Exclusive: ‘Evil’ David Sullivan sexually abused me on his school bus 12 times, says victim

The victim of at least 12 incidents of sex abuse on board a school bus 30 years ago has this week named his attacker as bus driver David Sullivan, the man at the centre of an alleged paedophile ring in Enniskillen.
Sullivan’s grim remains were found buried in a bog above Belcoo in 2000. He had been murdered two years previously. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for the 51-year-old’s brutal killing. Now there are more questions for the authorities than ever.
A plethora of sordid allegations about Sullivan - and other businessmen and professional people still living in Enniskillen - have emerged in recent weeks as victims of sex abuse in Fermanagh continue to come forward to this newspaper.
Never has anyone spoken out about the depraved and ruthless way in which evil Sullivan targeted young boys - and got away with it - until now.
In a powerful interview with The Impartial Reporter, John (not his real name), now 45, has recalled how the notorious paedophile:
•    Raped him on his school bus when he was 12 years old; abuse that would last for almost five years
•    Waited until other students got off the bus before sexually assaulting him, telling the schoolboy: “I can do what I want” 
•    Opened the doors of the moving bus when John stood up to him resulting in the teenager falling onto the road
•    Alerted another man - the driver of a white van - to abuse him at Castle Archdale
John has also claimed that he observed Sullivan, then a leader with both St. Macartin’s Cathedral Youth Club and the Duke of Westminster High School’s Youth Club in Ballinamallard, inappropriately touching nine other schoolboys on his bus. 
However, it’s believed there could be dozens more victims of the sick predator and of his comrades whom are now pensioners and have never been prosecuted.
“I was 12 when it started. He used to make me sit on the door of the driver seat, and he started touching me. At that time the bus was full, it was the 15:40, I remember it like it was yesterday,” recalled John.
He has provided the journey times and locations which we have not included in detail in a bid to protect his identity. 
“He got me one morning at about 7.40. It was December/January and was still dark, he stopped and picked me up outside the town. The 8am bus used to go from the town and always turned at a local shop to start from there. 
“The bus was empty and he went out a different road to turn. The internal lights were off, he pulled into the hard shoulder just before a former councillor’s house. That’s where I was raped,” he said.
After carrying out the depraved attack Sullivan realised his bus was running 10 minutes late. He panicked when another bus heading for another town went by.
“That bus was always about five minutes behind the bus I was on. The buses used to go on the backroads between the towns. Sullivan went on the main road that day to make up the time after he had abused me,” explained John. 
Recalling another incident John remembers stepping off the bus in a town. The buses, he says, would have gathered in the centre of this particular town. 
“I checked and he was not driving the bus I was due to get, or so I thought. He was, so I was forced to get on. He pulled into the turning circle so that we were obscured, he let everyone else off and I had to wait behind. He touched me, then he forced me to touch him. I was in third year.”
During another incident Sullivan, who worked as a member of groundstaff with the RAF during the ‘60s, abused the schoolboy forcing him to sit on the door when the bus got into the depot. 
He made him sit down in the seat of the empty bus as it made its way to another town, miles away from John’s home. 
“He abused me the whole way back whilst driving the bus by using his hand. It was October/November time and was getting dark when we got back to town,” he said.
Once John tried to stand up to Sullivan as he drove into a village outside Enniskillen. “I was standing by the door and I said to him, no more. The bus was slowing down to pick someone up and as it slowed down he opened the door and I fell out. The bus was only crawling. He told a woman that I had opened the lever myself, then he told me: ‘I can do what I want’”.
In an attempt to avoid Sullivan, John stopped getting his bus. He says he used to cross the road where Lidl is now, walk towards the Railway Hotel and later through Dunnes Stores when it opened. 
“I spent most of my time going where buses could not. Then I realised the quarter past six I could get always had different drivers on it [he names the drivers] as they lived near where I was going. 
“I would spend the evenings hiding in Enniskillen and get it home. I knew I would be safe with those two driving. Unless I saw Sullivan on other bus I knew then that I had until 5pm before he was back in town.”
