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RTÉ News
03-05-2025
- RTÉ News
The Christian Brothers: assets, abuse and accountability
As clerical child sexual abuse scandals grew in the 1990s, the Catholic Church was already starting to sell off, divide and divest its assets. The Christian Brothers were too. Survivors of Christian Brother abuse often point to the Brothers' assets, seeing the congregation as steadfast in the protection of those assets, while indifferent to their childhood abuse, and its impact on their adult lives. Some of what the Christian Brothers sold was substantial: 29 hectares in Booterstown, Dublin for the development of suburban housing in 1990; an entire estate of 384 houses in the Charlemont development on its Marino lands between 1990 and mid-1993. Those were part of large legacy lands attached to headquarters and administrative buildings, bought by or gifted to the congregation in connection with its charitable role, operating schools and accommodating and maintaining Brothers as teachers, all for its mission to educate, particularly the poor. But it also sold the land of its former industrial schools. One was St Joseph's Industrial School in Salthill, Galway, Ireland's last industrial school. It finally closed in 1995. Harrowing accounts of child sexual abuse at St Joseph's Salthill and five other residential institutions run by Christian Brothers featured in the Ryan Report, published by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in 2009. On St Joseph's Salthill specifically, the Ryan Report concluded that the Congregation of Christian Brothers had "protected its own reputation instead of protecting children". St Joseph's Salthill and its 25 acres of land was jointly owned by the Christian Brothers and the Bishop of Galway. By May 1995, they were ready to sell it to developers, but there was a hurdle. The previous bishop was one of the joint trustees, and he was Bishop Eamonn Casey. Casey had resigned and was in hiding abroad after revelations that he had an affair, fathered a child, and then rejected it. The hurdle was easily overcome. In Dublin, Christian Brothers completed the paperwork to transfer its share to its new leaders as trustees, and, from Lakeland, Florida, in the USA, on 17 May 1995, "the Most Reverend Eamonn Casey, of The Cathedral, Galway" signed an indenture to transfer his share to the new bishop, his legal document witnessed by an Irish priest, "Rev Peter Quinn, St Anthony's Catholic Church, Lakeland". The sale went ahead, and over three years, the Brothers and the new Bishop, James McLoughlin, went on to sell St Joseph's land for prime residential development, from Lower Salthill down to the prom. Last year, the public learned from an RTÉ documentary that in 2007, the Vatican had formally removed Casey from ministry due to separate allegations of child sexual abuse against him. The 1995 memorial of indenture by Casey and a former Christian Brother leader was just one document out of thousands examined by RTÉ Investigates that demonstrates how entangled legacy assets and legacy abuse are for the Catholic Church and the Christian Brothers. When the first wave of victims of institutional child sexual abuse came forward, the bill for compensation grew. The State redress scheme of 2002, where religious orders made a contribution towards the cost, granted the orders an indemnity against future claims. That left the taxpayer footing a €1.5bn bill for institutional abuse alone. Artane in north Dublin was one of the most notorious of the industrial institutions. Between 2000 and 2020, the Christian Brothers sold off most of its Artane institutional land for housing developments such as the St David's and Whitethorn estates. The old Artane building became St David's CBS, which last year rebranded as St David's College and started to become co-educational. Beyond the building itself, it has few reminders of its grim past. But the public spotlight has turned to abuse in day and boarding schools, prompted by an RTÉ Radio 1 Doc on One programme 'Blackrock Boys', which drew public attention to abuse in schools run by another order, the Spiritans, formerly the Holy Ghost Fathers. Last year, an official scoping inquiry into historical child sexual abuse in schools reported that the Christian Brothers had by far the highest number of allegations of abuse and of alleged abusers, involving the largest number of schools. RTÉ Investigates went looking for what the Christian Brothers owned in the 35 years since abuse scandals became public knowledge, from 1990 to date. Through in-depth searches, cross-referencing and analysis, from memorials of old property deeds to registered property, to planning files and company records, to newspaper archives and historical records and maps, a database of Christian Brother properties was built. It established that since 1990, the Christian Brothers has had a total portfolio of over 800 properties. Senior Brothers acting as trustees, held, sold, or