Damian O’Farrell – a survivor, responds to the recent statement from the Christian Brothers following a judge’s decision to name former members of the Congregation in a newspaper advert following a civil claim brought by a survivor.
Link to Christian Brothers’ Statement
Link to Newspaper Advertisement details
Tony Flannery’s comment on the issue, which also appeared in the Irish Times
Follow-up Irish Times article: Survivors experience Christian Brothers’ litigation strategy as abuse by other means – The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/08/30/survivors-experience-christian-brothers-litigation-strategy-as-abuse-by-other-means/
Damian O’Farrell: When is mediation really a choice? A survivor’s perspective
The recent Christian Brothers’ statement published on the Association of Catholic Priests website sets out the congregation’s approach to civil claims arising from childhood sexual abuse. It emphasises mediation, early resolution and avoiding the financial and emotional costs of prolonged litigation. Importantly, the statement presents mediation as a route survivors and their legal representatives are choosing.
There is nothing inherently wrong with mediation. Few survivors want years of adversarial litigation. My own pursuit of civil justice against the Order in the 1990s, and before the present litigation strategy, lasted nine years, so I understand the attraction of an earlier and less confrontational resolution.
But describing survivors as opting for mediation raises an important question: how meaningful is that choice when the alternative has been made so difficult?
The Christian Brothers say they seek “a just, timely and appropriate resolution of claims” and describe mediation as offering a less adversarial and more compassionate process. Those are worthwhile aims. But a choice is meaningful only when there is a realistic alternative.
The congregation leadership have been heavily criticised for its litigation strategy, particularly its decision not to nominate a person to accept proceedings on its behalf. This can leave survivors having to issue and serve proceedings on large numbers of individual Brothers and former Brothers without even having access to the addresses needed to serve them. In one recent case, the High Court ultimately permitted service by newspaper advertisement on 341 former members of the congregation. The process can take multiple years and can hinder healing.
Another consequence of not putting forward a nominee is that very few solicitor firms or survivors have the resources to carry the financial cost of complex litigation for years. This cost is often levied on survivors in order to keep the case going. Against that background, saying that survivors and their legal representatives are opting for mediation risks presenting as free choice what may be practical necessity.
There is also a legitimate question about who benefits financially. Mediation and early resolution can produce considerable savings in legal costs. If the compensation received by survivors through mediation is not as the Brothers state, ‘materially different’ from that achieved through prolonged litigation proceedings, to what extent do survivors share in those savings? A process that substantially reduces costs for the congregation should surely provide some corresponding benefit to those whose claims are being resolved.
At its heart, childhood sexual abuse involves the taking of power and control; that is why questions of choice and agency can carry such significance for survivors. A process that appears reasonable from an institutional perspective can feel very different to someone who believes the institution continues to determine the terms on which they can seek justice.
Mediation can be valuable. It can offer privacy, flexibility and earlier resolution. But its value depends on it being genuinely voluntary. It should not become the only realistic option because the alternative has been effectively blocked.
There should equally be compassion for older Brothers who neither abused children nor had responsibility for what occurred. Protecting them from being served with High Court summonses and providing survivors with meaningful access to civil justice should not be competing objectives.
Survivors themselves were among the first to express concern about the distress caused to older Brothers receiving High Court proceedings when they may have had no personal involvement in the abuse. But survivors did not create this situation. It follows from an institutional decision, however lawful, not to put forward a nominee. It is my understanding that no other Catholic religious order or diocese in Ireland, follows the same path in defending civil claims.
For a religious congregation, these questions have an additional dimension. Justice, compassion and concern for those who have been harmed are central Christian values.
The issue, therefore, is not whether mediation is preferable to litigation. It is whether survivors genuinely have a choice between them. For people whose choices were taken from them as children, that distinction is vital.
If the Christian Brothers’ present litigation strategy is primarily intended to spare survivors the ordeal of an adversarial court process, there is a straightforward solution: nominate a person to accept proceedings on behalf of the congregation and allow survivors to choose.
Those who wish to pursue civil proceedings could do so. Those who prefer mediation could choose that route with the Christian Brothers organisation.
That would not compel anyone to litigate or to mediate. It would simply place the choice and some of the power back where it belongs: with the person seeking justice.
In their statement of August 5th, explaining their preference for mediation, the Christian Brothers do not explain why they do not nominate just one person to receive legal proceedings on their behalf.
They could perhaps take this opportunity to do that – to strengthen the case for mediation as a preferential option?
