Christian Brothers: Not Christian and not brothers

Dave Sharp 

I talk to Dave Sharp on my Twitter site @georgebarilla.  Like me, he suffered at the hands of catholic clergy. These “brothers” are not anyone’s brother and if being Christian means doing good in the name of God then they are far from being Christian.

Dave, after 40 years of fighting his abusers received a settlement decades after he was repeatedly raped and beaten at St Ninian’s residential school in Fife.  He is the first person in Scotland to win a payout from the Catholic order, who ran residential schools for children across the world.

Because of his successful fight, it is likely that hundreds of other Scottish victims will be able to win compensation for historical abuse at various organizations.

Dave, said: “I hope my payment is the first of many the Christian Brothers are forced to make to those men whose lives have been wrecked because of the treatment they received as children in Scotland’s residential homes and schools.

Dave says, “If I can win, then so can they. They must come forward and tell their stories. There is help and support out there for all survivors, men and women, regardless of the institutions they were abused in. They will be believed and helped.

Dave’s tormentor, former headteacher Brother Gerry Ryan, has since died. Dave tells how he was tied up, abused and hung by the neck in a freezing basement shower room repeatedly between the ages of 10 and 16.   Abuse like this and worse is a pattern with all catholic residential homes. I was abused in the shower and my breathing was cut off –in my case with a pillow instead of a rope at St. Agnes in Sparkill, New York.  Child abuse by the catholic church is the same in every country in the world.

Dave told me recently:

“I’m finally giving my testimony at the Scottish child abuse public inquiry next Friday 7th.. I will be talking about how I and many other boys were taken out of the homes and taken to houses around Scotland where we would be put in coffins for long periods of time and also trafficked over to Ireland to be put into Satanic parties to be raped by up to 10 men at a time.

What I want to talk about after to the press is the need for a national discussion on Historical child abuse in Scotland and the name of discussion would be HOW SAFE ARE OUR CHILDREN. Let me throw this at you. Statistically over the last 50 years between 60/75% of homeless people and people on addiction in Scotland were abused in childhood or suffered childhood trauma. Most of these people take their abuse to the grave. These stats have never changed because no one in authority will do anything about it. The scary thing is that the only stat that has changed is that the average age of deaths is getting younger and younger. 

We need to have a discussion and ask the questions like: Has anything really changed since I was kicked out onto the streets over 40 years ago? I am not saying that nobody is doing anything but we have to ask. Why are so many kids falling through the system and what more can we do for our care leavers?”

Let’s hope that Dave and others like him keep talking about the abuse so that all the abusers are brought to justice. There are many of us survivors talking on
Twitter, come and join us.