Father Brian D’Arcy who was sexually abused as a child and while training for the priesthood believes as the years go on “the more the effects of the abuse are destroying me”.

The frank admission by the Fermanagh born cleric on the Tommy Tiernan Show on RTE at the weekend comes as The Impartial Reporter continues its long-running investigation into historic child sex abuse in the county.

Like very many of the allege victims who deserve justice here, Fr. Brian will never see his abusers arrested, charged or prosecuted because they are dead.

“I had been abused as a young fellow and abused as a student on my way to the priesthood, it took me a long time to sort myself out and I am not sure if I have sorted myself out yet actually… they died without anybody knowing,” he said during the emotional interview.

“In fact most days I say to myself life is a journey and if you think you have it sorted out you have stopped living, you are half dead, you have to keep going.”

Fr Brian was sexually abused as a 10-year-old boy by a religious brother at his school in Omagh and again seven or eight years later by a priest while he was studying for the priesthood at Mount Argus in Dublin.

“I was a country kid in schoolyard standing out, not playing football. One of the brothers spotted me and during lunch time he’d bring me up to his room, he’d be very nice to me, give me sweets, tell me I was very lonely, and then he’d put me across his knee and abuse me enough so that he could get satisfaction.”

In the years that followed Fr Brian finally realised what had suffered as a child.

“I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t know it was abuse until the years afterwards, that may sound stupid but that’s the way it is. At 18 I was nervous, I was young, I had been disturbed by the earlier abuse, and you want to be a people pleaser, you don’t want to be rejected.

“I stopped being a child at 10. Two things happen, you ever become extremely angry and try to act as an adult or you freeze emotionally,” he said.

Then at a student at Mount Argus he would experience being abused again because “the man saw me as a helpful, compassionate young guy, who was immature because of what happened before”.

“I thought I was wiser that time. How did I get caught again?” he said, admitting that it took years for the abuse to register with him.

“Then you’re growing up, you hear guys talking, I got ferociously guilty. Was I involved in this? Had I committed a sin? I was afraid to say it.

“Who was going to believe a 10-year-old country kid? I used to get scared, I was scared at night, I used to feel ferociously dirty. I never really had a healthy attitude towards sex or sexuality at all.”

While he has spoken in the past about the abuse he faced it is only now that Fr Brian is exploring the impact it is having on his life.

“At the moment I am trying to write a little bit about that within myself because at the moment I feel that if I don’t write about it, or talk about it, or think about it the older I am getting the more the effects of the abuse are destroying me.

“You feel that your life has been wasted, that I’ve done nothing. I’ve worked as hard as I could, trying to mix with people, learn from people, trying to be at pop concerts, masses, crematoriums, gravesides, jails. You try to be compassionate. If I can’t look in the mirror and say, yeah you made mistakes, yeah you are not perfect, you are never going to be God no matter what you think you are. “If I can look in the mirror and say that and forgive myself for not being perfect, forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, forgive myself for the wrong choices I’ve made… if I can’t do that how can I hand on anything to somebody else.”

Fr Brian told Tiernan that he has found the courage to “speak to power” and “speak the truth to power” by talking about being the victim of sex abuse.

“If I hadn‘t had to survive abuse I wouldn’t have had the same conviction when I was speaking. I can say to anybody now; to the Pope, that any institution that puts the good name of the good institution ahead of the vulnerability of a child deserves no respect,” he said to loud applause.