'I was raped by a paedophile monk when I was ten': Man reveals child abuse ... trends now

Located three miles off the South Wales coast, the shimmering island of Caldey is in many ways every child's dream holiday destination. 

With rolling green countryside, imposing cliffs and white sandy beaches, the island's physical beauty leaves little to the imagination and routinely welcomes thousands of excitable children onto its shores every year. 

However, many are unaware that the island's chocolate box aesthetics hide a chilling secret: a dark history of sexual abuse against infants 'as young as three' stretching back over 50 years and irrevocably tied to the secretive community of Catholic monks that inhabit the rock.

In the decades that have passed since the island's hay day as a popular summer resort for families, alleged victims of the abuse have pooled together to set up the Caldey Island Survivors Campaign and have fought for a public enquiry for years. 

This week, the island announced that former Assistant Police & Crime Commissioner for South Wales, Jan Pickles OBE would lead a 'thorough review' into historic claims of child abuse. 

MailOnline has spoken to three victims of abuse on the island who have shared for the first time how their abuse at the hands of men on the island changed their lives forever. 

'It was a safe haven for them to abuse and rape children'

Kevin O'Connell was just six when he first stayed on Caldey Island for a family holiday with his parents and siblings.

It was a free holiday arranged by the Catholic Church in rural Carmarthenshire where he grew up.

By the time he was nine he had been selected as an altar boy and returned to the island for a week as part of his training. This time alone.

He said: 'When I first saw Caldey from the boat it looked like paradise, the long beach loads of children playing and having fun.

'A monk came over and said to me he was a friend of my parents, and I recognised him as Father Thaddeus Kotik.

'He started taking me away from my group of children and spending time sitting in the sand dunes, eating chocolate. He would stroke my hair and kiss the top of my head.'

Young Kevin returned to the island for a holiday the next year with this site Rebecca and this time he claims Father Thaddeus and other monks sexually abused him.

He claims he would be dragged to an altar stone in the ruins of a previous abbey where the abuse would take place.

Mr O'Connell said: 'There was nowhere to run and hide, I felt trapped and often thought I would try to swim back to Tenby but I would have not survived the crossing.

'My sister would run up to me on the beach and we would hug - she had also been raped by Father Thaddeus.

'I knew then what this so-called holy island really was.

'I witnessed the industrial abuse of children, dragged away into dark damp caves to be raped, not only by monks and priest but men coming onto the island.

'It was a safe haven for them to abuse and rape children as young as three years old.

'When we left Caldey I never wanted to go back there. I hated everything about it.'

At home in his parish church, young Kevin 'confessed' to his priest about what had happened to him and his sister on Caldey.

He says he was told if he ever spoke about the monks, God would turn his back on him and the devil would take him.

The priest told the terrified schoolboy that a severed hand would come through his letter box at night and strangled him in his bed.

To this day Mr O'Connell has never lived in a house with a front door letter box.

Against his wishes Kevin, now 11, was sent to the island for a third visit, this time with his younger brother who he watched over in fear that Father Thaddeus would start abusing him.

During that stay young Kevin was found in the grounds of the abbey with a fractured skull and was taken to hospital on the mainland.

He said: 'I still have the scar but to this day I still don't know how I suffered that head injury. All I was told was that a carer found me on the ground with Father Thaddeus leaning over me.

'My parents were told that I was running away and I fell and hit my head - I believe it was something far more sinister.'

Mr O'Connell says he and his siblings were let down by social services who they were in the care of at the time of their trips to the island.

He became a loner and confessed everything that happened to him to his plastic Action Man which he later buried 'in a secret place'.

Mr O'Connell met his wife Carol in 1983 but it wasn't until years later that he told her about the abuse he'd suffered at the hands of Father Thaddeus and other monks.

Then in 2018, after years of torment, he set up the Caldey Island Survivors Campaign and collected 5,000 signatures on a petition calling for a Public Inquiry.

In 2022 Mr O'Connell returned to the island for the first time in 44 years. He set up a banner on the quayside saying: 'To protect the children of the future we must first discover the truth of the dark past of Caldey Island. Victims need answers.'

He said: 'Fifty people have come forward to say they were sexually abused on Caldey. They have never received the justice they deserve.

'I will continue to fight for them, for me and for my sister.

'Caldey Island was never a safe place for children, it wasn't then and it isn't now.'

'He would call children his "little angels" - he molested me and I got just £9,500 compensation'

A woman who was paid compensation for being molested by a monk on Caldey Island says she was 'one to thousands' abused by evil Father Thaddeus.

The victim, now in her early forties, said Thaddeus called the children his 'little angels' and plied them with chocolates, sweets and toys.

She was just three when the perverted monk led her into the island's dairy where he sexually assaulted children while their parents were nearby.

The woman, who doesn't want to be named, received £9,500 in compensation from Caldey Abbey in an out-of-court settlement, a figure which she described as 'pathetic'.

The victim lived on Caldey in the 1970s

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