CHILD ABUSE .

CHILD ABUSE.
Concern is expressed for the well being of children. If all one reads in the Press is as reported, all manner of abuse is still perpetrated against them. I use the word still, for it is now as ever was so.

When I was at a Catholic Preparatory Boarding School some sixty five years ago, few there escaped the sanction of cane or strap delivered by one of the Priests on the slightest pretext. Being then more naïve, such punishment was accepted at face value. With benefit of hindsight one suspects that corporal punishment was probably but the exercise of its perpetrator’s suppressed libido. If now one puts the word ‘Caning’ into ‘Google’ it offers choice of 407,000 entries, and at a glance few refer to Craft Wicker Work. Possibly celibacy of the Priesthood was never its own sacrifice, so much as it was the sacrifice of others? Matters were no better at many a Church of England or other Public School, where the antics of some Headmasters have become the stuff of legend, all of which accounts for corporal punishment being now verboten.

Children tend to be open to all manner of recurrent abuse. Some Boarding Schools had more than a fair share of paedophiles on the Staff. I know of a then twelve year old boy at my aforementioned Preparatory School, upon whom one of the Lay Masters preyed. It was only later in life that he told of being intimately ‘touched up’ by that man. Seemingly it wasn’t the physicality of the experience that affected him, but the burden of secrecy he saw fit to carry. It had driven a wedge between him and his friends which turned an average middle of the road chap into an asocial, under achieving loner, who throughout his adult life never involved himself with others more than strictly necessary, being neither clubbable nor a team player.

The boy should of course have complained to another staff member or his parent, but he did neither. Puberty comes at an awkward age and what then would a boy have known of Paedophilia, or of the Stockholm Syndrome? His parent noticing something afoot had some sort of a hoo-ha with the head Master of which hthw boy knew little; however it was the Lay Master who moved on rather than him. One might wonder how that man had come to leave his previous school which was run by the Christian Brothers, and too, where he worked after his few terms with us?

One reads reports of Court Cases, where some plaintiff equates alleged abuse with a need for monetary recompense; and too hears tell of Institutions running short of the ‘where with all’ to financially compensate claimants should Court judgement go in the Claimant’s favour.

Sweeping things under the carpet was never an answer, for the
suppression of the facts perpetuated abuse; which together with any defence of the indefensible has done incalculable damage to the Catholic Church. So far as Dublin is concerned maybe someone should sue the Irish Government if dereliction of duty is alleged.

HIS LATE HOLINESS WAS SORRY FOR THE CRUSADES. THE PRIME MINISTER IS SORRY FOR DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN AND NOW SEVERAL ARHBISHOPS ARE SORRY FOR CASES OF ABUSE IN IRELAND. ARE MAINLANDERS SORRY TOO?
Better still the old Maxim ‘Confession is good for the Soul’
MAYBE IT’S TIME FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM AND EIRE, TO EMULATE SOUTH AFRICA’S
‘TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION’.
First hear confession of historic child abuse, and only then grant Amnesty. I suspect that Child abuse has been far more widespread than any of us would credit. Would it not be better to ‘clear the air’ for only then can things move on? Lives were damaged ,‘Tea and Sympathy’ would be more effective than thirty pieces of silver.