When Christy Dignam was just six years old, he revealed he was raped by a neighbour in Finglas, Dublin.
The horrific abuse continued to occur over a three-year period until, at the age of nine, Dignam sought help from his best friend's brother, a man in his twenties.
During the meeting with his best friend's brother, Dignam explained his situation and he was then raped by this man as well.
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Recalling the horror, he previously said: “"I remember what happened. He brought me into his gaff. He done what he done. When I came out, all my mates were asking me, 'Where were you? We were looking for you.' I told them I was out in my back garden. I was lying to them.”
Revealing how the man lured Christy into his house, he said: "This guy lived near us. He sent me up to the van for a bottle of lemonade. I had gone to the van for him loads of times. The van was a shop. We had vans in Finglas like that. He would give you something for going up. Two pence. You could buy sweets out of it. So, when I came back, his hall door was ajar.
"You know, as a kid you would never walk into somebody's house. I knocked at the door. He called me in. 'Come in.'
"So, when I walked in, the house was in darkness. That's one thing that really struck me. He had all the curtains closed. He got me into a chair and he took the laces out of my shoes. He stripped me off and he tied me to the chair.
"And then whatever. And when I was going, he handed me a shilling. He said, 'Don't say anything to anyone.' When my mates asked me where I was, I thought I had done something wrong, particularly as I had taken the shilling. This is where it gets dangerous. This is where it can lead into addiction. Because I kind of felt chosen, I felt special that he was choosing me and he wasn't choosing one of the other kids from the road.
"So, then when I was an adult thinking about that - and thinking, 'Why was I not disgusted and appalled?' That's what freaked me out, because I wasn't disgusted. I thought, 'he thinks I'm great'. That's what f**ked me up later as an adult, because I didn't feel horrified by the whole thing,” he told the Sunday Independent back in 2020.
Dignam later suggested his drug addiction may have resulted from the psychological trauma caused by these events.
"From that moment on, my life was different. From then on, I used to have that f**king gaping hole in me. The first time I got rid of that as an adult was when I took heroin for the first time.”
Dignam turned to heroin in the 1980s, and his involvement with the drug caused conflicts which led to his eventual departure from Aslan in 1988.
He entered multiple drug treatment programs, including a stint in a rehab program in a Buddhist monastery, Wat Tham Krabok, in Thailand in 2004. This was featured in the documentary Heroin: Facing The Dragon.
Dignam recounted his story of drug addiction in his autobiography, This is Christy Dignam, co-written by journalist Neil Fetherstonhaugh and published by Merlin Publishing. One reviewer said it "should be required reading for anyone hovering on the edges of the drug culture."
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