Chapter 2: On the Run

Tony Muggivan

It was Friday and we were getting ready to bring Brendan back to Dublin. He was saying goodbye to everyone as I waited in the car. I noticed that there were no tears and he didn’t seem a bit lonely — not like the night before. We had to make a stop at the priest’s house to pick up a package he wanted dropped off in Dublin. When I went into the house to get the package and the directions on where to drop it off, I left Brendan in the car outside. When I came back to the car, there was no Brendan to be seen anywhere. Eventually I saw him in the distance. I jumped into the car to try to cut him off. I shouldn’t have tried to run after him though. He was a bronze medal winner for cross-country running. Trying to catch Brendan in this area of Ireland was not easy. As I said, we live not far from the west shore of Lough Derg on the River Shannon. There are only a few miles of what is called ‘good land’ between the Shannon and the beginning of the Slieve Aughty mountains. The Slieve Aughty mountains are not really mountains. They are more like a range of heathered hills and marshy valleys. Because the area covered by these hills and valleys isn’t much good for anything else, the State planted thousands of acres of it with trees — mostly pine trees — decades ago. Someone like Brendan could hide for a long time in these forests without getting caught. His only problem would be food, clothing, and shelter from the weather. In all, there are about eighteen thousand acres of forest and a few hundred acres of privately owned woods in this area. All of these forests and woods overlook Lough Derg, and a journey from part of these wooded areas to a boat on the lake is very short. It could easily be travelled, night or day, without being seen. If Brendan wanted to hide indefinitely, he would have little difficulty. And if he wanted to travel by boat the seven miles across to County Tipperary, he could also do that. I returned home about mid-day and was telling my wife how very much Brendan was now outside the law. I told her I didn’t think there was any way we could help him now. I felt disappointed but felt some relief that I had done as much as I could for him. I called Trinity House and told them what had happened. I again talked to an administrator and told him about Brendan’s fear of the detention centre. The administrator, like myself, was convinced that Brendan needed to be in a mental hospital and not at Trinity House.

I did some farm work, trying to get Brendan and his problems out of my mind, but wondering where he would go and what he would do. Now, the guards would have to catch him.

The weather was still very cold and wet. I finished all the outside work before it got dark, then came inside for my supper and settled down in the living room by the fire, to watch TV.

There are two doors to my house — a front door which we hardly ever use, and a door at the end of the house which comes directly into the kitchen at the end of the living room.

I went out of the living room to the kitchen for a cup of tea and sat at the table to drink it. I was still thinking about Brendan and wondering if I’d seen the last of him when I heard someone walking up to the back door. I looked up and saw the door opening, and in walked Brendan, soaked to the skin from the rain, acting as if there was nothing seriously wrong. Now we had a very serious problem but he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

He told us he couldn't go back to Trinity House no matter what. I knew it would be a waste of time trying to convince him otherwise.

Next day, 25 February, Mary and I finally persuaded Brendan to tell us what had happened at Trinity House detention centre. He agreed on condition that Mary leave the room.

After she left, Brendan told me how a member of staff at the detention centre would lock him into his cell and sexually abuse him. He told me that this had started after he was there only a month, and that it had continued until about five or six weeks before he ran away. He told me in detail about the last incident.

The member of staff made him take his clothes off. He then pressed himself against Brendan’s backside, reaching around with his hands to catch his penis. He then began to masturbate him.

In the course of the masturbation, which Brendan said was very painful, the skin was pulled back over the tip of his penis and it remained in that position because his penis swelled and the swelling wouldn’t go down.

Brendan thought that his penis had been seriously injured. He went to the nurse for help, and she referred him to a doctor who gave him some cream, with directions on how to use it. Brendan said that he thought there was blood on his penis and that he still had marks and scars on it from what had happened.

I told him that he might have to be examined by doctors and a psychiatrist, and he agreed to this on condition that I would stay in the room while the examination was going on.

I contacted my solicitor, Billy Loughnane, through his partner, Margaret Hayes, and gave all the information to him. He asked for Brendan to be examined as soon as possible as the marks might soon go away. Later, I got a call from the garda sergeant in Scariff, asking me to talk to Brendan’s father and see if we could work together.

