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32 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 33
By Michael Smith
The Soul of Whitty
Like charmer John McClean and up
to 20 others, Denis Whitty who has
just died, 2 weeks before a criminal
prosecution, was a savage abuser
in a Carmelite school
A
former lay teacher in
Terenure College, who
was accused of multiple
instances of physical
and sexual abuse of
young boys, has died aged 83,
peacefully in Fenit in rural Kerry. His
death in August came just weeks
before he was due in court to answer
sample charges brought against
him.
Denis Whitty previously faced
trial in 2004, accused of two
charges of indecent assault against
a fourteen-year old boy at his home
and a further 12 counts of gross
indecency at the college and
another location in south Dublin.
However, he was acquitted of the
indecent assault charges and six
counts of gross indecency by Dublin
Circuit Criminal Court in 2004. The
jury failed to agree a verdict on the
other six counts and a re-trial date
was never set after the alleged
victim emigrated and withdrew his
evidence.
Whitty denied having improper
sexual relations with the schoolboy
claiming the relations started after
the boy was of age.
Whitty was to face criminal
proceedings in mid-September.
Gardaí told him there were other
charges. He died in late August.
Civil proceedings against Whitty
had been brought by multiple
alleged victims, but never reached
the full hearing stage.
afterwards.
Following a litany of allegations
from a large number of past pupils,
some documented in this magazine
in 2016, McClean’s abuses were
finally forced out into the public
domain. McClean, his trial heard,
had groped and ejaculated on boys,
lain on top of them, beaten them,
masturbated them, ground his
groin against them and exposed
himself. Before and after abusing
them he bullied, groomed, and
psychologically terrorised
Terenure, known as the ‘Nure and
the Gick, had previously been
perceived as the training ground for
Ireland’s stolid middle classes, but
in fact was home to a regime of
rampant sexual abuse against the
innocent by the most cynical.
John McClean was a charismatic
teacher. Author John Boyne told the
Irish Times that, “sensing my
growing interest in literature,
McClean lent me a copy of TS Eliot’s
The Waste Land, a poem that I have
reread regularly ever since. When
my debut novel was published in
2000, he was one of only two
people to whom I sent a copy. Now,
this fills me with shame”.
Previously one of Leinster rugby’s
most revered coaches, particularly
in the senior role he took in UCD,
McClean was a coach at the school
when it won the Senior Cup in 1984,
and is credited with identifying the
talents of Brian O’Driscoll as a
teenager. As coach in Terenure he
was always on the look out for an
injury to rub, or a boys’ shower to
slither into. He was nick-named
‘Doc’. He manipulated boys by
linking favour to places on the
successful SCT he trained.
Some boys were heroic. Paul
Downes was dropped from the team
in 1979 though he had starred in the
cup-winning team of 1977. A
prefect, he went to the Terenure’s
principal, Prior Paul Graham, about
McClean in 1979. Des Harrison, an
unusually caring young man, was
elected school captain in 1979 even
after McClean and Graham called
for a re-vote “after some confusion”.
He went to Prior Graham about
McClean but Graham ignored him
and told the other prefects that if
there was another word about it
there would be trouble for them.
Paul Downes and Des Harrison
both went to gardaí for the first time
in 2018 after the Village articles
appeared, though they received
almost no support from past pupils.
Sadly both died in circumstances of
neglect and stress shortly
There is a level of accountability required
of the Carmelites who survive that is
proportionate to their delinquency in
allowing the abuse to fester and go
unpunished for what is now fully fifty years
Whitty
NEWS
32 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 33
obvious signs. When I read Village
Magazine years later it had the
absolute ring of truth about it as it
pulled together the stories of
multiple former pupils whose
stories were utterly
convincing. Whitty and McClean
worked alongside each other for
decades both as teachers and
rugby trainers. Did they know about
each other? Who else knew
aboutone, or both? Why was this
allowed to go on for so long,
impacting so many children?”.
As to whether O’Donovan,
McClean and Whitty knew of each
other’s abuse or collaborated the
Irish Mail has written of a
“paedophile ring” and quoted one
alleged victim, “‘There was this
feeling that we were all passed
around, you know”. A separate
victim described how, as a student
there in the mid-1970s, he was
“passed around from person to
person”. He was sexually and
physically assaulted by Whitty, as
well as the now jailed McClean and
others. It is understood that the
Carmelites are under legal pressure
to concede some degree of collusion
between the abusers.
