The Boy Cillian and other Lives

By John Quarmby

Essentially biographical, the book recounts my experiences in dealing with the effects of child sexual abuse, both personally (as a parent) and with other people involved directly or indirectly in the nightmare. I am not a professional in that I am

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637677933

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Copyright © 2022 by John Quarmby

Paperback: 978-1-63767-792-6

eBook: 978-1-63767-793-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022904273

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the products of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or historical events, are purely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1. PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCTIONS

CHAPTER 3. CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

CHAPTER 4. FINN O’DWYER

CHAPTER 5. KEVIN AND STEPHEN

CHAPTER 6. GAVIN SALTER

CHAPTER 7. DOMINIC O’NEILL

CHAPTER 8. COLM SALTER

CHAPTER 9. PRIORLAND GROVE

CHAPTER 10. DANNY MORAN

CHAPTER 11. EDDIE AND BOYZALONE

CHAPTER 12. CONSOLIDATION

CHAPTER 13. MACA EWAN AND JUSTINE MURPHY

CHAPTER 14. JACKIE LYNES

CHAPTER 15. FAMILY AFFAIRS

CHAPTER 16. JAMES

CHAPTER 17. JOEY HOSFORD

CHAPTER 18. SEAN AND LIAM

CHAPTER 19. EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 20. IN MEMORIUM

CHAPTER 1

PROLOGUE

When I first met Ciaran, I was, sadly, only too aware of the total devastation that sexual abuse could inflict on the survivors, their families and indeed on whole communities. My eldest daughter Louise had been abused by her stepfather from the age of eight until, at sixteen, she ran away from home and came to stay with me in Belfast until she sorted out her life. Not that I was much help. I am not a violent man, but Georgia’s revelations left me too angry to behave logically, and I think I would have put my shotgun in the back of my car and killed my ex-wife and her husband had it not been for the Irish Sea, the appalling weather, and the need to look after my beloved daughter.

It was a personal friend Alva, with whom Georgia closely identified, who helped her through the crisis, so she returned to Wales on condition she could go to boarding school. Distancing herself from her mother and stepfather, she kept herself safe by leaving home almost completely. Though that had its own problems which some years later resulted in my losing contact with her for nearly a decade.

It was probably the result of my own experience that prompted me to ask Cillian about his abuse when I first met him, and in helping him, I also resolved some of my own problems. Indeed, I have always recognised the cathartic dimension of the sustained help I have offered the lads over the years.

For me, however, there was an even greater reward. Looking after Cillian, and subsequently Finn, I gained an understanding of the International/Interpol determined medical, social, and legal protocols that have been developed to help protect the survivors as they recover from their dreadful experiences. When I eventually regained contact with Louise, I was able to put this knowledge to good use, preventing her return to prison and my then three-year-old grandson being placed in care.

With a medical background, I also appreciate the damage that can arise from well-intentioned interference by a lay person. So, understanding the importance of social and psychiatric care, I have always sought appropriate professional help for survivors.

I have also developed some basic rules in dealing with survivors. The first is to take care of yourself. In a caring relationship, the carer is the most important party. One of my first jobs was working in a psychiatric hospital. A Victorian institution, the bottom corridor was a quarter mile long with the wards extending at either end. Padded cells and straightjackets were in regular use. One of my abiding impressions of the hospital is the number of patients who had started out as staff. That I did not join them was due in no small part to the guidance of a senior nursing officer whose advice (above) has proved invaluable over the years.

The second rule is never to reject allegations of abuse, though such allegations should be accepted with caution. The extreme trauma of sexual abuse in particular and the plasticity of the human brain can give rise to incomplete, distorted and false memories, and in extreme cases, complete repression. As one lad told me …if you are a prostitute at least you get paid for being abused… though where does one end and the other begin, and did he know the difference?

The third rule is never to directly question survivors about their abuse. This is the (exclusive) responsibility of qualified psychiatric/social workers. One of the clinical effects of abuse is to compromise emotional control (with resultant violence) and short term memory, amongst other pathologies. This is the mistake I made with Cillian with a violent response. These days, I approach the question of abuse obliquely; for example, explaining a phone call as being from a survivor and expressing sympathy for their plight. Only if the survivor initiates a discussion about their abuse would I seek elaboration of some of the information they offer, and even then, I avoid discussing the details of the abuse, which are implicit in a discussion of the consequences.