transferred the 800 properties on behalf of the congregation. The Christian Brothers still owns at least 270 properties, while the trustees sold or transferred some 530 more. RTÉ Investigates revealed that two senior Brothers, in the leadership of the congregation over the space of two decades, and part of a group of leading Brothers that managed its assets and property portfolio, are now convicted child sexual abusers. A charity since its formation by a Waterford businessman, Edmund Rice, in 1802, today the Congregation of Christian Brothers' European assets are held in registered charities in Ireland, Northern Ireland and England - each of the three charities being subject to canon law as well as civil law. The congregation is known as the Christian Brothers in Ireland and as 'the Irish Christian Brothers' in some other countries abroad. Its traditional black cassock and white collar was clerical garb. However, the Christian Brothers are not clerics, but a community or 'congregation' of Catholic lay men, who swore vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to their superiors. Their superiors, in turn, report to the Vatican, through a committee of Cardinals in Rome. In recent years, the typical attire of Christian Brother members has been a business suit and tie. In 2008, the Christian Brothers announced it was transferring a significant part of its portfolio, 96 schools, then professionally valued for the Brothers at €427m, to a new trust it established, the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST). ERST, through a separate canonical entity, Edmund Rice Schools Trust Foundation, is also subject to canon as well as civil law. ERST's own accounts, from its incorporation up to its last filed financial statements to the end of August 2024 show the Christian Brothers transferred a total of €112m worth of school land to it, a quarter of the initial value. The Christian Brothers blame the property crash for the huge difference in value, but while by this year most school premises have been transferred, RTÉ Investigates has established that the Brothers held on to significant lands around the school premises, including school playing fields and ground used by pupils and local communities, and the sites of former residences for its teaching Brothers. As a lot of the properties and their boundaries fall on unregistered land, it is difficult for parents and members of the public to know where school premises end, and Christian Brother property begins. A well-known public example is the unregistered land around Clonkeen College in Deansgrange. That's after a controversial contract-for-sale in which the Christian Brothers were to sell off a significant portion of its lands and sports fields at Clonkeen to a developer to build 299 apartments and duplexes. In that case too, in addition to land, the putative sale included the former residence of the Christian Brothers who taught at the school, a building that is now the headquarters of the Brothers' educational trust, ERST. Completion of the contract for sale was contingent on the grant of planning permission for the development. In August 2019, a fence was erected that marked out the part of the lands to be sold. The fence denied access from then on for sports use by the school or the local community. In 2021, An Bord Pleanála approved the development, but following legal challenges, including by local residents, last year the High Court quashed that approval, finding that An Bord Pleanála had erred in how it interpreted the application of planning policies to lands in institutional use. The Christian Brothers confirmed to RTÉ Investigates that the sale of lands beside the playing field in Clonkeen has not been completed and no monies were received from the developer. It pointed out that its promised voluntary pledges to redress has been paid in full. That amounted to €30m and was paid off in instalments by 2019. The congregation remains the owner of the Clonkeen lands, and over seven years after the contract for sale was entered into, Clonkeen students are left with a pitch that is not full size, while the fence that separates the pitch from the Christian Brother land remains, still keeping school students out. Dr James Gallen, of the School of Law, DCU, said that though playing fields "clearly were intended to be used for the provision of public education, for sports and so on, the Christian Brothers were a private actor involved in providing a public service", and as such, knew that the fields could be rezoned and used for property development, and "could be more lucrative". Indeed, a year before it announced it was transferring its schools to its trust, ERST, a meeting of the Christian Brothers' leadership decided to retain the proceeds of sales of school playing fields that it owned. Among the leaders making that decision was the now-convicted child abuser, Brother Martin O'Flaherty. However, after the Ryan Report forced religious orders back to the negotiating