1il<\/a> has heard.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader Mary Lou McDonald<\/a> said the letter by S\u00e9an Drummond who sexually abused the children at Creagh Lane National School, dated back to February 1970.<\/p>\n

She called for an independent investigation into the concealment of the letter, to establish whether State agencies were aware of it, and the payment of full compensation to the survivors.<\/p>\n

Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> said \u201cthere is a shocking history of child sexual abuse in this country\u201d and acknowledged the \u201clife-changing impact\u201d of abuse on the survivors of Drummond\u2019s \u201cheinous acts\u201d and many others in schools and across society.<\/p>\n

McDonald said \u201ccorrespondence shows that the Christian Brothers in Dublin and in Rome were fully aware of the abuse committed by Drummond\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe confession letter was concealed. It was never given to the survivors, so the investigation, the criminal case, and the survivors\u2019 civil cases were conducted without this key piece of evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The survivors only launched their compensation claim after Drummond\u2019s conviction. The State argued at the time that a crucial European Court of Human Rights ruling in the Louise O\u2019Keeffe abuse case did not apply because there had not been a prior complaint.<\/p>\n

McDonald said the confession letter itself constituted a prior complaint.<\/p>\n

Had it been released \u201cthe men wouldn\u2019t have had to fight until 2021 to access compensation. The concealment of Drummond\u2019s confession letter resulted in further pain, trauma, and years of unspeakable distress for these survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drummond was sentenced in 2009 to two years imprisonment. He served five months, McDonald said, but the survivors and their families \u201cserve a life sentence on account of this abuse. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the worst thing of it, of course, is that they were faced down so viciously by the State.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of the survivors observed the exchange from the D\u00e1il visitors\u2019 gallery.<\/p>\n

McDonald said \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t lose sight of what these men went through as children\u201d. One of them, John Boland \u201cspoke of the horrors endured. He said \u2018you\u2019d be called to the front of the class for some reason or another. He\u2019d put his cloak around you and start interfering with you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn told of a full school year, hoping just to get through the days without being molested. Creagh Lane National School should have been a safe place for children, but Se\u00e1n Drummond turned it into a living in nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

These men \u201cwere failed catastrophically as children, and treated appallingly as survivors, and for years they had to fight the state for recognition, justice, and full compensation. <\/p>\n

She said they had been locked out of the redress process for years, prevented from accessing compensation because they had not made a prior complaint of abuse even though their abuser had been convicted in court. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the men are now in their 60s. Some have died without seeing full justice, and it\u2019s now finally time to do right by them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach pledged to take the issue further and \u201csee how best to examine\u201d and deal with the concealment of the letter.<\/p>\n

He said the scoping inquiry into historical sexual abuse in day and boarding schools run by religious orders was published in 2024 and recognised that those involved should be held accountable in terms of what happened and financially. He said he would discuss the issue with the Minister for Education. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A letter of confession by a former Christian Brother who indecently assaulted 19 boys at a national school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14234,15049,615,26705,61,60,1396,3658,1843,43,3415],"class_list":["post-540484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-christian-brothers","tag-dail-eireann","tag-dublin","tag-european-court-of-human-rights","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick","tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-sinn-fein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540484","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=540484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}