Mr Mervyn Rundle had a simple ambition yesterday. At 28, and standing under the great dome of the Four Courts, he said he just wanted "to live my life and be normal like everyone else".
It had taken him 18 years to get to that starting point, he said.
Moments previously, in High Court Number One, Justice Johnson heard Mr John Rogers SC, for Mr Rundle, say that settlement had been reached in the case. Costs were awarded against the Dublin Archdiocese.
Mr John Finlay SC, for Father Thomas Naughton "and others", then read an apology from Cardinal Connell.
The Cardinal expressed profound regret; sincerely apologised; acknowledged that the abuse of Mr Rundle had occurred; and acknowledged that before Mr Rundle was abused in 1985 "reasons for concern about the conduct of Father Naughton had emerged which, had they been more successfully pursued, could have resulted in his withdrawal from parochial duties".
Mr Rundle said there were 13 points in the agreed apology. "They kept coming back and wanting things taken out and wanting to change bits." There were five meetings before the entire settlement was agreed. Still, he was delighted.
"I am delighted the Catholic Church has at last acknowledged the pain it caused a frightened young boy for so long. I am not sure how long it will take me to forgive them for taking 18 years and numerous court appearances to do so," he said in a statement.
"It was 18 years ago that my father took me by the hand to the bishop's palace in Dublin. That is when this nightmare got worse. It ends here today."
He thanked his family, "quiet people, easy-going you could say, but my pride in their courage and undying belief in me over those past years is immense". He thanked his solicitor, Mr Sean Costello.
"Seven years is a long haul for a solicitor, and he supported us as a friend as well," recalled Ms Rose Rundle, Mr Rundle's mother.
She remembered that first day in 1985. "Mervyn came home and said 'that priest's a queer'. I said "what do ya mean?' He said 'look at me'. All his clothes were messed up."
She contacted a family friend. Her husband, Mervyn snr, Mervyn jnr, and the friend went to see Mgr Alex Stenson, then chancellor of the archdiocese.
During that meeting, the monsignor asked to speak to Mervyn jnr alone. "He told me I was lying and said I better tell the truth very quickly," Mervyn jnr recalled yesterday. He remembered the monsignor said: "Stop your lies, stop telling your lies."
"It was really fierce, really savage. I was terrified. But I said, 'I'm not telling lies'. And I wasn't. And that's what today means. It means that, finally, they have to admit that I was never telling lies, that all I ever told was the truth, just me, a 10-year-old child against all those big priests.
"This [civil action] took seven years out of my life, and that's just this one court case. They fought us every inch of the way. They started by telling us they'd give €75,000; take it or leave it.
"But I was determined. I mean, my life was in bits. Would you take €75,000 for that? No way. So we kept on fighting. We knew it was important to get the documents, because of all the meetings my father had had with them back when I was a child. And when my solicitor got them, there it was in black and white - they knew all about the priest, they knew that he was at children before he ever came near Donnycarney and me.
"And even then they still fought us, even though they had known this all along. It's beyond belief, really, what they're prepared to do. They made me go though seven years of fighting to get to this point. They could have saved me all that.
"One of the things that really hurts me is what they did to my parents. Both of them were very active in the parish. It was my father's proudest day when he was made a Minister of the Eucharist. And then all this happened, and when my father went and told them at the archbishop's palace about me being abused by Naughton, everything changed.
"My parents were shut out in the cold by the priests in the parish. They didn't want to know my parents anymore; they cut them dead. That was just vicious.
"And all that happened just because my parents stuck by me and tried to do something about the priest. And then they put that same priest back into another parish and he abused more children. It's incredible."
Ms Rundle remembered how Mervyn "just cried and cried" after their meeting with Cardinal Connell in 1995. Mr Rundle, then 19, had become aware that other boys had been abused since he first reported the abuse to Church authorities in 1985. "He cried so much because he felt guilty about the abuse of the others."
As for herself, she had lost her faith because of how the Church has dealt with her family.
Mr Rundle hoped "that what we've done here with this case will help other people like me. When Naughton went to jail [in 1998] I went on the radio, and as a result of that six more people who had been abused by him as children came forward. I was really proud of that, that I'd helped six people who all probably thought that they were the only one."
