Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick reveals he was sexually abused from the age of five to 10 by a male labourer at his family’s farm – and contemplated suicide after confiding in a priest who told him ‘God would punish him’

• Professor Noel Fitzpatrick revealed he was sexually abused by male farmhand
• The TV vet revealed the abuse in his upcoming memoir ‘Beyond Supervet’
• He said the alleged perpetrator was his babysitter when his parents went out
• For confidential 24/7 support in the UK, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details 

Supervet Professor Noel Fitzpatrick has revealed he was sexually abused by a male labourer on his family farm.

In his upcoming memoir ‘Beyond Supervet’, the TV vet says in a chapter titled ‘Openness’ that the alleged perpetrator was his occasional babysitter when his parents went out. 

He says the abuse began when he was just five years until, and continued until he was 10.

Mr Fitzpatrick told The Times how the farmhand’s, ‘tobacco-stained hands positioned his head to do unspeakable things.’

And when Fitzpatrick found the courage to trust a local priest and tell him what was happening, the then eight-year-old was ‘told he would go to hell.’ 

‘[He said] that God would punish me and send me to Hell, and that I was a bad person bringing these words into God’s house,’ the book says. 

‘His parting instruction was to say penance prayers and never speak of it again,’ Fitzpatrick says in his book, due to be published on October 27. 

Supervet Professor Noel Fitzpatrick has revealed he was sexually abused by a male labourer on his family farm as a child

The vet told The Times the alleged abuse took place in the fields, on a tractor, in the family home and in a derelict cottage. 

Elsewhere in the book, the TV vet reveals how he was mercilessly bullied, teased and beaten at school. 

He writes: ‘At secondary school, I couldn’t read or write to anything like the level of my peers. The other boys knew about things like maths and girls, but both were a mystery to me. As a result, I became obsessed with studying, to the exclusion of all else.

‘Perhaps inevitably, I was mercilessly bullied, beaten up physically and mentally every day. My only friend was Pirate, who was chained to the wall in a cowshed on our farm in Ballyfin in County Laois in the Republic of Ireland. To everyone else he was just the farm dog, but to me he was my dearest companion.’

He reveals how he worked as a waiter, gardener and a male model in college in Ireland and in America, adding: ‘I studied every hour I could, and my love life was slow to blossom – I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was in my 20s.’

Speaking about his money troubles, he writes: ‘I ran out of money and changed banks three times. I felt that I could force my dream into existence if only I worked hard enough, with integrity of purpose. Eventually I was able to set up my current practice, converting a collection of old farm buildings in Surrey into Fitzpatrick Referrals.

‘Everything was perpetually on the line, and I was often stressed to the point of despair, but I kept going.

‘The price of my dreams was significant in both financial and personal costs. I was married to the dogs and cats of ‘strangers’ rather than to a woman (as one female friend accurately put it). Not that my clients seem like strangers to me, and nor do the animals – they’re like family.’

Fitzpatrick also opens up about the loss of both of his parents. 

His beloved mother, Rita, passed away aged 92 in February and his father – a farmer –  died in 2008. 

In the book, he says of his father: ‘He only ever saw me operate once. In the late 1990s, he watched me fuse the broken wrist of a dog, a pancarpal arthrodesis.

‘At that time I didn’t have any proper tools – just a wood drill on a long electrical cable to remove cartilage from bone, and a mechanic’s hand drill with a bit to make holes in the bone for screws, both covered in sterile cloth drapes. I performed this operation in a wooden gardener’s hut.

‘I always hoped that Daddy might one day say he was proud of me. He never did. I could see that he was a bit impressed – and undoubtedly would talk about it to anyone who would listen when he returned to Ballyfin. But to me he never said the words, ‘Well done’. I don’t blame him. He was a man of his generation and upbringing.

‘His reticence is perhaps one of the reasons why I feel inadequate every single day of my life. I’m plagued by low self-esteem. Yet I know that I have made many thousands of friends in my life – the greatest blessing of being ‘The Supervet’.’

For confidential 24/7 support in the UK, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details 

• Beyond Supervet: How Animals Make Us The Best We Can Be by Professor Noel Fitzpatrick, published by Trapeze on 27 October, £22. © Noel Fitzpatrick 2022. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to 22/10/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Catch up on The Supervet: Noel Fitzpatrick on All4. 

Source: Read Full Article