table for a second voluntary redress deal in 2009, the Christian Brothers promised to transfer €127m worth of playing fields to ERST. That did not happen. ERST's own accounts up to the end of August 2024 show the Christian Brothers only transferred a little over €25m worth since, starting the transfers in 2020. Back in 2009, in its offer letter for the second redress deal with the State, the congregation's then Province leader, Kevin Mullan, wrote: "These sporting amenities are integral to the lives of 37,000 students and thousands of young people in local communities around Ireland". It continues to allow access to schoolchildren to the vast majority of those playing fields, and in a statement in advance of the broadcast of 'Christian Brothers: The Assets, The Abusers' by RTÉ Investigates, the Christian Brothers said ERST's now 39,000 students have "the full and continuing benefit of use of all these playing fields whilst conveyancing completes". Its statement said that its transfer of ownership of the fields was half complete. "The transfer of playing fields independently valued prior to the global financial crash is almost 50% complete with ERST," it said. However, after the broadcast, figures given to RTÉ Investigates by the Department of Education show the Christian Brothers transferred just 16 school playing fields to ERST since the 2009 redress deal in which it promised to transfer all of them. The Department of Education figures mean that just a third of the originally promised 49 school playing fields have been transferred, with two-thirds still owned by the Congregation of Christian Brothers. ERST and its 96 schools have use of those not transferred under a short-term licence only. ERST told RTÉ Investigates it was independent of and legally separate to the Congregation of Christian Brothers. Asked how many playing fields had not been transferred to it, ERST said the playing fields were "being transferred in order of priority". "Any time playing fields are required for school development steps to transfer them to ERST are immediately taken", it said. However, since the 2009 agreement, the Congregation of Christian Brothers has held out with the Department of Education - at one stage withdrawing its pledge to transfer. Then, in a later agreement reached eight years ago, the congregation promised to transfer the playing fields to ERST under an arrangement whereby the Government is to get half the net proceeds of any playing fields ERST might sell in the future. Even if it were in the public interest for playing fields to be sold by it in the future, ERST has to own them first. But there are more worrying signs that the public cannot take for granted the future of what many take for granted as educational lands. RTÉ Investigates uncovered a pattern of contracts for sale between the Christian Brothers and developers on school and institutional lands across Dublin. As with the contract for sale that the Brothers agreed for the lands at Clonkeen College, under such agreements, the Christian Brothers stand to get higher prices for its property if developers get planning permission in place. School and educational land is being lost, with commercial deals limiting future options and development for those schools. At the grounds of St Vincent's primary and secondary schools in Finglas, the Christian Brothers entered a contract for sale with developers to demolish a school swimming pool built in the 1960s and replace it with infill housing. The former swimming pool remained in the ownership of the Christian Brothers after it transferred the schools' premises to ERST, as did playing fields behind the schools. Within a year of the schools' transfer to ERST, the swimming pool was closed. In 2019, an application was submitted for replacement of the then derelict pool with housing. Planners saw the site as "not within the direct control of school management and entirely independent from the existing community/institutional uses on the Z15 zoned lands" (Z15 lands are for 'community and social infrastructure'). Permission was granted and the development went ahead. Robin Mandal described the Christian Brothers' approach to institutional lands as one of "sweating its assets" by selling them, and "squeezing its assets" by maximising the residential value of the land it has sold. "That uplift in value on a very small part of the site is quite substantial," he noted, "but that swimming pool site is on quite an important corner, and it now basically restricts the school quite substantially." Fergus Finlay of the Christine Buckley Centre for survivors believes institutional lands like St Vincent's, which was formerly the site of an orphanage run by the Christian Brothers, were run and maintained "through donations over many, many years by Irish families and Irish people" who believed in the social good of what the Christian Brothers was doing in its teaching mission. "Not a single one of these assets, not an inch of that land was given to the