Paul Malpas

Almost a year to the day from when I decided to set the record straight about that cruel pederast and paedophile, Monsignor Thomas Duggan, one time Rector of St. Bede’s College in Manchester, the Manchester Evening News is going front page today.  After months prevaricating and procrastinating, they have decided to grasp this anti-establishment, anti-clerical, bull by the horns and I can only guess that it is because the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph are showing an interest.  We let them in because of Old Bedian connections, connections that proved useless.  The editor and the reporter assigned to the case, although Old Bedians,  had not had the experience of the man that we had and when faced with the idea of  this anti-establishment barrage, decided to chicken out rather than be proper journalists.  They had seen the diocesan big-wigs in all their glory, denying, obfuscating and finally accepting the fact that sexual abuse took place at the school long before there was a dictionary definition of such an act.  They were actually in attendance at a meeting with these clerical word jugglers, even a young child could see the lack of quality in the ecclesiastical team, but still they did not publish, but now they are, faced with a commercial rather than an idealogical decision.

It was the middle of March 2010, with over three months blogging experience behind me that I decided to tell the story of this evil man, who in fact had died 42 years previously.  Why should it need telling so long after the event?  Well, because nobody would have believed us then.  We all left the school disheartened by the regime and went our seperate ways in life.  We never had chance of a post-mortem, we scattered round the world, almost blotting out our experiences, but at the back of our minds we had this little thing that kept reminding us of those dark days in the 1960s.  Every now and then I kept hearing a story of how one or two of us had died in strange circumstances, by suicide and its two allies, drug misuse and alcohol abuse.  I tried to do the mathematics and found that the number of these deaths in our cohort were far and away above national statistics.  Spurred on by my surfeit of spare time that retirement had offered me and by the recent disclosures of the shocking detail of priestly sexual abuse and especially with the publication of the Murphy Report here in Ireland, I decided to give my story and what I witnessed.

I wrote a series of blog postings about Duggan, not realising the need there was out there for people, especially Old Bedians, to share my grief.  It was like standing before a tsunami.  I was overwhelmed with old men in their sixties and seventies pouring their hearts out about their days at Bede’s.  Some blurted it out immediately, others took weeks moving from denial to certainty that misdeeds were done to their person.  Most wanted it kept secret, they did not want their loved ones in and so a discipline of anonymity prevailed with only myself in the know.  Some of the tales were harrowing, these men had lived with this so called disgrace all their lives and they had found it hard at times to sustain relationships.  Some although abused would not even countenance a confrontation.  On a good few occasions I was told to forget it, it was water under the bridge, let sleeping dogs lie and all the rest of the arguments put forward by the convinced victims who are still in denial.  Some were really angry that I should be bringing this subject up after so long a time, as though these grisly recollections had a statute of limitations imposed.

Along the way, I met and was introduced to some very nice people, some who although having suffered could still stand up to it with humour, some who had been saddened all their lives, others who would change their minds every few days wavering between acceptance and denial.  It was an amazing and harrowing experience for me.  Of course I also met some awful characters and these were mainly on the diocesan bench and nearly all from the group of people sanctioned by the diocese to look after children and vulnerable  adults, The Safeguarding Commission.  At our very first meeting when they welcomed us and allowed us to record the proceedings, they stressed the need in these circumstances for openness and transparency.  Yet when I published the audio of the meeting on my blog, they threatened to sue me and eventually decided to cast me off.  They said they could not see me, therefore I did not exist ergo they could not deal with me.  I was an “untrustworthy and unreliable advocate”.

However I had three good envoys and the Diocese trusted them and the process, after a little delay continued until the diocese admitted the three As, Acceptance that this abuse took place, Acknowledgement that it happened on their watch and Apology for the deeds done.  Now this apology became a stumbling block.  We wanted a form of words from the Bishop that did not mince about, the Bishop with his legal and insurance driven advisors could not bring themselves to do it.  We told them time and again our purpose was not money, it was the easing of minds.  Read my previous blog “I Have No Recall Of That etc” for this episode to be explained in detail.  Suffice it to say that the Bishop got angry and would not budge and we decided to go ahead without the apology.  The MEN said they would publish  …… but they  didn’t and that was over two months ago.

