The children of a man abused over a four-year period while he was at a Catholic school in the 1950s have fulfilled his wish and spoken on his behalf to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.
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Patrick Cleary died in July this year, missing his chance to speak to the Royal Commission, which is hearing from people abused while in the care of the Catholic and Anglican churches and the Salvation Army.
On Monday, his daughter Tina Cleary spoke for him.
Her brothers, Dan and Tim Cleary, sat behind her as she spoke often emotionally about their father and what he endured as a boy at St Patrick's College, Silverstream, near Wellington.
The day before the hearing Tina and her whānau went to the hearing room and sang, she said.
''I just needed to bring Dad into the room. He would have loved us all singing. It was important to feel him in the room."
She brought her father's walking stick with her to the hearing so he could be with her.
The statement Tina read to the Commission was written by her father.
In 1951, Paddy Cleary was a third-former at St Patrick's College.
After hurting his hand in an accident, he was at one stage in teacher Father Minto's study.
''He very soon began to kiss me. Lights out, door locked. Long, lingering. He would persuade me to sit on his lap. He below me, both of us on his easy chair. This would soon become lying, with me on top facing upward. This way he could whisper sermons in my ear. I later reasoned that if no clothes were removed, then that was okay, he was genuine.''
Shortly after the second term began, Cleary was summoned to the office of the rector, Father Francis Durning.
''He hardly gave himself time to lock the door before he started fiddling with my belt explaining 'I just want to inspect things down there'.''
On another occasion, a naked Durning got Cleary to massage what he said was cramp.
Cleary said that before Durning released him, he made sure of one thing, and that was a warning to stay quiet.
Cleary said he did not tell anyone for many years.
He said Durning had expected to be appointed to the role of Provincial, the head of the Society of Mary, but after one of the senior students laid a complaint about him he was posted to a school in the South Island.
Cleary said the objectionable proclivities of both priests must have been known to their fellow priests but when he did finally approach the Society of Mary he was surprised to discover there was no individual file on any member.
''Nobody knew or was prepared to admit anything about anyone.''
Durning died in 1999.
''I have heard my children wondering why I took so long to make this unsavoury history of mine known. Shame is the easy answer. Shame at my inability to grasp the nettle and tell these two ... where to go, shame for everything, even for being me.''
Cleary said a major reason for his 68-year delay in speaking out was that there was no one to confide in.
Tina said her father was a writer, had a high regard for what was fair and what was just, and for the power of words.
He was passionate about rugby. ''It could make or break his day, and ours,'' she said laughing.
He was a political animal, voted Labour and protested against the 1981 Springbok tour. ''When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed he boycotted everything French for a decade," she said.
"If he was here now he would have you all smiling. He loved connecting with people, he was romantic and a really compassionate man.
''He was a deeply proud father and he was proud of us, like we are of him."
