Born a few years before Pope Francis, Michael O’Brien, who also died this week, will be remembered for his appearance on RTÉ’s Questions and Answers current affairs programme in May 2009. As an audience member, he spoke powerfully and agonisingly of the physical and sexual abuse he experienced in Ferryhouse industrial school near Clonmel, Co Tipperary, run by the Rosminians. The hurt dripped from him as his testimony detailed a family torn apart, a childhood ruined and a life haunted by nightmares.

One of 13 children, after O’Brien’s mother died in 1942 he was taken by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children “on a scut truck” to court in Clonmel. The siblings were sent to different institutions and “there was nothing my father could do”. Two nights after he arrived in Ferryhouse, he was raped. “Our only crime against the State was that we were poor and had no mother,” he recalled.

Although O’Brien met his wife Mary when he was aged 18, he did not tell her about the abuse until 1999. He also spoke of a suicide attempt after spending five days at the Ryan Commission........

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