Colm O'Gorman

Colm O’Gorman founded One In Four, an organisation which helps those in Ireland and Britain who were sexually abused as children. One of six children who grew up on a farm in the south-east of Ireland, O’Gorman was himself sexually abused as a boy by the late Father Sean Fortune. In 2002 he was voted Man Of The Year in Ireland and in 2003 successfully sued the Ferns Diocese for the abuse he suffered. He is regularly invited by the media to comment on matters relevant to the crime of child sex abuse, and his calm and articulate demeanour has given comfort and strength to others who have suffered similar abuse.

JH: People watching the televised discussion after the broadcast of Cardinal Secrets on RTE were amazed that you could remain so calm while apologists for the Church seemed to be incapable of understanding the appallingness of the crimes revealed by the programme.
CO'G: In reality I was gripping the table with anger. I can still remember the rage I felt. That rage increased as the two people from the Dublin Archdiocese seemed to want to minimise the horror of what we’d seen on our screens. They rolled out the same old abject responses, so I didn’t feel calm at all. They started off with the cliché about not wanting to defend the indefensible, and then proceeded to try to do just that! All that stuff about not understanding the nature of paedophilia, nobody believes those excuses any more.

JH: How do you feel about the issue of blame?
CO'G: I can remember as a child, and this only came out later in therapy, not being able to understand how nobody knew I was being abused. I’m not that good at hiding things. If I had a sick stomach or was a bit unwell, somebody would have noticed.

JH: So how can something as awful as this be overlooked?
CO'G: It’s too disturbing, and people don’t want to see, and that reinforces for children that it’s their fault. They notice people looking away and wonder why they seem so repellent.

JH: But isn’t it a harsh view of parents to believe they knew and did nothing?
CO'G: Only if you see it as a judgement, which it’s not. For a loving parent there can hardly be anything more devastating than the idea that their child has been raped by somebody to whom they have entrusted that child. I can understand why anyone might desperately want this not to be true. They might want to believe anything but not that awful truth.

JH: What should they have spotted about you?
CO'H: My mother recalled that when I was about five or six she came into a room where, like any typical bunch of kids, we were making a racket. When she shouted at us, apparently I stood bolt upright from behind the settee with my face as white as a ghost. I think that was probably the day after I’d been raped for the first time. Thirty years later, she still remembered it. Seeing me like that obviously had a big impact on her, but she didn’t ask why. I’m not blaming her for that. Being raped by a priest was something that couldn’t exist for her then. So the lesson is, if you think something is wrong with a child, don’t let it pass, find out what it is.

JH: Perhaps parents would be concerned about introducing notions connected with sex to the child unnecessarily?
CO'G: It can be done very discreetly, and we need to be careful not to go to the other extreme too. I worked with a woman whose mother had been abused. That mother had told her children to tell her if anybody ever touched them and she’d kill whoever did it. Unfortunately, one of the children who was subsequently abused couldn’t tell her mother because she was afraid her mother would literally kill the abuser and she’d go to prison!

JH: Should teachers also be able to pick up on something wrong with a child?
CO'G: We can talk about teachers, or anybody who is around children, but I wonder why are we all so willing to ignore children’s hurt? When the toddler Jamie Bulger was murdered in England, many people were later devastated because they’d seen him being taken away screaming by the boys who murdered him, yet they’d failed to intervene.

JH: Maybe we rationalise it away by presuming there must be another reason?
CO'G: But if the child is not okay, that very fact should prompt us to find out why and not make assumptions.

JH: Sometimes adults don’t want to pay too much attention to kids to avoid spoiling them or giving in to their every whim.
COG: Yes, but we have to ask why that child is looking for attention.
JH: But the child might simply enjoy attention.
CO'G: But I think that type of behaviour is very different from a dysfunctional demand for attention at a deeper level. If a child is inappropriately seeking attention, that’s an indication that questions need to be asked. I’d prefer to see our attitude inverted so that our first instinct would be to question why we should do nothing, rather than having to justify doing something.

JH: You can’t watch over children all day every day, so isn’t there a limit to how far parents can go to protect their children?
CO'G: Of course, if you are so afraid that you are won’t let them out of your sight, that might be equally harmful! You could instil a disproportionate fear of the world they eventually have to learn to face on their own. The most valuable way we can help children to protect themselves is to tell them they have a right to themselves, that nobody has a right to force them to do anything they don’t want to do without at least talking it through. We can help them to an understanding of whatever issues are involved. If little Jimmy doesn’t want to kiss his Uncle Pat good night, or Jenny doesn’t want to be tickled, why force them? We don’t need to force children to do those kind of things. We seem to feel that, like breaking a horse, we have to break their wills, rather than openly exploring an area of difficulty with them.

