Colm O'Gorman (born 15 July 1966) is an Irish activist and former politician. He was the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland from 2008 to 2022.[2][3][4] He is founder and former director of One in Four.
He is a survivor of clericalsexual abuse, and first came to public attention by speaking out against the perpetrators. O'Gorman subsequently founded One in Four, an Irish charity which supports men and women who have been sexually abused and/or suffered sexual violence.[5]
Colm O'Gorman was born in County Wexford. His father was Seán O'Gorman, of Adamstown, County Wexford – a farmer, builder and local Fianna Fáil politician.[6] Seán O'Gorman was a member of Wexford County Council, and later moved with his family to live in Wexford town. He twice stood unsuccessfully as a Fianna Fáil candidate in general elections: in 1969 and 1973.[7]
In 2002, Colm O'Gorman settled near Gorey, County Wexford.[8] He is raising two children with his husband Paul, of whom they have joint legal guardianship.[9] When this was revealed it generated debate on fosterships in the Irish media.[10]
As an adolescent in County Wexford – between the age of 15 and 17 – O'Gorman was sexually abused by Fr Seán Fortune. The abuse occurred between 1981 and 1983.[11] He became the first of Fortune's many victims to come forward and report the assaults to the Irish police. In 1998, he sued the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns and the DublinPapal Nuncio, inter alia the then Pope, John Paul II, who later claimed diplomatic immunity. His case against the Catholic Diocese of Ferns was settled in 2003 with an admission of negligence and the payment of damages – in April 2003, O'Gorman was awarded €300,000 damages.[12] O'Gorman documented his lawsuit in the BBC documentary Suing the Pope.[13]
He successfully campaigned to set up the Ferns Inquiry,[14] the first Irish state inquiry into clerical sexual abuse. He founded the charity One in Four in London in 1999 and established its sister organisation in Ireland in 2002. He is a well-known figure in Irish media as an advocate of child sexual abuse victims and a commentator and campaigner on sexual violence. He was named one of the ESB/Rehab People of the Year and received a TV3/Daily Star "Best of Irish" award in 2002, one of the Sunday Independent/Irish Nationwide People of the Year in 2003 and in the same year he was also awarded the James Larkin Justice Award by the Labour Party for his contribution to social justice in Ireland.
O'Gorman was the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland from 2008 to 2022, and often appears in the media to talk or write about human rights in Ireland and around the world. He and Amnesty called for an update to Ireland's hate-crime legislation, stating that freedom of expression does not extend to hate crime and that Irish people need to accept that "it is not enough to be anti-racist but that there is a need to be actively anti-racist."[18]
^Thompson, Sylvia (6 May 2008). "Family danger". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 12 February 2017. Colm O'Gorman, who left the agency in January and has since become the executive director of the Dublin office of Amnesty International.
