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	Priest Tells of Sexual Abuse in Childhood By Ian Starrett Belfast Today [Ireland] October 23, 2006 http://www.belfasttoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=3425&ArticleID=1837155 Showbiz priest the Rev Brian D'Arcy has written an account of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and while training for the priesthood because he wants to help other abuse victims. "If I hadn't got counselling and tried to deal with it in a healthy way, it probably would have destroyed me," said the Fermanagh cleric. In his book, A Different Journey, he says that he was sexually abused as a 10-year-old by a religious brother at his school in Omagh and later by a priest while he was studying for the priesthood at Mount Argus in Dublin. "To deny it would indicate that I was to blame for it, and it's just part of the dealing with abuse in the proper way," he says. "It's a short part of the book – only two pages. It's the simple fact of the matter that it did happen. "It has changed my life and it does give me some insight to be able to say that the way the Church, in particular, and society also has dealt with abuse is not something we can be proud of. "It is something we should be drast- ically ashamed of." Now rector of the Passionist monastery at the Graan in Enniskillen, he told BBC's Sunday Sequence programme that it was years after the first instance of abuse when he was able to comprehend the " horror and the effect of it". As a child with a religious and moral upbringing, the abuse had an " an awful effect on my life". "For most of my life, I was ashamed even to think about it, let alone speak about it," said Fr Darcy, who is a popular BBC Radio Ulster record request show presenter and a friend of many people in showbusiness. He says in the book: "Thank God, I have been able to cope with the trauma but only when I shared the experience with professionals. "There are days when I am still disappointed with myself when I reflect on how I irrationally suppressed the abuse. "I am learning to be more forgiving, though. That was the key for me. As soon as I realised that I wasn't to blame, that I couldn't have prevented it and that I was used and abused simply because I was vulnerable, innocent and gullible, I was able to talk about it and start on a road to healing that will probably continue for the rest of my life."
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