JH: At what point can they be told about sexual matters?
We don’t have to tell five year olds about sex. But we should answer questions honestly when asked them. That way, sex education will always be age-appropriate. It’s not always about sex either, but about teaching children they have a right to their own bodies, and that nobody has a right to intrude upon them in that way, and they have a right to say ‘no’.

JH: Is the sexual abuse of children something that will always be with us, and maybe always was, just as people will cheat, lie, steal, and so on?
CO'G: I don’t know if we can ever wipe it out, but I believe we can reduce it significantly. We have a great capacity to be abusive in a myriad ways. We know that child abuse has existed right through our history and we’ve denied it most of the time. But I don’t believe it’s a problem of sexual orientation or a third sexual orientation. It’s not about sexuality. From my own experience and observation it’s about power, anger and rage, and the projection of all that, usually onto the most vulnerable person around.

JH: Some paedophiles argue that the abused children actually enjoy it. Is enjoyment possible under those circumstances?
CO'G: An abused person may have a sexualised response to the abuse that might be pleasurable, and abuse victims actually find that incredibly difficult to deal with. They feel betrayed by their bodies which, by nature, will respond to different kinds of stimulation at different ages. But even when that pleasure happens, the force and the coercion and the inappropriateness of the relationship is what causes the damage.

JH: How does that compare with adult rape?
CO'G: In adult male rape it is usually possible for the victim to feel sexual arousal during rape, and may even reach ejaculation. That may occur in heterosexual victims. It’s a purely physiological response, the body responding in the way it’s programmed to. But it’s wholly irrelevant and in no way mitigates the crime. But I know that many victims, including myself, moved to pleasure as a way of coping with the abuse. You can try to convince yourself that if there’s something in this for me, then I’m not being raped. It’s another way of avoiding the acceptance of what’s actually happening.

JH: Survivors of childhood abuse have spoken of their inability as adults to share their childhood experiences with even their best friends. What’s behind that difficulty?
CO'G: It’s not just with friends, but people whose role it is to help and comfort survivors can also be unhelpful. But it’s easy to keep blaming everybody without examining why people might respond unhelpfully. Some people find stories of abuse so awful that they can’t deal with it at all. It’s a perfectly human reaction when we’re faced with a loved one or a friend telling us about such abuse. We want to reduce the impact of the abuse without realising we can’t. We don’t want them to have suffered so badly and we would prefer if it all went away for them. So we tell them to get over it, it’s all in the past, take up a hobby, whatever. Unfortunately, those reactions don’t help the survivor at all.

JH: So we try to dismiss it as a problem or at least diminish it?
CO'G: Yes. I was listening to a psychic radio show recently. A listener had written in about their experience of having been abused and how they now had an eating disorder, and were feeling dysfunctional and suicidal. The advice they gave was to phone The Samaritans for the depression, seek help for the eating disorder and as for the abuse, just remember that it was all in the past, forget about it and get on with your life. The abuse was actually the underlying cause of all the listener’s symptoms, but it was the only symptom dismissed. The broadcaster failed to understand that even if the core events were in the past, the suffering was not. It was happening now, as was obvious from the symptoms. It’s hugely frustrating to hear those sort of uninformed responses from those who could know better. A wound that is not attended to will be a wound until it gets treated. You can’t just forget about it.

JH: The legal system, including the attitudes of many Gardai and the offensive statements issuing from some judges, suggest a need for changes there too?
CO'G: The Criminal Justice System is woefully under-equipped to deal with crimes of rape and sexual abuse. It’s very hit and miss. I was blessed in that I had a brilliant Garda detective on my case. But even that case dragged on over four years. If it hadn’t been for that detective I would not have known what was going on with my case. I had no contact at all from the prosecution service, and no feedback at all through the Criminal Justice System. That itself is quite abusive and it’s a very disempowering process for those who have already suffered enough.

JH: Is getting an admission of guilt from the abuser tremendously important to the victim, irrespective of the sentence?
CO'G: Even if a survivor gets to court to seek justice I’m not sure if that can be achieved, because it’s such an empty process it still leaves the survivor to deal with the after-effects of the abuse. Maybe we need to think about what justice means. The sentences handed out are never going to reflect the torment the victim has been through.

JH: What would you have expected had your own case against Sean Fortune gone all the way through the courts?
CO'G: If he had received a two-year jail sentence I would have felt that justice had not been served. But neither would I have wanted him locked up and the key thrown away.

JH: Are there other problems in the legal arena?
CO'G: We’re now seeing a new development with more and more cases being thrown out because too much time has elapsed. Were the cases against Sean Fortune going through the system now, it’s quite feasible that they would actually be thrown out.

