Colm O'Gorman
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Colm O'Gorman is the founder and director of One in Four, a national Irish charity that supports women and men who have experienced sexual abuse and/or sexual violence.
As an adolescent altar boy in County Wexford, he was sexually abused by the paedophile Fr Seán Fortune. He became the first of Fr Fortune's many victims to come forward and report the assaults to the Irish Police. In 1998, he initiated a lawsuit against the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns and the Dublin Papal Nuncio, 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. He successfully campaigned for the establishment of the Ferns Inquiry; the first Irish State inquiry into clerical sexual abuse. He is a well-known figure in Irish media as an advocate of those who have been victims of child sexual abuse and a commentator and campaigner on the issue of 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 Irish Labour Party for his contribution to social justice in Ireland
In April 2006, he announced that he would stand for the Progressive Democrats in the next General Election in his native county of Wexford.
