‘I WET THE BED. HE BEAT ME THEN HE TOUCHED ME,’ CLAIMS EX-PUPIL
JOE DEVINE knows what he will say in court.
The one-time resident of St Augustine’s will tell of the first night he wet the bed and the alleged punishment handed down by Brother Aidan Clohessy. ‘He took me into the bathroom and he pulled down my pyjamas and he walloped me across the a*** and then touched my testicles,’ Joe alleges.
‘He said, “You’ve got a nice fine pair”. They were his words. He said, “You don’t have to tell anyone about this”.’
Joe quickly learned not to wet the bed anymore. But that wasn’t enough. ‘If I didn’t do something properly, like making the beds properly, Brother Aidan would punish me by slapping me. He would tell me to pull my trousers and underpants down.
‘Once in the gym he put me lying down in the store room where the mats were. He put me lying across the mats with my trousers and underpants down and then he beat my backside.
‘When I was lying facing away from him he said, “Don’t move, keep your head frontways. Do not turn your head – keep it straight”. He gave me four slaps across the a*** with the strap. He took a long time with the fifth one and then he came up and put his hands in around me, then I started screaming. That’s when he touched my behind altogether.’
Joe is one of several former residents of St Augustine’s who is waiting for a DPP decision on the two-year Garda investigation that began after the Irish Mail on Sunday exposed Brother Aidan.
Now represented by legal firm Coleman Legal, Joe is preparing to sue regardless of the DPP’s decision. One way or another he is determined to seek justice and to tell his story.
Joe, who cannot read, never spoke about what happened until he saw Brother Aidan’s face on the front page of this newspaper. Now he wants the whole world to know.
For his part Brother Aidan maintains he is innocent. ‘I don’t think anybody is guilty until they are proved guilty,’ he told the MoS when we confronted him in 2017. ‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ he reiterated.
Brother Aidan was the principal of St Augustine’s school for boys with special needs from 1970 to 1993.
Prior to that he worked at the St John of God’s St Raphael’s campus in Celbridge, Co. Kildare. He is a colleague of SJOG Provincial Donatus Forkan. The pair were professed together in 1960 and today they are both housed in the order’s comfortable residence in Stillorgan.
The first abuse complaint against Brother Aidan was made in 1985. But this was dismissed internally and gardaí were not informed about it until 27 years later.
In 1993, Donatus Forkan sent Brother Aidan to Mzuzu, a remote city in northern Malawi, presenting him with a bronze statue of St John of God on his departure.
As Brother Aidan set about establishing new facilities for street children in Malawi – and housing street kids in a garage in his compound – his order back home continued to receive complaints of abuse.
Some of these complaints were secretly settled through the Redress Board, something the order never told its funders or the authorities in Malawi.
The order, meanwhile, told Brother Aidan not to work with children and reassured the health authorities here that he was ‘no longer involved with service to children’.
In truth, the opposite was the case. Brother Aidan continued to work and live with children in Africa. When we traced some of these children, they spoke of Brother Aidan routinely collecting them from the streets and forcing them to wash in his presence at his compound.
By 2006 Donatus Forkan had risen to become the Prior General – the worldwide leader – of his order. Based in Rome, he was responsible for approving millions in compensation and legal fees to protect accused SJOG brothers in Australia who would later be jailed.
In 2010, Brother Forkan and Brother Aidan celebrated their Golden Jubilee together, and Brother Donatus went on one of his frequent trips to Malawi, staying in Brother Aidan’s compound.
Children who stayed there at the time remember the visits.
In 2011, Brother Donatus was back in Malawi again to watch Brother Aidan surrender the statue given him in 1993, to newly professed African brothers taking over the helm.
Then in 2012, as Brother Donatus left Rome to become Provincial in Ireland again, Brother Aidan was quietly withdrawn from Malawi in the wake of a Vatican investigation.
By the time he was withdrawn, Brother Aidan was facing 14 allegations of abuse in Ireland – a number that has now risen significantly.
His order received complaints of abuse