Nathan is a son, a father, a businessman, and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.  He was sexually abused by his local priest from the age of 9. He is 46 now and has been in therapy at One in Four for 2 years. This is his story:

“My mum was so proud of me becoming an altar boy. I was glad because I wasn’t so sporty and school wasn’t my thing. But that hadn’t been my motivation for signing up, you see at the time you kind of had to do it. Everyone did, you couldn’t say no to the priest, could you?

And there lays the problem, our Parish Priest was like a celebrity, friends with everybody. It was a great honour to been picked, and even greater to be asked to do extra masses.

When I look back it was obvious I wasn’t the only kid he groomed and abused. Sure there were tons of us serving at each mass.

When the pandemic started, and I was at home more. I cleared out mum’s garage for her and found lots of old photos.  I found one of our Altar Boys at Killiney Beach in the summer of ‘84. Two of the lads in the photo were dead already and one half ways there with the drink.

If only I had known to get them help. 

In many ways life had been good to me, my business took off, we bought a lovely house and I have two incredible kids. But something always seemed to be missing, darkening the sunlight.

When I turned 40 I knew things had to change, and started therapy at One in Four.

My therapist in One in Four sat in that dark dark place with me, in that Sacristan, and helped bring light. For that, I am truly grateful.”

Abuse casts a long shadow over a child’s life, it has deep and detrimental consequences, often affecting a survivors relationships and life goals.

With your support change is possible. Your donations enable our therapists to go to those dark places in a survivor’s past and shine a light for their future.

Please donate today so we can help more survivors like Nathan.