Kathy Sheridan: More damaged men out there than we realise

There was a time when certain types from leafy suburbs would have mocked Liveline as a haven for all the moany auld wans and idle layabouts droning on from places no one could find on a map.

Chances are though, that they never listened to it. Until now.

Monday’s show was hard to bear, which was not unusual. What distinguished it on International Women’s Day was the voices of the abused, battered and bereaved; they were all male. As well as that, many of them spoke in those leafy-suburban accents we usually associate with people in positions of control, comfort and authority.

Marmion is dead more than 20 years but – as many terrorised women and men know too well – abuse and fear are stamped in the soul.

Many were students of Clongowes Wood, Belvedere and Crescent colleges 40 or 50 years ago, finding an empathic ear in Joe Duffy to offload desperately painful memories of a relentless bully and paedophile, Fr Joseph Marmion. Stories of unrelenting terror and malevolence tumbled out. Marmion would divert himself during class by ordering pupils to beat the daylights out of another boy; one such victim looked like he had been in a car crash, according to one man.

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There were grim stories of school visits to Vienna led by Marmion alone where a boy was allegedly brought to the priest’s room and drugged. Marmion is dead more than 20 years but – as many terrorised women and men know too well – abuse and fear are stamped in the soul.

That segment was followed by a former underage Tipperary hurling star, Séamus Troy, who described a random, daylight attack that left him unrecognisable to his children. He was battered over the head with his own crutch, incurred three broken teeth, a broken nose and bone in his neck and was forced to swallow three coins.

Treatment required 27 staples in his head and a nine-week stay in hospital. He has had no counselling.

He was followed by Gerry Keenan, whose 22-year-old sister Imelda vanished 27 years ago in Waterford and has never been found. She had set up home with the man who reported her missing in January 1994.

After a morning of International Women’s Day events where sexual and physical violence against women was never far from the agenda, this was an extraordinary alignment of male grief.

One of Liveline’s great virtues is its facility to draw threads together: to nudge a memory about a long-lost girl perhaps; to seek public vindication of Troy’s belief that his attacker’s sentence – seven years with two suspended, which will mean release in October 2022 – was laughable; to draw threads together in the Marmion case, which will almost certainly lead to a more complete narrative of his offending.

I still recall the shock of reading that one in four men had reported being sexually abused as children

One former Clongowes student recalled him “seeming to be on the prowl” between 1958 and 1963, many years before the accepted start date of 1977. They want answers of course. How much was known by Marmion’s superiors and when? Why was he allowed to remain on staff for months under the gravest of allegations and why he was not reported to the Garda before his death in 2000?

There is no doubt about his guilt. The Jesuit Order has named him publicly as a mental, physical and sexual abuser of children and encouraged victims to come forward.

A public outpouring from men

Accountability is expected now. A Facebook page set up for people to air their stories about priests and teachers from 30 or 40 years ago at a south Dublin private boys’ school is notable for the supportiveness towards those who have come forward – not something they could have relied upon before, says a former student.

Less expected is this public outpouring from men who have bottled up injustice, grief and humiliation for half a century. Are they ready at last to address the dynamics of male violence, power and abuse? A boy who took on Marmion, expelled and readmitted on foot of a petition, is hailed as a hero by class-mates. He clearly was. But what effect did that have on all those who didn’t have the language or support to describe what was being perpetrated on their pubescent bodies and remained silent and tormented for decades?

The Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland report will be 20 years old next year, but I still recall the shock of reading that one in four men had reported being sexually abused as children. The figure of nearly one-third of women was not so surprising, sadly. At the time Prof Hannah McGee, lead author of the report, said that her main concern was “whether the figures would be believed”. She was right to be concerned.

A recent study by Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University found that nearly half of women and one-in-five men reported being sexually assaulted or harassed throughout their lifetime. How far have we come?

We need more data of course but we already know that we have a problem. Women talk about it all the time; men have some catching up to do. They can shorten the agony by listening to the hard-won, accumulated wisdom of women. We cannot solve this without each other’s wholehearted support – and as Ellen O’Malley Dunlop has suggested, a dedicated minister with responsibility for sexual, domestic and gender-based violence.

It would send out a signal at least – this is serious. And it’s not only about women.