Nor should the effects of abuse on, and the response of the survivors associates to such abuse, be forgotten. Varying from incredulity and disbelief to total rejection, acceptance of abuse can be exceptionally difficult and lead to sublimation (blaming the innocent) as I myself found, to concealing the abuse (with the risk of re-offending). Garoid’s family hid his father’s abuse for many years until his father told his priest during confession, after which the priest felt it safe to abuse his son and nephew. The Cardinal’s swearing Brendan Boland to secrecy over his abuse allowed Fr. Brendan Smyth to continue his obscenities for decades (Boland Brendan. Sworn to Silence. ISBN 978 1 84717 637 0).

It was not my initial intent to write a book about abuse. Initially, my writing started as therapy. In the absence of any underlying pathology writing can be as therapeutic as counselling. It was only as the narrative developed, reflecting the trauma of my experience that the idea of a publication grew. Nor have I attempted to discuss the patho-physiology of abuse ‘per se’. I hope that in publishing what is essentially a journey of case studies I can offer guidance and hope to those bereft by such unqualified evil.

Indeed, the publication of this book has had its own difficulties. I initially asked a literary agent I know if she would handle the publication, but she returned the initial drafts. What you have written is so awful I can’t deal with it…it is giving me nightmares… she explained.

Then there were the secondary matters of confidentiality and defamation! Both the main characters in the book, Cillian and Finn, knew about the publication and welcomed it but could not be identified without also identifying their ‘associates’, and I myself have had to use a ‘nom de plume’ for the same reasons. While the book is obviously based on events in the Republic of Ireland the anonymisation has undermined the characterisation normally associated with such narratives, but this had left the stark reality of the book to speak for itself.

CHAPTER 2

INTRODUCTIONS

Cillian was a truly handsome young man. At 24, he was tall and of medium build. He had a clean-shaven, slightly oval face whose clear features were framed by fine black hair, which crept down under the collar of his T-shirt, covering and defining the strong, slender body beneath. His grey eyes shone with an intelligent intensity beneath fine black eyebrows and to look him in the eye was to leave one feeling that he had seen into ones very sole. He was articulate and charismatic and always seemed about to smile, but never did.

I first met him on the 17th, August 2003. He had been in hospital, and on his discharge and being unemployed, Social Services had accommodated him in a Bed and Breakfast. Having some months later secured a job as a machinist, he was going to have to vacate the B & B and had, allegedly, heard from mutual friends that I had an empty apartment over my office. Could he rent it? I decided not. I did not want to let it at that time, nor could he afford the rent. I had also noticed his arms. When he left, he quietly took my watch off the table!

I was not overly concerned at the loss. Although quite valuable, the watch was broken, which was why I was not wearing it, and knowing where he was staying I had intended to retrieve the watch the next day. I did not need to do so, Cillian returned with the watch and apologised. He told me that as we had been speaking the previous evening he had been overcome by the injustice of his life. While I seemingly had everything to which he ever aspired, he was likely to be out on the street by the end of the week with his life in a black plastic bin liner. Taking my watch had been his way of … getting his own back.

There were many subsequent occasions when Cillan demonstrated this kleptomania. On leaving the B&B, he took two wire coat hangers and a small towel, which he then asked me to return. At a doctor’s surgery in Belfast, annoyed at having to wait, he went into the kitchen and took a ten pound note from a purse. Subsequently unable to return it, he was full of remorse for what he had done. On another occasion, he took a watch (always a favourite) although that was returned before the owner noticed its loss. And so it goes on…

Impressed by his courage at returning the watch, I started to talk to him and assured him I would not see him put out on the street. How our conversation evolved after that I do not really remember. His was articulate and interesting to talk to as he told me a little about his life, the ‘hit and run’ accident that put him in hospital, the jobs he had had, and his estrangement from his family. I remember asking him a stupid ‘middle class’ question, …what was he looking for in life… to which he replied that he …wanted to be loved… Now it seemed to me that whatever else a 24-year-old guy wanted out of life, love (or love in the platonic sense that Ciaran meant it) is not an overriding ambition.

His reply prompted a realisation that there may be a dimension to Cillian’s character that was not immediately discernible and led me to ask a question that had been in the back of my mind since the previous evening, had he been abused.

His reaction was immediate and frighteningly hostile. I thought he was going to attack me; he stood over me shouting …how did I know… who had I been talking to… With some difficulty, I stood to face him and pointed to the scars on his arms. They were more than needle marks, they were evidence of self-mutilation, and I began to tell him about my elder daughters’ abuse by her stepfather. Gradually, he quietened down and began to tell me his own story. A story of 20 years of unremitting pain. Of emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual mutilation that was continuing, still. He told me of the paedophiles, his early alcoholism, his refuge in drug addiction, of the violence in his life and of prostitution…

I may have lived something of a privileged existence, but I have also considerable experience of life, yet nothing prepared me for Cillian. What he told me that night knocked my whole world sideways. It left me revulsed, angry, and badly traumatised. I was mesmerised by the sheer awfulness of what he was saying, and at first, I did not notice the change that came over him as he talked. His emotional regression was so seamless, so insidious and so complete. I went from talking to an articulate young man to holding a frightened, sobbing six-year-old in my arms. He begged me to help him, …would I be his daddy, could he be my son… I acceded to his pleadings. I had no other response.