When Sullivan was off work he could be found driving the roads at all hours in search of his next victim. 
“You really needed to have your wits about you then,” said John. 
“He would appear from anywhere and at any time,” he told this newspaper.
“First he was driving a Ford Orion, then he had two Rover Metros on the road. I used to dread those cars because he would be constantly on the prowl. It was like a game of cat and mouse. He would have taken the first victim he found. That was me, too many times.”
John remembers the day he finished his GCSEs in June 1990. He was waiting at a shop for his uncle to give him a lift to a part time job he had when Sullivan pulled up.
“He had not shaved, he told me to get in and I said that could not as my uncle was on his way. He got really mad and said I was lying. He took off like a mad man, spinning the wheels and almost drove out in front of a car.”
About 10 to 15 mins later another man driving a van pulled up claiming that John’s uncle had asked him to collect him. John has recounted the number plate.
“I was told to get into the van. He pulled into Castle Archdale, the one with the smaller entrance. It never dawned on me what was going to happen until he asked me to pull back the floor mat where he had a load of pornographic magazines.
“I was abused there and then. 
He hung his coat on a brass hook in the back. He was wearing blue tennis shorts, yellow socks and brown sandals. 
“The irony was cruel. I finally stood up to Sullivan only to be met by another. There was no way he would have known about me had it not been for Sullivan.
“That is why I am convinced a paedophile ring was in operation,” he said. 
Sullivan was a member of the Wellington Snooker Club on Rossorry Church Road in Enniskillen. He also frequented the Bush Arcade near Belmore Street.
“I used to hide in the Bush Arcade until he came in one afternoon. The pool tables made everything quite dark in there and he did not see me. 
“But he took some boy out with him. I did not know the boy but I believe he was wearing a Portora uniform.”
Sullivan had lived in a self-contained flat in the Inis Fold sheltered housing development overlooking the Sligo Road in Enniskillen before his death. 
Prior to that he had lived in Lisbellaw, on Enniskillen’s Dublin Road and in a bungalow at Breandrum Park in Enniskillen. 
In 2001 after the discovery of his body this newspaper published a special report into the loner and child molester, including this quote from one of his friends who had visited his flat in Enniskillen: “He put his fingers to his lips and told me to be quiet. When I asked him why he said: ‘He’s having a sleep’.”
Then the door of the bedroom opened and there stood a 13 year old girl and a 16 year old boy, one from Chanterhill, the other from Derrychara. The friend was in no doubt as to what they had been doing. “The hair was standing on her”.
Teenage boys were regularly seen entering and leaving his flat, as John recalled this week. “Now he had a place to go and a place to bring boys. It was hell. I think that was around 1990. I was at his flat twice. But he got thrown out of there. The charity or housing association had found out he was bringing boys there. 
“Then there was his place on the Dublin Road, that was the ultimate hellhole. A couple of times he tried to get me to go to his house in Lisbellaw. It was behind the main street before the flyover. It was a bungalow.”
John finally escaped Sullivan’s clutches but one day as he was hitching for a lift on a road in Enniskillen after missing his way home he was spotted by the paedophile. 
“Sullivan saw me but I hid in hedge. A man who lived across the road saw me and took a photograph and called the police. He thought I was acting suspiciously. “He drove by when the police were speaking to me. Sullivan saw me a day or two later and went mad thinking I had phoned the police on him. That was the end of him even coming near me. I never got to thank that man for being suspicious,” he said.
“It was six years of hell,” admitted John, who has never spoken about it before.
“I know that there were dozens more like me. Other victims of Sullivan and the paedophile ring in Enniskillen will relate to my story and whilst it brings heartache and pain by opening painful memories, I hope they can gather some solace in the fact that they are not alone in their pain,” he said.
John says he “blamed” himself for years and was “too embarrassed, ashamed and humiliated” to tell anyone, fearing “that people would not believe me”.
“Sometimes the small things now set me off, like certain smells. To this day I still look to see who is driving the Ulsterbus if one passes me. It is always niggling at you. It eats away at you, it is always there,” he said.