He gave them the name of other boys whom he had abused. Kenneally, related to a prominent Fianna Fáil politician, admitted his abuse. In 1987 one of the boys’ fathers lodged a complaint and was visited by the Garda. To keep them quiet he took photographs of the boys and told them that if they reported him he would claim that they enjoyed what he did. Kenneally was 36 when he started sexually abusing teenage boys in Waterford. James and Sophie’s names have been changed, but Bill Kenneally is real, a convicted abuser who has featured in recent news reports. Her views are echoed by others working in the field.
This means trying to see beyond our disgust at such crimes against children and to understand the factors that lead a person to commit them. We need to create stabler and healthier homes and work on better mental-health awareness and sex education.īut Sophie also believes that we need to provide therapy to abusers before they abuse, therapy that might stop them from hurting children like her in the first place. We need to listen to and educate children, she says. Few would disagree with some of her advice. Today Sophie has a difficult message about how we deal with child abuse. Now in her early 30s, Sophie spent years in therapy, earned a PhD in counselling psychology and went on to work with other survivors of abuse. Sophie’s mother, herself a victim of abuse, had proven incapable of protecting her children. Her biological father was taken away when she was three because he had sexually abused another sister, Rose, although he never harmed Sophie. There was further abuse in Sophie’s family. He also sexually abused my half-sister, his own biological child.” He controlled my every move and everything my mum did. “I’d hope and pray that he wouldn’t come in and pull the blankets back.
“I remember Gerard always wore these cowboy boots, and my little heart would beat faster when I’d hear him coming down to my room,” she says. Sophie was four when her stepfather, Gerard, started to sexually abuse her. If we are to keep children safe we may have to gain a new understanding of the problem and make some unpalatable changes to the way we deal with it. Our current image of child sex abusers in Ireland, and our approach to them, may be putting young people at risk.
Most abuse is carried out by family members or people known to the victim. James’s case highlights some stark facts that are not always understood about child abuse. It creates a perpetual anxiety for the survivor which is hard to put to rest.” “It’s hard for the survivor, for the other siblings, for the extended family. In many cases, James says, nobody wants to ruin the family image. A family member who abuses is always a family member, and how does the family cope with that?” “There’s a lot of focus on priests, rightfully: the abuse and the cover-up were despicable. I think people need to find the language to talk, at home and in schools, about good and bad intimacy. “Now I have a good relationship with my mum, but during my 20s she seemed to downplay it. When I told her what had happened she thought I was confused. When I was 18 my mum brought me to a psychiatrist. I carried self-loathing, humiliation, fear and shame. “During my teens there was a deep and profound sadness that I couldn’t shake, so I drank a lot and took drugs. It went on for about three years, until shortly after my dad died. He told me that if I ever told anyone we would both go to prison. “It began with gentle interference but, over time, became more serious and specific. “I was about eight when my brother started coming into my room,” James says.
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