‘Samantha’ was just 13 years of age when Fr Brendan Smyth began abusing her at a convent boarding school
MARCH 14TH last, Mothers’ Day, was deeply traumatic for “Samantha”. What she heard on the radio that morning stunned her as she realised how so much damage to her life need not have happened at all.
She heard that Sunday of newspaper reports confirming that Cardinal Seán Brady had interviewed, believed and sworn to secrecy two young people who had been abused by Fr Brendan Smyth in 1975. She heard the cardinal reported this to his bishop, but not to the Garda or anyone else.
That year, 1975, was her second year of being abused by Smyth. The abuse would continue until 1979, at a convent boarding school not far from where the then Fr Brady carried out his investigations.
Since March 14th last she has been constantly asking why Cardinal Brady, his bishop or Smyth’s Norbertine superiors at Kilnacrott in Cavan never thought, after 1975, to check up on Smyth. Her abuse by Smyth was foul and vicious and came back with a vengeance on Mothers’ Day, tinged with grief at what need not have been. She had to talk to someone. Her husband was too distraught, and they have yet to tell their children.
She rang Phil Garland. He had been director of child protection at the Dublin archdiocese when they first met some years ago. She was then accompanying another abuse victim in her role as a care worker. Mr Garland remarked how good she was at the job. She said it was easier when you understood. She told him about her own abuse. She told him much more that Sunday in March, during what she believes were life-saving phone calls which pulled her back from the brink.
She had made many phone calls in the past to the Samaritans. She believes it is due to them and Phil Garland that she has not followed the route of two other women she knows were abused by Smyth, who took their own lives.
The Samaritans are why she chose the name “Samantha” as a pseudonym, so she can speak out. That way “you begin to put the shame back where it belongs, with the abuser and those who covered up”, she said.
She was 13 when the abuse began. She knew nothing about the facts of life. The nuns never suspected a thing. Initially Smyth had been calling to see another girl he knew. This girl thought him weird and asked Samantha to accompany her the next time. She did so.
Then, that first time in 1974, Smyth saw Samantha on their own. It was in a reception room at the school. He raped her digitally and attempted oral sex, telling her “to drink the blood of Jesus”. She vomited. He told her she was evil, and that he had been sent by God to make her good again. She believed him.
Thereafter, he sometimes abused her in the dormitory. He would tell her to go sick on a specified day so he could visit her when no one else was in the dormitory. If he met anyone he would tell them he was giving her the blessing of the sick.
And then there was the camera. “It was a good day when he just raped me. It was a bad day when he raped me and took pictures of my body,” she said.
In all the years of abuse, she never spoke to him. She used to think: “Don’t let him see you cry. It’ll be over soon.” He would say things to her like: “Do you fucking hear me, bitch? I’m here doing God’s work and you won’t answer me?”
She said: “He could make me bleed but he could never make me cry.” Sometimes, afterwards, she would run a scalding hot bath and when she’d see the blood she’d pray: “God, let me die tonight.” As the water cooled, she would again realise there was no escape.
It was worse when holidays approached. He’d visit far more frequently then. She wouldn’t be able to sit. She has hated holidays since. She can’t attend Mass either, as every time she sees a chalice lifted she thinks of Smyth’s bodily fluids.
She took tablets, stopped eating, tried to get expelled: all was put down to Samantha “looking for attention again”. She would wonder whether “they saw the badness in me too?”
She left school in 1979 and “went down a very slippery road”. In her mid-20s she met the man who is her husband. Her life began. It is why she now describes herself as “one of the lucky, unlucky ones”.
- Samaritans helpline: 1850 60 90 90