I have just read Keegan’s article and a more wishy-washy piece have I yet to read and it took him three months to write it.  We were supposed to review and comment on the piece before publication, but no.  The arsehole Keegan and his sycophantic boss are that far up the Diocese rectum that you can only see the soles of their shoes.  The article concentrates on the Bishops excuse for an apology and the errant Fr. Green and is full of factual errors.  You do not wonder, when Keegan has not had the grace to ring me in the five months he has been on the scene.  Nowhere is there a place to comment on line, like there is with other articles and this alone smacks of underhandedness.  My fears about the Evening News have been justified.  As one of  my daughters said recently the Evening News is a moribund rag.

I feel for the victims, there is no place to comment and for new men who have yet to contact us there is no information in the piece to enable them.  I am so annoyed and if Keegan was here now he would get the full weight of my fist.  He is not a journalist, just a diocesan clerk.  So the fight goes on.  I am disgusted with the press, with the way they have handled the Hollie Greig case in Scotland and now with the way the Evening News have made a polite cough instead of an almighty sneeze.

All the above I posted at noon on 15th March, an hour later I had an indignant Mr Keegan on the phone telling me that himself and O’Neil were not in the pocket of the diocese and that what he had written was a hard hitting piece.  I tend to believe him when he says that, but acceptance of that fact downgrades them even more as journalists when all they can write is the tat that I have just read.  He said it was a powerful story and somebody or some organization would possibly take it on from there.  Why could he and his journal not do that.

He said he could not put a comment section to the article because of legal problems but the Diocese in their own tedious way had accepted that everything in my report was correct.  O’Sullivan, the safeguarding priest had known about Duggan’s behaviour for 23 years. Why can there not be a debate?  He came up with a lame excuse as to why it had taken three months to write 500 words, in fact he sunk lower in my estimstion, but I do believe now he is not a diocesan employee.  I now know he is just a lousy journalist, his article is still factually incorrect and it rankles when he did not have the decency to interview me about my report which started the whole thing off.  He soon contacted me, within the hour in fact, when his feelings were hurt.

My last words are for the victims known and not known and in fact those victims who are still in denial.  This campaign was for them and them alone, not for Paul Malpas or the Evening News and certainly not for the Safeguarding Commission who have behaved abominably in this matter.  At the end of the day they have been let down by all and so will continue with their torment.

This week the last chapter of The Murphy Report can now be published.  You remember the Murphy Report, issued in November 2009 and headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, into how the Catholic Church in Ireland dealt with the mass of allegations of clerical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the period 1975 -2004 and how the Church covered up this abuse.

Chapter 19 of this Report was omitted at the time of publication because it dealt with ongoing prosecutions of clergy and the last and arguably the most serious case was concluded this week and concerned the paedophilic behaviour of a  now laicised priest, 57 year old Anthony Walsh, who received a 16 year prison sentence for 17 counts of sexual abuse on three boys including five counts of buggery on one boy.  The last four years of this sentence were suspended as the judge had received a report from a psychiatrist saying that it was very unlikely that he would offend again.  This was Walsh’s third admittance to state prisons for offences of this nature.

It seems that throughout his priestly career the hierarchy of the Archdiocese, in the form of Canons, Monsignors, Auxillary Bishops, Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals, even Pope John Paul II for four years, all knew of this man’s predilictions, from the time he was being educated in seminary, through his priesthood until he was laicised in 1996.  Some 23 years of paedophilic mayhem.

To have a better understanding of this perverts predations, I will put his career into a chronological framework.

1973 -1978.  A Coolock boy, Anthony Walsh, was educated in seminary, visiting various parishes in his role  as lector, acolyte and deacon  and awaiting the definitive call of the bishop, to advance himself to priesthood.  For it is only when the bishop is satisfied that a seminarian will make a good priest does he give this call.  Now it seems that in this five or six year period as a seminarian, rumour abounded of his perverse deeds.  So how did the Bishop, undoubtedly knowing of these rumours, call him to the priesthood unless this type of behaviour was excepted practice for a Catholic priest.

1978.  Ordained a priest and within weeks was abusing one of the altar boys who served at his Ordination Mass and who eventually gained some satisfaction this week.

1978 -1986.  Assistant priest at Ballyfermot Church in Dublin, adjacent to Phoenix Park where he came under the wing of that charasmatic priest Fr. Michael Cleary, the same Fr. Cleary who sang at the Pope’s visit to Dublin in 1981 and who by this time had fathered two sons with his housekeeper.  Fr. Cleary had a radio show and a travelling band of priests who went under the name of “All Priests Show”.  In this band Fr. Tony Walsh was a guitar player and Elvis impersonator.  He was in a very strong position and his seniors did not wish to rock the boat.  He was in charge of a group of 60+ altarboys and was manager of that famous institution in those days “The Children’s Mass” every week at Ballyfermot church.  On top of that he had the run of all the National Schools (Junior Scools) in the area.  For a man of his tendency it could be said  that he was on the pig’s back, if it was not so serious and the fact was it was on childrens’  backs he was.

