5 entries for Gerry

Peter Tade used to take Richard,29 who was a boy in care in St Joseph’s, and Gerry on fishing trips and for spins in his car. Peter Tade took photographs of them. The Garda described what happened: the circumstances were that Peter Tade had taken photographs of Richard and Gerry. He used to take them fishing and took them for spins in his car. But Gerry’s mother discovered that Peter Tade’s face, he was in one of the photographs, had been scratched and pins driven through it and she suspected something was wrong. She spoke to him and he told her that Peter Tade did something to him. As far as I recall it was a bank holiday weekend and Peter Tade was off, he was on leave and he was in Dublin, Sr Astrid said she had to get rid of him or ask him to leave. I came to Dublin with her – or I came to Dublin and I met her in Dublin.

When confronted by Sr Astrid and the Garda, Peter Tade admitted that he had abused Gerry. He admitted that he touched the child improperly. Sr Astrid told him he could never return to St Joseph’s or have any contact with the children there.

He said that it was 1995 before he realised that the incident with Gerry was not an isolated one, and Peter Tade had been abusing boys in St Joseph’s since he had arrived 10 months previously.

Neither the Garda nor Sr Astrid saw fit to question Richard, the boy from St Joseph’s who was with Gerry in the defaced photograph, and who had also been taken on the trips with Peter Tade, about whether he had been interfered with by Tade. It is difficult to understand why they did not question the other boys in the home where Tade had worked for 10 months. There was a failure on the part of both the Garda and Sr Astrid to face up to the danger Peter Tade posed to other children.

Peter Tade died whilst serving the four-year sentence imposed on him by the Circuit Criminal Court in 1999. He had pleaded guilty to seven counts of indecent assault against three former residents of St Joseph’s and Gerry, the boy who had made the complaint in 1977.