Paul Malpas

St Mary’s Church and parish is in North Lancashire, probably the northernmost parish in the Salford Diocese.  The village is famed for its prettiness and old world charm.  The church and graveyard is famed for its bones ie, the bones of Monsignor Duggan and Lord Nolan, the man the Bishops of England and Wales asked to sort out their Safeguarding problems back at the turn of the century (21st that is).  While Nolan was beavering away at his report published in 2002, which really made clear to the dioceses of England and Wales how they were supposed to deal with this pesky problem of priestly abuse on children, Duggan’s bones were already 34 years in the cold Lancashire clay.  No two men could be more poles apart, Duggan, the arch-abuser of vulnerable young boys at St Bede’s College in Manchester and Nolan, the antithesis.  Yet here they are side by side in this lovely Lancashire vale.

St Mary’s had been presided over by Fr Anthony Grimshaw, ex- strapper in chief at St Bede’s under Duggan in the 1960s, a man, who once he had shrugged off the cloying mantle of Bede’s, distinguished himself in Africa as a missionary priest before returning to parish work in Manchester.  A lovely man by all accounts and in my few recent dealings, he seemed to be a good honest man.

Idly flicking through the web this morning, I came across a site named Holy Spirit Interactive, their message for today Friday 4th May 2012 was a long rambling piece on how boring, the boring mass should not be, the writer must have written 5000 words on this boring subject and by the time I reached the end, I was bored to tears.  Then my heart gave a leap because the writer turned out to be no one else but my old mate Bazza, Fr Barry O’Sullivan, who described himself as the parish priest of St Mary’s Chipping.  So what happened to Fr Grimshaw, I do hope he is alright but I did understand he had been in poor health.

So if the the web is not lieing Old Bazza has found his little heaven in the sun.  For those not aware of O’Sullivan or this blog, let me just tell you that in his previous life Bazza was the Coordinator of the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese.  The man charged by Brainless Bishop Brain to look after the welfare of young people and vulnerable adults in the Diocese.  Brain’s nickname could not have been nearer the truth.  O’Sullivan was the complete square peg trying to fit into a round world.  In fact in O’Sullivan’s world there was no square hole even, he was just one useless son of a bitch.

After 10 years slaving away at nothing except feeding his two scraggy dogs he accepted the inevitable, when Brain’s advisors eventually got through and told the Bishop that the present situation in Salford regarding Safeguarding was ridiculous, it could not go on.  Even Cardinal Brady of Armagh was sniggering at Salford.  Bazza with downcast head left his plush Cathedral offices supposedly to devote his time to the poor prisoners in Strangeways Jail in Manchester and devote himself to his 11+ studies in Counselling at Manchester University.  The prisoners revolted and the senior professors threw up.  They have all been saved by Bazza’s mate Brainless removing him to Chipping where he can polish bones and look after another old mate of mine, Ronald Shelley, who I went to school with and who is now a parishioner in St Mary’s.  It was Ron who barked at me one day two years ago that I should leave the sacred bones of Duggan to lie in peace and not publicise the horrors that this devilish man had bestowed on young boys at St Bede’s for 16 years (1950-1966).  Well Ron you have another fine man now so look after him.

It was O’Sullivan who told me one day that he and Brain had discovered something terrible about Duggan and that it was too serious to talk about on the telephone and would I come over to Manchester.  I said I would but before the meeting happened he, in his stupid childish little way, fell out with me over a matter of protocol and said I was an unworthy advocate, not to be trusted and that he could no longer see me and therefore could not speak to me and therefore could not deal with me.  I was persona non grata.  How could a man faced with the biggest clergy abuse scandal to ever hit the Salford Diocese, become my enemy over something so trivial, unless he was the blithering idiot that everybody now knows he is and was.  A man so far removed from reality that he even puts Brady in the shade.

