If the dust has settled, it is possibly now a time for analysis. Let us take for a start the Manchester Evening News article on 26th March 2016. The headline says that the victims had dropped the legal action against the Salford Diocese. In fact they did not drop it at all, the insurance company you need, in order to bring a case of this nature to court, backed out of the deal because in their opinion causation and limitation might fail. Our solicitors were willing to continue and bear their own costs but could not and would not cover the defence costs which could amount to two million pounds. The poor victims for their own family’s well-being dare not lay their assets on the line. So it was advised by counsel to approach the Diocesan solicitors and look for settlement under the Judicial College guidelines which would have amounted to something between £10,000 and £50,000 per man depending on the severity.
The defence solicitors, not being honourable men, approached the Bishop, who is not an honourable man and decided between themselves that as the victims were in an invidious position they would dishonourably tell them to fuck off. The case therefore collapsed, it was not dropped. Bishop “Hardman” Arnold, who had been put into place for such a scenario, could at this point have done the honourable thing and gained the Church some much needed kudos. He missed the beat here and will eventually suffer in front of his maker but I do not think he believes in that old mumbo jumbo and anyway he has had previous in Westminster, hence his soubriquet.
Further down the article it says that St Bede’s College is now an independent mixed-sex school and not operated by the Diocese. Well that may well be the case legally now I suppose but there is still a clerical presence even though most of the priestly governors have been politically removed, but this Hardman Arnold is there sitting prettily at table.
In the statement by the Diocese it says abusive behaviour (here they mean rape of young children by priests) has absolutely no place in the Catholic Church. Well that line might look good on paper but it is a lie. The rape of children by clerics is still endemic in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Ask Enda Kenny whose speech I quoted in my last posting “Abuse: Its Forms and Failures”. I quote again “this calculated withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman Church was founded”.
The statement continues “we wish to reiterate that the health, safety and well being of every child is always our priority”. Well it wasn’t five years ago under that laughing stock of a priest, Barry O’Sullivan, the Coordinator of the Safeguarding Commission.
So there we have it, case closed, nothing to see here, but are we sure.
Looking back on the six years I have devoted to the case, has there been any positives. Well certainly:-
1. The whole world now know of the abuse that took place at St Bede’s College in Manchester overseen by several bishops starting with Bishop Henry Marshall, who had intimate knowledge of Thomas Duggan’s baser nature. Then there was Bishop George Beck, who would have been aware of Duggan’s antics, followed by Bishop Thomas Holland who wiped the files clean of nefarious activity. Then came Bishop Patrick Kelly who along with Holland oversaw Fr William Green’s activities and finally Bishop Terence Brain who was overloaded with allegations against his darling priests. This abuse was reported in the media in Africa, India, Australia, America and Canada to my knowledge.
2. The sole purpose of Hardman Arnold’s appointment was to tighten up the Diocese. Hardman had earned his spurs in Westminster. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, knew to recommend him for this post after the sterling work Arnold had done in closing down controversy in his diocese. Before he is finished Hardman will have Salford as tight as a drum. There will be no more leaks of information or semen for that matter. For previous history Google Michael Doherty and Bishop John Arnold and follow the thread.
3. This campaign of mine has re-organised St Bede’s College enormously. We got rid of an under-performing abject headmaster, a preening, self-serving Chair of Governors and in fact nearly the whole Board tended their resignation for fear of what was coming down the tracks at them. We certainly got rid of a lot of dead wood and the school now seems to be coming back onto an even keel and rightly so. The teachers just need to tell the kids how to perform in external examinations now.
There were many negative aspects as well:-
1. I shudder to see the mental state the victims were left in. Having been offered up as sacrificial lambs the Diocese has behaved abominably in not performing some form of reparation. The lads are in an awful depressed state. One of the lads was telling me over the weekend that he was most distressed. He had had long periods of depression since leaving school and he has a therapeutic tool he uses. He called it the Empty Chair. On his many sleepless nights he sits in front of this empty chair and pictures Duggan sitting there and he keeps telling Duggan that he cannot and will not beat him, over and over again and for him it works temporarily. Why should they have to go through daily routines of this nature without reparation. This man is nearly 70 and has been doing this on thousands and thousands of miserable nights.
2. Another negative is the failure of the Salford Diocese and the Catholic Church to take its head out of the sand and benefit from St Benedict’s “ear of the heart”. While they continue to disavow, they continue to make a rod for their own back. Why is the Diocese at this moment cutting its parishes by 50%. Why because nobody gives a fuck for them anymore. They are a dying breed, who have not stood up to their responsibilities. They continue to pander to their aging and dying supporters, none of whom can see beyond the end of their noses. The smell of putrefaction meets you at the threshold of every church.
