Paul Malpas

Now that I am rid of delightful grandchildren, wife’s bad backs and volcanic dust clouds, I can get back into the groove again,  ie, the never ending quest for words to put into my blog.  Some days I sit looking at a blank page for hours then something clicks and I am off, other days I wake up with an idea in my head and then struggle for hours to put it into acceptable form.

This idea came to me at 6.00am this morning as I sat reading an article by Ali Bracken, the Sunday Tribune’s crime correspondent, about sexual abuse by five staff members of young boys in St. John’s National School in Sligo over a 30 year period.  Three were Marist brothers and two were lay teachers.  The Garda say there was no evidence of a paedophile ring but it is a remarkable coincidence that most of these men taught at the school at the same time.  To make matters worse after a very thorough 11 year garda investigation, one of the Marist brothers, eventually convicted of 35 counts of sexual abuse against four boys  between 1968 to 1977 wriggled that much it took four trials to eventually nail him.

What was surprising was the leniency of the sentencing in the five separate trials.  The victims felt themselves let down by the courts.

Peter White (Brother Agnellus) In 2005 he received three years on eight sample charges of indecent assault  for “unfathomable torture” on two boys after pleading guilty

Patrick Curran In 2005 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years reduced to nine years on appeal for assaulting nine boys between 1966 and 1984.  He originally denied 237 counts of indecent assault on ten boys in the same periopd.  He was still teaching at the school when these allegations came to light.

Michael Cunnane In 1999 he received a three year suspended sentence for 11 counts of indecent assault on three boys after pleading guilty

Martin Meaney (Brother Gregory) In 2008 he received a two year sentence for five sample counts of indecent assault against one seven year old boy after pleading guilty.

Christopher Cosgrave (BrotherChristopher) Convicted after four trials of 35 charges against four boys over a nine year period.  He walked free from court this month because of time already served.  He has never admitted his guilt.

Now I would suggest these specimen charges must have just been the tip of the iceberg in this Sligo school.  God knows how many occasions have gone unpunished, but even so the punishment is, just on these specimen charges, lenient.

Whilst Cosgrave was wriggling, I have been conducting my own inquiry into a priest who has remained unpunished.  Perhaps his premature death at 62 years old in 1968 saved him from his punishment on earth, but let us hope he has received it in the place he espoused.

Most of you supporters of my blog will already know of my search for truth in relation to Monsignor Thomas Duggan, late Rector of St. Bede’s College, Manchester and I will not bore you with a repeat of his sins.  Suffice it to say that I am gathering a portfolio of testimonies on the sexual conduct of this priest and things are moving apace, as the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese now want to interview me and discuss the evidence collected.

Today I am not about to reveal the statements made by these ex-pupils (now professional men, some retired, in their 60s and 70s) but I have become fascinated by the language used by the middle-aged men of Sligo and the diaspora of former pupils of St. Bede’s.

Phrases like “he picked out the weak boys” and “reign of complete terror”, “physically violent beyond belief”,  “I put it out of my mind and did not think of those days” and “how could you tell your parents” repeat themselves so often in both inquiries.  Those men were all working to a pattern  as though taught it at some third level campus.  If the Garda say there is no evidence of a paedophile ring, there seems to me to be evidence of a learnt paedophile mentality as though the position and learning attracts.

These Safeguarding Commissions set up on both sides of the Irish Sea by the various dioceses are riddled with lawyers who do not know how to show empathy and understanding, but are selected to form defensive bastions willing to shrug off all allegations.  I understand the argument about wheat and chaff but I do think empathy comes first.  a psychotherapist or some such person would be a better first port of call than a hardbitten legal man,  It does show you though that the Church is thinking more of pounds, shillings and pence, rather than the healing of tortured minds and bodies.

This corruption went on years ago, it went on last year, it is still going on today, these paedophiles have just reorganized their strategies and the future is bright for them.  The Church and the Government need to understand this and get the right pegs in the correct holes and forget the retribution from sins passed.  Get positive.

