A ST JOHN OF GOD brother at the centre of a covered-up abuse scandal, first exposed by an Irish Mail on Sunday investigation is facing a fresh lawsuit.
The new case against Brother Aidan Clohessy was filed in the High Court in recent days in the name of a survivor who has recently come forward for the first time.
The head of the St John of God order, Brother Donates Forkan, is also listed as a defendant, as is the board of management of the order’s St Augustine’s school.
The new case is the first in what are expected to be numerous cases being handled by Coleman Legal – a Dublin firm with a significant track record involving institutional abuse cases. Since 2020, Dún Laoghairebased Murphy Solicitors has also initiated numerous High Court cases on behalf of former pupils, who came forward after our initial exposé into Brother Aidan.
The survivors are all former pupils of the order’s St Augustine’s school for children with intellectual disabilities in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, where Brother Aidan was headmaster for nearly 25 years.
After Brother Aidan was first accused of child abuse, the St John of God order (SJOG) covered-up the allegations, misled a statutory inquiry, secretly paid compensation to some victims and dispatched him to Malawi without informing the authorities there of any potential risk to children.
In Malawi, Brother Aidan was allowed to run the order’s children’s programmes for almost two decades, even as his order told Irish child-protection authorities he had no contact with minors.
While in Malawi, Brother Aidan routinely collected street children, which he housed at a specially built garage at his home, and was present when they showered and washed. Brother Aidan and his order also lied to international donors in order to obtain more than €1m in funding for operations in Malawi – telling a German charity he had never been the focus of child abuse concerns.
The MoS first exposed Brother Aidan’s abuse in 2017 after an investigation traced alleged victims both in Ireland and Malawi.
The story resulted in funding worth millions being withdrawn from the order by international donors and the Irish Government. Our coverage also sparked a Garda investigation and today, files relating to at least half a dozen alleged victims are awaiting a decision from the Director of Public Prosecutions, believed to be imminent.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen former pupils of Brother Aidan have decided to take High Court cases against him and his order.
Also facing lawsuits is the Department of Education, which largely funded the order’s St Augustine’s school and oversaw the now-closed redress scheme for those abused in State-funded institutions.
Some survivors are also suing the Provincial of the SJOG order, Donatus Forkan, and the retired Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin,
Diarmuid Martin. As the then-head of the Catholic Church in Ireland Archbishop Martin would likely have been aware of a secret Vatican investigation into Brother Aidan – set up in 2012 as he was abruptly removed from his mission in Malawi – although the Archdiocese has refused to comment.
When contacted by the MoS, an SJOG spokesman said the order had ‘no comment to make ‘.
The order previously apologised for childcare failings and said it would ‘cooperate fully’ with Garda investigations into Brother Aidan.
