When I was 10 I went to school like most other kids my age. We had moved house during the school year, so just to be sure that I wasn’t missing out on anything the new school put me in the year behind the one I was meant to be in.
Sounds fucked up, but I suppose there’s logic to it somewhere as they did the same to my brother.
I was bullied, which isn’t that much different to what most people encounter on some level. I eventually got the bully back, but it wasn’t without it’s consequences.
The bully I had kicked square in his nuts turned out to be the nephew of our teacher.
Our teacher was a hot headed power hungry little prick at the best of times, so this coupled with the fact that I was in a Christian Brothers school meant that I would pay for my little shoe/scrotum episode.
The bully would stand me at the wall and make his cronies fire footballs, tennis balls, rocks, whatever was handiest at me. He’d make best friends of other boys if they came up with original names for me, the token fat kid.
Finally I snapped and couldn’t take it anymore, regardless of the consequences, I would teach him a thing or two.
The day after I had triumphed over the bully who had been dragging me around the yard for months by my “diddies”, I was called to the front of the class in front of everyone.
My victim hadn’t come to school that day.
“Class, this is the face of a coward”
Excuse me?
“This is a bully who has stooped to the lowest and most spineless of levels”
Is this for real?
“This thug that stands before you has nearly crippled another member of this class with his mindless and unprovoked attack. You boy, tell the rest of them what you did. And try not to sound as proud as I know you are”
“I kicked him in the balls”
He was silent and walked to the back of the class, with a black board duster in his left hand. I suspected nothing.
“Look at him long and hard boys, there is the form of an evil soul full of malice”
Straight to my knees, I was crippled with a blinding pain that was only slightly louder than the silence coming from the shocked audience to this spectacle. He had fired that duster at my groin and scored a perfect hit. As I lay there in a fetal position I was convinced he’d been target practising the whole night before.
I could hear him approach me as his shoes clacked on the wooden floors.
“Get up”
I could barely see, let alone think about moving but I did. If my eyes weren’t so full with tears, I would have seen everyone else avoiding them.
“Was that a pleasant experience?”
“No Sir”
“No. Then why did you do it to another boy yesterday?”
“He was always picking on me”
“That’s a lie”
“It’s not Sir”
“Of course it is. It’s a lie you’ve conjoured up to try and defend your actions. If he was picking on you, why not bring it to my attention?”
So I could get a preview of this?
“Because he said he’d kill me if I did, Sir”
“More lies. Boys, this is the most pathetic victim of lying you are likely to ever encounter within this school. If I ever hear of anyone behaving like this scum has, you will face me. Is that clear?”
“YES SIR”
Later when my grandfather collected me from the gates, I told him all about it through floods of tears. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe me, but he was convinced that the teacher was well within his rights to do what he did.
I was only 10, you don’t question your father at that age, never mind his father. The teacher was right, and I was wrong. That was that.
The next day I went in to school to be greeted by a bully grinning like a Cheshire cat, sitting at the front of the class right next to his Uncle.
I sat down and prayed that I wouldn’t be picked to read or answer any questions for the day.
Lunch time came around and the state made corned beef sandwiches and single serving milk cartons were passed around. I just sat and looked at mine, not being able to stomach a bite. The teacher did the rounds of the class and couldn’t help but comment as he stood at my desk.
“What’s wrong? Eaten too much already?”
“No Sir, I’m not hungry”
“Rubbish, stand up”
Oh Christ.
“Class, stop what you’re doing and look at this boy. He’s not eating his lunch because he says he’s not hungry. Now, I don’t think he’s telling the truth, do you?”
Silence.
“DO YOU?”
“NO SIR”
“And why is that? Why do you think no one believes that you’re not hungry?”
“I don’t know Sir”
“Well I haven’t got all day, so I’ll explain it for you. Look at the sheer state of you, boy”
Poking my protruding belly.
“I find it very hard to grasp that a boy in your condition got to that state by not being hungry, did you?”
“No Sir”
“Then stop with this attention seeking and eat your lunch”
“Yes Sir”
It was the hardest meal I had ever eaten and to this day remains so. I choked down every bite and felt close to vomiting when I swallowed, but I finished. I couldn’t face anymore of his torment.
