Victim of Paedophile Brendan Smyth: "I Still Don't Know Where the Pictures Are That He Took of My Body"

By Louise Kelly
Irish Independent
June 23, 2015

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/victim-of-paedophile-brendan-smyth-i-still-dont-know-where-the-pictures-are-that-he-took-of-my-body-31323251.html


"I have flashbacks, I get triggers and sometime there's no warning," Loreto, who was previously known as Samantha, spoke under her real name on the Pat Kenny show this morning.

"He'll never be dead, when you've s**t like this going on on television, all these inquires going on and everything. It's more real, it's always going to be there.

"I still don't know where those pictures are that Brendan Smyth took of my body. Who has seen them? Have they been published?

The comments, taken in a pre-recorded interview earlier this morning, come following a number of revelations emerging from the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

Smyth was convicted of 117 indecent assaults against 41 children across Ireland. He died in prison in 1997 after a heart attack.

Inquiry: Fr Brendan Smyth

In a startling frank discussion, Loreto called for a State-run investigation, funded by the church, into the sexual abuse.

She recalled the first time she visited Father Brendan Smyth alone, when "the nightmare, the daymare, everything started."

"It was a case of managing every day from then on. It was a case of existing," she told the Newstalk presenter.

Read more: Suspicions about notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth existed before he was ordained

"He took my life and every time it happened another part of me died that I didn't even know was there. I thought I was dead already. And all people kept saying was 'this one is just looking for notice'."

In 2008, the memories and flashbacks of the abuse she suffered for the five years she attended boarding school came flooding back. Loreto "had it all" at the time with two children and her partner Patsy but was thrown into severe depression.

"I would say I was actively suicidal for at least two years. It was reliving it all over again," she said.

She said she "would be dead if it wasn't for Patsy", her partner, during this time. Yet "there were times when I was in the car driving and I was looking for a brick wall, because I could see Brendan Smyth trying to get in through the windscreen at me. I had the Samaritans number on quick dial on my phone."

Loreto said she didn't telling anyone at the school about the abuse when it was taking place as "Brendan Smyth told me I was going to go hell, and he was the one that was going to cure me, to save me from the fires of hell".

"My body was on fire, the parts that he had raped. I thought what would it be like if the rest of me were in the flames, because it really felt like I was on fire. He had me sucked in," she said.

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