A victim of sex abuse predator Christian Brother Paul Dunleavy has told how he was targeted as soon as he stepped into the classroom for the start of his final year of primary school.
Brian Ellison was preyed on in the first weeks after starting his 11+ year at the Abbey Primary School in Newry, Co Down.
The 66-year-old was at Belfast Crown Court on Thursday as Dunleavy was jailed for further offences.
Dunleavy, with an address at Glen Road in Belfast, was found guilty of 36 charges against former pupils in September.
The offences were committed on dates between 1964 and 1991 while the 89-year-old worked at four schools in Belfast, Newry and Armagh.
He is already serving a prison sentence having been previously convicted on two separate occasions of sexual offences against children in his care.
Speaking after sentencing to The Irish News Mr Ellison said: “As soon as I walked into the school that year I was preyed on. The abuse started within two weeks.”
The then 10-year-old was sexually abused over a period of close to two months in an orchard close to the school, a gym store and a cupboard containing drama props.
Dunleavy had set up the assaults by phoning Brian’s mother to say her son was staying back for extra tuition. In the orchard, the boy was abused and then told to pick apples for his mother to make pie.
The abuse stopped, Brian claims, after a senior staff member, also a brother and suspicious because there were claims Dunleavy had targeted children at a previous school, caught him in the act.
“I was told to go on,” Brian remembers as Dunleavy was confronted by a fellow brother. While the sexual assaults stopped, Brian remained in his class and suffered regular beatings.
He managed to pass his 11-plus and enter Abbey Grammar, which Brian describes as a terrible experience as he grappled with the aftermath of being abused. From being a top student, he left with three O-Levels.
The serial abuser, who Brian believes targeted multiple more boys than were involved in the trials, continued as a teacher in the Abbey, moved to other schools, then returned to Newry as principal in the 1980s and 1990s.
Brian also revealed he first made a complaint to the RUC in 1997, which then led to interactions with senior Christian Brothers who were made aware of the interview.
“In 1997 I happened to be in the front room of my mother’s house in Newry when Brendan Smyth was on the TV,” Mr Ellison recalls.
The paedophile priest, who abused boys in Northern Ireland, the Republic and the United States, was being extradited south after serving a prison sentence in the north.
His mother just happened to mention the then still Brother Dunleavy in connection with something entirely separate.
“My words to her were not that f****** b******. He is as bad as that f***** on TV.”
While he did not reveal the full details, he made his mother aware of the abuse, who then told his father. An interview with a detective at Newry station was arranged.
Around the same time as the police interview, Brian says senior Christian Brothers were made aware of the allegations being made against Dunleavy.
He was told at the time Dunleavy, then still principal of the Abbey, was being removed from his job and would never teach again.
From 1997, Brian says he “spiralled downhill” and was “constantly disturbed by what had happened to me and about him getting away with it,”
He believes that from the time he made the statement to when a police investigation began nearly two decades, later, there were suicides and early deaths as victims attempted to cope with the trauma. He knew personally some dead victims.
Brian first became aware of the investigation into Dunleavy’s crimes in 2016 when he received a letter asking whether he would like to come in for an interview. He was contacted because of a police log with planning details of the 1997 interview.
He was involved in the first trial, which took place in January, 2020, and lasted for nearly four weeks, with Brian spending almost a day in the witness box. Dunleavy was convicted and received a 10-year sentence but his ordeal was far from over.
Dunleavy successfully appealed and the retrial did not take place until June, 2023. He was found guilty.
On why the now 89-year-old did not spare his victims the torment of a waiting for, and participating in a trial, Brian argues was because of his “oath of obedience” to the Christian Brothers, which for many years maintained a culture of denial.
Owen Winters, of KRW Law, which represents Brian and 11 other victims of Dunleavy from Newry, Armagh and Belfast, said the firm’s clients, including those who gave evidence in the previous trials, “found this process to be an arduous one”.
“Dunleavy’s ongoing failure to acknowledge the abuse he perpetrated against helpless children continues to be a source of pain and upset to the survivors,” Mr Winters said.
“We have issued civil proceedings against the Christian Brothers on behalf of a number of survivors of Paul Dunleavy. Our clients want them to acknowledge the hurt caused. Their lack of comment following the sentencing is particularly upsetting.”