By Anne Sheridan
Limerick Leader
May 28, 2009
http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Abuse-survivor-in-contact-with.5310818.jp
A "SURVIVOR" of physical and sexual abuse at St Joseph's Industrial School in Glin said he had been contacted by dozens of people who had suffered abuse at the school as far back as 1948.
Tom Hayes, 63, a resident in Richill, County Armagh, has been contacted by thousands of people through the Alliance Support Group website.
Mr Hayes is secretary of the alliance, which was formed in 1999 as a direct result of the Government's promise to help support those who, as children, were abused in State-run institutions.
"It has just gone astronomical," he said, "Many, many people from St Joseph's school have contacted us. They want to relay their own stories from the different years they were there."
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| Tom Hayes: "I'm a survivor. Thank God I am" |
He said he had been in contact, via email and phone, to 75 people who attended Glin Industrial School and were now living as far afield as Canada and the United States.
"They are just shocked about what they've read," said Mr Hayes, adding that many other people who attended the school now lived outside the Limerick area or in Britain.
However, he said a number of people had also told him of their positive experience at the school.
Mr Hayes said he was glad the child abuse report had been published in his lifetime, but found the apology of the Christian Brothers "difficult to accept".
He returned to Glin on three occasions up until 1969 to meet individual brothers, "but they never, ever apologised to me".
As an orphan, he was initially placed in the care of the Sisters of Mercy in Killarney and was moved to Limerick at the age of eight.
Fifty five years later, he said the abuse he suffered there – when he was beaten with straps, fists and canes by the Christian Brothers – had lived on to this day.
"The most horrifying brutality was used by the Christian Brothers," he said.
Despite years of counselling, he said he was still haunted by memories of his time at the school from 1954 to 1962.
"Once a child has been abused, that child has been abused for life. It haunts you and it stays with you throughout your life. It's like if you witness an explosion, you get flashbacks of it," said Mr Hayes.
He travelled to Dublin last week to pick up the report and was "absolutely shocked" by what he read.
He added that Mr Justice Sean Ryan's assertion that the Christian Brothers and other congregations had allowed the systematic neglect and abuse of children was "horrifying".
An an orphan he had been told that his mother had died, but it was only in 2003 that he learned his mother had married and settled in Liverpool. Sadly, she died just months before he had learned the truth.
Mr Hayes said he was sexually and physically abused by older boys throughout his time in Glin, but was never sexually abused by a member of the Christian Brothers.
When he complained to a priest of the abuse he suffered, the congregation threatened to transfer him to Letterfrack Industrial School in Connemara, and later he was sent to work for a farmer in Kerry, which he believed was punishment for speaking out.
He said it was "useless" reporting the sexual assaults to the congregration as it only led to more abuse.
At the age of 17 he began begging on the streets of Cork, where, he said, he had lived the life of a vagrant, "simply drifting" and trying to find the occasional job.
He later moved to London and eventually joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers, serving in Swaziland, Cyprus, Canada, and Bahrain.
He said he gained respect in his new job – "the family I never had" – and rose to the rank of warrant officer.
After 22 years he was headquarted in Portadown, where he met his wife, Ruth, and they have now two sons in the military.
"I am a survivor. Thank God, I am," he said.
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