It was November 1970 and Northern Ireland was sliding into the Troubles, but for Gerard Gorman, a new pupil at St Colman’s College, the horror of that era began when Fr Malachy Finegan summoned him into a room, closed the door and told him to sit on a sofa.
Gorman was 11 years old and small for his age, with big blue eyes. Two months earlier, he had started as a boarder at the Catholic boys’ school in Newry, County Armagh. Staff tended to be aloof or intimidating, except Finegan, the religious education teacher, who was solicitous and avuncular.
More than half a century later, Gorman can still picture the scene on that autumn day. He had been with other boys, running to the dormitory, when Finegan beckoned him from a doorway into his sitting room. It overlooked playing fields and had a TV and a bag of sweets on a table.
The priest sat beside the boy. He was a big man with huge ears that had earned him the nickname Floppy. There was a bit of chitchat, then he leaned in. “His whole face was sort of wrapping around me and just blotting out everything else,” Gorman recalls. “I had shorts on and he put his hands on to my penis.”Esto es lo que escribe Rory Caroll en The Guardian. Un testimonio terrible del daño que puede llegar a generar el abuso sexual durante la infancia. Cuando, además, estamos hablando de hombres que van por la vida dando lecciones sobre lo que los demás tenemos que hacer, sobre qué significa ser buena persona y sobre la magnificencia de Dios son especialmente terroríficos.
Me cuesta mucho pensar en la reinserción en estos casos. me cuesta muchísimo.