Discussing the absence of choice in deciding to opt for mediation versus litigation, Damien O’Farrell refers to himself as a survivor and uses the term nine times. I take it that is how he describes persons who have been sexually abused by predators. The term “survivor” rightly applies to people who have escaped death, as in those who survive natural disasters, war, massacres.
My recollection of the emergence of the self-description ‘survivor’ by sufferers of childhood abuse – including sexual abuse – is that this began happening in Ireland as early as the 1990s – in preference to the term ‘victim’ – to emphasise the recovery of agency by the sufferers, their sense of being undefeated by the experience. Wasn’t e.g. the Irish Times adopting this usage as early as that?
And didn’t SOCA – ‘Survivors of Child Abuse’ – come into existence c. 2005?
And did not the ‘MeToo’ movement by female sufferers of male sexual abuse adopt the same usage from c. 2017?
I am surprised that Margaret Lee would challenge Damien O’Farrell on this usage in 2026, as though this was somehow exceptional or unprecedented – especially given the known tendency for such childhood trauma to precipitate suicidal ideation in later life.
Like Sean #1 I noticed, and regretted, the glaring omission of an explanation in the Christian Brothers’ statement.
They are the only Congregation/Religious Order in Ireland with this litigation policy. A preference for mediation isn’t in itself an explanation.
And like Seán #3 I am puzzled by Margaret’s objection to Damian O’Farrell’s use of the word “survivor”.
The Christian Brothers themselves in the statement to which he replies refer to claimants as “survivors”:
“Our primary focus remains on ensuring just, timely and appropriate settlements for survivors etc…”
The Catholic Church itself in Ireland, the Vatican and elsewhere routinely refers to persons having suffered sexual abuse as survivors (eg Towards Peace and Towards Healing organisations:
https://towardshealing.ie/history/).
See also the Irish Bishops’ A Report of a Public Consultation With Survivors of Abuse (2024) https://www.catholicbishops.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/OverviewReport-SurvivorConsultation-ISSUED.pdf
I also find the routine application of the word “survivor” rather grating – it seems to be insisting heavily on a propagandistic point – risking a “boy who called wolf” syndrome. I do not know of any critical discussion of the merits of that vocabulary. As we saw in the Tuam babies discussion, once a word or image is canonized it takes on a life of its own and becomes just as hallowed as the victims of abuse, even at the expense of their real-life sufferings. Even the words “victim” and “abuse” become ritually mandatory vocables that are seen as surgically precise technical terms, which they are not. The category of child abuse integrates into one and removes from use a congeries of different categories that each had a more precise sense. Rather that creating insight or empathy we get into the realm of bureaucratic acronyms — CSA — and it actually becomes impossible and politically incorrect to use expressions such as “cruelty to children” or “molestation.” The entire scenario of “grooming” etc. becomes a pattern to be discovered in every case, or to be read into the actual facts of the case. The theme of “sexual assault” is invoked to vamp up the gravity even of mild sexual misbehavior. All of these words conduce not to any kind of open discussion, but to putting a stop to any discussion. Even the acronym LGBT is convenient bureaucratese for reversing the too open and too human connotations of “lesbian, gay, bi, trans”, words which themselves need to be further parsed in line with the rich and complex texture of human experience rather than some bullying police protocol. The study of literature tends to blow skyhigh all this robotic language (though that language tends to censor literature, both past and present — novelists now write with their eye on the protocols, and older novels are upbraided in light of newfangled understandings of sexuality (or rather prescribed wooden discourses). We should treasure writers who spoke openly and honestly about their sexual experiences, such as D. H. Lawrence, George Moore, or Jean Genet, who had to fight against the ire of censors. How far astray the policed, lawyered, and morally overwrought current discourse about many aspects of human life (not only the sexual) can go can be assessed by the Jason Arday case. He was absurdly glorified for seeming to tick all the right boxes, while others of great merit are crushed for not ticking them.
#5 In the context of childhood sexual abuse, I am struck by the description of the routine use of the word “survivor” as “grating” and “propagandistic”, and as risking a “boy who called wolf” syndrome.
I am more troubled, however, by the suggestion that the term “sexual assault” can be invoked “to vamp up the gravity even of mild sexual misbehavior.”
I do not want to attribute to those words a meaning that was not intended. But in a discussion centred on childhood sexual abuse, language of this kind concerns me because of the opposite risk: that language can diminish, rather than exaggerate, the gravity of sexual violence against children.
That risk seems particularly important in this pastoral setting, where words can themselves either compound hurt or help create the conditions for healing. It also matters in the context of my original piece, which was concerned with choices being made by the Leadership of the Congregation of Christian Brothers today and the continuing harm those choices can cause to people who experienced sexual abuse as children.
