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‘A priest groomed me at boarding school by giving me tobacco – and I blamed myself'

‘A priest groomed me at boarding school by giving me tobacco – and I blamed myself'

Many years after suffering abuse by a cleric at school, a past pupil found peace through a lengthy process of psychotherapy. The victim and his therapist talk about coping with the trauma
It is the early 1970s and a boy is struggling to adapt to life at a Catholic boarding school in Leinster.
William Smith* is mercilessly teased about his English accent and he feels desperately homesick. Week after week, he finds he cannot fit in and he longs for the comforts of home. His father had been a boarder at the same school, too, when he was a child, and he might have hoped for some understanding about his predicament.
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