Well with Bishop Terence Brainless back-scuttling it out of the Salford Diocesan door, we have another criminal being inserted into his troubled seat. Bishop John Arnold, Auxillary Bishop of the dark and dirty Diocese of Westminster has been elevated by the pope and just in time for Nichols of Westminster to thank his lucky stars that he is going. Why? Because next week John Arnold is up in Luton County Court.
Mr Michael Docherty asked Arnold for information under the Data Protection Act, a perfectly reasonable and legal thing to do, as to what file they had on him. Arnold said he had the file but he refused to give a copy to Docherty and in fact was going to destroy the file. The matter referred to the illegal removal of a child by the diocese from her home.
Mr Docherty asks the question “why is it that men who profess holiness and to be ‘Men of God’ are capable of both perpetrating and concealing crimes against children”. The full story can be read on www.justicenow.co.uk/news/41- injunction-on-the-bishop
So with his work cut out to escape this criminal prosecution in Luton next Wednesday, 15th October, he cannot spare much time in dealing with the burgeoning problems and law suits leveled against his new position as Bishop of Salford and in fact against the Diocese itself.
Not that Brainless, the present incumbent, who had, since his appointment in 1997, been trying to put a lid on the transgressions of his clerics. Trying to dissuade them from going down to the homosexual nightclubs of Canal Street in Manchester in busloads of a Friday night and covering up the carnal urges of the half straight men in his stable. Promising victims everything and delivering nothing. In 2011 before he made his miserable half-hearted apology in the Manchester Evening News to the victims of Monsignor Thomas Duggan’s sexual rampage through St Bede’s College in Manchester in the 1950s and 60s, he promised through his factotum, the idiot cleric Barry O’Sullivan, Co-ordinator of the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese, to give counselling to the victims. He promised to meet the victims personally and to offer whatever other help he could. All of which never happened and in fact all we have seen since is bile and scorn laid on these poor old men who have suffered silently for the last 50 years. Brain went out of his way to deflect criticism and defend resolutely the actions of his priests.
Well with Brain’s back-scuttle, Arnold will have to have his wits about him to prevent the extradition of Canon Mortimer Stanley from his stately retirement home in Ballybunnion in Kerry. After returning twice to Manchester for questioning by the police, the Diocese of Brain told him to stay put in Kerry and not to avail himself of GMP hospitality. He is wanted on 17 charges of sexually abusing 11 year old girls at St Vincents Primary School in Norden near Rochdale over a 25 year period between 1977 and 2002.
The Diocese of course are putting up their usual claptrap to say that it is “co-operating fully with the police and the statutory agencies in these investigations in line with the robust safeguarding policies put in place by the Catholic Church in this country in recent years”. Which in Manchester English translates into “it has got fuck all to do with us”.
Well in fact it has a lot to do with the Bishop and the Diocese as the forthcoming court cases reach fruition. Arnold looks as though he is jumping out of the frying pan into a fire or escaping the leper colony of Westminster and joining the Ebola clinic of Salford.
And not only that but the burghers of Ballybunnion are not to happy to have this nonce Mortimer camped on their doorstep only a few yards from their school.
To Paul Malpas:
I’m not holding my breath for the the extradition of this 80-plus year old priest from the Emerald Isle. In previous cases, the Catholic Church didn’t even reveal the whereabouts of any priests suspected of abuse when questioned by either the UK police or the Garda.
Things have improved slightly since those days, but not by much. People still managing to evade the law.
Any news of the Brother wanted for abuse at a Cathlic college in Ealing, West London, who jumped bail and was last heard of on his way to Italy? It seems to have gone quiet on that one, just as the Catholic Church would prefer.
He is a Benedictine monk and he is still on retreat in Italy expiating for all nonce sins world-wide and doing a good job obviously because nonces have now started to confess.
This high ranking politician who has been the subject of a secret court case in London is very sorry for the 40 years of sexual abuse of children and even reckons himself that he should get 30 years nick. We will see when the sentence is announced.
To: Paul Malpas
They’ve certainly kept the one about the high-ranking politician quiet, we should expect no less from the Establishment. We await the news.
No doubt a new wing for nonce Celebrity Offenders can be arranged, so they can cosily swap stories of their various hideous misdeeds.
