30-06-2025
Student suffered relentless abuse at hands of Christian Brother
Wayne Farrell was sitting at home on the couch when he casually picked up a copy of the Irish Mail on Sunday.
It was January 28, 2018. Wayne cannot read or write, but as he flicked through the pages, a picture of an old man caught his eye. The photo was of Brother Aidan Clohessy. It was then that something in Wayne snapped.
'That's when it happened,' Wayne recalls. 'I just broke down, sitting on the sofa, and I threw it [the paper] on the ground.' Aidan Clohessy. Pic: Collins Courts
Suddenly, Wayne was full of rage. He was crying uncontrollably, too.
'What's wrong?' asked his sister Michelle, seeing his distress.
For the first time in his life, Wayne, who was then 44, told her about St Augustine's.
Wayne was eight when he was transferred there after his First Holy Communion. Prior to that, he'd been attending 'Benincasa School for slow learners' run by the Dominican order in Blackrock, south Dublin.
St Augustine's, located on nearby Carysfort Avenue and run by the St John of God order, was a school for individuals with mild intellectual disabilities. Wayne Farrell. Pic: Tom Honan
Brother Aidan Clohessy was the school principal at St Augustine's from the early 1970s until 1993.
Within a year of arriving at the school, Wayne was targeted.
The abuse could happen anywhere – at the pool, in the gym and often in the principal's office.
'He was watching all the time. And he'd just stand there, staring.'
'You just knew he was coming for you,' Wayne recalls. 'He'd touch me on the shoulder, and I'd look around and he'd say: 'Come with me, son.' You knew you were in trouble then.' Aidan Clohessy. Pic: Collins Courts
Each day, as he got off the bus at the school gates, Wayne faced a new nightmare.
Walking into the building, he'd watch for any tell-tale sign of trouble from Brother Aidan.
'He'd be standing at the double doors with his hands in his pockets. As soon as he'd seen you, he'd have the comb over the hair, and you f***ing knew you were going to get done that day. You knew it. You would feel it.'
Brother Aidan's office was through the school's main double doors and up the corridor, on the right-hand side.
There was then one step up into the room.
Inside, Wayne remembers a religious statue, a sink, a desk to the left, chairs and a window opposite the door. Through the window, a pond outside was visible.
The first time Brother Aidan called Wayne to his office, he had no idea what was in store.
Removing a key from his pocket, Brother Aidan locked the door from the inside and returned the key to his trousers.
No escape was possible. Then it began.
'Take off your clothes,' Brother Aidan ordered.
At first, Wayne refused. 'No.'
Then Brother Aidan reached for his cane and drew his belt from around his waist.
'What do you want?' he asked, threatening Wayne with a beating, a frequent occurrence for students at St Augustine's.
'I don't want anything,' answered Wayne, confused.
Brother Aidan grabbed Wayne by the ear and lifted him up.
'Son, you listen and do what I tell you,' he warned.
Eventually, Wayne gave in.
'I stripped off and he sat in front of me naked. He came around behind me. He would always put his arm on my shoulder, and he'd say: 'Son, no words.' Then he started rubbing his penis up and down me backside.'
Over the years, that phrase – 'son, no words' – was replaced with a menacing gesture that haunts Wayne to this day.
Every time Brother Aidan placed his forefinger over his lips in a shushing motion, Wayne knew what was about to happen.
He still remembers the gold ring on Brother Aidan's hand, with an embedded red gemstone, and the way he kept twisting it.
Once, Wayne ran for the window to escape. But it was hopeless.
'I tried to get out of it one day because he had me naked. He gave me such a whack that I just [fell over] backwards.'
Wayne travelled to school on the bus, but sometimes he'd be called to the office after school. When that happened, he'd miss the bus and have to walk home afterwards.
The walk down Carysfort Avenue into Blackrock and back to Dún Laoghaire took an hour.
'It was eating away at me all the time'
'In winter it was horrible,' he recalls, breaking into tears.
After several years, Wayne's mother pulled him from St Augustine's. She never said why. She must have seen the bruises from the beatings. She couldn't possibly have imagined the rest.
Wayne never spoke about the abuse until 2018 when he saw this newspaper, when he finally opened up to his sister.
Wayne's dream was to be a fireman or a policeman, but he'd never learned to read or write in St Augustine's. Just how to be afraid.