This brings me onto another point that has shown itself in the last while. How does the legal profession manage to gather so many psychopaths into its fold? Where do legal firms manage to recruit human beings to defend the indefensible? Hill Dickinson, the Diocesan lawyers, seem to have no problem. Are these lawyers not married with children or perhaps they are of a type that others spurn both them and their spawn. Surely any right minded person told to defend a case of child abuse would walk away. These people who take on such a role must surely have psychopathic tendencies. But in some ways you have to admire them. As we came at them with all guns firing they adroitly side-stepped the charge and jumped through a door marked limitation and causation and allowed us to charge full pelt into a brick wall marked abuse behind which the Salford Diocesan clerics, wallowing in omerta, sat tittering.
One thing I learned over this period is that even if you are as guilty as hell there is always a doorway marked escape for you to walk through. The law is a fucking ass as I think Mr Bumble once said. And the Salford Diocese have consciously and blatantly rode it in the Grand National.
Why, why, why is there no compassion. Why, why, why is there no decency. Why, why, why is there no love of humanity, no charity, no honesty in the Catholic Church today, or was there ever. Have we all been duped, have we all been stitched up by snake oil salesmen.
As one of the four survivors who now won’t get our day in court I would like to add a personal positive that has come out of the campaign. When you are abused you are left with an overwhelming sense of guilt, ” why me, what made me a target? It must be my fault”. Intellectually I know that I cannot be blamed in the slightest for what happened but the guilt was still there. The feeling of guilt was exacerbated by thinking I was the only victim and this was made worse by not opening up to anyone about the abuse for nearly 40 years. This not telling anyone included some sessions with a psychiatrist following a serious attempt to take my own life in 1988. So for me this whole episode has been quite empowering. OK, we lost the his one but I am sure other cases will come to light and the church will have to face the music at some point. I am now determined to get on with my life, I have a beautiful wife, of 42 years, 3 gorgeous daughters, 3 hardworking son in laws and 5 fantastic grandsons. They all know what happened to me, except the grandsons, and have supported me and given me a reason to go on living.I’m going to try and make sure that that bastard Duggan doesn’t negatively affect my life anymore. Paul I cannot, from the bottom of my heart, thank you enough for taking this fight on you probably saved what sanity I had.
Well said Mike and I hope at some stage that bastard bishop John Arnold reads this to make him come to his senses. This rotten stinking church needs a dose of honest to goodness humility.
I was very sad to hear of this outcome Paul, but remember the famous saying, never uttered by a lawyer in any sort of seriousness:-
“Trust me, I’m a lawyer.”
It looks like, as the Yanks would say, the Statute of Limitations ran out on this one, it would be interesting to know by how much.
The fact that, even now, the Church and College are still reluctant to offer any half-decent apology or indeed any compensation to the victims leaves a terrible taste in one’s mouth. But it’s entirely predictable, as well as being totally reprehensible.
It would interesting to know why Bede’s coughed up, albeit for small amounts, to other victims of the period, likewise where does it leave the College with Billy Green’s later victims of the 1970s and 1980s?
Sorry for so many questions, but if I were Bede’s and the Diocese of Salford, I wouldn’t be too sure that this is the end of the matter just yet.
There’s another train coming down the tracks maybe?
Paul,
I did tell you when we met at the beginning of this month that there seemed to be a problem with limitation. The only rule on it as far as I know is that any abuse before I think April 1954 is time barred. The judge can use his initiative with anything after that and has done successfully in some cases but the man the Diocese put between the sticks was the acknowledged expert on limitation and our side thought that he could persuade the judge to time bar the lot. It is a frigging daft law.
Well mark my words Paul, we will not leave it at that. We will continue to fight and on the small assumption that there is a God, the right will win.
If it came down to money.. why not pay with a promissory note.. After all it is their currency… Judges and solicitors are scamming little fuckers. Their entire life depends on our ignorance… The minute you outsource your pursuit for justice… you are fucked!!!
The church has its tentacles in every conceivable type of power and authority: lawyers, doctors, schools, local councils, masonic lodges, social services…. It owns the opposition. Any whistleblower worth her salt will tell you that the minute you stand up and tell the truth, you are surrounded by wolves in sheeps’ clothing purporting to be on your side but really controlling the explosion. I have met recently with someone whose story opened my eyes to how it is all run and clearly the St Bede’s case is no different. You cannot have dissenters and truth seekers working for governments and corporations. It is only the single, lonely old crusader in his lab, or at his computer, or on his own picket line who can hope to shine the clear light of truth on how vile our society really is. And this crusader may pick up some followers and friends along the way but he is better off alone ultimately relying on his inner fire and strength.