Never again did I ask Cillian to recite his story, his regression so appalled me. Only have I asked him to elaborate particular circumstances as they arose in conversations which he initiated. Nor do I interrogate those other survivors to whom I talk, I just let them do the talking. Interrogation merely destabilises them, precipitating anger, violence, and arrest.

Later that evening, I took him back to the B & B, subsequently phoning him to say goodnight before I fell asleep.

It must have been about three in the morning that his phone call woke me. He had woken, as he had done every night for 20 years, screaming for his mammy as he re lived the abuse of all those years before. How could they do that to me (he sobbed), I didn’t have hair on my balls and the bastards were fucking me… I talked him back to sleep and phoned him at 7am to make sure he got to work on time.

The nightmares continued for night after night over many months. I initially bought him a teddy bear in an effort to focus his mind away from the abuse when he woke and phoned me. The strategy was a great success, asking if teddy was okay, and telling him not to wake the bear quickly settled him.

He remained in regression for eight days, easy to handle, biddable and anxious to please, he was always looking for approval and reassurance. He was also absolutely open and honest. Normally discrete to the point of secrecy, in regression, Ciaran was totally uninhibited. Had he not been, I wonder if I would ever have been able to comprehend the nature and extent of his abuse.

He could, however, be violent, throwing things and hitting out blindly, as small children do when upset. While such pain and anguish can be assuaged in a small child, such violence in a 24-year-old, 12 stone man is of a different dimension, and as the violence continued, I gradually developed an instinct for its onset and protected myself as best I could, usually by legging it!

Then Teddy was gone. Cillian was out of the regression, of which he had no recall and was subsequently appalled at things he had told me, so I gave him an undertaking that I would never reveal what he had told me to anyone without his consent. I subsequently extended this undertaking to all the survivors to whom I talk, although I do not meet the majority of them, preferring to talk over the phone. This means I cannot identify them, and anything they tell me is hearsay evidence and not admissible in a court of law, keeping both parties safe. The downside of this is that some of what I hear are lies, a lot is out of context and can be so outrageous that I tend to be unbelieving and my scepticism is infectious

Once out of regression, I also sat him down and repeated my offer of help. I made it clear, however, that his acceptance of my offer would be an irrevocable decision, that my condition in making the offer would be that I would never give up on him or allow him to change his mind, and that while I would respect his privacy, he was never to lie to me or take drugs. He agreed to my offer. Many months later after one of our frequent fights, he admitted that he had not meant to accept, he just thought that he could exploit me for a few weeks and then go back to …the old Cillian… when you gave up on me as everyone else has…but you kept coming back…I could not get rid of you… you are still here… I asked him if he had any regrets, would he really want to go back to the ‘old’ Cillian (as he frequently threatened), and he looked at me with affectionate disbelief and just said No.

In reality, he did not change or changed very slowly. He did exploit me, he lied to me constantly and it was months before he trusted me enough to begin to walk away from his former lifestyle and the security if offered him. Years later, he was still taking drugs on a spasmodic basis, and there was always the violence.

There appears to have been a hierarchy of violence on the streets. The difference between a ‘thumping’ (punches to the body which may have been sufficient to fracture the ribs), a kicking (when the victim is kicked to the ground with the risk of internal injuries), and a beating (when the victim is kicked unconscious) are used as an indication of the seriousness with which the assailants regard the victims transgressions. Then there are the ‘killings’. The victim is abducted, imprisoned, starved of food and water, and subjected to extreme violence and degradation over many days. They are thumped, kicked, and beaten, cut with knives and subjected to extreme sexual abuse by their abductors and associates. Their friends are phoned to listen to their screams and pleadings. The victim are left on the verge of death and wishing they were dead. One lad spent a week in hospital before he was sufficiently recovered for the doctors to operate on his internal injuries. Another spent four weeks in hospital while the doctors salvaged his gangrenous foot. Jackie Lyne (vide Chapter 14) did not survive.

Of all the problems I faced with Cillian, it was the continuing physical abuse I found most difficult to deal with. Even the ongoing sexual abuse seemed to pale in comparison. The hospital had stopped x-raying him for fear of radiation overdose. He said he deserved the abuse because of the shit kind of person he was. The paedophiles had told him that. He sought to rationalise the abuse by arguing he deserved it. "I should not have bought the drugs… borrowed the