He was a champion swimmer, though, and from the age of 18 he volunteered with the Dún Laoghaire lifeboat crew.
Wayne would go on to save many lives and win bravery awards for dramatic and selfless rescues at sea. He also often worked as a diver, recovering submerged bodies for the emergency services.
But since he suffered three minor strokes in recent years, Wayne has been unable to volunteer any more. His beloved daily swims in Dublin Bay have ceased.
For work, Wayne served time on fishing trawlers, helped at a funeral home and even had a stint as a Dublin Bus driver on the famous 46A route.
He always tried to keep busy, to run ahead of the memories that chased him. But it never worked.
'I tried to put it behind me, but it was eating away at me all the time. When you get time to think about these things it just comes back. It never goes,' he says.
Meanwhile, Wayne never felt he could tell anyone.
'Imagine going home to your friends or relatives to tell them that had happened to you. Them days they wouldn't believe you because of the Catholic religion. That was God. And that was it.'
At night, he medicates to keep the memories and emotions at bay.
'I take sleeping tablets at nighttime to make me sleep because I wake up so angry. If I knew where he was, I'd go after him.'
Today, Wayne feels let down by 'He stole everything I wanted in life'
'When I was young, I was in the care of the State because I'm a slow learner. I was f***ing abused under their watch.
'I'd love to meet the Minister for Justice and say it to them – how do you think I feel? Has it ever happened to you? Yet you let him [Brother Aidan] walk around.'
Unable to read or write, Wayne never even knew that the Redress Board existed.
Set up in 2002 in the wake of the Ryan Commission into abuse at religious-run schools, the board ran a now-closed compensation scheme.
But he doesn't care. For Wayne, it was never about the money. He only ever wanted justice for what Brother Aidan did to him.
'He has stolen everything I wanted in life,' he told in the days before Brother Aidan's trial began this month. 'I want justice done. I hope justice is done.
'I'm not afraid of him. I'm a big guy now. What he did is a crime – if I did what he did, I'd be in jail. So what's the difference with him?
'I want to go into court. I want to be there to tell the judge what he's done. That's all I want, for him to get put away, even for a month, because at the moment, he's walking around. I want that f***er in jail. I don't care if he's 101. I'll wheel him to jail. I'll put him in a wheelchair to jail.'
This week, Wayne finally got his wish as his abuser, now 85, was convicted of 19 counts of indecent assault following two separate trials at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last month and sentenced to a total of five years and four months in prison.
However, the trial almost never took place, and Wayne was very nearly not involved in it.
Numerous victims from St Augustine's came forward to the Redress Board two decades ago, and their cases were settled in secret.
No prosecution resulted, and Brother Aidan remained free.
Then in 2018, tracked down former St Augustine's pupils who had never been before the Redress Board and published their statements. A week after he saw Brother Aidan's face in that newspaper coverage, Wayne walked up to the counter in his local Garda station.
'I want to report an incident of sexual assault that happened at school,' he told the officer at the front desk.
'When did it happen?' he was asked by the garda.
'When I was young,' he answered. 'I was sexually assaulted in school – what do I do?
Through the hatch, Wayne was asked to provide his name and number on a blank sheet of paper.
'I'll arrange for you to come in,' he was told. 'We'll be in touch.'
Wayne walked back out the door that day thinking that he'd made a giant personal leap. But nothing ever happened. No one called.
The bravery he had shown in coming forward, after years of silence and shame, had all been for nothing.
'I felt I was getting somewhere, but I was let down by the State again,' he says.
Five years later, in 2022, Wayne called this reporter for the first time. He had nowhere left to turn.
The day after his call, I sat down with Wayne on a bench at Bulloch Harbour, overlooking Dublin Bay, and he shared his story with me.
The harbour, where his family run a small lobster business, is a special place for Wayne.
'I come down here out of the way of everyone,' he says. 'I don't socialise, really, because I fear people. I'm down here out of the way of everything.'
Aidan Clohessy had, at this point, been charged with the abuse of the other St Augustine's pupils that our 2018 investigation had been able to track down. But the Garda team responsible were unaware of Wayne, despite his visit to his local station to report his abuse, years beforehand.
That was corrected only when we provided Wayne with the details of the team that was prosecuting Brother Aidan.
This week, after many let-downs and many years, Wayne finally got his chance to tell the court what Brother Aidan did to him and to see his abuser get justice.
