A COMPENSATION scheme for men sexually assaulted as boys by Fr Joseph Marmion at Limerick’s Crescent College decades ago, has been made public by the Jesuit religious order.
British born Marmion, who died in 2000 at the age of 75, is believed to have sexually assaulted dozens of boys he taught at Crescent College; Belvedere College, Dublin and Clongowes Wood College, Kildare.
The redress scheme by the three Jesuit Colleges in Ireland offers €75,000 plus to survivors, depending on severity of the abuse.
A statement from the Irish Jesuit Order said that the scheme had been recommended by the Steering Group which represents survivors.
The order’s Irish Provincial, Fr Leonard Moloney SJ said: “Once again I want to apologise to all those who suffered in any way at the hands of Joseph Marmion.”
Fr Moloney said his words alone would never be enough, but it was his sincere hope that the scheme would go some way towards assuring victims of the order’s commitment to continue responding in whatever ways possible to the wishes and concerns of survivors.
“I hope also that in its construction it will cause the least possible trauma to victims of Joseph Marmion, who have already suffered enough,” Fr Moloney added.
The Jesuits said the scheme was “one strand in a number of processes that have taken place since the Order first named Joseph Marmion on March 2, 2021, as a Jesuit who abused pupils in Belvedere, Clongowes and Crescent College Limerick forty years ago”.
“In the wake of the response to the statement from survivor/victims of Marmion, the Jesuits engaged two independent Restorative Facilitators, who have been working with survivors and Jesuits in a number of ways to address the concerns and requests of the people who were abused and harmed by Marmion,” the statement explained.
“Working with the facilitators, former pupils who had been abused identified that they wished to have as complete an understanding as possible of Fr Marmion’s behaviour and how much the Jesuits were aware of and responded to it”.
In an unusual move, on March 2 last year, the Jesuits publicly identified Marmion as having “abused boys sexually, emotionally and physically while he was on the teaching staff at Belvedere College in the 1970’s”.
The statement was issued “following engagement with a former pupil who was himself abused, in the hope that others who may have suffered would come forward and get the support they may need”.
“The Jesuits were contacted by this former pupil of Belvedere College in early 2019. He was a student at Belvedere in the 1970’s. In that time, he was sexually and emotionally abused by Joseph Marmion, and the abuse took place when he was a 13-year-old boy”.
Last July, the Jesuits completed a response document in an attempt to provide those details.
Fr Moloney expressed his gratitude to those survivors who were in contact since the naming of Marmion as well as those who “engaged so generously in developing the subsequent processes”.
Fr Moloney also renewed his call to survivors of abuse to contact the Order’s Child Safeguarding Office, the Restorative Facilitators and the relevant authorities.
To contact Ms Saoirse Fox, Child Safeguarding Officer, Irish Jesuit Province, email: [email protected]; Ms Barbara Walshe, Restorative Facilitator, email: [email protected]; and Ms Catherine O’Connell, Restorative Facilitator, email: [email protected]
