Christy Dignam has opened up about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and how it affected so many people around him.
The Aslan frontman was just 6-years-old when he was first abused, and has said, “People don’t realise the amount of damage sexual abuse can cause to a person.
“It has affected my wife, it has affected my family, it affected all my brothers and sisters, it affected all the band and all their families. It is like a ripple effect.”
The singer, who is living with a rare blood cancer called Amyloidosis, also said that the chemo he is receiving has made him forget a lot.
Christy said when he was making the RTE documentary This Is Christy filming helped him to recall things he’d forgotten.
“It was very surreal and strange. I’d forgotten so much because of the medication. I call it ‘chemo brain’,” he said.
“They showed me an interview I did on The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne and I couldn’t remember it at all. I couldn’t remember a thing. There were interviews and other TV shows I had completely forgotten about.
“So it was a very emotional experience, seeing all this forgotten archive footage.”
The 57-year-old also said that he feels bad about not being there for his daughter Kiera when she was a child.
“I try not to regret things because I think it’s a bit of a waste of time having regrets, but I knew that I wasn’t the best father I could have been,” he said according to the Herald.
“With Kiera, I just felt so bad that I wasn’t there for her as a father. I caught her one day, I said, ‘Look Kiera, I’m really so sorry I wasn’t there for you’.
“I’ve tried to show her over the years that I was sorry and tried to be the grandfather that I wasn’t as a father.”
This Is Christy airs tonight on RTE1 at 9.35.