Christian Brothers for its wealth", he said. At Oatlands College, Stillorgan, in a joint venture with developers in 2013, the Brothers sold land at the bottom of its playing fields and a long access strip beside it. Residents objected to plans for an apartment complex, and parents objected to the loss of a playing area and land needed for the expansion of the primary school, right next to it. But in 2016, An Bord Pleanála approved it. The development of apartments and duplexes went ahead, squeezing the school beside it. "Oatlands is a very good example of how, having liquidated your asset, having got rid of some of your land, the remaining land is clearly not adequate for its use," Mr Mandal said. St Aidan's CBS on Collins Avenue, next to Dublin City University, recently got planning approval for an extension. It had little room for expansion. There was no space to the rear of the school, because the playing fields owned by the Christian Brothers are right behind it. The only expansion space on either side of the school was the site of a former Christian Brothers' residence. It was vacant, but in the application, the Christian Brothers was to keep its empty residence and its parking spaces. In planning application documents, the school architects noted: "As a result of ownership and right of way issues, the viable zone for situating new accommodation is more constrained than at first realised. Without additional demolition, the only viable location for a new building is to the front of the existing school, between it and the road". But RTÉ Investigates found that at the same time, the Christian Brothers had a contract for sale with a developer to demolish its residence and replace it with a six-storey block of student apartments. Planners rejected that idea, but the Brothers, as owners, now "fully support" another application from the developer for a five-to-six storey block of sheltered housing with an approved housing body, next to the approved school extension. The RTÉ Investigates examination of the Brothers' properties threw up many instances where the Christian Brothers' leaders acted to protect and enhance its property interests, with consequences for institutional lands used by schools or local communities. One such example is at a playing ground in Dolphin Park, Dublin. Under the 2002 redress deal, the Christian Brothers initially agreed to hand over three properties. The most valuable was at 23 Parnell Square North, the former home of Coláiste Mhuire, valued at €1.27m in 2002 and transferred to the OPW. The least valuable was a 0.1-hectare site in Crumlin valued at €250,000. It was transferred to Dublin City Council and is now a youth facility. But behind the small, corner site it transferred in Crumlin, the congregation retained the freehold for 5.5 hectares in Dolphin Park, where two playing pitches were used by local schools and clubs. A year after the corner site valued at €250,000 was transferred as a contribution to the cost of redress, in 2003 the Brothers gained €250,000 from the sale of a long leasehold to Dolphin Park to Templeogue and Synge St Past Pupils Gaelic Football Club, who it tasked with managing the sportsground. The leasehold was for 850 years. Normally, that would mean the Christian Brothers' ownership of the freehold to Dolphin Park would not matter much: the leaseholders are effective owners. But the Brothers attached a special condition to the sale of the leasehold. It stipulated that in the event of a sale of all or part of the 13 acres of land, the Christian Brothers would be entitled to 50% of any increase in value over the €250,000 price paid by the club in 2003. The special condition became relevant within years, when planning permission was granted for development on the site in 2006. The Celtic Tiger crash put a stop to those plans and in 2011, An Bord Pleanála refused an extension of time. But in 2019, the club holding the lease put in a fresh planning application for a new clubhouse and the development of 161 apartments and parking - covering one third of the site. Dublin City Council refused permission, but An Bord Pleanála approved it. Residents, and one of the clubs that traditionally held a right to use the pitches, Kevins GAA club, took court action. In 2022, the High Court quashed approval for the development, finding that An Bord Pleanála had not demonstrated any 'highly exceptional circumstances' in which selling off part of lands zoned open space/green for the commercial development of apartment blocks, was needed. In 2023, the former Christian Brother leader Edmund Garvey transferred the freehold ownership of Dolphin Park to the Brothers' trustee company, Christian Brothers CLG. Former RIAI president Robin Mandal said he was surprised at the size and extent of the portfolio in RTÉ Investigates' findings. "They're really important land banks for the future," he said. "They're important for education, they're important for social use, they're important for residential use." On