TOO much repetition can make any tale lose its punch. The story of John Brown's life is repetitious, but the horrific detail in his sad and sordid story make it compelling and the telling of it necessary.

Episodes of abuse after abuse from infancy through childhood, the teen years and into adulthood - were suffered by this man. He is borderline mentally handicapped, with a mental age of 12.

There are so many of these episodes that you lose count of the number of people who sexually abused John, which is not his real name. Despite the many signs displayed over the years, including suicide attempts, the chronic abuse of John was not acted upon by the authorities until he began to display paedophile tendencies himself and sexually assaulted children.

During his trial, when he was convicted of a sexual assault the court heard of the extraordinary trauma he suffered throughout an existence starved of affection. It heard how he was first failed by his family, then the State, and the Catholic Church.

Even now rejection continues, despite all the efforts of the judge who heard the case, and his own legal team, to have him cared for. This continuing failure by the South Eastern Health Board to find a permanent place for him is said to have had a devastating effect on him.

FOR 12 years John, who is now 33, lived in a mobile home at the bottom of a priest's garden in Co Kilkenny. Last June, that priest was jailed for eight years for offences against boys, which included the buggery of an altar boy.

Sentencing John at the end of his own trial, Judge Michael O'Leary said he was more sinned against than sinning. While the medical evidence was that he was not psychiatrically ill, this was at variance with the judge's own observations in the court.

It was because of the sexual assaults committed by John that his own abuse by the priest and others came to light. When questioned by gardai, he revealed a litany of abuse.

It started with his father and included a priest when he was in care in Dublin aged six. Once, a welfare officer in Dublin brought him to a back room of an office and abused him when he went there seeking assistance. As he was leaving the officer, he said he was told: "If you are ever stuck, for money or anything, call back.

"I let him do it because I was afraid of him and also because I wanted to get some money from him," John has said.

He used to call to a religious house in Dublin for food and money and tells of being abused there by another priest. "He used to take off all my clothes. Then he would wash me in the shower, sometimes from outside the shower; other times he would strip off and get into the shower also. He would wash me, then he would have sex with me."

Despite his young age and the number of times he was abused, John remembers names, places and details of the abuse which he was able to pass to gardai. He appears to have made a number of attempts over the years to report his abuse, but to no avail. He told one therapist: "Nothing happens to people who hurt me."

At one point he revealed that the priest he lived with in Co Kilkenny would reprimand him when he heard he was abusing other boys himself. The priest said once: "Jesus Christ, do you want me run out of the parish?" He also told gardai the priest told him to keep his secret, that "he would be ruined for life" if it got out.

The priest had a drink problem and a foul temper. "One day he said to me, `Get the fucking key of the church, I want to say Mass,' said John, who swore back at him. The priest told him to `get the hell out of this house or apologise'".

"I felt depressed and afterwards I took a few bottles of tablets. The ambulance took me to the hospital to be pumped out."

John developed a drink problem and as a teenager got into trouble for stealing cars and handbags and robbing shops. He was introduced to the Co Kilkenny priest at a probation hostel where the priest used to call "to see people there". Someone in charge at the hostel asked John if he would like to go to the priest's house for weekends. He was taken there in a mini bus from the hostel.

Eventually he moved there full time and the priest bought the mobile home and John paid him back over time. His story is filled with sexual incidents between himself and the priest, himself and other boys the priest was abusing, and young boys he abused himself.

He revealed a frightening compulsion to abuse others. He not only fantasised about young boys but felt compelled to act on those fantasies. He has asked several times to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital to keep him away from boys. He would become very upset by his fantasies of approaching young boys.

He recalls one day seeing a boy wearing "short trousers and a Tshirt, cream or white socks and black shoes" on the street. "I went over to the boy. I said `You're a nice boy and you have a nice bottom.' At the same time I touched his bottom with my left hand and felt his testicles with my right hand. The boy started crying. He shouted `Go away. Mammy, Mammy.'"

In another incident he cycled to Tramore, Co Waterford, and took a boy of nine or 10 who was "wearing long pants" into a half built house and abused him.

When discussing his background of abuse and trauma, John becomes very upset and regresses to the level of a six year old, tubbing his head and repeating: "John good boy, John good boy". He rocks himself to sleep at night.

He was one of a family of six children. His father was a violent alcoholic. He was charged with abusing John's sisters and also abused John. The children were taken into care because of the incest, but several times John's father removed him from care and brought him to live with him. His father taught him to steal.

"There is a long family history of unemployment, drunkenness, child neglect and incestuous relationships," according to a South Eastern Health Board psychiatric report, which added that John was semi literate and left school at 13.

John tried to tell a member of the probation service after the first time the priest molested him around 1983, but "he thought I was joking". He claims that while in a psychiatric hospital, after telling gardai in Kilkenny his story, the same man visited him and tried to get him to drop the allegations against the priest.

"All the good times you had with Father and now you had to turn against him," the man allegedly said during the visit.

"I told him I was sick and tired of being abused since I was a little lad. He could be doing it to someone else."

John also revealed that during this time the priest tried to get him to keep quiet, warning him not to "say bad things about me". ,At times, according to psychiatric reports, John would feel guilty about the priest who had "befriended him" and he would want to change his story.

Once found guilty himself of sexual assaults, he was sentenced to 18 months, but Judge O'Leary postponed sentencing, saying he was not suitable for prison.

ORIGINALLY it was agreed there would be a multi agency approach are, which would include the South Eastern Health Board and the Diocese of Ossory.

It was difficult to treat the man as anything other than a child, the judge said, and it was the State's responsibility to look after him in his child like condition. He accepted that he did have some control over his actions.

The case has come before him a number of times, but the SouthEastern Health Board, despite the earlier undertakings, has not made the appropriate arrangements for his care. His own legal team has now taken an action to try to force the board to provide accommodation and treatment in line with the undertaking given by it during the original hearing. It will be heard in January.

Agreement was finally reached last Wednesday on how John should be accommodated before his case is heard in the High Court. The board will be responsible for his treatment but not his behaviour. He will continue to stay in a psychiatric hospital.

One of the board's own psychiatric reports says John is very angry at the treatment he had received throughout his life.

He blames his past for his present predicament and his preoccupation with young boys and sexual fantasies. He tends to minimise the harm which he has done. "He is vulnerable to exploitation. He also lacks an insight into the gravity of his behaviour."

For now he is back in the care of the health board. But the future for John is uncertain. No one appears to want him.