Mother got sadistic abuser moved on

A MOTHER has told how she intervened to put a stop to former Christian Brother Liam Coughlan’s abuse after her son told her the teacher had beat him ‘until he cried’.

The mother told the Irish Mail on Sunday she confronted Coughlan after her eldest son told her the teacher ‘beat me up’.

She also revealed her son’s psychologist told various government departments about Coughlan’s behaviour.

‘Just before he started school his father, my husband, died in a car crash. He [her son] was very badly affected by his dad’s death,’ she said. ‘My main concern was my eldest; he was different, highly intelligent, nearly genius level.’

When the boy was in sixth class, he told his mother: ‘Brother Coughlan beat me up.’ She also learned from other children Coughlan took her son out of class ‘and threw him against the store room for as long as it took to make him cry’.

‘This was the early 1990s and my son started bed wetting, became very unwilling to go to school and even leave the house,’ she said.

The mother brought her son to see her sister-in-law, a clinical psychologist who told her: ‘He feels in huge danger at school and definitely there is abuse going on there.’ The mother said: ‘He was referred to another psychologist who saw him for weeks on end. She sat me down and went through the transcripts of her talks with him and she said: “This is notifiable – I am notifying it to the Departments of Health, Education and Justice.”’

The mother said everything Coughlan did was ‘criminal’, adding: ‘A lot of it was overtly sexual and it was classic abuse. She [the psychologist] said a lot of it is buried within him.’

The psychologist gave her paperwork to give to Coughlan, but when she gave it to the then principal of her son’s school, he was ‘very, very arrogant’ towards her. But her intervention ensured Coughlan would not abuse her son or other boys in the school again. She told the MoS: ‘We were assured he would never teach again. He announced he was leaving and was retraining in counselling and going over to the UK. He was sent over to where they send messed up clergy.’

Two years after telling his mother, the by then teenage boy was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She said they were told there were ‘two triggers’ to his illness - his father’s death and the abuse by Coughlan. Distraught, the mother said she ‘felt he [her son] was beyond my reach at that stage’. ‘There were suicides around the town, and with hindsight, I think it had a lot to do with what happened.’

The mother learned Coughlan was the subject of a Garda investigation after being told by other survivors, who read a report in the MoS, about the former Christian Brother being charged with indecent assaults, at Kilkenny District Court.

‘I rang the gardaí and told them my son was abused by Brother Coughlan and they said they need to get it from the victim himself,’ she said. ‘I was afraid to traumatise my son again and I said I wasn’t going to do anything to put his mental health in peril.

‘Only last week I was talking to him on the phone. I told him I loved him very much and then I said: “I don’t know how to say this, but do you remember Brother Coughlan?” He replied: “That bastard mum.”

‘I told him what was happening and I said: “There is no pressure on you, would you like to talk?” And he said: “Yes, yes”. He said: “I want to talk about it to someone who can do something.”

The mother added: ‘The whole thing has come full circle.’