IRELAND
The Irish Times
GERRY MORIARTY
VICTIM’S REACTION: THE “PENNY dropped” for Brendan Boland when he was just shy of his 14th birthday at Christmas 1974. The paedophile priest Brendan Smyth had been sexually abusing him for two to three years at that stage.
Smyth had brought him, a Belfast boy and three girls to a Wombles concert in Dublin. Afterwards Smyth shared a room with the two boys, who also featured in this week’s BBC programme. First he abused Mr Boland, then he signalled the other boy to come to his bed.
“I was lying listening to what was going on. And I said to myself, ‘This is not going to happen again, I have got to do something. I don’t like what’s going on here’. That’s when the penny dropped for me.”
Mr Boland spoke to The Irish Times in a hotel in Belfast with his wife Martina by his side. “She’s a rock,” he said.
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