Bobby-John says ‘I was let down by the institution that was supposed to look after me’
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The local authority placed Bobby-John in a Catholic home where physical and sexual abuse were rife.
No one ever came to check on him or his siblings, and when he told the police about the sexual abuse he suffered, they took no action.
Bobby-John was born soon after the end of the Second World War.
Because a lot of information in his records was blacked out, Bobby-John does not know the details of why he and his siblings were put in care, but his father had been in a prisoner of war camp and Bobby-John thinks he may have had PTSD. His mother had a health condition and both parents were charged with child neglect.
The children were removed by the local authority, and because their mother was Catholic, they were placed in a children’s home run by nuns and priests.
When Bobby-John was nine, a new priest, Father Joseph, arrived at the home. One day this man asked Bobby-John if he would like to go out for a drive. ‘I thought it would be fun’ Bobby-John says, ‘I’d never been in a car before’.
While they were out, Father Joseph stopped the car. He started touching Bobby-John between his legs, and tried to undo his trousers. Bobby-John relates ‘I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do but I tried to fight him off’. In his fear, Bobby-John wet himself and the priest stopped abusing him. When they got back to the children’s home, Bobby-John was punished for having had an accident.
A few weeks later, when Father Joseph sent for Bobby-John to come and help him move furniture in his room, he abused the boy in the same way. Bobby-John says that again ‘I tried to fight him off, but I was only nine’.
Bobby-John told the nun in charge of the house he lived in what had happened. She slapped him and said ‘How can you say that about a man of the cloth? … you have a filthy mind’.
He adds ‘It was as if these priests were gods, that was how this place ran’.
Father Joseph carried on abusing Bobby-John, and he adds that all the boys were regularly physically and mentally abused by the nuns. ‘They were not very nice’ he says.
When he was 12, Bobby-John, his older sibling and another child decided to run away. It was a cold winter night, and they sheltered in an outhouse until the police found them and returned them to the home. On the way there, Bobby-John told one of the policemen that he and other children were being abused by the priests and nuns.
Back at the home, he also told the Canon about Father Joseph. He relates ‘I got the strap’. The nun in charge of his house was waiting for him and he says ‘She went wild’. She called him ‘a filthy creature’, and said he should be ‘in the gutter with your parents’. As he lay crying on the floor, she lashed him with a cane in such a frenzy that Bobby-John says he thought she was going to have a heart attack.
Bobby-John thinks that she panicked when she saw the bruising on him, because she locked him in the isolation room in the sick bay. During that time, Father Joseph came in and sexually abused him. He describes how he was crying as the priest touched him and masturbated as he did this.
After five days, the nun let Bobby-John out. The bruises and welts were still visible and she made him wear long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt.
The abuse ended when Bobby-John was 13. He told another nun about Father Joseph, and she helped him avoid being alone with the priest. By this time, he had been sexually abused by another priest on a camping trip.
When he was in his mid-teens, Bobby-John left the home. He emigrated a year later, and says it was ‘The best thing I ever did in my life’.
Several years later, Father Joseph was sent to prison.
Bobby-John says that he is very angry that the local authority never once came to see him and his siblings in the children’s home. He says ‘We would have told them, but we saw no one … we were isolated’. After a lengthy struggle, Bobby-John obtained his records from the local authority, but most of the information was blacked out.
He is also upset that his father came home from the war with mental health problems, but instead of being helped he was punished by having his children taken away.
Bobby-John also feels let down by the policeman he told about the abuse. He later saw the officer at mass, and realised he was a Catholic. He says ‘That policeman could have stopped so many children being abused, but he covered it up’. He adds ‘So many children ran away from that place and lots of them must have told the police why’.
He has children and grandchildren but has never told his family about his terrible childhood experiences. He says he is a ‘loner’. He is in touch on social media with others who were in the children’s home, and comments that this trait seems to be common among them.
Bobby-John feels the world is different now, in a good way, and that children are better informed about abuse. He says ‘Talking about it and educating people is the most important thing’.