The effect on boys was
devastating. John Boyne was
molested by a lay teacher. He told
the Irish Times: “I find myself
wondering whether, if the first
person to touch me had not been a
middle-aged man in a position of
authority but a boy of my own age,
would I have evolved di erently, my
mind less discomfi ted by intimacy”.
A year ago, the Carmelite Order
said it had paid out over €1.6 to
victims of abuse in Ireland,
including payouts and “therapeutic
support” to victims of McClean, and
suspect apologies. 56 people have
made allegations of historical sex
abuse against an extraordinary 21
members of the Order.
For Whitty’s alleged victims, his
death marks the end of a long
campaign for justice that never saw
the inside of the courthouse though
for some it made it to the threshold.
For many, there is a level of
accountability required of the
Carmelites who survive that is
proportionate to their delinquency
in allowing the abuse to fester and
go unpunished for what is now fully
fi fty years.
of 18 who attended Terenure
College. He will remain in prison
until 2030. Court evidence showed
that Terenure College knew from the
1970s that he was abusing boys
and that rather than removing him
or reporting him to the Garda, the
school had a orded him greater
powers and access to boys: though
barred from producing school
plays, after allegations he was
using his position producing the
plays to separate out his targets, he
was made fi rst year form master in
charge of 12-year-old boys, and
given an o ce o to one side that
would become the perfect venue for
abuse.
Allegations were also made
against other members of the
teacher sta , including President of
the school’s Pioneer Council and
spiritual director of the Carmelite
Third Order, Fr Aidan ‘Iggy’
O’Donovan who was moved to new
parishes, including San Antonio in
Texas, following accusations,
before his death in the UK in 2015.
Multiple pupils accused
O’Donovan of abuse, claiming he
used to sexually assault them as
they sat on his knee in front of the
rest of the class. His alleged victims
were denied their chance of justice
when he died in 2013.
Alongside the sexual abuse,
beatings were commonplace in
Terenure College at the time, with
many former students recalling
being sent home with red marks on
their hands and legs.
Tom Lyons says: “I thought John
McClean was a bully and a creep in
school. As a boy, I didn’t know what
a paedophile was so I didn’t see the
Whitty was to face
criminal proceedings
in mid-September.
Gardaí told him there
were other charges.
He died in late August
individuals for years at a time, on
school grounds.
McClean was abusing boys in
Terenure as long ago as 1966 and
reports first surfaced in 1974.
McClean ran the school play in
Terenure. Another abuser
Fr Weakliam, a highly controlling
ringleader, assiduously assigned
Denis Whitty to work on the play
every year with McClean. Whitty
also helped McClean choose the
rugby team and like him
administered dubious medical aid
on the pitch. Though they both
characteristically dressed in the
black cloaks that were voguish at
the time, Whitty always seemed
deferential to McClean.
Tom Lyons, editor of the Currency,
was a student at Terenure College in
the 1990s. He says, “Denis Whitty
was my economics teacher for the
leaving cert and my rugby coach.In
school he could be gru but my
experience was he was also
encouraging. He did have a temper,
but I never saw him hit anyone.He
was known to fi re his duster and
heavy set of keys across the
classroom to attract attention, and
older students said that in the past
he had clattered children by
throwing things at them. But I
never heard any sexual
allegations against him while
I was in school”.
Lyons says that after school
there were rumours about a
court case: “I was shocked to
hear about the case, and other
serious accusations in more
recent years. The children - now
men - who had the courage to speak
out against Whitty, like those who
spoke out about other abusers in
the school, showed incredible
bravery”.
McClean is currently serving an
11-year sentence, with the fi nal
three years suspended, handed to
him in 2021 following conviction of
abusing 23 former pupils. Earlier
this year he received a further four-
year sentence after admitting to
sexually assaulting 20 boys over
two decades.
Passing sentence, judge Martin
Nolan raised the key unanswered
question: “Why was this allowed to
go on for 30 years?”.
The Carmelites o ered many of
the abuse victims cash which it was
implied was linked to not going to
the Garda. It appears boys who
went to the Garda were told that the
only conviction the Garda would be
supporting would be McClean.
Pressure from this magazine and
many other media, and national
scandal after publicity over the
abuse in Terenure and other private
schools, made that position
politically untenable.
In total, McClean was convicted
on 96 counts, all for indecent
assault of young boys under the age
Terenure College secondry school in 1993
John McClen clrifi ed, left, nd Denis Whitty clrifi ed, right: picture
courtesy Tom Lyons/The Currency
McClen
