Mary is my rock, my soulmate, my best friend and my lover. Everything I have, everything we are, is because of her. For some reason, she tells me that she is very proud of me, for some reason I really don’t understand, she says I mean everything to her. Which, I guess, proves something my abusers never understood, that love is the most important thing. Funny, isn’t it, how people who preach the words of Christ could have forgotten that?

There was no love in the Artane, and not much more in St John Of God’s, though at least there was kindness there. In the Artane, I was little more than a slave – beaten, starved, abused sexually, physically and mentally – I didn’t have birthdays or Christmases and I was locked away from the world.

If I hadn’t met Mary I would have had nothing, no future, no hope. I owe Mary everything. This book is because of her, and it is dedicated to her. It is her book, because without her, it would never have been written – she knew we had to tell the story. She wanted people to know what kids like me went through and we wanted people to know that only forty years ago there was a place where kids, the most vulnerable, innocent creatures of all, were ignored, abused and locked away – and this in a Christian country and in the name of the Catholic Church. So this book is also for them.

Unfortunately, I still pay the price of my childhood; I suffer from terrible nightmares and I get vivid and terrifying flashbacks out of the blue that keep the Artane as fresh in my mind as if it was yesterday. I have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, I get times when I am very depressed and I have weak lungs, so that I’m often in hospital. I put that down to the beatings, particularly the one in the classroom when I was punched in the ribs.