Shock at abuse implies belief that school tie protects boys

THE old school tie is credited with carrying many privileges, from powerful connections to open doors at society’s highest levels to an aura of unshakeable self-confidence and membership of a gilded elite.

But not even the greatest critics of this supposed badge of social exclusivity would also credit it with the magic power to protect bearers from predators and paedophiles.

Yet that is precisely what the shocked outrage at the Blackrock college revelations suggests.

That this large fee-paying school in south Dublin, cradle of statesmen and sport stars galore, should alone, of all our boys’ schools and organisations, have been spared the horrors of child sex abuse?

Boys’ schools, particularly boarding schools like Blackrock, are magnets for paedophiles because they offer a steady supply of children over prolonged periods, and often in vulnerable situations.

The Murphy Report lifted the lid on the Dublin Archdiocese and its policy of moving paedophile priests to new parishes rather than dismissing them and reporting them to the Garda Síochána.

The Ryan Report into Church-run institutions showed how in the boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers, molestation and rape were ‘endemic’.

The Brothers’ reputation was destroyed by the scandals of child sex abuse, the Order becoming a byword for sadomasochism and brutality.

There are historical sex abuse allegations against 21 members of the Carmelite Order who run Terenure College and more against Castleknock College, home of the Vincentians.

The Irish Jesuits recently set up a redress scheme for boys abused by Fr Joseph Marmion in three of its schools. The victims and their classmates tell the same story; of sex abuse and grooming being normalised in school, an open secret among boys as they warned each other of the monsters, while a handful of quiet or vulnerable boys slipped through the net to be abused by lay teachers or priests.

So why would schools run by the Holy Ghost Fathers, now renamed Spiritans, be any different?