Words do matter. But behind these words were eight, nine and ten-year-olds subjected to sexual violence by Christian Brothers who were bigger, stronger and held authority over them; whose intimate parts were touched, who were made to touch adults sexually, and who were made to perform sexual acts for the gratification of adults. These were not simply matters of terminology, but acts imposed by adults on those innocent children.
Perhaps, whatever language we choose to use, there is value in keeping those children, the adults they became, and their continued suffering at the centre of the conversation.
#6 There is an interesting historical context to this discussion about terminology. In Ireland, what we now call “sexual assault” was previously known in law as “indecent assault”. The Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990 changed the name of the offence to “sexual assault”, with that change taking effect in January 1991.
Importantly, the change was not retrospective. Offences committed before it came into effect continued to be charged and recorded as “indecent assault”, even where a prosecution and conviction occurred many years later. This means that in historical childhood sexual abuse cases, the term “indecent assault” may appear on a person’s criminal record simply because of when the offences were committed, rather than because the conduct was regarded as some lesser category of sexual offending.
That distinction matters when we discuss terminology. In the work that preceded the change, the Law Reform Commission described “indecent assault” as a “plainly inadequate title”. More recently, the Supreme Court recalled the Commission’s observation that the word “indecent” could “seriously understate the gravity and enormity” of the conduct covered by the offence. Importantly, renaming the offence did not redefine the underlying offence.
The lesson is that terminology is not neutral: it can shape how seriously conduct is understood. A word such as “indecent” may sound vague, mild or merely improper, even when it describes serious sexual violence and profound harm, particularly where children are involved. The later adoption of “sexual assault” did not make the conduct more serious; it made the law’s language more honest about conduct that had already been serious all along.
If the routine use of the word ‘survivor’ is experienced as ‘grating’ what of the actual experience of real child sexual abuse, especially if in the aftermath there is even a hint of having ‘cried wolf’ and of that term ‘survivor’ being either inaccurate or a ‘claim too far’?
A scholarly microscoping of any given word is one thing. The questioning of a given use of the word ‘survivor’ in a particular case could be experienced not as impersonal but as personal, even if that is not the intent.
If even recent legislation in Ireland – e.g. ‘Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Act 2025’ – uses the word ‘survivor’, should not those on whom the word ‘grates’ accept the onus of campaigning for a preferable alternative?
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/publications/supports-for-survivors-of-residential-institutional-abuse/
“survivors” could be replaced by “those who suffered any kind of abuse”. The latter phrase is a fairly honest designation of what is being referred to.
claude.com on over-use of the term “sexual assault”:
This is a live debate in psychology, law, and media commentary, often discussed under the concept of “concept creep” (a term coined by psychologist Nick Haslam) — the idea that harm-related concepts can expand outward from their original, severe meaning to cover milder or more ambiguous situations. Here’s how that argument is typically made regarding “sexual assault” specifically, along with the pushback it receives.
Examples commonly cited by those making this argument:
Unwanted but non-forceful contact — a single unwanted touch, pat, or brush against someone in a crowded space, argued by critics to sometimes get labeled the same as forcible or violent assault, collapsing a spectrum of severity into one category.
Verbal or non-physical conduct — catcalling, lewd comments, or persistent unwanted advances sometimes being grouped under “sexual assault” language in campus policies or social media discourse, when critics argue these more precisely fit under harassment.
Regretted consensual encounters — cases where consent was given at the time but the person later feels uncomfortable or regretful about the encounter, which critics argue occasionally gets reframed retroactively as assault.
Campus Title IX policy definitions — some university conduct codes have been criticized (including in legal commentary and some court rulings) for defining “sexual misconduct” broadly enough to include things like a single inappropriate joke or ambiguous flirting, which critics say functionally merges minor misconduct with assault in institutional records and public perception.
Social media and activist use — instances where the term is applied in viral posts to describe experiences that, on the poster’s own account, involved no physical contact at all (e.g., someone standing too close, an unsettling stare), which critics say dilutes the term’s specificity.
The case against this framing (worth holding alongside it): Advocates and researchers in this space generally respond that under-reporting, not over-labeling, is the dominant real-world problem — most sexual assaults are never reported to authorities at all. They also argue that legal and clinical definitions of sexual assault already include non-penetrative and non-violent acts (unwanted sexual touching, for instance, is legally assault in most jurisdictions, not just violent rape), so what critics call “expansion” is often just the public catching up to definitions that were always broader than popular imagination assumed. There’s also a concern that “over-use” framing can be used, intentionally or not, to cast doubt on legitimate reports or discourage people from coming forward.