It was the learned O’Sullivan who once threatened to sue me for deformation if I did not retract something that somebody else had written on my blog.  I told him that all resonable gentlemen argued in words and that he had every right to counterbalance the offending sentence with one or two of his own.  Perhaps at that time he had not learnt to write but he is certainly making amends now with this boring old piece of bunkum on the website.

It used to be said that as a priest if you had done something wrong, made love to a women, robbed a bank or went on a drunken wrecking spree, you were sent to North Lancashire to cool off and repent and let the breeze of that area wash you clean.  Unfortunately with O’Sullivan that will not happen because the poor chap needs counselling himself and with his two dirty mutts snuggling up beside him each night, the rancid smell of dog will be with him for life.  God help Chipping.

I am willing to change anything in the above piece if I am proved wrong and the internet has lied to me but I do not think it has and I do not think I will, but at least this piece will be ongoing as more facts arrive.

Shock and horror 12 hours after the above went public a very learned friend who is much closer to the action tells me that I have been duped by that stupid inefficient website Holy Spirit Interactive.  They had the date right but the entry written by our friend O’Sullivan was at least 10 years old.  It seems he was attached to the parish for some time just after the turn of the 21st century.  So I am glad that Fr Grimshaw is in good health or at least as good as it can be at 75 years old and I am happy for the parishioners of St Mary’s.  The last thing I would wish on them is the nincompoop O’Sullivan especially for a second time.  We must also give the website a new name, how about Holy Spirit Inactive.  But at least they gave me a chance to give out about O’Sullivan, another inactive if ever I saw one.

So sorry Tony Grimshaw, sorry parishioners of St Mary’s but God blast you O’Sullivan for being the stupid man you are and to you Ron Shelley watch how you go and listen out for the rattle of bones as Duggan lies uneasily in his bunker.

Tommy O’Duggan was an agrarian expert, a Lancashire farmer imbued with the generic gifts his forefathers had bequeathed when they left the broad green fields of their native Tipperary to seek a life in distant lands after their agricultural skills had deserted them following some bad harvests long ago.  Lancashire was where they pitched up and in those dark satanics their innate gifts were lost as they went about life like the rest of the unwashed, with no care at all for their fellow man or woman.

But T O’D was different, great things were expected of him.  It was obvious from a very early age, dragging himself from the curse of unwedded birth, everything he touched almost turned to gold.  The rich landowner of those wild Lancashire hills kept a good eye on him, he could see his talents and nurtured them.  As Tommy matured and became a man, the landowner fed him the best and put him in front of the finest educators.  The landowner’s marriage was barren and he loved Tommy like a son, Tommy was going to inherit the land but something happened, we know not what, the story became blurred.

It could not have been anything to do with the pretty young maids who cluttered the mansion house, put there for Tommy’s delictation.  Tommy was a devil for work, ploughing and tilling the fields of his master’s many farms.  He had no time for frippery.  Tommy’s work was his raison d’etre.  However some people say that a change came over him when that big broad and burly sailor wandered through the village.  The sailor, tall and wide like the masts and sails of an ocean going clipper, rolled through the hamlet one weekend, hoping to pick up a four master in the port of Liverpool.  He was dressed in his finest civilian clobber purchased in the world’s seediest fleshpots.  Strappy 6″ high heeled shoes, fully fashioned nylon stockings, pencil thin white skirt putting mighty pressure on his muscular hips, which from the imprint on the sheath, were covered by gossamer thin lingerie.  A tight sleeveless top barely covered the rippling torso and left his tattoed biceps for all to wonder at.  His freshly coiffured head of silken ginger curls took the eye, as the whole was embroidered with professionally applied nail laquer, American lipstick and delicate Provencal perfume.  This man was hitting town big style and possibly Tommy was the victim but do not tell anyone that I said that.