such land banks in both Balheary near Swords on the northside, and in Bray, on the southside, the Christian Brothers has been making submissions to development plans with a view to maximising the future development potential of the lands. In Bray, where over three decades, it sold at least 23 hectares - including training schools, grand houses and private estates, small developments and detached houses, and land for local authority housing - it continues to have a significant holding. In a submission on its behalf to the latest Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan, it pitched for 1,050 residential units and a new residential and retail 'hub' on 25 hectares it owns in the Old Connaught area on the outskirts of Bray. In its statement to RTÉ Investigates, the Christian Brothers said that "beyond immediate care and living needs all of our resources are applied for charitable purposes and to meet existing and/or future obligations." It said that where property divestments occur, that converts the value to another asset, such as cash, or to reduce liabilities, all of which supports its capacity to meet its future obligations including existing and future claims. The Christian Brothers also maintains that its property portfolio is largely down to the donations of salaries by its members over decades. However, Mandal said: "These lands, while they are in the ownership of the congregation, are really there in trust from the community. They wouldn't be there if the community hadn't helped them put them together." "Somehow, they have turned into a series of land banks that seem to be driven by profit. Holding on to that much property looks to me like land speculation," he said. He said he believed the Christian Brothers' remaining portfolio is of huge importance to the future development of Irish towns and cities. On the charities register, the Christian Brothers still lists "formal mainstream education in support of schools and provision of playing fields" as its chief activity. It is not required to publish annual accounts for the charity that holds its assets, because statutory regulations prescribing how such financial statements are to be prepared for the Register of Charities were never enacted. A spokesperson for the Charities Regulator said it could not provide the financial statements of charities that are unincorporated bodies where they provide them to the Charities Regulator, "as happened in this case". "Currently, charities are not required to submit financial statements to the Charities Regulator under the Charities Act 2009 (the Act), as regulations prescribing how these financial statements were to be prepared were never enacted. Consequently, we are unable to provide such statements for inspection under section 54 of the Act," they said. The Christian Brothers' European Province for Ireland, Northern Ireland and England currently has 132 surviving members. Its Irish-based membership of around 108 Brothers is boosted only by Brothers returning home to retire from abroad. The majority are over 81 years old; a fifth are in nursing homes. It has no Brothers employed as teachers anymore, and dwindling numbers in active ministry of any kind. Its Provincial Leadership is largely dedicated to pastoral and practical supports for the care of its aging Brothers and managements of its asset portfolio. A senior leader in its English network, Br Dominic Sassi explained in 2020: "The work of the Province Leadership Team is partly administrative (finance, legal, property etc.,) and partly pastoral. The pastoral care of the Brothers is very important, especially as most of them are now quite elderly." The Christian Brothers said it has honoured its commitments under redress. It said it had "rightly acknowledged past abuses and sought to make reparation." "In addition to honouring our commitments under prior redress and our subsequent voluntary pledges, we have agreed a substantial number of settlements over the past two decades," it said. As a private property owner, the congregation has fully exercised its property rights, but the public, already footing a bill of €1.5bn for redress of institutional abuse, may consider school and institutional lands are neither fair game for commercial development, nor to fund religious orders' contributions to redress, nor for paying for the needs of an aging congregation that has alternative property assets to dispose of. Meanwhile, private property rights, protected under the constitution, and the absence of open availability and transparency in Irish property, company and charity records and rules, contribute to a dearth in awareness as to what is happening behind religious charity veils. In that context, two convicted child predators have been influential in determining the financial and legal strategies of a congregation that was the biggest single provider in Irish education and through the trust, ERST, has a continuing significant stake in the present and future of Irish education.