I am conscious that much of the discussion here has focused on language, the words “survivor”, “sexual assault” and how we describe what happened to children.
But I am also conscious of what has received rather less attention: the substantive issue raised in my original article, the present-day litigation strategy of the Christian Brothers and its impact on victims seeking civil justice.
Some of those people have achieved criminal convictions against perpetrators for heinous sexual crimes. Yet when they turn to the civil justice system, they encounter another formidable barrier.
That is the uncomfortable contradiction I was trying to describe. A Church organisation can say that it is sorry for what was done to children, while at the same time choosing a legal strategy which can make the path to civil accountability impossible for those same people as adults.
Some contributors to this discussion have responded positively to that concern. Others have focused on the language used to describe abuse. And there has also been silence on the substantive issue itself.
Perhaps that silence is part of the discussion too.
As one who was in the hands of the Christian Brothers from 1956 to 1966, I just wanted to say that they were very self-sacrificing men who really did take their educative task very seriously. The atmosphere was Spartan, and corporal punishment was the norm, and surely damaging to some students. Sex was repressed or replaced with the passion and energy of sports and athletics. The portrayal of the Brothers as sexual predators does not match my recollections at all.
#12 Positive memories of individual Christian Brothers deserve to be respected, and everyone is entitled to speak about their own experience of them. The dedication and self-sacrifice of many Brothers should also be acknowledged. But context matters. These comments are being made in response to an article about the present-day litigation strategy pursued by the leadership of the Christian Brothers towards people who experienced childhood sexual abuse.
It is in that context that there is something about the direction of this discussion that feels uncomfortably like being transported back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when survivors were beginning to speak publicly about clerical and religious childhood sexual abuse but too often were not listened to. Abuse was still being brushed under the carpet, and accounts of what had been done to children could be met with reminders of the many good religious and priests and of all the good work the Church had done. As though one somehow answered or qualified the other.
There are and were many good and decent Christian Brothers. There are also many Brothers who have been convicted in our criminal courts of serious sexual offences against children. Both are part of the truth, and neither cancels out the other.
The original article above was deliberately measured. It did not portray the Christian Brothers collectively as sexual predators, nor am I aware of any survivors involved in the present discussion doing so. It focused on something much more specific: choices made by the leadership of the congregation in its litigation strategy, the exercise of institutional power through that strategy, and the human consequences for people seeking civil redress.
Those concerns are hardly confined to survivors. Judge Keenan Johnson, President of the Circuit Court, described the congregation’s approach as “morally bankrupt and grossly unfair” not only to victims but also to the many innocent Brothers caught up in it. Dr James Gallen of DCU has described the response as “particularly adversarial” and “particularly aggressive”, involving the use of procedural obstacles that prevent survivors from having the substance of their complaints addressed in court.
That last point matters. The choices made by the leadership have consequences for their own members too. Older and former Brothers against whom no allegation of abuse has been made have found themselves served with High Court proceedings arising from abuse committed by others. Concern for those men and concern for survivors are not opposing positions. A pastoral response should be capable of holding both concerns together: recognising the dignity and suffering of innocent Brothers while also listening seriously to survivors and addressing the institutional conduct that has contributed to their distress.
That is why the echoes of the late 1980s and early 1990s are so uncomfortable. Survivors were asking then for the reality of abuse to be heard rather than obscured by the good that others had done. Today they are asking for scrutiny of how institutional power is being exercised in response to them. A genuinely pastoral response would begin by listening to those who have been harmed, acknowledging the suffering involved, and seeking truth and accountability rather than allowing concern for the good work of others to displace the issue being raised. It would be deeply regrettable if, once again, the response to what survivors are actually saying is to talk instead about something they have never disputed.
Joe, in my case it was a few years later, and I would agree. Only one Brother stands out in my memory as someone who would not now be acceptable in the teaching profession, or at least, his behaviour would not be. But that was the one of my experience, and the others were decent, hard-working people, often patient and with a sense of humour. Far more terrifying than the Brothers, more given to humiliation of pupils and punishment, in some cases nothing short of sadistic, were the lay staff, most of them married men with families. What were their excuses for cruelty to children?
To my mind most of these male comments to suffering lack compassion. Geoffrey Hinton struggled to find a solution to our present dangers of AI. His proposed safety solution “adding maternal instincts” to AI. The world may be saved by beauty but will the Catholic Church be saved without the maternal instincts of women?
I have been requested by survivors reading the comments above to set out for all interested what a survivor faces in trying to avail of our Civil Courts.
