Letter from the Editor
IT is beyond appalling that the paedophile John McClean could — until last week — get away with abusing dozens of boys in his care at Terenure College over the course of decades. Appalling, but — if you went to school in Ireland back around the time that McClean was ruining young lives — not that surprising.
“A lot of these victims never told their partners, never told their parents, thought they would never be believed,” Detective Inspector Jason Miley tells our reporter Maeve Sheehan this week, adding: “Whatever amount of time was needed with a victim we would spend that time.”
In that story, on page 6, Maeve writes: “Former pupils say that rumours circulated about McClean for years.” That sentence should resonate with many readers. From time to time, I think of the Christian Brother at my own Limerick school about whom very similar “rumours” circulated. There were whispers of certain boys of 12 or 13 being kept back, alone, after GAA training. It seemed like most of the school knew something was going on, but nobody did anything about it. After several years, the man moved on — the circumstances were vague, but there was mention of a new school in Cork. Maybe even a promotion.
What happened to the boys who were almost certainly abused by him? How many of them were there? How bad was it? How were they affected by it? We don’t know.
Like most such paedophiles of that era, it seems he got away with it. In my adult years, I never saw his name in a newspaper report. The McClean trial and conviction is unusual in that respect. The fate for abusers like him is more often a comfortable retirement, not a jail cell.
Elsewhere this week, in the People & Culture section, there is an extract from an important new book by the admirable Trish Kearney, who writes about her experience of being abused as a girl by George Gibney, her swimming coach. Gibney, notoriously, has never been brought to trial. Despite facing 27 counts of indecency and carnal knowledge of children, he won a judicial review in the High Court 27 years ago which prohibited the DPP from going ahead with the case against him.
That was a grotesque outcome for his alleged victims. But new witnesses have come forward to gardaí, after hearing the podcast series Where is George Gibney? They continue to hope that — like John McClean — Gibney will finally face the full rigours of the justice system, no matter how long that might take. It is the very least they deserve.