The Naming of Names

Jesuit secrecy about child sexual abuse continues and continues...

Last year, the Jesuit Order in Ireland appointed a three-person committee to advise on the issue of naming, or not naming, those Jesuits who have been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of children. My understanding is that 45 have been so accused.

The Jesuits were forced to name Joseph Marmion SJ; I named Paul Andrews SJ and Dermot Casey SJ on this platform, and then the Jesuits did. Brendan Kearney SJ has been named in several places but has yet to be acknowledged as an abuser by the Jesuits. It has been strongly suggested to me that Finbarr Lynch SJ is on the list and I am now wondering if Dermot Murray SJ is on it too.

This is the trouble about the Jesuit’s hesitation. The advice of the committee, I understand, was to name the accused Jesuits. And yet we are left wondering, in some instances, no doubt, about blameless men.

I will admit that I never liked Dermot Murray when he was deputy Prefect of Studies at Belvedere. I thought he had the kind of self-importance that generally goes with having little or nothing to be important about. But I was taken aback when the mother of a school friend said of him – and I remember very clearly the words that she used – “God forgive me for saying thing but I’m sure that man interferes with little boys.” I was sixteen or so at the time.

I actually didn’t believe that he did. I certainly never heard anyone else suggest that he did. But I found him “creepy” and I’m sorry to be so vague.

Almost half a century after my friend’s mum made that rather shocking suggestion, I found myself in conversation with a man who I knew in my early days in journalism. Murray was a friend of his family and, as Prefect of Studies at Gonzaga, he would chastise this boy, who was between 12 and 14, by striking him on the buttocks with the usual leather strap – on one occasion, on the bare buttocks. The boy let out a very loud cry, Murray stopped, and I gather this peculiar form of punishment was not applied again. The leather strap, in my experience, was only ever applied to the hands.

It is hard to imagine that these were isolated incidents. If a man is given to hitting a boy on his bare bottom I would be inclined to believe that he is not doing so for the good of the child but to give some form of perverted pleasure to himself.

If there is anybody who wants to share their experiences of Dermot Murray SJ – anonymously, of course – I’d be most interested to hear them. And the same goes for any Jesuit.

There was some talk of the Jesuits naming the accused before Christmas but they got cold feet. They took soundings about the possibility of issuing an “edited” list. The phrase “plausibly accused” (which, unlike “credibly accused”, has no official meaning) was mentioned (and, indeed, was used in the Marmion narrative published by the Steering Committee and clearly written by the Jesuits and/or their lawyers, despite protestations to the contrary).

I can’t help thinking that the Jesuits believe that this whole issue will simply go away if they do nothing for long enough. None of the victims are getting any younger, and many of them are already dead. Maybe the Jesuits are right but it’s cowardly and unchristian. And we have seen them behave in that way before.