Dennis Whitty, a former teacher in Terenure College for over 30 years, died recently. He was 83 and living peacefully in a rural village in Co Kerry for almost 20 years. He died without the publication of any death notice and was buried privately. 

Whitty was, according to journalist Garreth MacNamee in the Daily Mail last week, facing nine sample charges next month in relation to one person who allegedly suffered at his hands. 

A significant number of other allegations of abuse were also being investigated according to the paper. I don’t know the circumstances of all the individuals who were trying to hold Whitty to account but I believe them and know of people he abused.

Whitty was my economics teacher for the Leaving Certificate in 1996; and he was my rugby coach a few years earlier. He was encouraging to me as a teacher, but there was an edge to him. 

He was known to fire his duster and heavy set of keys across the classroom to attract attention, and older students said that in the past he had clattered children by throwing things at them.

As a rugby trainer, Whitty identified the best rugby players who were capable of playing on the senior cup team coached by John McClean, then in his pomp, but today in jail as a convicted serial paedophile. 

Whitty also played the role of an on-the-field medic during senior cup matches and was known for his distinctive head-first run onto the pitch in Donnybrook or occasionally Lansdowne Road, to deliver first aid when a teenager went down. 

Like McClean, Whitty was fond of wearing a black cape around the school. Like McClean, he also was involved in taking children on overnight trips to play rugby. McClean saw Whitty as somewhat his junior and sometimes ordered him about in an arrogant manner.

There were dozens of adults working in Terenure College. How did none of them see anything in the decades when the two men were working there?

We know from a criminal court case there were credible complaints about McClean sexually abusing children from 1979 when older children witnessed him doing so while he was in charge of the school play. 

Rather than being fired and reported to the Gardai, Terenure College gave McClean more power by making him first-year form master over twelve year olds. He was also made coach of the senior cup team, the most respected position in the school. McClean was given a lesser workload to allow him focus on rugby, but he used some of this time to roam the school taking children out of class to abuse them. This went on for decades.

In this culture, a man like Whitty thrived and could commit his own abuses. 

Did they know of each other?

In Terenure College: 1860-2010 A History, the official history of the school, Chapter 22 considers the many sports stars produced by the school. This chapter says a turning point in the school’s rugby fortunes occurred in the mid-1970s when the Carmelite-led Terenure College finally got one over the Spiritans in Blackrock when the school won the Junior Cup in a “nail-biting final.” The book describes the men who led the boys to victory: “The juniors, whose back-up coaching team, led by Fr Aidan O’Donovan, which included Dennis Whitty, John McClean…”

All three men were abusers. Fr O’Donovan, known as Donewax, was a serial paedophile who was allowed to take children on unsupervised holidays with him where he abused many of them. He also abused them on the grounds of the south Dublin school. The Village Magazine, which broke a series of stories about the school in 2017 and 2018, quoted numerous unnamed men who described being abused by Fr O’Donovan who died in 2013. I have separately met several men who said they were also abused by O’Donovan as boys. In at least one case the same boy – now a man – was abused first by O’Donovan and then by McClean. McClean and O’Donovan knew of each other’s crimes. Did all three men watch out for each other or exchange notes?

In 2004, Whitty appeared in a court case where he denied having improper sexual relations with a schoolboy. The boy said he was 14 when it began, but Whitty denied he had started to abuse him this early. Whitty admitted he had “inappropriate sexual relations” in March 1988 after a school rugby match. But he said his pupil was above the age of consent at the time. He said the teenager arrived at his house in the evening, and they ended up sitting near each other. “I kissed him, and he responded, and we ended up having mutual masturbation,” Whitty said. “We sat for a while, had tea and I drove him home.”

Whitty claimed in later years his former pupil asked him for money to clear his gambling and other debts. Whitty pled not guilty to two charges of indecently assaulting the Terenure pupil between November 1st and December 31st, 1985 at his home and denied 12 counts of gross indecency in Terenure and another location in south Dublin on dates unknown between 1986 and 1988. Whitty was acquitted in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. He was never named in court reports due to reporting restrictions. News of the case however spread rapidly among past pupils of Terenure College, and Whitty’s name was widely known. The pattern of Whitty grooming and sexually abusing his students in Terenure College and elsewhere went on for decades. How was he able to get away with it for so long?

Stolen childhoods

In 1978, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel 81st Scout Unit of Terenure College published a pamphlet that included a selection of articles and photographs of its activities between 1957 and 1978. John McClean wrote an article for this publication reflecting on a trip to Munich in 1960. A picture of McClean as a boy accompanies the article which is written in a jolly style filled with puns as he describes his trip as a scout to the Munich Eucharistic Congress.

“What we did exactly I have forgotten except that we appeared on TV, dined in a marquee with several hundred other scouts, attended an open air Mass as part of a congregation of thousands, met several Church Dignitaries and generally had a great time.”

McClean said he was back in school with his pals two weeks later but had a “collection of photographs, a host of stories, and a memory forever.” The year after McClean recalled his happy childhood, he was witnessed abusing children for the first time. His criminality robbed many men of their childhoods.

Whitty, O’Donovan and others did the same thing. The adults in Terenure and elsewhere who knew or suspected but did not act as these crimes went on and on for decades should be haunted. The former school boys who sent McClean to prison were courageous. Whitty may have escaped being locked up, but his brave former pupils who took him on ensured he died knowing the truth was coming like a train.