Reginald feels he was let down by all the people he should have been able to rely on
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Reginald had a very unhappy upbringing and his parents divorced.
He started spending time with a Catholic priest, who groomed him and sexually abused him.
For a long time Reginald’s mother was very unhappy with his father, but they were Irish Catholics and she was reluctant to get divorced. She was also very critical and cold towards Reginald, and often hit and verbally abused him.
When she eventually did divorce her husband, Reginald says ‘I knew it was the end for me’. After his father left, Reginald struggled at school. He found it hard to concentrate and did not do well in his exams.
Reginald attended a Catholic school. He was bullied at school and used to get into fights. His mother did not support him but would go to school and tell them what he had done wrong.
Reginald was an altar boy at the parish church. The priest, Kendric, knew that Reginald’s father had gone. One day he invited Reginald into his room at the church and offered him whisky.
He started ‘play fighting’ with Reginald, and put his hands on Reginald’s genitals towards the end of the ‘game’.
This abuse continued on several more occasions.
By his mid teens, Reginald had stopped going to school. He was not really living at home and he had no job. He wonders now if he had had some sort of breakdown. He couldn’t function and had nowhere to go, so he hung around the church and sometimes slept in the grounds.
The abuse by Kendric ceased, but he remembers meeting him while there was a group of cubs at the church, and the priest saying ‘Look at them, they’re all the right age for masturbation’.
For a time Reginald lived and worked in a hostel, but he suffered with depression. Later, he managed to access therapy and went on to college and then to university.
He did report the abuse by Kendric to a senior member of the Catholic church, but says this man made it clear he did not want to hear the allegations.
Reginald suffers severe complex PTSD and has had suicidal thoughts.
He feels resentful of all the professionals who had contact with him when he was young who did not help him, and have not wanted to listen to him as an adult.
He now has a good relationship with his adult children.