Phonsie of Waterford has a very controversial In Tray just now.
1. NO MONEY TO PAY PRIEST’S WAGES:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Priests in the Diocese rely on the offerings of the people to live. With the suspension of public Masses, there is little money coming in for the payment of clergy. I know that this is a difficult time for most people. If however, you would like to make a donation towards the payment of priests at this time we have made this online payment facility available.
I also have in mind various projects for spreading the faith in the Diocese and for this we need to employ a Youth-Ministry Officer and a Faith-Development Officer. These roles are vital to help change the negative culture that surrounds us and to let people know God’s message of truth and mercy. If you would like to help support these and other diocesan initiatives, you can contribute to Bishop’s Evangelisation Appeal below.
I would like to thank you in advance for your support and generosity.
Yours Sincerely, Bishop Phonsie
Waterford is facing a problem most dioceses are facing – reduced income due to closed churches etc.
That is bound to continue and get worse.
Many people will not return to Mass when the lockdown is lifted.
They have developed the habit of not coming.
THE SCANDALS
Nearly everyday a new scandal comes out of the RCC.
Every scandal sends more people away from church.
And Phonsie has his very own big scandal in his diocese with MOUNT MELLERARY and RICHARD PURCELL.
The scandal has been reported to Phonsie who seems to have done nothing about.
Why give a man who does not sort out scandals any more noney.
Let Phonsie sell assets to pay his priests – churches, presbyteries, hall etc.
2. AN INVESTIGATION INTO WHETHER OR NOT A DIOCESAN PRIESTAND GARDA COLLUDED TO PROTECT A PAEDOPHILE.
Sadly, this collusion scandal involved my old friend Monsignor John Shine 😭
JOHN SHINE RIP
John Shine’s nephew, the Waterford swimming coach, Bill Kennealy, was a prolific paedophile.
Kennealy
The Garda knew about him for years abd did nothing.
The suggestion is that Monsignor Shine may have colluded with senior Garda to prevent Kennealy from being prosecuted?
Shine was a good, kind pastoral man but as a canon liar he had a blind spot when it cane to savibg the good name of the church and people he was loyal too.
He had a misguided idea that it was better to sort things out quietly and privately.
That’s what the Church did in the past.
Anyway, the whole thing is now to be subject to a judicial enquiry.
HAVE READERS NOT WONDERED, AS I HAVE, WHY THE CISTERCIAN ORDER OF THE STRICT OBSERVANCE HAVE TOLERATED THE CONTINUING PRESENCE OF AN ACTIVELY GAY ABBOT IN THEIR IRISH MOTHER HOUSE, MOUNT MELLERARY?
A contact in Rome to whom I asked this question recently answered: “Could it be because there us a very powerful gay rump in the Cistercians”?
As we proceed with this matter, which we will pursue to the bitter end, I am coming to the educated conclusion that Richard Purcell is not alone and that he is being protected by other actively gay Cistercians of differing ranks.
And of course, the corollary of that is that Richard Purcell probably has all this information – information that could cause many heads to roll.
If Purcell goes, how many other OCSO’s will he take with him, including members of other religious orders like the Dominicans and indeed diocesan priests and seminarians?
Purcell is another Gregory Collins – the Benedictine abbot of Jerusalem and a former monk of Glenstal – who found his position untenable after a liaison with a young Palestinian man. He is now a vicar in the Church of England. In the end Rome insisted he go.
The Cistercians have at least one semi- powerful episcopal supporter in the Vatican who has expressed an interest in protecting and saving Purcell and other compromised Cistercians.
This episcopal supporter is himself the object of many suspicions, one or two of which I am aware.
In any event, the Purcell matter is progressing (slowly as is Rome’s way) in Rome with the help of very competent canonical and civil lawyers.
This week I, myself, will be swearing my affidavit before a Belfast notary, recounting all I have learned over the past six months.
The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God.
PAUL CHURCHILL
DERMOT FARRELL of Dublin has appointed a 68-year canon lawyer who tried to deny the Tuam Baby holocaust as parish priest of Berkeley Road in Dublin’s north inner city.
ST JOSEPH’S
Having worked all his life, as a bachelor, deciding whether men and women trapped in bad marriages should get a church annulment – he is becoming a parish priest for the first time – seven years before his retirement at 75!
In the nterview below Paul Churchill maintains that he is on the side of truth. Of course he means Roman Catholic truth. In the minds of people like him there is no other truth!
In the interview Churchill attemts to deny that the Bon Secours nuns piled 796 uncoffined babies bodies wrapped in Coke like bottles, all on top of each other.
