Scouts who suffered sex abuse by leader Jim Harmon reveal their torment

Whether it was in distraction or denial, the child abuser took to Quora, a question-and-answer forum, with gusto. And the 80-year-old former scoutmaster from Shannon, Co Clare, showed his tetchy side.

How many years ago did Titanic sink?

“Look it up and find out for yourself,” he replied.

How do you write a letter that ends with “you reap what you saw?”

“I do believe the quotation should be you reap what you sow,” was his smug reply.

That phrase came home to roost for Harmon less than 24 hours later when he presented at Ennis Circuit Court last Wednesday — alone and without support — to reap the punishment for admitting to indecently assaulting five boys between 1976 and 1981.

‘We looked at each other and both realised what was going on in the next tent’

Judge Francis Comerford noted Harmon did not seem to understand the harm he had caused as he jailed him for 16 months for offences against each of the five boys, totalling six years and six months.

The boys are now men in their 50s who met for the first time as adults at Ennis Courthouse, strangers drawn together by their abuser. Each travelled a different path to get there, uniquely impacted by the devastating childhood experience of being sexually abused by Harmon.

All of them minimised or buried it in some way. Two men had reported him years ago, but Harmon escaped.

“Do you know, the horrific thing I got from meeting those men in that room that day was the links of damage that Harmon caused,” said Tom who, along with three others, spoke to the Sunday Independent under a pseudonym after the case concluded.

Harmon came to Limerick in 1973, having worked for 13 years as RAF groundcrew in the UK.

He was 30, lived at home with his parents in Garryowen and worked at Shannon Development in various roles, including EU information officer, until his retirement in 2003. He had joined the scouts and began sexually abusing boys from at least 1976.

Five men last week recalled a well-built, tall man with glasses, who bragged about his exploits in the RAF, impressed with his motorbike and terrorised them with unspeakable acts they didn’t understand.

It became apparent during the garda investigation that his pursuit of the boys followed a pattern — ingratiating himself with the boys’ families, and targeting those who seemed vulnerable.

In the five cases in court last week, the boys’ fathers worked away from home.

There was a modus operandi: molesting boys under their clothes, in broad daylight, in their tents at night, in his tent, finding excuses to strip them to their underwear, to weigh or measure them.

‘You quickly learned not to cry. If you did, you would be brought to his tent’

Tom recalled how Harmon spent months befriending his mother — his father worked away from home — and persuaded her to allow the boy to stay overnight in Garryowen, on the pretext of driving him to camp the following day.

That night, his parent elsewhere in the house, Harmon got into Tom’s bed, put his hand down the back of his pyjamas, and asked: “What do you call your bottom?”

Tom called him a creep — a term he picked up from his older sister. Harmon left the room and dumped the boy home the next morning.

Harmon never molested Tom again. But things Tom saw and heard are seared in his memory. They include one of a boy Harmon ordered to sleep in his tent during a camping trip to O’Brien’s Estate in Cratloe.

Tom and his friend were in an adjoining tent and heard shouting.

“We looked at each other and we both realised the same thing about what was going on next door.”

The boy was Ruairi Hickey, who waived his anonymity. Harmon abused Ruairi “regularly”, sometimes creeping into the tent where he slept with other boys to molest him, sometimes forcing him into his tent.

Ruairi recalled a camping trip to Holy Island on Lough Derg. Harmon sent two boys off exploring and made Ruairi stay and play chess. Harmon undid the boy’s trousers and abused him as he played.

“I remember seeing the other two walking away and being powerless, knowing and dreading what was to come.

"I close my eyes and can see the travel chess set, brown and white squares, magnetic white and black pieces, watching the backs of the other two walk away,” said Ruairi in his victim impact statement.

Adam*, the youngest of the five, recalled: “You learned very quickly not to cry, not to say you were missing your parents. If you did, you would be brought to his tent... I knew at a very young age that’s not where I wanted to go.”

Harmon molested Adam in his tent on a camping trip. On another occasion, Harmon drove Adam and another boy to his home in Garryowen.

“I remember being stripped down to my underpants being weighed, being measured, being touched for preparation to an overseas camp called Peak 80,” he said.

Even now he finds it hard to talk about and believes he has blocked out certain memories. Adam got away from Harmon when his family moved back to Dublin in 1980.

Gardaí advised him not to pursue his complaint against the child abuser

In 1981, Harmon molested Edward* at a campfire on O’Brien’s Estate when he was 11, cold and tired after a long day. Harmon took him on his lap and to the child’s incomprehension and shock, put his hands inside his pants.

The next day, Harmon caused Edward to fall into water and made his move, offering to change the boy’s clothes. Edward, despite his innocence, instinctively and robustly rebuffed him.

Harmon left the scouts a short time later, triggered by an 11-year-old boy who decided he could not take the abuse anymore.

John* joined the cub scouts aged seven or eight. He was molested repeatedly by Harmon, on camping trips and outings, and in John’s own home, where he sat beside him on the couch, tickled him and put his hand down his trousers.