After a few days the eagle-eyed landowner noticed the canker, put sailor and farmer together and came up with a no-no.  No longer was Tommy the next in line, no longer the favourite child, but at the same time the liege lord was not heartless and he searched his fiefdom and came up with the answer, his favourite field.  The lord after rebuking his once favourite, took him down to the Long Field.  Through the wide pillared gateway to the Victorian pile with many outbuildings erected by previous tenants who had obviously seen the good days.  At the rear of the buildings was this God’s gift to man.  The land that had created the name for the place, the Long Field stretched as far as the eye could see and even farther, the finest tilth.  There was nothing that would not grow on it given care and attention and T O’D had that in spades.

The landlord spread his arms wide, “this is yours my son, my good and faithful servant.  This is yours to do with what you will, but obviously you do understand that we cannot have you and your canker in the manor house”.  Tommy’s eyes, seconds before filled with remorse for his recent stupidity, started to shine.  He could see the possibilities.  If this was not on the pig’s back at least it was very close to the sow’s arse.  He thanked his lord profusely and set about the place.

Without doubt it was a long field starting off at his Victorian edifice, it ran for many a mile, far into the 21st century.  Besides being long, unfortunately it was very narrow and had often defeated his predecessors, who had a job turning a cart and horses within its width but its quality was magnificent.  There was no finer loam, a splendid glebe.

Tommy knew only too well his own shortcomings, he knew he had squandered his biggest chance but he was lord and master of this heavenly place and he was going to give it his best shot.  “Thomas O’Duggan is a magician”, he thought ” I have the chance of turning this lovely oasis into heaven, I will not fail, God if there is one, is on my side”.

The Long Field was narrow but with his agrarian acumen and equine know-how, within a couple of seasons he had bred a team of shire horses that could easily turn the cart.  They could shimmy, in fact, far better than that now forgotten sailor.  Tommy was going great guns and except for the occasional blip when the landlord’s help was needed, he carried on regardless and in fact his labours were so good his master granted him a knighthood for services rendered.

On the right hand side of the field was a railway track, like the field, disappearing into the distance and on the left separated by a stony ditch was wet marshy bogland.  Anyone or anything venturing into same would be lost without trace, devoured by this cloying, contaminated slough but between the two was this glorious narrow verdure, the Long Field.

Time moved on and the maturing Tom found life a little dull.  No more the tittilation of tars, the idyll had lost its heavenly allure, thoughts turned to alcohol and worse.  Tommy’s adoring prince could see this and scoured the country for answers, all the agricultural panels were consulted and he came up with a solution.  He drove up to Tommy’s place in a mighty pantechnicon, full to the brim with sacks of  the finest quality seed that the leading bio-scientists could find.  “Here Tommy, here is your gift.  With your abilities the yield from this field will be fivefold, the grain the finest.  You will make a fortune and I only want 10%.”

That evening Tommy brought a few sacks into the house and spread one sack onto the large dining table, normally burdened with huge hunks of beef, tureens of vegetables, pots of potatoes and jugs of succulant velvety gravy.  His trained eye immediately noticed that though all the grain had been passed by the finest scientific brains, it was not all the same.  Each seed was not a clone of the other but each had its own little nuance.  Some were golden and fat, some a pale yellow and pointed, some even round and comely.  As he sat and looked at each grain he developed a game to while away the long winter hours before it was time to plant same.  He pulled out his erect, veinous and by now knarled penis from his voluminous garments and placed it carefully on his knee.  Then carefully placed a seed from each of the main types onto the end of said digit and with a swift flick of his mighty phallus sent the seeds  and any small drippy bits tumbling into the air.  At this point his seaman stained tongue issued out, chamelion like, from his puckered and muscular lips and the idea was to catch as much of this scattered load as he could.  After a few practises he was containing the whole of the tumbled load in one tongueful and after a few pensive mastications he spat the spent husks out into his copper spitoon.

Initially Tommy was heartened with this winter sport, however his lust for the noxious had increased along with the need for alcoholic turpitude and in a fit of rage and in the middle of winter with the frost still on the ground and the land not ready for sowing, he took the seed and scattered it wildly.  Lots went into the murky morass never to be seen again, some fell into the stony ditch maturing some seasons later but impossible to reap, a little fell onto the fine tilth of the unprepared land to grow the following summer but with poor yield.  The rest fell on the railway track and were gathered up in the slipstream of passing trains and carried off to all parts of the known world where they prospered in the main in warmer climates.

