This week the Irish Mail on Sunday’s investigation into Brother Aidan Clohessy’s abuse in Ireland and Malawi received a nomination for a prestigious European Press Prize in the Investigative Journalism category.
The investigation started as a follow-up to €1.6m of secret pay top ups for Saint John of God executives in 2016. That work led this newspaper to question in 2017, why the order had given false evidence to the Ryan Commission about when they received their first allegation of sexual abuse.
In response, a legal threat in the face of incontrovertible facts hinted at something more. What that something was would take a further eight years to fully bring out to the light, and convict a serial paedophile who the order had spent years and millions of euro trying to cover up.
Here the journalist, whose dogged pursuit finally revealed the pain and damage Clohessy inflicted on his silenced victims, relates his part in the almost decade–long journey to justice.
Brother Donatus Forkan has a story he likes to tell. It involves an encounter the Irish Provincial brother once had with an impoverished street girl in Mexico who was shunned by others.
Feeling sorry for her, he intervened and bought the sweets she was selling.
Ever since, he has kept them on his desk as a reminder that many children are denied the ‘dignity that every human being is entitled to’.
I too have a momento like that. It is a simple bracelet, made by a homeless addict from Malawi called John Simwawa.
He made the bracelet by stripping wires from scrapped cars and wrapping the copper around itself to form a wristband.
John is dead now. But his legacy lives on. He is one of several people without whom this story could never have been told.
So when Br Aidan’s trials began in May, I slipped on John’s bracelet and wore it throughout.
When photographer Sean Dwyer and I first travelled to Malawi in 2017 to track down Br Aidan’s victims there, John was the key who unlocked everything else.
As an orphaned street child, he had been one of those Br Aidan routinely collected in his pickup truck by the People’s Cafe.
He’d then bring them home to bathe and beat – and worse.
Strung out as he was when I met him, John was still able to lead me to others who had been taken from the streets by Br Aidan.
It was a similar role to the one that another person vital to this story, Con Carroll, performed in Ireland.
Long before I went to Malawi, I had to prove the St John of God order knew Br Aidan was a danger to children before they sent him to Africa.
That meant finding victims here in Ireland, something that was only possible because of Con.
From 2003, the Redress Board had begun compensating those abused at St Augustine’s. But that process was entirely behind closed doors. Even today it remains a crime for anyone to breach this seal.
Think about that for a moment. It goes to the heart of how St John of God was able to cover up the crimes of a serial paedophile, allowing him to continue abusing.
In fact, it is likely that for many victims, they did succeed in wiping the abuse they suffered from history. We don’t know how many claims were secretly settled at the Redress Board – because St John of God won’t tell us.
All we can trace is how the order inserted itself into the redress system at the very last moment, just as it was being passed by the Dáil.
That was achieved thanks to secret, backroom negotiations conducted by the powerful Church and political figures St John of God was able to marshal in the order’s favour.
What this all means is that in return for a contribution of €1m to the Redress Board by his order, Br Aidan got a free pass to continue abusing kids.
In his first trial, Br Aidan Clohessy was convicted and branded an ogre by the trial judge
Michael O’Farrell, journalist speaking with John Simwawa in Mzuzu, Malawi
Because he was an orphan, Con, above, had been sent to St Augustine’s and into the preying hands of Br Aidan
SJoG’s mission in Malawi was regularly visited by Irish SJOG officials. In 2010 Irish Provincial Brother Donatus Forkan, pictured far left, joined Br Aidan, centre, when an extension to a college of health sciences was opened.
Later in 2004, his order was able to mislead the Ryan Commission into clerical abuse. In fact, they made out that child abuse was not an issue for them at all.
At the time of his commission testimony, Br Fintan Whitmore made no apology – saying he had checked the files and could find no evidence or proof that any abuse had occurred at St John of God institutions.
Asked by the Commission why they had contributed to the redress fund, if this was the case, the answer was telling.
‘It was an attractive proposition,’ then Irish provincial Br Whitmore answered.
The misleading Ryan Commission testimony of Br Whitmore was the first article this newspaper published in this strand of our investigations into SJoG – as the order became known in our newsroom shorthand.
They tried to stop it, threatening a High Court defamation case. The threat might have worked because at the time we were not aware of the scale of this story, and were still largely focused on the €1.6m in secret top ups to their executives who ran their services for the HSE.
We had not yet identified Br Aidan, or the fact that he’d been recklessly sent to Africa while his order covered up his crimes here.
We simply knew the Commission had been misled. And because we are trained to, we wondered why?
It was the legal threat that told us the why mattered. And how it mattered.
From the moment I began to find them and Br Aidan’s victims began trusting me with their stories, I knew this was going to be a life–altering assignment.
I knew that if I never got any other story over the line but this one, I’d look back at my career as a journalist with satisfaction.
Each and every one of those abused by Br Aidan – here and in Malawi – were instantly and utterly credible.
I knew they were telling nothing but the truth.
Grown men have nothing to gain by telling a stranger how they still wet the bed and cannot have adult relationships because of what was done to them as a child.
The tears that silently roll down their cheeks do not lie.
So I knew that if any jury ever heard these people, they too would believe them. No doubt about it.
The further we went the more this became apparent. Victims who never met, on different sides of the world, spoke of the same sinister pattern, the same sick modus operandi.
Every new victim traced gave yet further corroboration that we were dealing with a prolific paedophile who’d been systematically enabled by his superiors.
The challenge was to get as far as a jury at all. All the odds were stacked against it.
But those intent on keeping secrets didn’t bargain on Con Carroll – and the enduring presence of obscure internet chat rooms.
Because he was an orphan, Con had been sent to St Augustine’s and into the preying hands of Br Aidan.
