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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
24 July-August 2024
T
o Whitefriars Church for the funeral
of Fr David, known as Adrian,
Weakliam, former Carmelite
headmaster of Terenure College.
I arrive early as I’m not really here
to pay respects but to look around and get a
sense of this man with his lost power over
children.
I take some furtive photos and then a small
groupie in a brown religious suit asks me to
stop but I don’t.
I take a pew but I get panic attacks at
funerals so I head for the back wall to observe
and record. I’m directly in line with the priest,
via the con.
It’s not a grand aair. The survivors have
negotiated that it wouldn’t big a big multi-
priest cascading tribute.
The con has gone in early and there are
some nice gardaí on duty, outside. Funny that
they’re needed; him being a man of God and
all. I wander in past the grannies lighting
candles and observe a line to sign the register
and a picture of a blob of a grey man, at the
back of the pews.
Fr Michael Troy, Carmelite Prior Provincial,
who’s doing the mass, is an old-timer all in
purple and he’s belting away about Fr
Weakliam’s sins being forgiven, and the risen
Christ. David’s seventy years of service to the
Carmelites.
He does feel obliged to make a small detour
from the usual all-forgivingness. But it is very
small. “David kept faith in a forgiving God
through his long and varied life. The mission
is to love and David tried to do this as a son, as
a brother as a friar – his strengths, his
weaknesses. And indeed like all of us he had
his weaknesses. Many loved him; some did
not. And that’s ok”.
It’s not. David’s weaknesses were
egregiously worse than others’.
I’m tempted to go to Dunne’s over on
George’s St. I like their freshly squeezed
orange juice but I survive as far as the bidding
prayer. So I miss the best bit when a nephew
addresses the mourners impromptu as they
flock out: “He was a great man”. Later Fr Troy
guarantees to the survivors that this was a
mistake, unheralded.
The headline over an article by Paul Kennedy
in the January 2024 edition of Village had read:
‘McClean, Madden, O’Donovan, Whitty:
Carmelites under Troy and O’Neill have never
admitted Terenure colluded in widespread
paedophilia, with the abusers named above
facilitated by Fr David Weakliam’.
It was tough stu but then the article
outlined a catalogue of horrors. Weakliam,
whom we alone of all media named, had
presided over it.
The article explained that “The four
paedophiles McClean, Madden, O’Donovan,
and their ringmaster Weakliam were obviously
sharing information on victims with each
other”.
Kennedy described a beating from Fr
Weakliam:
“I walked away from Fr Madden [with John
McClean the rugby coach who dropped
Kennedy when he rejected their advances]
when he went to feel me; He leaned and
drooled over me reeking of whiskey, cigarettes,
bad breath and BO. Then suddenly he
squeezed my genitals so hard I nearly passed
out. When I called him a “fuckin bastard” and
elbowed his hands from my crotch he bounced
my head repeatedly o the desk until I was
concussed.
Days later I was called into Fr Weakliam’s
oce. I had no idea why, until he said: “I
heard you are not obeying Fr Madden and Mr
Carmelite Cover-up
Fr David Weakliam, ringleader of abuse in
Terenure College, gets a respectable funeral
By Michel Smih
McClean”.
With that, Weakliam locked the door, beat
me to a pulp, focussing principally on my
liver, kidneys and internal organs keenly
avoiding any visible signs. I can still
remember his violent arousal and frothing
excitement as he inflicted the hammering.
He said: “You stupid boy. Who do you think
you are? Do as you are told or I will have to
do this again and again”.
Kennedy wrote that: “All of the Terenure
abusers are dead, (Fr Aidan O’Donovan/Fr
Jackie Madden/Denis Whitty), incarcerated
(John McClean) or incapacitated (Fr David
Weakliam)”.
Now Fr Weakliam too is gone.
Since he went public, Kennedy has been
contacted by almost 100 men who were
abused. They realised that maybe 18 men
have committed suicide due in no small part
to the fact that they were sexually abused in
Terenure College.
Members of the Carmelite Order cannot
ocially say sorry for sexual abuse or admit
they violated their duty of care to the children
in their care and they remain determined to
deny their collusion and risibly to claim that
the four active paedophiles on their sta
were operating without the knowledge of any
of their order or sta over three decades —
yet with the full knowledge of the students
at all times!
For this observer Fr Troy failed to recognise
the awfulness of Fr Weakliam’s regime, his
bullying nature, his exceptionally negative
influence on the generations he for so long
controlled. That was a failure for Fr Troy and
an unforgiveable failure for the Carmelites
for whom he fronts.
To be fair, Weakliam attended anger-
management courses decades ago and
eventually ended up teaching them. There
are countless numbers of people he helped
and counselled in later life, some were aware
of his earlier delinquency which he never
public acknowledged, many were not.
Today Fr Weakliam joined St Valentine
whose relics are allegedly in the Church
where he was eulogised. St Valentine is the
Patron Saint of Love. Fr Weakliam was often
an agent of hatred. May he rest in peace
NEWS
grdí on duty outside Fr Weklim’s
‘respectble’ funerl; inside mourners py
their respects
