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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
National
John Hand

Victim of paedophile Irish doctor Michael Shine speaks out and says he is still haunted after abuse

A victim of a serial paedophile doctor is calling for an investigation to ensure a child never endures the torture that he and other victims suffered.

For the first time the victim has spoken of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of unrepentant pervert Michael Shine while he practised as a doctor.

Christy, who does not want his second name revealed, is calling for the Government to launch a commission of investigation to give him and others answers.

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He added: “I’m after spending the last 47 years asking myself how am I going to survive today because you hate yourself, you hate what you’ve become.

“I’ll always have to have this for the rest of my life. But the Government has to protect other kids and ensure that this never happens again.”

In the late 1970s, 13-year-old Christy suffered from extreme pain in school one day arising from a bike crash three months beforehand.

His mother rushed him to A&E in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth, where he was brought into a theatre where Shine operated on him.

Two weeks later he underwent a second operation.

After that he attended Shine’s private clinic in Drogheda’s Fair Street for follow-up appointments.

Christy explained: “That’s where the abuse all happened.

“The first time it happened was the first appointment at Fair Street after the first two operations.

“I went in and he said ‘I have to check the tubes to make sure everything is OK’.”

Shine targeted Christy again and abused him before he had a third operation following more difficulties.

Christy said: “He attempted to do it in the hospital again and he was disrupted by a couple of nurses and he stopped doing what he was doing.

“I came out two or three weeks later and had to go to the Fair Street and it happened for a third time there.”

The effect on Christy was devastating and still haunts him today.

He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder but he also learned much later in life that he suffers from a condition called dissociation.

He said: “Now I know I suffer from a thing called dissociation.

“So I could be talking to someone but go blank, so my body is there but I’m not here. I don’t remember what I said or did or what the person said or did.

“The third time I don’t remember a thing. I don’t even remember coming home. All I know is he said he had to test the tubes, never looked at my scars or anything.

“I was screaming but I wasn’t screaming with my voice, I was screaming with my head. Now I know it is dissociation.”

After seeing Bernadette Sullivan, a former nurse at Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital exposing Shine on RTE’s Prime Time, Christy told his ex-wife what had happened to him.

Christy, like another victim, lost a testicle from Shine’s operations and could not have children but he told his then partner that he had gone through a cancer battle.

Christy said: “I had to work out how to tell my parents and my family.

“And my mother said, ‘I knew something had happened from the way you were acting’.

“My parents were very supportive, my father went mad. But he had cancer at the time and wasn’t well. Then I told my brothers and sisters and I didn’t get the reaction I thought I’d get and my whole world turned upside down. Then my father died, my marriage broke up and I just went off the rails.

“I drank a lot. I never took drugs. I just threw myself into work.”

Christy went to Bernadette Sullivan who founded Dignity 4 Patients and she encouraged him to make a statement to gardai, which he did.

But Christy later learned his case would never be prosecuted.

Shine served just three years for indecent and sexual assault of seven boys between 1971 and 1992.

Earlier this year it emerged that the Director of Public Prosecutions has dropped 25 cases against Shine. It came from a successful appeal by 90-year-old regarding a separate case for the alleged sexual abuse of 10 other patients, which was due to go to trial in 2021.

He will likely go to his grave without serving any more jail time despite allegedly abusing 260 childrens.

He retired from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in 1995 on a full pension. The paedo has been living in a plush Dublin apartment since his release from prison in February.

Christy said he was part of a civil action some years ago and received compensation.

But for him, it will never be enough explaining that being told that his case was not being tried against Shine was like “being abused all over again”.

He added: “He gave me and others like me a life of misery, pain, hate, feeling disgusting, feeling dirty. This monster was worse than Hitler.

“Any new inquiry into sexual abuse that is now being agreed by the Government emanating from the revelations of the Spiritan abuse has to include the victims of the 300-plus children and young people abused by one doctor over a 30-year period.

“If not now, when. And if not, what are they hiding?”

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