Paedophile Irish Christian Brother ‘trafficked boy’ to a house in Ireland to be abused by men
As massive compensation is made to victim of Brothers’ abuse, another survivor speaks out about his rape
A MAN who was brutally sexually abused by an Irish Christian Brother at a school in Scotland claims he was ‘trafficked’ to Ireland during school holid0ays and repeatedly raped by several clerics.
The shocking claim emerged after two Irish Christian Brothers were named in a record €1.678m payout this week to a victim of repeated sex abuse at notorious St Ninian’s residential school in Fife, Scotland.
Christian Brothers Gerry Ryan and John Farrell sexually abused boys over a 20-year period at the school in the 1970s and 1980s.
Now another of Ryan’s victims at St Ninian’s has come forward to say he was trafficked to Ireland by the Irishman, where he was drugged and repeatedly raped.
Dave Sharp, 63, said St Ninian’s became ‘a holiday camp for paedophiles’ during school holidays when boys like him had no homes to go to. But he also claims that boys were taken from the home to Ireland.
Mr Sharp said: ‘I remember Ireland… I will never forget it. I remember being brought to a house there and raped by several men. I am not alone. I know of several survivors who, like me, remember going on the boat.’
Mr Sharp gave statements to Scottish police about his alleged trafficking to Ireland. However, the investigation was dropped after Ryan’s death in July 2013.
In response to queries from the Irish Mail on Sunday, Police Scotland Detective Chief Inspector Steven Bertram said: ‘Where the suspect is deceased, there is no opportunity to interview that person as part of the investigative process nor to allow them to give an account. Therefore, the investigation remains incomplete and there is no prospect of prosecution.’
In 2016, John Farrell from Dublin and Paul Kelly, who had Irish roots and studied at St Patrick’s seminary in Maynooth, were both convicted of rape and sexual assault of several boys at St Ninian’s and were imprisoned.
But Mr Sharp, who has received a five-figure payout from the Christian Brothers in compensation for the abuse he suffered, says the
‘Irish part’ of the story has never been properly investigated.
He told the MoS: ‘We had nowhere to go during the school holidays. I had no home or home life. My only crime was that my mother died while I was an infant. St Ninian’s was effectively a borstal and I was there from age 12 to 16 although I had committed no crime.
‘I remember Ireland. I remember being brought there on the boat. We were in a house and there was another boy, like me, frightened. There were a number of men there. I remember them so clearly. If you put pictures of 100 men in front of me now, I could pick out those six faces without any hesitation.
‘Myself and the other boy were put into a corner and they threw fruit at us and afterwards they took me to a room and raped me. Years later, I met other survivors and they said, “Do you remember going on the boat to Ireland? Do you remember what happened to us there?” I believe it was a paedophile ring.’
Another former student of St Ninian’s made similar allegations to Scottish police in 2014 about being brought to Ireland. In an interview with the Scottish Daily Record, the man said: ‘I was sexually abused and there was very little I could do about it. I was taken to Ireland just like David but I wasn’t daft. I knew there was something going on and I managed to escape the house before anything happened.’
Mr Sharp said he met with a Christian Brother child protection officer who in 2011 travelled from Dublin
‘I believe it was a paedophile ring’
to Northampton, where he now lives, to discuss his allegations.
‘The meeting lasted 15 minutes and this man looked me in the eyes and he said, if you think you are going to get any money from us you are wasting your time.’
Five years later the head of the Christian Brothers in Europe, Edmund Garvey, travelled from Dublin to meet Mr Sharp at a hotel at Manchester City Airport, where he repeated his allegations about the abuse he suffered and how he was trafficked to Ireland by Ryan. He said Brother Garvey was accompanied by a female child protection officer from the order.
‘He asked me lots of questions and they bought me dinner. Then he pulled out an A4 envelope and he
said this is all the records they have of my time in St Ninian’s.
‘It was one page that said, “Dave Sharp was caught raiding the tuck shop with other boys. He also attended various table tennis competitions”. I was furious. I
remember crying all the way home on the train.’
The following year Mr Sharp became the first person in Scotland to win a payout from the Christian Brothers. At the time the order’s solicitor, Alastair Gillespie, said: ‘The Brothers and its legal representatives reviewed Mr Sharp’s allegations and decided it was appropriate to seek to resolve the claim before it became formally litigated in the courts. The Brothers have already expressed regret regarding Mr Sharp’s allegations and reiterates that expression of regret.’ Mr Sharp said the 2019 child sex abuse inquiry into St Ninian’s omitted some of the worst abuse that went on, including his alleged trafficking to Ireland.
He told the MoS: ‘There was no mention of being taken over to Ireland, despite lots of men coming forward and saying the same thing happened to them.
‘We were taken out, taken to houses where there were priests, and in the back garden they would have a coffin in the ground, and they would put us in it and shut the lid and put stones over to simulate a burial and leave you there for ages, hours.
‘There were day trips. People were coming in minibuses to abuse children. They would have a party, running around the dormitories, steaming drunk, grabbing children.’
Ryan died in St Patrick’s home for Christian Brothers in Baldoyle, Dublin, in July 2013. The MoS visited his grave this week in a locked graveyard in Baldoyle. A woman at the care home remembered him and said he was a ‘nice man’.
The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry found Ryan’s sexual abuse was ‘at the most extreme end’ of the scale. The inquiry’s damning report said Ryan was ‘a serial sexual abuser’ of children throughout his time at St Ninian’s, a fact the Christian Brothers also acknowledged.
Born in Ireland in 1928, Ryan taught in West Africa and Gibraltar before he was sent to St Ninian’s in 1969. He remained there until 1974 and returned again in 1975, where he was headmaster until 1981.
The inquiry found boys were sexually abused by him in different ways. One witness called James (not his real name) who attended St
Ninian’s from 1973 to 1976 said he was held back by Ryan after a rugby match and locked in the shower area.
Ryan told him to remove his towel, which he did. He then grabbed him ‘by the hair and he threw me over the sink, which I was big enough to go over, and he sexually abused me... he sodomised me. This attack resulted in
anal bleeding and as a result I had difficulty in walking.’
James was no older than 13 at the time. He said Ryan told him that this was a ‘way of turning a bad boy into a good boy’. Ryan also threatened him that he wouldn’t see his parents again if he spoke about what happened. ‘I’ll remember that until I go to the grave,’ the boy said.
Mr Sharp told the inquiry his earliest memory of St Ninian’s was of being woken by Ryan and taken to his room, and then waking up in his bed with both of them naked. He said he also saw other children being removed from their beds.
‘Sometimes you were picked, sometimes other boys were picked. Many times you heard screams. Sometimes I used to pray that the boy in the next bed got picked before me. Sometimes my prayers got answered and sometimes they didn’t.’
Edmund Garvey and the Christian Brothers did not respond to queries from the MoS this week.
‘People were coming in minibuses to abuse us’