Ricky says the people who abused him ‘took away my childhood and destroyed my life and the lives of others’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Owing to extreme poverty, Ricky’s mother sent him to live in a Catholic children’s home where abuse was rife.
He suffered emotional and physical abuse, and was sexually abused by two members of staff, a priest and a nun.
Ricky grew up in the 1960s. He lived with his mother and older brother; his father was not around. They were very poor and he recalls having very little to eat, and no electricity or gas. ‘I went to school in ragged clothes and holes in my shoes, but it meant I got one hot meal five days a week’ he says.
When he was nine years old, some people came to the house and Ricky’s mother told him and his brother that they had to go with them. She said they would be safe. The boys were taken to a Catholic children’s home. ‘I was scared … not knowing what was going on’ he recalls.
Ricky and his brother were led into an office where one of the nuns greeted them and smiled. He says that made him feel a little safer.
The two boys were allocated dormitory places but not together. That night Ricky was frightened and started crying. The nun who had met him in the office came and asked what was wrong. She took him to her room, put him into her bed and got in with him, naked.
She masturbated him, made him touch her genitals and rubbed herself against him. When it was over, the nun took Ricky back to his room. On the way, she hit him hard on the head and told him not to tell anyone or he would have to go to the police station and stay there.
The next night, the nun woke him again and took him to her room to sexually abuse him. The abuse included rape and oral sex. She hit him and threatened him again.
Ricky was in the children’s home for about two years, and the nun sexually abused him numerous times. If he did anything wrong she would punch and pinch him until he was ‘black and blue’.
The nun would say that Ricky had bruises because he had been fighting other children, and he was taken to see the priest to be punished for this. He tried to say that the nun had caused the bruises, but he was told to stop telling lies.
When Ricky got upset, the priest pulled him close, and put his hand down the boy’s trousers, then made Ricky touch his penis. Ricky recalls that the priest said ‘it was our secret game that we could play at any time’. This abuse happened every week. Ricky would cry while it happened but this had no impact on the priest.
The impact of the abuse still has a significant effect on Ricky. He feels a huge sense of guilt and shame, he finds it hard to trust people and has a constant feeling that he is not good enough or worthy of happiness. His hearing is impaired because he was beaten round the head so often.
Ricky wants someone to take responsibility for what happened to him and for the way staff at the home abused their position of trust and abused children.
He believes that nuns and priests are a law unto themselves and are protected by the church, and says ‘organisations like this should not be looking after vulnerable people and children’.
Ricky recently reported the abuse he suffered to the police and is waiting to give a statement. He has since discovered that the priest who abused him was convicted of similar offences against other children and died in prison.