In the summer of 1981, he had been on a family holiday and had been looking forward to joining the scouts on a camping trip in Kilgarvan.

“I arrived at the camp late. I realised the atmosphere was not good.” he said. “Something had shifted in me. Maybe I was a little bit older at that stage.”

He left the camp, walked the couple of miles to the village and phoned his parents. As his mother bathed him that evening, he told her Harmon had been putting his hands down his trousers.

“I told her I didn’t want to go back. She said she would take care of it. That was the end of it,” he said.

John’s mother warned other parents and complained to the scouting authorities. Harmon was forced out — he would later tell gardaí he left because his parents were still alive and he didn’t want to cause a scandal.

There is little doubt John’s actions and his mother’s response saved other boys from further abuse.

‘If harm is done to children at a young age, they carry it into their lives’

As soon as Ruairi Hickey’s mother heard from John’s mother, she immediately pulled her boy out of the scouts.

​Edward was the first to report Harmon to gardaí. It was 1996, he was in his mid-20s and had come through a troubled period — Harmon, he said, was a “monkey on his back”.

Gardaí advised him not to pursue his complaint. It would be Harmon’s word against his, they said.

Edward again reported Harmon to gardaí in 2014, prompted by a counsellor. This time Harmon was arrested. He answered “no comment” in garda interviews and denied knowing Edward.

Once again, it was Edward’s word against Harmon’s and he was not prosecuted.

His victim was deeply disappointed.

“One of the motives I had in going to the police was that they would investigate and intervene so that he might not be doing that to other people,” said Edward.

In 2016, Tom disclosed his childhood trauma to a counsellor who urged him to report Harmon to gardaí. Harmon was questioned voluntarily. He made no admissions. Again, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute.

Two men — unbeknownst to the other — had now come forward alleging child abuse against the same scoutmaster, but their cases were apparently never connected and their complaints investigated in isolation.

There was a third complaint for which Harmon was prosecuted in 2017, also investigated in isolation.

Harmon pleaded guilty to molesting a 14-year-old boy on a camping trip in Waterford. He portrayed the incident as an isolated “one off”, for which he was sorry — and walked away with a suspended sentence and his identity protected.

​Harmon finally received the joined-up investigative attention he deserved after details of widespread sexual abuse in Scouting Ireland led to a public scandal, and Ruairi Hickey made a formal complaint to gardaí in 2019.

John did not respond when gardaí first contacted him in 2020.

“I ignored them. I didn’t get in touch. I didn’t want to go there,” he said. He eventually agreed. “If they are going to the effort of doing this, I should help. I wasn’t doing it for a resolution for myself,” he said.

In his victim impact statement, he said he went to college, married and forged a successful international career.

“Bubbling beneath the veneer of success is a person who has been damaged and upset by having been abused by a very young age.”

John struggles to describe how Harmon’s abuse had impacted on him. “But I know it has — and profoundly so.”

​Ruari, who “counts himself lucky in life” with family and friends, said in his victim impact statement that he keeps his memories buried and “tries to live his life in spite of them”.

Edward, whose statement was read by his wife, went “off the rails” in his 20s but forged friendships, a happy marriage and a successful career despite Harmon’s “devious efforts” to destroy his innocence.

Harmon was a “prolific paedophile” and an “evil predator”.

Adam said his childhood was corrupted and any trajectory he had in his life had changed. He experimented with drugs and alcohol from a young age to escape the self-loathing bestowed on him by a predator.

Harmon’s actions have created “ripples of evil”, affecting not only his life but his wife and his children’s.

Disturbingly, the HSE placed a six-year-old child in Harmon’s care

Tom, who struggled in his teens, suffered from anxiety. He said he is haunted by the images of Harmon’s acts. His wife, who is also affected by her husband’s trauma, said “what he saw, he can never unsee” and he will never forget.

The men praised Denise Moriarty, the detective garda who brought them through this case. They have urged others who have been abused to come forward and to trust in the criminal process.

Some were unhappy with Scouting Ireland’s response.

​Harmon, frail, in spectacles and navy jacket, closed his eyes as the men read their victim impact statements.

The court heard he had married a widow with five children in 1994. The couple became foster parents.

Disturbingly, the HSE placed a six-year-old child in Harmon’s care. His wife died in 2000. He was “alone in the world”, estranged from family and friends.

Harmon had claimed to be a victim himself, the court heard, but he showed no understanding of the impact of his actions.

“This idea that children are resilient and will get over things,” said Judge Comerford. “If harm is done to children at a young age, they carry it into their lives.”

The five men who gathered more in sadness than in jubilation outside Ennis courthouse last Wednesday can attest to that.

In a statement, Scouting Ireland welcomed Harmon’s conviction and reiterated its public apology to those hurt by him. It said it provides counselling and support to all adult survivors.

​Adam, Edward, John and Tom are pseudonyms to protect the men’s identities. Ruairi Hickey waived his anonymity