Testimony

Laurence Hennessy.

Laurence was converted to Christ on 10 November 1983 in Bolton Lancashire, he came under heavy conviction of sin, after his wife Iris had been converted to Christ some eight months earlier, on seeing the transformation that took place in her life, he knew instinctively by the conviction of the holy spirit that he needed to be saved and released from the burdin of his sin and shame, on 10 November 1983 Laurence knelt in his living room with the local pastor and wept his way to Christ, Jesus said , come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest ,take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in Harth, and you will find rest for your soul,for my yoke is easy and my burden is light Matt 11 v 28 N.I.V.. That day Laurence found freedom in Christ and forgiveness for his sins through the shed blood of Christ on the Cross at Calvary, and that was the beginning of a wonderful transformation that has been taking place over the last 28 years .At the time of coming to Christ Laurence was 3 1/2 years sober and making quite a good recovery from his 12 years of chronic addiction to alcohol, the reason for sharing this testimony which you is to bring hope to the hopeless, I want every person who is addicted to substance to know that there is hope for them, for every homeless vagrant type down and out alcoholic or drug addict I want them to know about Jesus the real life giver, I want those who feel in adequate, insecure, inferior, perhaps misfits, people who don’t fit into our society. And above all to bring glory to God, and to offer new life to all who read this testimony, the hymn writer said, :what a wonderful change has been broght in my life since Jesus came into my heart, I have peace in my soul for which long I have sought, since Jesus came into my heart ,
This is my story, this is my song, praising my saviour, all the day-long,
This is an incredible story, about an incredible God, who can do incredible things in the lives of ordinary people like you and me

Chapter 1 Dublin the early years.

I was born in the city of Dublin in the year 1948, my parents were from a Catholic background, and so , we were brought up in the Catholic faith, and although it did not mean a great deal to me, , I made my first Communion, and my confirmation, and went to a Catholic school for I think about for years. Schooling was a difficult time for me as a child, I found it very difficult to concentrate on anything, and for some reason or other I always wanted to run away, I loved the great outdoors, and just want to be out in the fields, I think I felt freedom from life struggles, particularly those struggles at home, this meant that I grew up without an education and have been totally illiterate all of my life I don’t blame the education system in the Republic of Ireland for this, you see in them days , things were different and of course you would not get away with that today, not only will you unsure whether the pupils were going to turn up, but you were not always certain that the teacher would turn up to take his class and somehow or other when he did there was always a strong smell of drink, I have seven brothers and two sisters, some of them have struggled with the same problem down through the years, we lived on a very large council estate just outside the city of Dublin on the northside of the city a place called Cabera West, life was different in Dublin in them days than it is today, there was no keltic Tiger, there was no massive growth in wealth, and we went creating a new millionaire every week in fact in them days as I recall there was quite a lot of poverty and deprivation, I want to take you on a short journey truly early years of my upbringing in Dublin, it will help you understand what a transformation has taken place in my life, my father was a very heavy drinker and became extremely violent under the influence of alcohol, the police were often called to the house to sort him out after one of his escapades and although he worked in a coffee shop in the centre of Dublin call Bewleys, he was a coffee blender, I think he did other jobs as well, I also remember he was fond of fishing and shooting, I can remember him coming into the house with rabbits and fish, maybe it was trout, that he had caught, I also think his fishing and shooting was a form of escapism, many a time, I remember seeing a bottle of whiskey in his fishing bag, I never really got to know my father as a man, and I don’t think I ever had a proper bonding as a father and child relationship, I think there was a lot going on in his own life as we were growing up as children, he was a Tipperary man, living in the city of Dublin I think even in them days that could bring problems of its own between Jackie’s and coaches I don’t really remember how many a knee good times as a child, and although I think there must have been some, I find it hard to recall them, on many occasions was my father was under the influence of alcohol he would have beaten the children severely almost to the point where they were unconscious, I can say today, but by the grace of God, I have forgotten a lot of what went on, and I have no