RTÉ News
01-05-2025
- RTÉ News
Profile of an abuser: Christian Brother Martin O'Flaherty
As a senior Christian Brother, Martin O'Flaherty could access all areas in Irish education. His mark is evident across the sector, not just in his primary and secondary teaching and principal posts, but in teacher training, governorships and Boards of Management, on schools' syllabus, in the creation of the Christian Brothers' schools trust, ERST, and in the sell-off of educational land. He was part of the Christian Brothers' core leadership for a dozen years from 2002 to 2014, and he had an influential reach on either side of those years. O'Flaherty was a keeper of the keys to the congregation's assets and secrets. He was one of them himself; he is currently in Mountjoy jail, his status in the Christian Brothers' leadership exclusively revealed by RTÉ Investigates. A native of Doora, Ennis, Co Clare, O'Flaherty was reared in St Michael's Villas in the town. He returned in June 2015 for the launch of a local history book about St Michael's and preached the homily at a special mass in Ennis cathedral. O'Flaherty was a typical Christian Brother recruit: by his own account, the son of parents of modest means, who were delighted to be among the first to benefit from social housing schemes of the 1950s. "Imagine how lucky they must have felt in the knowledge that there was a green area 'out front', as we used to say, where children could play and be supervised", the Clare Champion reported him preaching at the mass. His parents were probably delighted too when their son entered the Christian Brothers' training school at Carriglea Park, Dún Laoghaire, in 1965, at the age of 13, to study there. The former journalist and senator John Whelan was another Christian Brother recruit, from Co Kildare. He joined Carriglea eight years later, in 1973, aged 12. John Whelan brought his toy soldiers with him and hid them under the bed. Four years later, in fifth year, his parents drove up to collect him and he left, completing his Leaving Cert elsewhere. He is critical of wholesale denunciation of the Brothers that ignores the good, inspiring educators among them, and he was aware corporal punishment wasn't just legal back then; it was encouraged. But Carriglea was different. He described a training school for Brothers that was a breeding ground for violence. What he experienced and witnessed, he said, was a school of "cruel behaviour", in which "a handful of men seemed to take pleasure in a sort of vicious application of being able to beat you." He recalled one incident that exemplified the culture; for him, it was the last straw. It happened at a football match. "We would have been fifth and 6th years, versus the teachers, the Brothers, and one chap was running rings around them, then scored a goal", said John Whelan, "and on his way back out, celebrating, he got bursted, like, levelled". The Brother who beat the boy had to be restrained; he was the Brother Superior of the school, its principal. "When the Brother Superior was dishing it out, you know, it was very much embedded in the system", said Mr Whelan. "Corporal punishment was taken out of place and amplified to a place of cruelty and brutality. Boys were hurt, and terrified — but you know, it wasn't just one bad egg, it wasn't just a rogue trader; it was more systemic." In the face of that culture hung the fate of sexual abuser, Br Martin O'Flaherty. He was a brutal physical abuser too, described as "a monster" by one of his victims. Yet for 50 years he remained undetected and untroubled within the Christian Brothers' congregation. Instead, he rose to the top. The Scoping Inquiry that reported last year was focused solely on historical child sexual abuse in schools, not physical abuse. Yet on sexual abuse too, the Christian Brothers came out on top, with the highest number of alleged abusers, albeit having had the largest number of schools. Using the Christian Brothers' own figures, the Scoping report cited 820 allegations of historical child sexual abuse across 132 schools against 255 Christian Brothers, mainly from the 1960s up to the early 1990s. Total allegations are likely to exceed the figures given to it by the religious orders, it reported. From O'Flaherty's tenure in one Kilkenny primary school there is an indication is just how high the figures are likely to go. O'Flaherty started teaching in CBS Primary School, 'Scoil Iognaid de Ris' in Stephen Street, Kilkenny from August 1976 until August 1981. There he sexually abused several boys. He shared some of that time with another child-abusing teacher, then-serving Brother Liam Coughlan. In May 2023, former Br Coughlan (88) was convicted of indecent assault on five boys at the school in the 1970s; in October 2023 he pleaded guilty in relation to the abuse of 19 more boys. Br Martin O'Flaherty, arrested in October 2020, pleaded not guilty each time. He put his victims through six separate trials, from 2022 up to last