During all this time he was subject to numerous complaints and allegations but between Fr. Michael Cleary, Monsignor Alex Stenson, the Chancellor of the Archdiocese and Canon lawyer and Auxillary Bishop James Kavanagh, they managed to fob most of these charges off by saying that Walsh was sorry for his sins and that Archbishop Dermot Ryan was dealing with the matter.  For all these abusing eight years nothing happened to Fr. Walsh until he was transferred to Westland Row parish.

1986 -1988.  Esconced in Westland Row parish in the centre of Dublin he continued his merry way abusing young boys until and no longer under the patronage of Fr. Cleary he was removed from parish duties and sent to a monastery or secure institution while Archbishop Connell applied to have him laicised by writing to the Pope for permission.

1987.  Served one year imprisonment for the abuse of two boys in Westland Row

1988 – 1996  For a few years the Vatican vacillated thinking that a longer spell in the monastery might cure him but it was only after four years and appeals by an Archdiocesan committee led by Connell and supported by Bishops Willie Walsh and John MacAreavey that the Pope granted a licence for laicisation.  Their actions would have been commendable during this process if only they had told others but they did not and Walsh landed up at a requiem mass for some old man and was allowed to take part in the ceremony after which he raped the grandson of the deceased in the church toilets after the service.

!996 – 2001.  He spent most of this time in prison for further abuses of young boys having received a six year term for which he served just less than five years.

2002 – 2010 Fighting a legal battle with the barristers of other victims.  He and his defence team trying every trick in the book to thwart the legal process until finally this week justice was eventually meted out and for three Ballyfermot boys who had had their lives ruined by this man 30 years previously and who had gone through various stages of torment, some degree of closure was given.

One wonders whether Walsh gained strength in his defence, from the 2002 indemnity that the Fianna Fail Minister for Justice, The Cahirciveen man, John O’Donoghue, had pushed through the Dail that said that the State would pick up 90% of all costs  arising from clerical abuse and whether any of this fund went towards paying for his long and protracted defence.  Because I am sure that a poor boy from Coolock could not afford this, eight years of legal argument, Elvis impersonator or not and if this fund did figure in his accountancy perhaps in these very straightened times the tax payers of Ireland should be thinking that this daft Kerry man’s idea should be chucked in the bin and the billion euro fund used for something more substantial.

The Church in Ireland as had to withstand a few trials by media in the last 20 years.  At the time of Smythe’s exposure in the early 90s, further disclosures in the late 90s, followed by the infamous Ferns Report in 2005 and now the Murphy Report and its aftermath.  The Church learnt that if it kept its head below the parapet, the crisis would blow over and they would be back to the status quo very quickly.

Unfortunately in the aftermath of Murphy, this has not happened and the row goes on and the longer it goes on the Church starts to panic and in the panic more heads appear above the parapet and these heads seem to have the uncanny ability to start talking before engaging their brains, which leads to the gibberish and all the nonsense we have heard from various monsignori and bishops recently, which leads to even more pressure.  This attack on the Church, its thinking and its confusion will go on as the public, day by day, engage even more in the process of retribution.

What has changed from previous trials?  Why is this pogrom likely to succeed?  The answer of course is the internet, the absolute and previously not felt power of the web.  The whole world in five minutes knows what is going on in the back streets of Dublin.  More and more people have gathered strength and confidence from what the net can do and especially the net’s machinery, such as the blog system, Facebook and Twitter.  People in their thousands are writing blogs on a daily basis, on a subject of their choice, which undoubtedly is the state of the Church.  With this power that the blog gives them, they gain in confidence and become even more vituperative.  Thousands more log on to this conniption and become aroused to be part of the process.  Years ago these thousands and thousands would have just idly read the scourge in the newspaper and forgot about it minutes later.  This way you become part of the inquisition and gives you a feeling of empowerment that the individual rarely experiences.

