WE LIKE to think that once a wrong has been exposed, the worst is over for the victim. There will be justice, we imagine: then help, healing, closure. Something like a happy ending. 

Mick Finnegan might look like proof of that. In good shape at 40 — he’s taken up running and keeps shattering personal bests — Mick is a highly regarded mental health advocate, working towards a master’s degree in advanced child protection at the University of Kent.

But he’s also a whistleblower who broke a child abuse scandal that rocked Dublin. And because he was one of those children — and because of the torturous, mentally gruelling nature of the process of seeking justice — he’s also currently homeless, sleeping rough and in recovery for alcohol addiction. 

Mick was embarrassed to share this with me (though of course has no need to be), but did so to highlight how much abuse takes from you. 

Between the ages of 12 and 15 Mick, as a young volunteer for St John’s Ambulance Ireland (SJAI) in its Old Kilmainham division in Dublin, was groomed, abused and raped by a senior member of the organisation. 

“The abuse began almost as soon as I joined. His modus operandi was to use first aid training as a reason to touch me, and get me to touch him. It escalated over time, and then — when I rejected his advances aged 14 — he beat me up. That was when he first raped me.”

So vicious was the rape, Mick was left with intimate physical injuries requiring surgery and is registered disabled today. 

Mick told people about the rape straight away, including the gardai and SJAI itself: “Nobody wanted to know. Nobody believed me, or wanted to listen to me. This is only 1999 — we’re not talking distant 1950s Ireland. But no-one cared about working-class inner-city kids getting abused.”

Mick knew even then that he wasn’t the only victim: it would eventually transpire that at least 15 more men had experienced abuse by the same man.

As is inevitably the case for victims who haven’t been heard and helped to mentally process their trauma, Mick’s whole life suffered: “My life unravelled. I ended up homeless as a teenager, sleeping rough on the streets. I’ve had problems my entire life maintaining relationships.”

But he refused to give up. In August 2020, he spoke out publicly, after a report by Child and Family Agency Tusla upheld his complaints. Despite the other 15 victims recounting their stories, the DPP would eventually make a decision not to prosecute. Historic cases are notoriously hard to bring to justice: but this was obviously distressing for the victims. 

At least all their efforts lead to an official inquiry: Justice Geoffrey Shannon, an expert in child law, spent more than a year investigating and meeting with survivors to compile an official report.

It was damning. SJAI had failed to act on concerns, it found, and on knowledge of the risks posed by the perpetrator. As a result the abuse had gone unchecked for decades, from the late 1960s. 

Crucially Shannon judged children were still not safe as things stood, and urged the appointment of a national safeguarding lead, fully independent of SJAI: “It should be a full-time role … Recruitment for the role should focus on experience with child welfare, rather than of SJAI as an organisation.”

The Shannon report was completed and submitted to the board of SJAI in November 2022.

Even then, it wasn’t over for the victims: it wasn’t published. 

That’s when I first got in touch with Mick to offer my support from one survivor to another, and admiration for what he was doing. I’d watched the campaign on social media and saw Mick and the other men protesting day in, day out outside SJAI, asking for the report to be published without further delay. 

Mick was supporting the other men through the ordeal of having to expose themselves once more to public scrutiny. He seemed a tower of strength — eloquent, strong and indefatigable. But of course that wasn’t the whole story: the investigation itself had exacerbated the trauma that was never far from the surface anyway: Mick has PTSD, causing nightmares that wake him up screaming, leaving him exhausted physically as well as mentally.

As he says, “…this is the reality of the aftermath of sexual abuse. It doesn’t just go away.”

Incredibly he also faced personal abuse for his courage. One day, as he intervened in an incident between a gardai and a homeless person, the officer recognised him — and sneered at him for the rapes he’d endured, mocking him with vile, graphic words. 

But finally, because survivors kept the pressure on, the minister for children and the president of Ireland both demanded publication. The report was released to survivors in a private session in Dublin the day before St Patrick’s Day, March 16 2023. The timing was criticised by the group as an attempt to bury the findings in the holiday news cycle. 

Still, Mick felt relief — but, too, shock and anger at what he and others had been put through: “St John Ambulance knew about this! They knew for the best part of 40 years; and throughout that entire period they chose to do nothing. That’s the bit I can’t get my head around.

“This has involved up to 15 men like me. We are vindicated massively but … all this time they continually ignored us; we were attacked and belittled, I was called a liar. To put us through all of that, when they knew…”

It seems Kafkaesque that the men were made to fight so long and hard when the organisation apparently had had so much evidence already: “The whole thing had a profoundly detrimental impact of my entire life. My father died not knowing the truth, and it hurt my family, and my relationship with them.”

Finally, on publication of the report, SJAI offered an “unreserved apology” to victims, and accepted its own organisational failings had “facilitated” the grooming and abuse.

However, as we reach the first anniversary of publication, the report’s key requirements have still not been met. 

The safeguarding officer is not in place, despite calls from survivors and politicians. 

Even worse for survivors, recent developments have seen the Department for Children consider funding the post directly via a service level agreement with St John Ambulance Ireland. In other words, SJAI will receive an additional €100,000 a year of public money.

The survivors have received nothing, to date, except “three numbers to ring if we need support — so we can go on waiting lists for that support.”

“It’s time the government put victims and survivors ahead of the institutions and organisations that facilitated their abuse,” Mick says.

Despite all he’s achieved, Mick Finnegan sometimes wishes he’d never come forward: “The way people treat me since I spoke out would break you. I only opened my mouth because I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I experienced. I wasn’t looking for attention. I only wanted to be supported.”

He has received incredible abuse on social media, from the far right and others, as well as in person. Because of this and the long, painful and exhausting process he was put through, since the report was published, Mick’s life has spiralled out of control: “I started to drink a lot to numb the pain and help me cope. I desperately tried to hold it together, but I was afraid to let anyone around me know what was really going on. 

“I began to distance myself from my friends and my partner at the time; and as a result, my mental health deteriorated, my relationship ended, and my landlady kicked me out back in August 2023.

“Since then I’ve been sleeping rough. I’m embarrassed to have found myself in this situation, having been homeless when I was younger.”

Still, Mick Finnegan keeps fighting for a chance at a life he’s so long been denied: “I know it won’t be forever. I’ll keep linking in with my community mental health team, Dr Prosper and nurse consultant Ciaran Lanigan at the North Dublin Homeless Mental Health Team. They’re helping me get my life back on the track. 

“It’s hard starting from scratch again, and focusing on my sobriety and going to therapy. But  SJAI robbed me of so much in life: they’re not going to take my future, too.”

If readers would like to get in contact with Mick, his email is [email protected].