NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Rubane House ‘like Hell upon Earth’ for 69-year-old branded a liar for reporting his abuse as boy
BY HARRIET CRAWFORD – 07 OCTOBER 2014
A former resident of a Catholic children’s home stayed silent about the horrific abuse he suffered as a 10-year-old boy for more than half-a-century after he was branded a liar when he first tried to raise the alarm.
The witness, now 69, described his eight years at Rubane House as “like Hell upon Earth” in evidence to the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry into child sexual abuse at the home in County Down yesterday.
The four instances of his sexual abuse at Rubane began in 1955 when he was just 10. In the first occurrence he was asked how he was settling into the house before having to “fight off” a Brother who attempted to rape him. He said that he knew that what the Brother was doing was wrong – “even as a child it was something I wouldn’t want to do”.
The same Brother attempted to rape him again, as well as taking him out of his bed in the boys’ dormitory to sexually abuse him. The witness described the fear he felt going to sleep, in case a Brother would come to wake him up for abuse.
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