A 58-year old father tried to end his life and often had suicidal thoughts after a former Christian Brother abused him when he was just ten years old.
In a victim impact statement read to Limerick Circuit Court, the man told of how he had trouble with relationships in the years that followed.
The evidence was heard when former Christian Brother Sean Drummond, previously jailed for two years in 2009 for molesting 18 boys at Creagh Lane National School where he was a teacher in 1967, stood accused of abusing another young boy when he taught at CBS Sexton Street in 1968.
The victims were all aged between eight and nine at the time of Creagh Lane assaults.
Before imposing sentence yesterday, Judge Carroll Moran said Mr Drummond’s actions had a “devastating and traumatic” consequences for his ten year old victim.
The 65 year old retired UCD librarian originally pleaded not guilty to two sample charges of abusing a young boy at the Sexton Street primary school.
With an address at Broadford Drive, Ballinteer, Dublin 16, Drummond had pleaded and a jury of seven women and five men had been sworn in. The case was adjourned and had been due to hear evidence last Wednesday but in the absence of the jury, the former teacher asked to change his plea to guilty.
Drummond, who has 36 previous convictions for similar offences relating to the indecent assaults that happened in the academic year between 1967 and 1968 at Creagh Lane, was charged with indecently assaulting the ten year old boy on unknown dates between August 1968 and August 1969 at the Christian Brothers School Primary School, Sexton Street, Limerick.
Aged ten at the time of the offences, the court was told that the boy was attending the school as a 4th class pupil where Mr Drummond was a teacher.
The court heard how Mr Drummond would sit the injured boy on his lap at the teacher’s desk or at the pupils table and touch him inappropriately.
The victim told gardai that his teacher would bring pupils into school on a Saturday and he recalled how he put his hand under his vestment and put it on his penis.
Counsel for the state John O’Sullivan told the court that Mr Drummond was a teacher who was “capable of administering corporal punishment of a severe nature”.
The court was told that Drummond would have continued teaching the rest of the class while he touched and fondled the young boy’s genitals and buttocks at the young boy’s desk.
Prosecution counsel, John O’Sullivan said that pupils feared Drummond as a teacher.
John O’Sullivan told Limerick Circuit Court that Mr Drummond, who was also known as S O Droma, was a member of the Christian Brothers Order at the time of the offences.
Judge Moran said while some of the inappropriate touching was done in the presence of other pupils, it was carried out “under cover and surreptitiously”.
He said the former Christian had abused his position of trust as a teacher and a member of a religious order.
In his victim impact statement the victim said that he had suicidal thoughts and that he tried to take his life at 21.
“I have never forgotten his name or his face. The things that happened have caused problems in my relationships and confused my thinking. They made me doubt that God existed.”
The former Christian Brother was sentenced to two terms of 12 months imprisonment in 2009 and served all but five months of the full two year jail term.
However, as this week’s case concluded, Judge Moran said he took into account the 65-year-old’s guilty plea and evidence that he is considered a low risk of re-offending according to a report from the Granada Institute.
The injured boy had been similarly abused by a lay man referred to as “Mr X” two years prior and Judge Moran said that “not all the trauma could be attributed to the accused.
He said that the 65-year-old had stayed out of trouble for 40 years and the fact he had served a two year prison sentence and the adverse publicity he has already been subjected to, he imposed a two year jail term but suspended the sentence for two years.
He also ordered that the accused man’s name be on the Register of Sex Offender for five years from yesterday’s date.
Originally from Walkinstown, Dublin, Sean John Drummond later married after he left the and has five children. He was made redundant from Fiat in the 1980s and also worked as a library assistant at the James Joyce library in UCD, but since retired.