For weeks he picked on me in class for being fat or slow or stupid or whatever and his nephew picked on me in the yard because he knew he faced no concequences. I just figured this was school because that’s what my Grandfather said in the bus on the way home each day. My old school wasn’t like that, but maybe my old school wasn’t normal.
Swimming classes were announced and I was petrified.
How can a 10 year old boy be afraid of learning to swim?
Kids love the water. They love to learn new skills. They love to play and they sure as fuck love to be out of the class room on a school day.
I was scared because I would be in nothing more than trunks. A 10 year old boy afraid to be a 10 year old boy.
I felt like crying when we got to the changing rooms of the swimming pool and was told to strip. I was quivering with anticipation of what I knew was coming. As I gingerly stepped out of the changing rooms, the rest of the class were lined up and waiting for the “Diva” to show up.
The bully literally herniated himself when he saw me and when the teacher didn’t stop him the rest of the class followed. I felt so small and completely sad. I can’t use any more articulate descriptions because that’s what I felt as a 10 year old boy being laughed at for the way he looked.
“This is why we have lent, boys. We sacrifice things that others don’t have the luxury to have in the first place. We send food to Ethiopia and people like him only care about themselves. Ugly on the outside and ugly on the inside.”
I couldn’t take anymore of it. I broke down. Unashamedly I crippled and balled my eyes out by the side of the pool. It was short lived as I was dragged by the hair back into the changing rooms. Thrown against a locker with such force as to buckle the door, I was stunned.
I looked up to see my teacher standing over me with a look that would have put the fear into God himself.
“I WILL NOT STAND FOR ANY MORE OF THIS ATTENTION SEEKING”
I had no words.
“Get changed and go sit by the side of the pool and wait for the lesson to finish, if you so much as look at me sideways you’ll wish you had gills, never mind knowing how to swim. Is that clear?”
“Yes sir”
I changed and watched as the teacher taught and laughed with the rest of the class. Every now and again one of them would cast me a sorrowful glance, but not wanting to be where I was, they quickly rejoined the fun. I can’t blame them.
I was at that school for 10 months and while I was never “touched”, I was abused. I didn’t know any better at the time because this was being done to me by a teacher who might as well have been a priest for all of my understanding at the time. One of my most trusted authority and family figures told me it was normal, so why wouldn’t I believe it?
I was never “touched”, I was abused and there are parts of me that I would rather not talk about. There are people who went through less than I did and there are those who went through a hell of a lot more. What this report doesn’t highlight is what each of us has to live with each day. It’ll take more than an apology, a report, and admission or even financial compensation. Short of being armed with a time machine and the gift of hindsight, there’s nothing we can do about the past except learn from it.
Don’t leave your kids in the hands of someone you don’t know and trust 100%. Listen to your kids, or any kid for that matter who says that something isn’t right.
We live in a sick world, as you read this on the internet someone else is searching for child porn. While your kids play with their Playstation, another is being abused somewhere.
It wasn’t until years after that something happened in the news that made me realise I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t in a normal school, or maybe I was and that sickened me.
I realised that my Grandfather was perhaps afraid to confront the teacher because of similar experiences he had when he was younger, and they still rang loud.
There’s been a lot of angry stuff in the news and online in the last few days, and rightly so. The report has proven that people like me weren’t “making stuff up” with “over active imaginations”, it all happened.
The Church, in my opinion is more at fault for allowing known abusers to preach and teach. The state and governments, past and present are at fault for not holding them more accountable. All I see is blame passing and apologies that are about as sincere as a politician can muster, that isn’t good enough.
I could go for compensation, but that won’t prove or solve anything, not for me anyway. That teacher who terrorised me is still teaching, his nephew is now a priest and the cycle will start again.
If we take one thing away from this shameful, damning and reputation changing dark chapter of our history it simply has to be that we do everything within our power to prevent it happening again.
Having said that, with our leaders worried about “legal issues” in challenging the church, can we do anything?
I was going to put this on my own blog, but my persona is not taken seriously and this is not a subject to be taken lightly, or made less significant.
I’m sorry it went on, thanks for reading.
