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How Gabriel Byrne Confronted the Priest Who Sexually Molested Him
Gabriel Byrne claims that when he once got in touch with the priest he had accused of abusing him as a child, the guy had no memory of who he was.
In 2011, the actor spoke out about the sexual abuse he experienced as a young kid in the Catholic Church, claiming that it happened after he went to an English seminary at age 11 to pursue a career as a priest.
The Usual Suspects actor claims that years after the event, he had phoned the priest on the phone to confront him only to discover the priest saying he did not remember the actor in his new book, “Walking with Ghosts.”
In the book, Byrne said, ‘I wanted in those last seconds to call him a c*** and say that even though I don’t believe in Hell, I hope he does because I want him to be terrified and burn forever.” ‘But I said nothing. ‘
He continued: ‘Some part of me did not want to hurt an old man with a kindly voice stuck in a retirement home who now had no memory of me or anything he’d done.’
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The star added: ‘Even years later, it feels like the night has been concreted over. I’ve been picking at it with a pin ever since, afraid to use a jackhammer, afraid of what’s buried in there.’
He also writes that for so long he blamed himself for what happened, feeling “ashamed” and “guilty” like he’d done something wrong.
Last week, Byrne told The New York Times the priest died years after that phone call and that he had made peace with how his story unfolded.
“We love to think there’s a resolution to these things, that that’s how to deal with trauma,” he told the Times. “‘I confronted him; I dealt with it; I moved on.’ But that’s not necessarily true. I realized that there doesn’t have to be a resolution.”
The Dublin, Ireland born star told RTÉ television’s The Meaning of Life in 2010 that he ‘experienced some sexual abuse’ as a child in an English seminary, according to The Telegraph.
‘It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man, and you didn’t want to be left in the dressing room with him,’ he said. ‘It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me.’
He said that he was also molested by a separate priest, and that ‘it didn’t go on over a prolonged period but it happened at a very, very vulnerable moment.’
He added: ‘Again, I didn’t think it severely impacted me at the time. But when I think about my later life, and how I had difficulties with certain issues, there is the real possibility they could have been attributable to that.’
Byrne has been vocally critical of the Catholic Church, criticising Pope Francis for ‘doing nothing to address’ child sexual abuse, divorce and the role of women in the church, and expressing his anger that the church still ‘controls’ education in Ireland.
“It still makes me angry,” he added.
“Walking with Ghosts” was released on Jan. 12.