Poor T O’D did not last the course, he was carried out of his beloved desmesne in a straight jacket stricken with mental illness brought on by an overpowering need for depravity and two years later died of an aneurism, the legacy of that buxom sailor. ” All’s well that is hard as well” were his final words.

One of the disturbing news items coming out of Syria today is the Amnesty International report that the Assad security forces are using 31 different methods of torture to create a “nightmarish world” for those protesters picked up off the streets of that beleaguered state.

Victims who were taken into custody report the fact that they were beaten up and further abused with whips, sticks and fists when admitted to detention centres.  Other prisoners were anally raped or hung by their wrists from ceilings and beams.  Many have died as a result and survivors are coming and giving their testimonies from all over the country, all telling a similar story showing that this systematic torture is widespread.

As I was reading the reports of this in the Guardian newspaper this morning, memories of similar tortures came flooding back into my mind, from a time when Amnesty International was only a twinkle in Peter Benenson’s eye (Peter founded this august institution in 1961).  The times I speak of were the late 1950s, the location was St. Bede’s College in Manchester, the perpertrator was Monsignor Duggan and his clerical staff.

St. Bede’s College, the premier Catholic grammar school in Manchester, was where I was unluckily sent after passing my 11+ examination in 1957.  We were faced with torture of equal magnitude, which probity, to use a popular word, forbids me to mention .  A whole generation of clever Catholic boys lives wasted, some have even been lost.

More news to come out of the Catholic dustbin this week is that the Salford Diocese have now appointed a new co-ordinator for their Safeguarding Commission to replace Fr Barry O’Sullivan, who was ignominiously sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester in December 2011 to commit therapy on the prisoners.  The new Coordinator, who starts in April 2012, is a lady called Dawn Lundergan, who works for Rochdale Council at the moment and who must be at least one step up from the blithering idiot she is replacing.  It makes one wonder though, whether after over three months without a Coordinator, do the Salford Diocese need one?  From all their accounts they have the situation under control and there is not one priest or servant of the Diocese stepping out of line.

You can read all about the new appointee, with comments from professionals in the field and a look once more at Bishop Brain’s excuse for an apology in March 2011 for the aforementioned Bedian abuse in this Friday’s edition of The Tablet.  If you cannot buy a copy, read it on line.  However as a person who has had vast experience of Ms Lundergan’s new department, I cannot let this opportunity pass without giving her some good advice.  To start with, her committee are a waste of space, they are only expected to attend a couple of meetings a year and some cannot turn up for those.  They are only there because being on the Committee is good for their CVs, Sullivan knew this and did not bother to involve them, preferring to do his dirty work alone.  Dawn’s chairman, a solicitor chap called Devlin, who likes to control meetings whatever they are about, because his head is full of empty words, but who used to wash his hands of O’Sullivan’s malpractices, is only there for his Bene Merenti medal from the pope and also because his position looks good in the practice brochure.

So Dawn, clear them all out, let your new brush sweep clean, do not allow it to become glabrous, you owe it to the many survivors of clerical abuse who live precarious lives in the Salford Diocese and who cannot find an outlet for their experiences.

This Christmas whilst indulging in a bout of omphaloskepsis and at the same time suffering  great pain emanating from my nethers, I asked myself where it all went wrong and eventually after much gazing I narrowed it down to a day in February 1957 when I set out from Duncan Road, in Longsight, Manchester to catch a bus up Stockport Road to Ardwick Green and St Gregory’s School to take my 11+ examination.  In those days every child took this examination to see whether they were good enough to go to Grammar School, Technical School, or in fact remain insitu at their Primary School, to waste their time in the mundane until released at 15 or 16 to fill the unskilled jobs that the country was full of at that time.

