Army veteran who suffered horrific abuse in boys home fears survivors wouldn’t live to see justice
Patrick O’Rourke, now in his seventies, says Stormont election impasse means victims could miss out on formal apology
A DEFENCE Forces veteran who suffered terrible abuse in a boys home has told how he fears some survivors will not live long enough to see justice done.
Patrick O’Rourke, now in his seventies, says political upheaval in the North has prevented a vital report being published.
He relived the horrors of his childhood when he told the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry of the sexual and physical abuse he suffered at the Termonbacca Home for Boys in Derry.
But with negotiations to restore a government in Stormont, dragging on, and further delayed by the UK snap General Election, he fears some of the older survivors will pass away without seeing justice.
The Stormont impasse means the Inquiry report has still not been presented to the Northern Ireland assembly and survivors must continue their wait for a formal apology.
Patrick told the Irish Sun: “It’s not easy for me to come out and say all this but I am 73 years old and I am going to be off this planet in a while and I won’t be here to tell my story.
“There were 22 institutions. This isn’t all about me or my story. There are other people who are 75 to 80 years of age and others have died.
“When the Inquiry came out the ex-High Court judge Lowell Goddard said ‘I hope they will treat this as a matter of urgency’ because we deserve nothing less.
“There’s no Government and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any time soon and some of us will never get justice.”
Patrick’s mum and dad brought him to Termonbacca at the age of five after they fell ill and could no longer look after him and his sisters.
The former barman and truck driver opened up about his eight years of hell at the hands of nuns and older boys in the Derry home.
Patrick, who now lives in Dublin, said: “I was there at five and you were living in fear all the time. Later on there was sexual abuse, not from nuns, but from the older boys in the home.
“The nuns were so short-staffed that they left these boys in charge of us. They would hit you and kick you and force us to go to sleep during the day.
“There were times I thought maybe I’m going to die here.
“As I got older, I realised that not all nuns were bad. It was a bit like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates — you didn’t know which one you were going to get. You were in mortal fear of some and other ones were just OK. In the early years my parents would come in unannounced so the nuns were always wary around me.
“There was a boy once who was trying to bring me into the bathroom to sexually abuse me — that was the second time — so I screamed out loud.
“The nun came and I tried to explain but she pulled me by the hair and hit me across the face and said ‘nothing happened in there, you’re a bad boy, you’re going to hell’.”
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Patrick and his sisters, who grew up in the Bishops Street home run by the Sisters of Nazareth, were among the first survivors to give evidence in the Inquiry.
Patrick, who would later go on to win awards for his work in the Defence Forces, left Termonbacca at the age of 13 and was then given electro convulsive therapy after suffering a breakdown at 16.
He said: “All of my life I’ve had trouble with my hand because of the amount of times I was thrown on the ground at Termonbacca.
“I was beaten on the back of the head all the time. To this very day if someone comes up behind me I always feel like someone is going to hit me.”
Patrick and the other survivors want a formal apology from the government in Northern Ireland — and want political parties to place the issue on a priority list for when a new administration is agreed upon.