unforgiveness in my harth towards any of my parents.My mother was an invalid and suffered from multiple sclerosis for many many years, I vaguely remember my mother walking she did so by holding on to the wall, again because I ran away from home at such an early age I never really developed a mother and son relationship or got to know Her as a woman as well as a mother, because of the problems our parents were having of which as I look back there must have been many, dad was practically an alcoholic, and mom was an invalid suffering with multiple sclerosis, in any family that in itself would create difficulties, we grew up in the midst of lots of drunkenness, violence, lack of money and a constant round of rows. To say our family was dysfunctional would be an understatement, as children we run riot in the streets of Dublin,and getting up to all kinds of skulduggery, schooling was not a high priority for me and I much preferred to go down to Dublin docks and see all the activity that was going on their , in those days, there were hundreds of dockers looking for work, and it was just alive, there were lots of cafés and you could always get a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea off one of the men, there were banana boats, and cotton boats, tomatoes that would come in from the far side of the world we had some great times that of Dublin docks as runaway children, yes, of course we would have to Dodge the odd policeman because we should have been at school and instead were playing truant or miching as they call it in Dublin. I remember on one occasion when I was picked off the streets of Dublin and sent to a place called Malbura house, I’m never sure what sort of place it was and why I was sent there I think it was a kind of a holding station where wayward children were taken and kept for several weeks or months while stepparents were located to see whether not repatriation was possible, I think I’ve it in Mowbray has about five times I can remember distinctly, the superintendent who was in charge of us, he was a huge man and had a big tick neck and we nicknamed him the hipple because that’s what he reminded us of , it wasn’t a very big place but there were quite a number of children in their, from their we were taken to Dublin Castle to go in frount of some sort of panel, there were three people sitting in front of us and it was a kind of court room, I’ll never forget what the judge set to meet next, you are a child who is beyond your parents control and for that reason we will send you to Dangale a Christian Brothers reformatory in County Offley where you will spend two years perhaps that will teach you not to keep run away from home, although at that age I didn’t have much understanding of what was happening to me if you left a marked impression upon my life that somehow or other I have never forgotten, you see, I don’t think at that stage we have much knowledge as children of the rest of Ireland, we were on the Northside of the city of Dublin and I don’t even think we had been to this outside at this stage, we were ignorant, have very little understanding, and just had to go where we were told, I think after that I was taken to St. Patrick’s prison to be held for a couple of nights whilst they processed me, I think I was put into St. Patrick’s prison because I had run away from other police stations that they held me in, what happened next was to have a major impact on my life, I will never forget the day when I walked through the doors at Dangle, after being received in by the priest and processed I was sent out into what looked to me a huge yard, there was a lot of children some older ones and some younger ones it had a kind of leaned to to and some outdoor toilets, the first thing I remember is seeing somewhere between five and seven other children sitting in a corner with their heads shaved, this really really scared me I thought they were from space,, I had never seen a shaved head before, I remember asking why their heads had been shaped, and for that, I got a smack at the back of the head and was told to go over and sit down and shut up and not to ask silly questions, I cried, but there was no comfort coming from any member of staff, in fact I felt abandoned, alone, and already begun to feel angry, during my time in this reformatory I saw a lot of things go on that no child should ever see, I used to see the priests beaten the children, and somehow or other they always seem to make out that it was the child’s fault that they have to beat them, I guess this was their form of therapy, at night time, many of the night we would hear children screaming, someone would come along and get them out of bed, all lights were out and no noise was to be made but you couldn’t help hearing the screams, I can honestly say that children went missing, and I am convinced from that day until now that they were never found alive again, we were put to work initially mending shoes, and at other times I would’ve worked in the slaughterhouse, and sometimes we would be in the fields snag turnips, there was never what you might call a good atmosphere and again I don’t remember having a knee good times whilst I was