Nobody Heard Me Cry

Nobody Heard Me Cry is the harrowing and painfully honest story of one young boy whose childhood was destroyed by sexual abuse. At the age of eight, John Devane was called from the street into the home of a trusted neighbour. There he was brutally raped, the beginning of four years sustained, secretive abuse at this man’s hands.

A few years on still not a teenager, he turned to a pair of trusted older friends for help. It would be to his cost. Instead of help, he soon found himself pinped on Limerick’s Dock Road. The remaining years of his stolen childhood would see him used as a pawn by paedophile rings in Limerick and Dublin, initiated into sex parties where paedophiles from all walks of life serially abused and raped him and other young boys.

Fatherless and with a violent, alcoholic mother and a family in chaos, John had nowhere to turn. And nobody heard him cry.

here for the first time, he shares his remarkable story – of a lost childhood, of alcoholism and the devastation of abuse, and of a pivotal moment that would change everything when, years later, a practicing solicitor, he came face to face with a past abuser. Nobody Heard Me Cry is an unforgettable story of survival, and hope in the bitterest of circumstances.