Unless the Church comes up with some original thought and puts some deliverances on the table, I think it is ruined.  The hierarchy has to go to enable this new process to occur and I cannot see that happening.  These bishops are to fond of their massive joints of beef on Good Friday for them to even think of subduing themselves to this form of accountability, but the pressure will not let up.  This country of Ireland is enraged and incensed and the ire cannot be cooled or controlled unless something extremely radical happens.

To change the subject for a moment, to a more happier thought.  I have been recently writing about the trials and tribulations of parish and school life in the 50s and 60s.  Hardly ever in the 48 years since I left school as anybody contacted me regarding those days.  The paths of life have lead us in different ways and to different corners of the world as we went about the difficult business of putting one foot in front of the other.  Now after writing some simple pieces about those far off days, people of my previous aquaintance are contacting me like never before.  It is a very pleasant and strange feeling that as I sit here writing in the backwoods of North Roscommon there are people thinking of me round the world.  The power of the blog is amazing and humbling.  Long may it reign and thank you, all those voices from my past.

Last night I witnessed the most inept, senile and out of touch display of accountability by the bishops of Ireland that has ever been known, when they set up the three stooges, McAreavey of Dromore, Brennan of Ferns and the holier and more stupid than thou, our own Jones of Elphin.

Although this press conference was expected and in fact Brady of Armagh said he would attend and it was expected Archbishop Martin would also be present, two hours notice of time and location was given to the media and the conference was limited to 25 minutes duration while these three bishops gave their much vaunted master class in obscurity, idiocy and sheer lunacy.

You would think that the bishops knowing the seriousness of the situation and that a public relations class was necessary, would have brought out their big guns to fend off the barbs of the media, but obviously Brady does not want to become involved and Archbishop Martin has been told to back-pedal.  The difference in that man pre-Rome and Post-Rome is a subject in itself.  It is as though they are two different men, the go-getting Martin knowing God was on his side pre-Rome, has been replaced by this stultified, nervous and certainly very uncomfortable post-Rome Martin, who finds it difficult to put more than two words together in answer to questions on the subject of abuse.  On Newsnight on BBC2 on Tuesday, he was at his lowest and no match at all for the strident Jeremy Paxman when talking about the serial abusing yet unpunished Bill Carney.  My advice, for what it is worth in matters as important as this is to stand up and be counted,  do not hide behind authority and at the end of the day give authority as the excuse for wrongdoing, like Hitler’s minions did after the war was lost.  Be totally accountable at all times to everybody.  Feck the rules because the rules are wrong and evil.  I feel really sorry for him having to take the path he has and being reined in and letting the likes of Drennan of Galway and the retired O’Mahoney have their evil way and say.

Which reminds me that Drennan of Galway who was classed as the complete scholar and holy man by Jones of Elphin at the press conference yesterday, has told his priests to send a couple of representatives from each parish in the diocese to a service of reparation in the Cathedral on Palm Sunday where these elected ones would place a sprig of palm on the altar to express penitence for the cover up by the bishops of these paedophilic priests.  The poor people of Galway, what has it to do with them?  Why should they express penitance?  Why are the bishops not standing on their heads and shouting “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”.  Jones’s statement about Drennan reminds me of something a mate of mine said this morning whilst we were talking on this subject,  Michael Cryan, citizen of Boyle and always good for a quote said “If you are there  at the bottom of the shit heap even a hump on your back is a thing of beauty”

So there we were with these three monkeys from Dromore, Ferns and I am ashamed to say Elphin, with Dromore spluttering and farting like a demented pig, Ferns doing a good impression of a man sucking a lemon and Elphin asking why is everybody singling out the Church when it is a well known fact that most child abuse takes place in the home and has done for hundreds of years and nobody condemns that, but just because the Church has transgressed and covered up, the world is on its back.  What a load of bunkum, if this is what they say publicly what must their private thoughts and conversations be like.  Why should we accept lunacy of this nature from a shepherd of Christ.

It was Jones of Elphin who said in his pastoral letter after the Murphy Report that the Diocese of Elphin abides by best practice when dealing with possible child abuse and the laity have nothing to fear.  Well I fear him.  Where is best practice in that statement of his yesterday.

Watching this simian trio at the press conference made me think that the Church is missing a trick, professional PR men or women would do a far better job at wooing the people back, but perhaps the Church realises it has put its finger too far into the fire and that self immolation is the only way out.  It is  well known  among all the dead religions as the Phoenix Theory.  It never works.  All we can do is sit back as Sinead O’Connor said to me last Saturday “Good will win in the end.  We just relax and enjoy watching it all unfold”.