When he left he became a homeless heroin addict haunting the streets of Dublin. But he somehow pulled through and survived.
Then in September 2005 Con walked into the Five Star Internet Cafe on Dublin’s Talbot Street and paid for an hour online.
The words he typed out that day with a single finger on his one good hand are online still.
‘Aidan Clohessey was involved in child sex abuse,’ he wrote, misspelling his tormentor’s name.
By then Con had been before the Redress Board. Were he to ever say what happened there, he could be prosecuted as a criminal.
But he wasn’t afraid to speak up about what Br Aidan did to him.
In fact, he wanted the world to know. Over a decade after he left those words online, I stumbled across them.
Soon Con was leading me to others across Dublin who had been victims. Con Carroll was the first real breakthrough in this case.
Because of him – and those he led us to – we discovered the abuse of boys at St Augustine’s had been covered up in Ireland.
Then, thousands of miles away in Malawi, John Simwawa played the same role. Through him, we learned Br Aidan had continued to abuse.
We knew all this by late 2017 and that Christmas I confronted Br Aidan in person back in Dublin.
He was completely unfazed. Listening to him I never felt like I was listening to an innocent man. Instead, he sounded every inch a monster who knew he’d gotten away with it.
Perhaps he was right not to be worried. The odds were still stacked firmly in his favour and against those whose lives he had destroyed.
But we had enough to publish and we did.
Although our 2018 coverage was primarily about the cover up that allowed Br Aidan to remain with children in Africa, we were effectively naming a man as an alleged paedophile, which is not without considerable risk.
But naming and picturing him proved to be the next breakthough. As part of that story, we put Br Aidan’s photo on the front page.
Other victims, some who could not read or write, saw the photograph – something that would not have worked if it had appeared in an anonymised form or without a photo.
When they came to us we listened to, and published their stories. We then directed them to gardaí as a new criminal investigation of Br Aidan was launched.
Then, with matters in the hands of gardaí and the DPP, we watched and waited. And worked on other stories.
For his part, Br Aidan lawyered up and received the best advice money could buy. When asked, he voluntarily attended several interviews under caution with investigating gardai.
This allowed his defence to later tell juries that their client cooperated fully and had never been arrested.
That defence was funded privately and St John of God have refused to specify if they paid.
(The order did, though, pay for a barrister to keep a watching brief on his trials – something that costs about €750 a day or €15,000 every 20 days.)
Whoever paid for his defence, Br Aidan got value for money immediately.
That was evident when he appeared before Dun Laoighaire District Court to be formally charged in February 2022.
This was the first step on the formal road to justice for his victims after decades. Finally, they could feel someone had believed them.
But Br Aidan’s defence secured a gagging order, preventing the press from reporting any of the charged against their client.
This reporting restriction was only lifted six months afterwards when we joined forces with other media organisations – including RTÉ, the Irish Independent, News International and The Irish Times – to defeat it.
And still some victims were left
He was then added to a second case and soon Br Aidan was charged with abusing Wayne and another victim.
Ultimately, Br Aidan did not go on trial until May 2025 – eight years after we’d first exposed him.
The State wanted to run all the victims’ cases together in one trial, something that would have led to a great deal of corroborating evidence.
But the defence wanted six separate trials, meaning every jury would be unaware there were any more complaints.
After legal argument, two trials were ordered, one for four victims and one for two.
By then St John of God had spent millions in Ireland and Africa settling civil actions – of which the juries knew nothing.
In Africa, those who came forward were targeted, threatened and offered cash to drop their claims – something St John God condemned when we brought it to their attention.
Br Aidan then pleaded not guilty, forcing each and every victim to testify against him.
This tactic put one of the trials in jeopardy when one victim, Joe Devine, had a panic attack on the stand – and was taken away by ambulance.
Had he not returned several days later, that trial would have collapsed. But none of that could be reported at the time.
That’s because a new law designed to protect rape victims meant the trials were held in camera – even though the majority of Br Aidan’s victims wanted their story heard publicly.
Instead, as the trial and sentencing process continued for the best part of two months, the public were prevented from hearing them tell their story.
Then, for those victims involved in the first trial there was one final blow.
In his first trial, Br Aidan was convicted and branded an ogre by the trial judge, Justice Elva Duffy.
She moved to imprison him immediately, pending the second trial and sentencing. However, Br Aidan’s defence intervened, arguing this would delay the second trial.
So instead of being lead away in cuffs, something victims had waited decades for, he walked out the front door even though he was a guilty man.
I know, from speaking to them that night, that this traumatised them afresh. To them it felt as if the system had let them down again. Thankfully, this was a temporary glitch, albeit a cruel one.
As I write this today, and as you might have read last week in this newspaper, Br Aidan is in jail and the cover up facilitated by his order has been exposed.
While I am proud of our part to play in that what matters most is children – who became men – who were never believed, have finally been granted that relief.
‘They finally believed us,’ one victim, not connected to the trial, called me to say afterwards.
He sounded astonished that it could be so.
And given how long it took, and how many twists and turns threatened to prove his doubts correct, maybe he was right to be.
But somehow, I always knew that would be the case. The challenge was getting them heard. That’s where the journalism was.
I have a name for this kind of work. I call it ‘slow news’.
It relies on resources of news organisations, and the expertise (and instincts) of reporters and photographers, and the patience (and instincts) of editors.
It relies on the collective belief in the end result, despite whatever setback might make you question the time and effort being funnelled into one story.
Oh and people. People like John Simwawa and Con Carroll.
People who fought their demons and proved that no matter what a monster like Br Aidan Clohessy can take away, a sense of shared humanity, and a belief in a fundamental justice, can triumph over the even hugely powerful organisations like SJoG.
And the secrets they still cling to.