I think a couple of positives were missed off the list:
4) You have had your eyes open wide to society and humanity and this can only be a good thing. No longer can you give the benefit of the doubt. You have been trolled and shilled, deceived and played, yes, but you are a much wiser man than you were 6 years ago.
5) You are a much kinder man too because you have realised that the only thing that matters is helping others. Or in other words, love.
Thanks for that Katy, but you missed one important fact and I do not know whether it is a positive or negative. I am now an old curmudgeon.
Are you kidding me? You always were. From the day you were born. And that is definitely a very good thing.
Hmm. More than ten years ago, I was paying Hill D. £600 per hour (£600 per MONTH is now my only taxable income) to help me fight off a thieving psychopath. They were worse than useless and the psychopath stole c.£100,000 from me. One of H.D’s lawyers excuses was, “The law doesn’t turn on the truth. It turns on evidence, even if that evidence is fabricated and false. That’s how honest people lose and liars win.”
For me, it was never about the money. It was about truth and justice. That failed. We live in a topsy-turvy, wicked world run by evil, non-human entities who have no souls, spirits or consciences.
Another person, like myself here, who is unimpressed with lawyers.
During a case I was involved in, due to considerable personal injury to myself at the time (luckily no long-term damage done), I was another one railroaded into accepting a low offer, the danger being I could have gone to court and won even lower damages than on offer out of court.
I was informed that this would have resulted in having to pay costs of both sides (this happened to William Roache years ago, when he sued the Sun for calling him boring, he lost around £100K as a result).
This would have bankrupted me, so I took the compo (well under £10K), remembering the parting shot from my solicitor:-
“In court, you don’t get justice, you get the law”.
That was 20 years ago, it would seem nothing much has changed.
Please don’t get me going on lawyers again. Rant now over.
Paul, I agree with much that you say about the problems of the Catholic church, but I fear that in your examinations of the major players of the Salford Diocese you have managed to miss the real man responsible. You attribute most of the blame on Bishop Terence Brain, Brain however wasn’t really responsible, for the last few years of his reign as Bishop of Salford, he was little more than a figurehead, a puppet, going slightly gah gah and not really responsible for what was going on. The real power behind the throne, the puppet master if you will, was a man who seems to have escaped your radar, the Vicar General, Monsignor Anthony Kay. He was the man organising the St Bede’s defence, and so much more. He was like a spider at the middle of a vast web and a very dangerous and unpleasant man.
Winston,
I have to agree with you that Kay is a very unpleasant man. On the few occasions I have been in his presence I have noted how he exudes evil. One day he will make a good bishop for some poor diocese.
Just seen this and quite shocked.
Anthony Kay was my friend and he was one of Bill Green’s “friends” at school. He spent many hours in Bill Green’s rooms and he fully knew about the abuse because he was the first to tell me about it.
We both openly saw and witnessed the abuse perpetrated against at least one border who used to sit on Green’s knee smoking.
I am now horrified from reading the above. He was a nice guy at school but obviously something went very wrong.
Well Anon, you know what they say, ‘Power Corrupts’. During the cases, he was unconcerned about the truth, just about saving money.
The decent members of the clergy really dislike him, they call him ‘The Smiling Viper’ behind his back, or ‘The Big Smirk’, because he always wears an insincere smile, especially when he is telling lies. He recently celebrated his Silver Jubilee of Ordination and hired the Manchester Town Hall at huge expense for a massive elaborate party, a lot of the clergy refused to go, because the morality of spending that much money on a big party, when all other priests make do with a church hall.
His new boss, Bishop Arnold, who was long known as ‘Ming the Merciless’ in Westminster due to his uncompromising nastiness, the nickname is now catching on in Salford. Kay has just become his hitman. All I would say is never trust either of them
To Winston Ogilvy
Yet another two good reasons to stay away from the Catholic Church.
The last time I went there was to my mother’s funeral, six years ago, and that was out of respect.
I haven’t set foot inside a church since.
I’m finally catching up to what happened to the case. I was one of the witnesses involved. I have been busy staying alive, having been taken ill in January 2016 and being finally diagnosed in June 2016 with acute myelomonocytic leukaemia. After four months in hospital I was given 3-6 months to live, but by some fluke I’m still here.
I was inspired by Paul’s determination which is why I gave my wholehearted support to his campaign. He’s the kind of guy I see as a saint, not a sex-starved celibate which is the norm for canonisation.
Thinking of you Paul, and with gratitude.
Thank you Frank, your words are too kind. I hope you continue to live on borrowed time for a long long time.