month, his legal defence paid by the Christian Brothers. The Scoping Inquiry reported four alleged abusers and 17 abuse allegations in CBS Primary, Kilkenny, over the years. But from O'Flaherty and Coughlan's convictions alone, a sense of the true scale: they alone have 167 convictions and at least 53 victims. On the state side, there is a cost in prosecuting such trials, involving multiple counts and several victims. The Garda investigation that preceded the cases came at significant cost to Garda time and resources too. Gardai identified 900 people who had been in the school in the relevant years, and pursued inquiries on that basis. They took 88 statements regarding five alleged abusers. Forty-three complainants came forward against O'Flaherty alone. Of those who have secured convictions, many do not wish to be publicly identified. Some have told their wives of the abuse; others, not. Many did not tell their mother or father, and fear telling them now is too much to ask of elderly parents. Some told their family, but do not want to tell work colleagues. Others do not want anyone to know. They face the same predicaments many others will soon face — how open they are prepared to be about widespread sexual abuse of young boys in Irish schools over decades and its impact on them as grown men. One survivor who wishes to remain anonymous queried how other Christian Brothers did not know about Br O'Flaherty. "They had to know", he said. "If the kids knew it, the other teachers knew it —I just can't see how they could not know". Another survivor recalled that it was talked about in the schoolyard at playtime. "Stay away from him" older boys told younger classes. The survivor said that O'Flaherty used to squeeze in beside him at his desk or call him up to the teacher's desk on the pretence of reading something out loud. He would also beat him with his fist as he walked by his desk. He recalled O'Flaherty trying to catch him in the dressing room of the Kilkenny CBS hurling grounds. "He went to close the door, and I just knew, I knew. He closed it and I couldn't get out. I hit him with a hurl on the side of his face and that shocked him sufficient for me to get away", the man said, "But he hit me a blow on the face as I went out". The boy's father spotted that the boy had been hit on the face and went to the school the next day. O'Flaherty was gone for three days, the man said. "He never touched me again; he never laid his hands on me again." One survivor, the smallest boy in his class, suffered an attempted rape by O'Flaherty. In his case, beatings led to sexual abuse. "I didn't know it was happening to anyone else", he said. O'Flaherty held him back after school on the pretence of improving his long division in maths. He then wrote a school report claiming the boy was not pulling his weight in class. In later life, the man said he could never fully commit in relationships and his marriage broke down. Br Martin O'Flaherty's career took him through several other schools in Ireland and in England in various roles, ensuring he had continued access to children until recent years. He first taught in Tipperary CBS primary school from 1971 to 1973, and then in CBS Greystones primary school until 1975. After Kilkenny, he studied in Dublin until 1985, when he moved to CBS secondary school, Portlaoise, later becoming principal there. When he left Portlaoise in 1991, he took a sabbatical in England. He was principal of 'North Mon', Cork's CBS North Monastery, from 1993 to 1994. O'Flaherty was based in the Family Studies Department at Marino Institute for Education from August 1996 to March 2002, where he ran an MIE course for parents in leadership skills for personal, spiritual and faith development, and authored a book on spirituality in adolescence. A booklet O'Flaherty wrote titled 'Faith Development' was on the recommended reading list for a module of the 'Leaving Cert Applied' Religious Education syllabus. By 2002, he was part of the Christian Brothers' leadership, involved in its decisions on the first state redress scheme for victims of institutional child abuse. O'Flaherty saw himself as an educator. He was also associated with St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, where he facilitated religious gatherings. By 2006 he was on the Governing Body of MIE. Christian Brother abuse survivor, Damian O'Farrell said he was shocked when he heard about O'Flaherty's history as an abuser. He had met him through connections to Marino. "I was in his company a few times. He came across as a very charismatic person", said Mr O'Farrell. In 2007, when the Christian Brothers in Ireland restructured, creating a new Province for Ireland, England and Rome called the European Province, Martin O'Flaherty continued to be at the core of the leadership, involved in key decisions on its property, its cash assets, its treatment of victims of institutional child abuse during and after the Commission into Child Abuse