I see this morning that the Bishop of Gloucester got let off by Scotland Yard. Must have some powerful friends somewhere?
I must have been the most blinkered day boy at the college from ’65 to’69 as I never saw any of this going on.
Monseignour Duggan was there in the early part of my pupillage and I seem to remember Eggo taking over about ’67.Is it possible that there was abuse going on and it wasn’t the talk of the indoor playground amongst pupils?
Peter, you were not “the most blinkered day boy” there. I was there from 1964 to 1971 and I neither saw nor heard anything that would have suggested that anything was wrong. I think that most former pupils could say the same. I still haven’t seen any definite evidence pertaining to our own time, but I am now 100 percent sure that things were going on in the 1950s. And since some of the personalities were still there in the 1960s, and since leopards don’t change their spots, I would not be surprised to learn that similar things were happening in the 1960s.
To Linda
I agree totally with what you say. Your reply to the OB who arrived in ’65 and left in ’69 (did he get time off for good behaviour) only came 12 months beforeTommyD was fired off to the backwater that is Langho, a backwater about as far away from Bedes as is physically possible whilst remaining in the Diocese of Salford.
I kept in contact with my classmates for nearly a decade after leaving Bedes, never once was abuse mentioned. Tommy D’s heyday of abuse would appear to have been mainly in the 1950s.
A Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers
Whether or not it will remain so for the new Obengruppenfuhrer of Stalag 17 (erstwhile known as Richard Robson) remains to be seen. Has he been handed the Champions League trophy or a poisoned chalice? Time alone will tell.
Place you bets now with Bet Fred.
Evens are he won’t see out 3 years. These are generous odds because his last two predecessors haven’t.
Our Benedictine monk from Ealing (Anthony Soper?) has finally surfaced in, of all places, Kosovo, in a village called Peta, after 5 years on the run, after jumping bail in the UK. He’s currently under arrest.
Apparently he told people there he was writing a book.
When he comes back to Britain, after extradition, he’ll have plenty of time on his hands to write, as for a start he’ll be remanded in custody to prevent him fleeing the law once more.
Then when he gets sentenced, ends up on the Nonce Wing under Rule 43. he’ll have time to write several tomes of equal length to War And Peace.
I’d love to know where he got the money from to stay on the run for 5 years, he had no visible means of support and hadn’t worked since arriving.
Perhaps there is a God after all.
Apologies for this.
Our Benedictine monk was using the nom de plume Anthony Soper.
Not much imagination really, his real name is Laurence Soper.
not exactly a good alias, was it?
Although it worked for five years.
Cannon Mortimer Stabley has been cleared of all charges by a jury this last week, so I suggest you adjust your blog accordingly. As a child in the parish of St. Vincent’s at the time of the allegations, I know him very well and have never doubted his innocence. Whilst there have certainly been some unsavoury, predatory characters within the church, and indeed all walks of life, Cannon Stabley is not one of them.
Allow him the peace he deserves.
Catherine,
I do not intend to adjust the blog at all. Having found out with my Bedian experience that English law is an ass, I have no faith in its conclusions.
It is a known fact that mature adults do not gang up and decide to unveil their trauma to the world so that a person is sent to jail. These people individually went to the police with their story. What happened in court in front of the jury I do not know but the CPS do not bring these cases to court on a whim. The jury were undecided on a couple of the charges which tells a tale. The Salford Diocese got away with murder in the St Bede’s case and they have done the same here and now Stanley has all the peace he wants. Ballydehob be aware.
You are ridiculous. Believing in the justice system when it suits you. I was one of the witnesses for the defence so I do know what happened. They were undecided on one count due to lack of evidence and the other complainant was ‘sick’ (chickened out of their lie!). The police themselves said that this should never have gone to court
Biggots like you are the Ebola of the world, passing judgement from your little stand. God forbid you are ever arrested for something you didn’t do… But of course, that would be different, right?
You know nothing…
Thank you Catherine, it is my blog and I think as I know.
I agree with Catherine you are a biggot. Fr Stanley is an innocent man. They put him through hell for three years,for reasons we can only speculate on. Now he has been cleared it is a dissapointment to you because of your attitude towards the catholic Church.The man is cleared,not guilty let him get on with his life.