A fellow called Geoffrey Burke was our headmaster at school, St. Bede’s College, the premier Catholic Grammar School in Manchester and its environs.  He eventually became an Auxillary Bishop of Salford in 1967, only four years after I was hounded out of the school.  I might have been holding him back.

I knew Geoff well as he was a friend of our parish priest, Canon Vincent O’Shaughnessy and often took services at St. Robert’s where I was an altar boy.  As altar boys it was expected that we treated him with dignity, in return for which he gave us a spiteful grimace.  In the school he was worse and if anybody could bear a grudge it was him.  In the school his subject was History and in particular Reformation History which he taught us in Upper 5th for O Level.  His brand of history had nothing to do with Tudor History but only that of his dream woman, Bloody Mary.  Henry VIII and Elizabeth I did not enter the frame, so unless you read outside of the box you would never pass history.  He seemed so out of touch with reality you often wondered at his pronouncements.  I suppose a little like the bishops of Ireland today.

I remember one day in 1962, the first day back in 6th Form.  Myself and Mike Sheehan having both acheived seven passes at o Level (the maximum in our stream of Classics), we were confident with our abilities but possibly not with our behaviour.  We presented ourselves at the morning assembly, all the staff of the College in their mortar boards and gowns were on the stage in the hall.  The whole school, then around 900 boys, were present as Jack Rigby, the Prefect of Discipline, stepped forward to read out the names of the new boys and the classes they had been allocated in the Upper 3rd or First Year and then the names of the boys and their streams in Lower 4th or Second Year, either Classical, Semi-Classical, Modern or Remove.  Then the whole school were dismissed except for us boys in Lower 6th or Sixth Year.  There were three streams in this year, Classics, Literature and Mathematics and the names read out for each stream and then dismissed, leaving myself and Sheehan standing in the vast open space of the Hall with the emblazoned staff still standing on the stage looking down at us.  It must be remembered here that there had been no previous discussion, no letters to parents explaining that we were persona non grata. Geoff Burke stepped forward saying “what have you boys come back for?  See me in Our Lady’s Corridor in Five minutes”.  We did as we were bid and shuffled off, dismayed and disheartened and attended the interview some minutes later.

“We did not want you back; you caused enough trouble for us last year.  Why have you turned up this morning?”  We mumbled something along the lines that we did not have anywhere else to go.  Geoff thought for a minute and said “I’ll tell you what we will do.  We will let you go into the 6th Form if you join the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.”  Not knowing what that entailed, we immediately agreed and following the maxim of divide and conquer, Sheehan was allocated Classics and I, Literature.

Our first SVP meeting took place a week later on a Saturday morning.  We were given 200 Senior Service cigarettes each and told to go round Newholme, the geriatric facility at Withington Hospital and distribute 100 cigarettes each to the patients and the following day to go down to Salford Docks and distribute a further 100 each to the poor sailors on the boats, tied up at the docks.

We could not believe our luck or Geoff’s stupidity, we never gave the charity of the SVP a second thought.  The old folk got about 20 of their 200 and the next day we visited the docks and ascended the walkway on to what seemed like a deserted ship.  The sailors must have been ashore doing what sailors do; only the chef was on board in the galley.  He was as mad as a hatter and thought we were either trying to stow away or hoping to steal the ship’s cargo and he chased us off the ship, brandishing a cleaver and cursing in some foriegn tongue.

Although we continued with the geriatrics for a few further weeks. we never went back to the docks.  We were never as rich disposing of 140 fags a week each.  We kept 60 apiece for our own consumption.  This went on for five or six weeks before the source dried up.  In all this time we did not think of the crime we were possibly committing, our only thought was to treat the school as they treated us, with scorn and derision.  We knew we were on borrowed time and we eventually stopped going to meetings.  If Geoff Burke knew of this he never said anything and we kept out of his way and in fact buckled down to the grind for a while.  Sheehan was thrown out of school on some trumped up charge by the equally despicable Fr Dodgeon at Easter and I was asked to vamoose that summer after preferring to watch the Australian cricket team instead of doing games.  We both survived.