On 27 February 1989, the Monday after Brendan had come back, and after I had reported the complaints of sexual abuse to Billy Loughnane, a guard stopped me on the road and asked me about Brendan. At this stage, I was in no humour to be nice to guards, or, for that matter, anyone in authority.

The guard asked me about missing chain saws, and reports of a house being broken into. He asked me whether I would know if Brendan might have anything to do with these reports. I told him I wouldn’t know and suggested that the guards would be better occupied conducting investigations and asking questions about the reports of abuse Brendan had made. I told him that the real criminals might be getting paid by the State. When the guard got tired of listening to me, he went on his way.

At this stage, I had become alarmed at the prospect of helping anyone who would make Brendan go back to an institution where he could be harmed further.

On the night of 27 February, I decided to follow the suggestion I had received from the Scariff sergeant, that I visit Brendan’s father. A letter for Michael Pat O’Donnell had arrived by mistake at my house and I decided to deliver it myself.

I met Michael Pat and his wife, Nora. They were both very angry at me and asked me where Brendan was. I told them I didn’t know his whereabouts. Michael Pat said he would hold me responsible for his son and he wanted him back in Dublin right away.

A couple of days later, on 1 March 1989, the administrator I had previously spoken to called me from Trinity House, and told me he had heard the reports that Brendan was saying he had been

sexually abused. I told him that Brendan had agreed to be examined by doctors and a psychiatrist.

I told him I did not know where Brendan was but believed him to be safe. I gave him the names of the staff member, and of the prisoner who had helped him, and asked that something be done about these two men.

He agreed to investigate both men and told me that Brendan had complained to him some time previously about being ‘thumped’ by the staff member whose name I had given him.

We knew that the guards could come at any time as they were likely to expect Brendan to return to where he had previously been welcome. We let him stay the night, but someone had to stay awake all night to watch out for the guards.

The following morning, I sent Brendan to a friend of mine, Sonny Farrell, and told him to stay there until he heard from me. Sonny Farrell was an old man who has since died. I didn’t have the heart to force Brendan back to Trinity House, and I needed time to come up with a way to help him. Brendan persuaded Sonny Farrell to remove the window in his bedroom so that he could escape if the guards came.

In the next nine days, the garda squad car from Killaloe came to our house seven times inquiring about him. It started with guards and then went right up to the superintendent. All grades in the force were questioning me whenever they caught sight of me.

I began to have some idea of what it must have been like for my father when he was being watched and questioned by the British when he was in the old IRA from 1916 to 1921.

One of the times I was being questioned by the guards on the side of the road leading to my house, I glanced behind one of them and saw Brendan up near the top of a tree in the forest. I had warned him not to come near the place.

On another occasion, the guards were at my house, questioning me. Since they didn’t seem to believe me when I said I didn’t know where he was, I offered to let them search the house without a warrant. They declined and I found out later that had they come into the house, they could have found him hiding within three feet of where they were standing when they were questioning me.

I remained baffled about what to do since neither my wife nor I liked the idea of sending Brendan back to the detention centre. He had begun to play cat-and-mouse with the guards. Sometimes he would stay in a community hall across the street from the garda barracks in Mountshannon and would follow all the comings and goings of people at the barracks.

It was now into March, with the days getting longer but with the weather still staying cold and wet. I had a round-table discussion with all of my family, sons included, to discuss what to do.

Two of my sons had gone to school with Brendan in Mountshannon before he had got into difficulty with the law. Moreover, he was a second cousin of my children’s, and everyone wanted to help him. We all wondered how we could.

Next morning, solicitor Billy Loughnane came to my house with my wife’s brother-in-law, Tony O’Brien. He explained the law on how we might be able to help Brendan. He said that it would cost a lot of money. I called my brother and talked to Joe Carney. They both continued to advise me that mental health care was necessary no matter where Brendan went.

One day, I met Brendan on the road and he had a stick about four feet long. It was a stick cut from a young sally tree and it was pointed at both ends like a spear. It was over an inch in diameter. It looked like a very dangerous weapon.