So armed with pen and pencil, ruler and pencil sharpener all wrapped up in a little wooden pencil case, we sat in quaky  miserable silence in the grim classrooms of the aforementioned school whilst we were examined in the arts of Arithmetic, English and IQ.  I, unfortunately, was classed as very bright and St Bede’s College in Alexandra Park, Whalley Range was my lot.  This was a  school that gave all parents of the time a great buzz and advanced them up the local society pecking order a great deal and turned decent  working class folk into the yuppies of their day.

However for us guinea pigs thrust into the cauldron of early baby boomerism,  St Bede’s was not at all what it was supposed to be.  From the very first day or at least from the day that the gloss wore off, we were aware of a canker in the place.  Nobody was happy, nobody smiled.  Staff and pupil alike could be seen to not enjoy themselves.  This aura of gloom and misery descended from the top but we could not put our finger on it.  For all our years at the school and for many years afterwards, whilst we tried our best to forget the experience, we were bound up in totally negative thoughts of our time at Bede’s.  We now know what this gloom and misery was all about and we can put our hard times into perspective and try and remember the few decent things from those days, like Spike Martin’s classes and the sportsfield where this despondency never encroached.  I do not ever remember the authors of this wretched atmosphere walking down Alness Road and onto Brantingham Road where our playing fields were situated.  No, Messrs Duggan and Burke just sat in their studies and grimaced while they thought of the next best boy to abuse or the next stupid College rule to make.

I had six years there and on the cusp of third level education when Duggan decided my face did not fit and that I had to go.  He took his time about it and must have examined me closely from a distance before he decided I was for the chop.  He did not even inform my parents as any right man would have done.  For my part I was so badly damaged mentally by my experiences I was glad of a way out.  I had lost touch with reality.  I had become an automaton only able to turn up in the morning and go home at night, not able to soak in anything that the devastated and underqualified staff had to offer.

So at 17+ I left the school, thrown onto the midden that I had been told would not be there for us top 6%, with not an idea in my head as to what I wanted to do, with never a steer by anybody at the school about what was at all possible for a well qualified midden dweller.  Basically I was back with the lucky kids who failed their 11+ level, only they had had four or five years to sort out  where they were heading  and were  content with their lot.  In actual fact due to the sticky consistency of this middden it became intensely more difficult to escape from than the morass that those who had failed their 11+ and left school at 15 or 16 found themselves in  I have never ever got over that feeling of uselessness that I suffered at that time.  Six years spent in expensive and at times intellectual education and then wiped off the blackboard like chalk scores at the end of a game of darts.

The only saviour of this whole chapter was that I was back amongst my own, the uncomplaining, hard working underbelly of Manchester and because of them I had inherited this willingness to work and work hard, so I soon found myself a mattress, a job on a building site, where I could at least come to terms with my lot.  The only trouble was, my aquaintances and those of my age group had had two years more experience of this dilemma and had learnt  the angles and ways of humble life.  I had to learn fast and I did but I do not owe one iota of that cunning reflex to Bede’s.  I had reached the end of my six year vaccuum and I was starting again as if at 11 years of age to try and make something of what Bede’s did not give me.

How can a school with the reputation that St Bede’s had, waste so much of young people’s lives.  The very time when young boys need two strong and helpful arms to save them if they stumble,  all St Bede’s offered was a one way ticket to oblivion.  As I have explained in previous postings 20 – 30% of each years intake were unceremoniously discarded when all they needed was some help to get over whatever personal hump was blocking their path but all Burke wanted was a well oiled smooth running educational establishment regardless of personal hurdles.  I remember him coming into our class one day and saying ” B…… your father died at work this morning you will stay in school and go home at the normal time” then swept out of the room.  The boy was devastated but dare not move.  The teacher embarrassed beyond belief but too emotionally  immature to react.

Whereas we now know what Duggan wanted, a smooth young fragile boy, personally picked out of the many hundreds that came before him.  He seems to have had no interest in the school or the staff.  They were just there for his own personal and vicious ends.  These poor abused boys were discarded as soon as their use was over.