A victim's story

"K" was referred to see Michael Shine with severe stomach cramps when he was 11.

"K" was referred to see Michael Shine with severe stomach cramps when he was 11.

"He asked me to come into his consulting room. He asked me to put on a hospital gown and lie down and he proceeded to examine the glands and then the stomach area and he went from there to lower my pants."

He says the doctor masturbated him. "I was very scared and he kept referring to me as a fine, healthy, young boy in a low whisper, with this permanent grin on his face.

"That was the first sexual experience I ever had, and that's not right."

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He didn't tell his parents and had to return to the hospital two weeks later, and again he was assaulted.

"When I came out I said I was never going back there. I soldiered on for three months with the cramps." In the end he had to be hospitalised for 21 days with severe appendicitis.

"And he assaulted me in there every single day, and night," he said yesterday, his eyes dampening.

He tried to tell his GP, who told his father he had some strange ideas. His father slapped him and told him to cop on.

"That was the nail in the coffin. I kept it in then. Then when I was 19 I was admitted again with meningitis and the bastard came back at me again. He did it to me when I was semi-conscious."

He says Shine tried to assault him a second time during that stay "and I told him to 'F*** off'."

He went on to join the Garda "and tried to get on with life . . . but it kept coming back - feeling dirty, rotten, he took everything.

"I left the guards and went to England, drinking, taking drugs, self-harm all to block it out."

His marriage ended and he says: "It took me until I was 40 to be so broken down into an alcoholic wreck to go and get help."

It was in residential alcoholism treatment that he confided in his counsellor about the abuse and began to confront it. He says he is "good now".

"I seek serenity and I get on with my life a day at a time. I have a beautiful partner I will marry soon and a new baby. I have six children and I have confided in all of them. I just want this man and the system that allowed him to go on for 30 years brought to justice. I want an end to this for the victims."

Shine lives in Ballsbridge, Dublin on a €100,000 per year HSE pension.