JH: Is the antagonism against survivors that seems to be inherent in the system influenced, as some are beginning to suspect, by paedophiles in the Gardai and in the courts?
CO'G: I’m certain there is a level of paedophilia throughout our society, at every level. Remember, people were shocked to hear that Operation Amethyst had uncovered alleged paedophiles who were teachers, doctors, solicitors, a judge, and so on. Abusers exist in all walks of life and in all socio-economic classes. We’re seeing cases of offenders found guilty of multiple child rapes and receiving two year sentences, and you have to wonder why.
There are probably paedophile carpenters, writers, accountants, bus drivers and so on, but they are not able to hinder the legal process as easily as would a paedophile Garda or paedophile Judge.
Well, perhaps an individual Garda could lose a statement or see that it’s not submitted to the DPP or simply lie to the victim. I’m sure it’s happened. In Britain, during the trial of a man who had raped his nine-year-old step-daughter, the Judge said that this was “regrettable but understandable” and could happen to anybody. The fact that the man’s wife was pregnant and had gone off sex was used as a mitigating excuse!

JH: Surely judges who say such things are actually in contempt of court?
CO'G: I would agree. That judge was an apologist for a child rapist and we should have grave concerns for any child in that man’s life. So on that level it’s easy to see how paedophile judges could pervert the course of justice.

JH:Politicians are viewed by many survivors as being generally indifferent to the plight of rape victims. They make the usual noises about ‘being concerned’ and ‘we must do this’ and ‘we must do that’, but in reality they do virtually nothing. Why do you think these issues are so low on their agenda?
CO'G: Well it hasn’t been a vote-catcher, although it might be now. Over the last five years we’ve seen it become a major social issue. When Sean Fortune committed suicide in 1999, nobody in Government or the legislature commented on the case. That staggered me. None of them asked how did this happen and how do we ensure it never happens again? When the Taoiseach was asked about the paedophile priest issue he replied that he hadn’t really being following it and that it was a matter for the Catholic Church! But child protection is ultimately the responsibility of the State. It’s not a matter for the Church at all.

JH: So will the situation improve in the foreseeable future?
CO'G: I think in Ireland we’re at least acknowledging that we have a major social problem, although we haven’t seen any solutions coming on stream yet. The one big area that hasn’t been acknowledged at all is female perpetration of sexual abuse. At One In Four we’re increasingly being contacted by people of all ages who have been sexually abused by women. That’s a positive sign in that people are obviously feeling more able to speak out.

JH: How do you view the Laffoy Commission, set up by the Government to look into the sexual abuse of children in Irish institutions?
CO'G: To me it was a ground-breaking initiative, but it seems to be bogged down in legalese. The Church institutions, while adhering to the letter of the law, seem to be more inclined to hinder its work than help it.

JH: And what about the Residential Institutions Redress Board?
CO'G: Most of the cases it will examine will end up with no acceptance of liability. People may receive compensation accompanied by a letter denying liability. Nobody’s accepting any real responsibility.

JH: Do you think the Catholic Church will change its current policy of denial or continue to breed and harbour child rapists?
CO'G: I don’t know if it will change that policy, but if they do change it won’t be because they want to, but because they’ll have no choice. I find that very depressing. They seem to be more concerned about minimising the damage to the institution than accepting the damage done to children in its care. When Cardinal Connell talked about his own humanity and claimed that nothing had blighted his time in office more than this issue and nothing has caused him more pain, all he could talk about was the impact it had on him. He made no reference to the hurt caused to countless others by people for whom he bore the ultimate responsibility. There’s no doubt any more that there’s a particular problem in the Catholic Church about sexual offences against children, but there’s no real desire to engage with the impact of their crimes.
Of course it’s not just a Catholic Church problem. Jokey references to the Vicar and the choir boys were a staple of English Music Hall.
I’m aware of cases of paedophilia in the Anglican Church as well as in the Moslem and Jewish faiths, so it’s not just a Catholic Church problem.

JH: Finally, what main changes would you like to see in the broad area of rape and child abuse in Ireland?
CO'G: First of all, I’d like us to fully recognise that all human beings, while capable of great beauty and love, are also capable of committing acts of the most barbaric cruelty. We have to be prepared to name those acts and see them for what they are.
Secondly, I wish we could move beyond the cycle of blame and look instead at the issue of responsibility in an aware sense, rather than in a judgmental way. We all contribute to this problem, me included, and we can all help find the solution. But blame ultimately gets us nowhere.
Finally, I wish we might all stop being so black and white in the way we see other people. We are often so desperately eager for everything to be all right that we very often won’t accept ourselves as less than all right. Just because you might hit rock bottom and fall asunder, it doesn’t mean that you’re an awful person and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’ll never get up again.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS – Coping with Rape and Sexual Abuse is on sale now, published by Hot Press Books on behalf of The Wexford Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Service. It retails at E11.99