there, there was a lot of sexual abuse went on and in them days no one would ever believe you if you told somebody that a brother or a priest had abused you, if you did you would be more likely to get beaten again and again, in my case, as far as I know I wasn’t sexually abused, but I was physically abused, my understanding is, that when I worked in the letter room mending shoes, me and another boy got into a fight, surprise, surprise, and a cause we have knives somehow or other I ended up stabbing the other boy in the stomach, when this came to the Brothers attention I remember being taken out of my bed one night in front of the whole dome, there was a lot of childranin the dormthat night ,I don’t really know who meny, I just remember there was an office at the top of the room and in a V-shaped tidbits went down either side there seem to be lots and lots of bets and lots and lots of children, I was taken to the front of the office, stripped naked, spreadeagled on the floor, the brother stood on my hands, while the priest flogged me with a leather strap it was about two feet long, I will never ever forget that, I screamed and screamed and the pain was so intense that it got to a stage after about 30 times where I almost couldn’t feel the pain anymore I was flogged 50 times for stabbing another boy, as I went back to my bed that night I could hardly walk, there was blood on my hands from my backside, and the swelling and pain was beyond belief, I had never been traumatized like this before in my life, there was all kinds of emotions going on anger, confusion, you see, we were brought up to look up to a priest that he was one of God’s servants, and when he told me, that this hurts me more than it hurts you, somehow or other I didn’t believe him, all I wanted to do was run away but there was no escape, there was just no way of getting out of there, later on, perhaps a few weeks later, they told me that the other boy had died from stab wounds, to this day I never know whether or not that was true they played a lot of head games, and a lot of emotional damage was done, I just kept getting this instinct to run away, then I remembered the shaved heads, that’s what they wear( runaways) so that was part of the punishment, I don’t really want to go on much more about Dangal because although it is over now and forgiven and forgotten, when I do bring it to memory, it breaks up all kinds of emotions, to cut a long story short I never stayed for two years, after 11 months or so, I was released to go home to Dublin to be repatriated with my family for good behavior, what they were really trying to do, was to see whether or not mom and dad could cope with me, after I had been out for about a week, me and another guy decided that we would run away to England, we have had lots of stories about different people who had emigrated to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some have gone to England, where the streets were paved with gold, and because that didn’t seem too far we decided to do a runner,there was know way i was going back to that hell hole, so we went down to the docks at Dublin sneaked onto a ship that we knew was going to Liverpool, I think at this stage I would’ve been 13 1/2 years of age. I thought that the physical pain of the public flogging was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, I realized later on in life, that the psychological and emotional damage that had been done was worst and it gave me an excuse for my, anti-social behavior for the next 15 years, I also
headed down the road to alcoholism after all this had taken place, wouldn’t you think, after all I had experienced at home, that alcohol would’ve been the last thing I wanted in my life, yet because I was so screwed up, so angry and confused, and had so many hangups from my upbringing and because I felt so in adequate and insecure and inferior I found that when I drank alcohol it gave me confidence and have a positive effect on my life initially, I can truly say, I was sick of the rows at home, I was sick of institutions, and the instinct in me was to run away just to get away from it all from dad drinking and violence, from the abuse of the Christian Brothers so it was farewell to Dublin and hello to England , the only reason I have documented this and have been so open and honest is to give you some form off understanding of what life was like for us in Dublin, by the way, most of our neighbors could have similar stories, I want to hold out hope to those who have been in these Christian Brothers institutions throughout the Republic of Ireland, that there is freedom to be found in Christ Jesus and in him alone, how do I know this? Because I understand that there are scars and wounds that are so deep that no man can heal only the Holy Spirit can heal, he came to set the captives free, and I know that there are thousands of people living in the Republic of Ireland who have never come to terms with the abuse that took place in our lives, I think that’s the worst sin of all, and I for one want to reach out to local Jesus to all those who have been abused and to show them to this testimony that there is hope for each one of them.