“Validation” is the word that comes to mind for a woman who this week saw a “father figure” priest named among 15 deceased Jesuits the congregation says were credibly accused of child abuse.
The woman says Fr Shaun Curran groomed and sexually abused her when she was a teenager. Of the 15 published names, he has the largest number of recorded complaints.
Four of the 18 complaints were made during his lifetime, but none were reported to gardaí before his death in 1999, according to the Jesuit document.
Curran taught at Belvedere College in Dublin and Mungret College in Limerick, was director of a youth group on Dublin’s Gardiner Street, spent time abroad, and was project director at the Glencree Peace & Reconciliation Centre in Co Wicklow.
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He was the director in the 1980s of St Declan’s special school for Traveller children aged between 12 and 15, in Booterstown, Dublin.
After a child sex abuse complaint in 1970, the Jesuits removed him from Mungret College, according to the document. There is no record of any other action being taken, it says.
“He was able to present as a priest in good standing, and this meant his sexual abuse of children also continued undetected throughout most of his Jesuit life,” it said.
Anne (not her real name) said the abuse began in the 1970s when she was about 11 years old and being raised without a father.
“He would come to the house. He would take us to the beach, to Brittas Bay. He brought us to Glencree,” she said.
She remembers students from a Jesuit school helping out in Glencree, where Curran had a caravan. “I was about 12 when one of them said ‘watch him’.”
“He always used to check my homework [and] showed a lot of interest in the work I was doing. He was the first male, I suppose, who was interested in my studying.”
Curran got her trust and became a type of “father figure” to her, she said. The deception and emotional abuse this involved is something she struggles with to this day.
“That’s where all the confusion came from,” she said, adding that the affection and the abuse became a type of “trade off”.
It was only when she was in her 30s that she sought help, she said.
“They just have too much power over you. It was only when I was [abroad] that I could even admit to myself that had happened.”
After Curran died, she complained to the Jesuits about him and was told no previous complaints had been made about him.
This week she learned this was not true.
“I thought I was the only one to complain, and that made me feel guilty. You just doubt yourself. I knew [what Curran had done] was wrong and abnormal.”
Although the publication this week was upsetting, it has also provided a sense of validation, she said.
“It is so important that these things are reported and published, so that people can come forward.”
The last thing she wants the Jesuits to say is “come and talk to us”, she said.
“I don’t want them to feel good about it, about what they have done – covering things up for years. I think they should hand over their money to an independent body [that] people can trust to provide support,” she said.
It is hard to explain the power someone can exert over a person they abused as a child, Anne said.
“It is totally illogical and very powerful ... I used to look forward to seeing him. I got the attention, the encouragement. That’s how twisted it was.”
She last saw him in the 1990s.
“I was driving away thinking: ‘Do you realise what you have done? Do you realise the damage you have caused? Because I never challenged him on it. I never gave myself permission to challenge him and say: ’What you did was wrong.‘“