Background
On-going litigation experience of an historical child sexual abuse victim (primary school) whereby the Christian Brother perpetrator pleaded guilty to offences of a sexual nature in an Irish criminal court and was subsequently sentenced (multiple victims etc). The now adult victim is seeking financial redress/compensation through our civil court system.
The Congregation of Christian Brothers is on record saying they will meet any such claims in a candid, consolatory and fair manner. The reality is somewhat different.
Legal background
A Supreme Court ruling has meant that Plaintiffs cannot sue the Congregation of Christian Brothers as they are an unincorporated body but, individually, former or present members of the Congregation are capable of vicarious liability for any wrongdoing of another member of the Congregation.
One or more Brothers can act as representatives for the Congregation.
In this typical case the Congregation leader is sued as representative of the Congregation of Christian Brothers. In advance of proceedings the plaintiff i.e. victim, will have already invited proposals for settlement.
Ongoing civil litigation experience of a child sexual abuse victim
The Congregation leader has refused to act as legal nominee of the Congregation for the purpose of defending the proceedings, or to nominate any other Brothers.
In those circumstances, the Plaintiff had no option but to sue the Brothers and former members (ie. all congregation members at the time of the abuse) individually under the doctrine of vicarious liability. (Supreme Court ref above). To do so, a victim requires their names and addresses.
The Order has refused to provide those names and addresses (claim of GDPR) obliging the Plaintiff to apply to the High Court by way of an application for Interlocutory Discovery for an Order directing the Order to provide the names and addresses of all current Members of the Congregation.
That Order when granted and in compliance with the Order, the names and addresses of all current members of the Congregation, then totalling one hundred and sixty members, two (is this case example) is provided to the Litigant/ abuse victim. Typically up to 25% of the addresses can be incorrect as members due to their age may have transferred to a nursing home.
An application was then made to the High Court to amend the proceedings so as to increase the number of Defendants in this case example from two to one hundred and sixty two.
That Order was granted.
A further High Court application must be made seeking liberty to serve the amended proceedings on those members of the Congregation, numbering thirteen, who reside overseas and therefore outside of the Jurisdiction of the Court.
This is not the first case where this sequence of applications has been necessary because a representative has not been nominated by the Congregation, for the purposes of Defending proceedings on behalf of the Congregation.
Such pre-trial applications give rise to delay and therefore distress for litigant victims (not to mention significant legal costs/financial pressures).
In the case referred to above, having obliged the Litigant/victim to obtain an Order joining all current members of the Order as Defendants to the case, the Orders leadership declined to allow the Solicitors instructed by the leader to defend the leader in the case, to act for those other members. This is highly significant as you will see below and victims feel this is a ‘double’ abuse, revisiting trauma, etc.
As a result of these actions the litigant/victim will potentially have to deal with over 160 different legal firms, many outside this jurisdiction as individual Order members are being required to find/instruct Solicitors to defend themselves in the case.
A consequence of this choice by the Orders Leadership is that the Order members, many of advanced age (average age 80) and failing health, residents of Nursing homes, have received formal legal communications inviting them to compensate the Litigant/victim by reason of the sexual acts and batteries of the original perpetrator (first named Defendant).
This treatment of the Order’s child sexual abuse victims and their own elderly members by the Order’s leadership team is in my opinion unconscionable.
It was within the leadership’s discretion to instruct one firm of Solicitors to act for all members of the Congregation without any impact on the Defence of the Action. This is the element of power and control I referred to, not to mention trauma triggering for victims as they feel there is zero compassion being shown to them.
Conclusion
The Order well know that future settlement talks/meditation have to be initiated by the Defendants (Christian Brothers) in circumstances where both the original perpetrator and Orders Leader (as representative) have filed full Defences and denials to the claims that are being made. At the outset, and in advance of issuing their proceedings, Plaintiffs will have already invited proposals.
If the Christian Brothers are sincere in their view, that claims will be treated in a candid, consolatory and fair manner then it is a simple matter to instruct the Solicitors currently ‘on record’ for the Province Leader to act for all members of the Congregation, this will have no impact on the Defence of the Actions and/or to invite settlement discussions or mediation in the expectation that this will be positively received. This will remove the unjust burden being placed on victims and other members of the Congregation as well as reducing timeframe and costs.
The above treatment of victims prevents others coming forward and also some victims will die before cases are settled.
The above case history was the reason that a High Court judge recently allowed service of summons to be carried out by newspaper advertisement, thereby naming 341 former Brothers, the vast majority innocent.
The above is, in my opinion, as far from Gospel values as is possible.