and the Ryan Report, and its approach to the second redress deal in 2009. In 2007, he was a founding member and director of New Street Properties Ltd., a trustee company that acts as the property management company for the Christian Brothers and is now called Christian Brothers CLG. He remained in that role until May 2014, and was still recorded as a trustee of several individual properties after that. O'Flaherty was part of the Christian Brother leadership that developed an approach to its property interests of increasingly entering contracts for sale with developers across Dublin to maximise profits, a policy that has resulted in it squeezing availability of schools' land. In 2007 also, he was part of the leadership that decided that the congregation would keep assets arising out of the sale of the schools' playing fields it owned, and in 2008, that created a new, lay trust, the Edmund Rice Schools Trust, to which it said it was transferring all its schools. O'Flaherty and other past and present leadership figures are themselves trustees of many Christian Brother properties. Of the twenty surviving trustees in the Congregation's current and past leadership, a handful have been trustees over several years. O'Flaherty is one of those. He remained a member of the Province leadership team until May 2014. He was transferred to England in spring 2016, but before that, he was Chair of the Board of Management of a non-Christian Brother school, Our Lady's of Mourne Road in Drimnagh, having been appointed by another religious schools' trust, CEIST. Chairs of Boards of Management of schools are responsible for overseeing child safety issues in schools, under the statutory framework, 'Children First'. RTÉ Investigates also examined O'Flaherty's movements in England, where he was appointed a director and trustee of the charity and company holding Christian Brother property assets there. As a Congregation trustee for England, he was a Governor in five preparatory schools owned by the Christian Brothers in England, two of which since closed. He was also appointed as a trustee of St Anselms College Edmund Rice Academy Trust in March 2017, only stepping down on his transfer back to Ireland in May 2018, as the Garda investigation into him intensified. The Christian Brothers said that "all allegations of sexual abuse against a Brother or former Christian Brother are notified to the appropriate safeguarding authorities and to the gardai (and to police and church authorities in the UK where appropriate)". It also said that "pending investigation of such allegations, any Brother against whom allegations were made (whether in Ireland or the UK) were removed from active Ministry or any frontline role involving the education or welfare of children". However, RTÉ Investigates has established that Martin O'Flaherty had contact with pupils from a number of Christian-Brother connected schools during his time in England, after the Garda investigation had begun, including in March 2018, when he attended an event with pupils from St. Anselm's College, Liverpool, St. Joseph's College, Stoke-on-Trent, and St Ambrose College in Hale Barns, Altrincham, Greater Manchester. When he was brought back from England in May 2018, while he resigned from roles involving ministries with children, he remained a trustee of the congregation's property assets in England. He resigned from that position in December 2019, almost three years after Gardai first made contact with the Christian Brothers about him in January 2017, and 21 months after the first formal statement to Gardai by one of his victims, in February 2018. In October 2020, he was arrested and charged in connection with child sexual abuse in Kilkenny CBS Primary School in the late 1970s. He first went on trial in March 2022, and, following six separate trials involving multiple victims, his final conviction was in March this year. In Ireland, he remained a trustee listed on the deeds of several Christian Brother properties, including some synonymous with the Brothers, such as Synge Street in Dublin 8, and Monkstown CBC, where he was among trustees executing a rectification on the deeds in 2022, over a year after he had already been charged with abuse. The Christian Brothers trustee company subsequently transferred land it had retained at Monkstown to ERST in July 2022. In response to RTÉ Investigates, the Christian Brothers, under current Province leader David Gibson, said it "reiterates our apology for the physical and sexual abuse that occurred in many former CBS schools and institutions over several generations." It said it recognises "the terrible damage that was done to innocent children who should have been protected." However, in the face of its approach to victims and its record on educational land, the Christian Brothers words ring hollow for many survivors. With the public, it now risks its legacy in education, where its actions, not its words, have been sounding an alarm.