I was angry when I saw it and told him to put it down, warning him never to let me see him with something like that again. Sonny Farrell told me he had seen him making it and was not happy at what he was doing.

I started to read a book I had taken from my brother’s house when I had visited him in New Orleans in 1982. It was called Abnormal Behavior. While reading this book, I was thinking about Brendan. My concern was that if he were to continue on his present path, he could commit very serious crimes.

Meanwhile, my solicitor made arrangements with a barrister to take Brendan’s case to court. We had decided to request the court that his sentence be set aside and that my wife and I be awarded custody.

Now there was a plan in place to get rid of the basis for one of Brendan’s worst fears — the fear of going back to Trinity House.

He continued to live at Sonny Farrell’s while waiting for the court hearing in County Carlow. It was scheduled for 17 April 1989.

Going to court was expensive but we felt we had to help Brendan. I had mixed feelings about the courts and the State. On the one hand, I was grateful to the courts, but, on the other hand, I was fed up with the State.

Although I was proposing to save the State a lot of money by taking Brendan off its hands, I had to pay for the legal expenses myself — a total of two thousand pounds. When I visited Billy Loughnane the day before court, I gave him fourteen hundred pounds and hoped that it was worth it.

Fr Tom McNamara visited my house on the same day. I needed a letter of consent from Brendan’s father but I couldn’t get it myself as Michael Pat and I were on bad terms. Fr McNamara got it for me and brought it to me, signed, so we were all ready for court.

I continued to have serious worries about Fr McNamara’s involvement. One night, before going to court, we were sitting in the living room — Mary, myself, Brendan, and the priest. Mary went into a downstairs bedroom, one room away from where we were sitting. At the time, she was suffering from a badly injured back and frequently had to rest because of pain.

The phone rang in the front room and I went to answer it, leaving Brendan and the priest alone in the living room. I was talking on the phone while half-listening to the conversation going on between the priest and Brendan. I suddenly froze when I heard Fr McNamara say, ‘I love you, Brendan.’

I didn’t know what to do. When I walked into the sitting room, Brendan looked at me. It was so sad to see a man, up in years, in love with a young boy, and to see the distress it was causing the latter. I sent Brendan out of the kitchen and continued talking to the priest as if I hadn’t heard what I’d heard.

When the priest left, I asked my wife if she had heard it too. She had. The priest always wanted Brendan sitting near him and several times I had seen him putting his hand on Brendan’s inner thigh. I warned Brendan and told him to make sure to avoid ever being alone with him. I warned the priest too about danger if he didn’t behave himself. In those days, it was a waste of time going to the higher-ups in the Church or to the guards.

The priest had known Brendan since his childhood. Brendan had regularly served Mass for him when he was younger. For many years, parents had warned their children never to be alone with this priest.

Fr McNamara later told me of an occasion when Brendan had visited him at the rectory, having been out in the rain. He said he had to have Brendan strip naked so that he could dry his clothes before the fire.

I talked to Brendan about my worries and he told me he had known for a long time that the priest was ‘bent’. I later found out from Fr McNamara that, over a period of time, he had given Brendan substantial amounts of money. When I heard this, I wondered if Brendan had been blackmailing him.

I did not like what I heard but I knew it was useless to report the priest since, over a period of many years, many reports had been made and nothing had been done. In spite of this, I did complain to the guards, and anyone else who would listen to me.

One day, I had an argument with a guard about why Fr McNamara was never investigated and how worried I was for Brendan. The guard told me that if I saw what he had on the ‘station book’ about the priest in question, I would be shocked.

I talked to Fr McNamara later and warned him that if he didn’t distance himself from Brendan that Brendan would be capable of cutting his throat and laughing at him while he was doing it. I think I scared him for awhile.

Brendan was in danger of abuse in Trinity House — and in Mountshannon, from an unlikely source.

However, I needed Fr McNamara for a few more days — until court was over. So I had to walk a thin line. I couldn’t afford to stay completely away from him.

Even though we were trying our best to do whatever we could to prevent Brendan from ever having to go back to the detention centre, we had begun wondering whether he was already

harmed beyond the point of being able to recover.