In a letter he wrote at the time he says anyone accusing the nuns, especially the media were doing the work of THE DEVIL!
CHURCHILL’S LETTER SUPPORTING THE NUNS
Everything that Churchill claims about the Tuam Babies has been blown out of the water by Catherine Corless, the local Tuam historian, who has backed up everything she says with extensive documentation and taped interviews of former Tuam internees.
CATHERINE CORLESS – TUAM TRUTH TELLER
PLEASE, IF YOU CAN, LISTEN TO THE WHOLE INTERVIEW FROM RTE AND JOE DUFFY’S LIFELINE.
REFUSING TO ALLOW A COUPLE WHO CARE FOR THE DISABLED TOMARRY IN THE INSTITUTION’S CHAPEL SO THAT THEIR DISABLED CLIENTS COULD ATTEND!
Cardinal refused chapel for wedding
A YOUNG Dublin couple have been refused permission by Cardinal Desmond Connell to marry in the chapel of their choice for reasons…
PHARISEE CONNELL
The Irish Times – Patsy McGarryFri, Dec 7, 2001, 0
A YOUNG Dublin couple have been refused permission by Cardinal Desmond Connell to marry in the chapel of their choice for reasons “too numerous to recount”. They were assured, however, that those reasons were “sufficiently serious to merit what might seem a rather strict regulation”.
Ms Laura Smyth (26), a physiotherapist at a residential centre for people with mental and physical handicap in the city, wrote to the cardinal on November 8th last seeking permission – as is necessary – to be married in the centre’s chapel on February 20th next.
She explained this would mean a lot to herself and her fiancΘ, Mr Michael Cooke (30), as it would “allow my clients, who would not often witness a marriage, to be involved in the day”. She also said that in making the request she had the full support of the centre’s administrator, a member of a religious order.
FATHER PAUL CHURCHILL replied on behalf of the cardinal, on November 12th. He said the cardinal, while appreciating Ms Smyth’s reasons for making the request, “would be unhappy at this stage to change accepted diocesan policy in regard to marriages in private churches and oratories”. The matter had been gone into “very carefully” some years ago by the late Archbishop Ryan, he said.
“The pastoral difficulties and problems that led to this decision are too numerous to recount here, but I can assure you that they were sufficiently serious to merit what might seem a rather strict regulation,” the letter then said.
Replying to Cardinal Connell on December 2nd Ms Smyth said the reason given for his refusal was “not a satisfactory explanation”. She and her fiancee would now “have to explore the alternatives of cohabiting or a civil marriage, neither of which we want but have little choice about at this time” .
Once, again we see Churchill as the mouthpiece of the hierarchy pushing ROMAN CATHOLIC TRUTH!
I dont believe that Paul Churchill is a “bad man”.
But he is a BLIND MAN putting RC teachings, doctrines and laws before compassion.
Would it not have been a human and pastorally wonderful thing to allow the clients of their carers to see their carers married, to be part of the ceremony and to be part of the celebration?
Clients like these probably never see a eedding in their whole lives.
Would Jesus have refused the wedding taking place in a chapel in a facility for the disabled? Absolutely not!
What would Jesus think of those who, like the Pharisees, refused?
Would He repeat what he said before – things like: “brood of vipers”, ” whitened sepulchres”?
“You lay burdens on men’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to remove them”?
So what qualifies Paul Churchill at 68 to be a parish priest for the first time in his life?
A lifetime defending RC teaching on marriage?
Letters and interviews denying the Tuam Holocaust?
Refusing marriage to disability carers in front of their clients on the basis of a church laws that lays down the only places where marriages can be celebrated?
Would Cardinal Connell and Paul Churchill have allowed Jesus to attend the Marriage Feast at Cana and turn water into wine.
On the basis of canon law – YES!
PS:
Connell was a philosopher who was an expert in the Beatific Language – the language God and the angels use to communicate with each other in Heaven 🤡.
When Connell condemned homosexuality on one occasion the gay activist Senator David Norris came out with a brilliant statement:
“The cardinal seems to know a lot about Angels but absolutely nothing about Fairies” 😜
Cardinals and Canon Liars live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
SEAN JONES (AKA KING PUCK)AND THE PALLOTINE ORDER.
Sean Jones
Does anyone know the circumstances under which Sean Jones left the Pallotine Order in Rome before going to Maynooth as a lay student and eventually being accepted by Kerry?
The Job’s Comforters who visit this blog keep telling us that we will never achieve success in our mission to highlight corruption at high and low places in the clergy and hierarchy.
But we can take confidence from the parable below.
THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST JUDGE
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she will not eventually wear me out with her coming!'”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”— Luke 18:1-8,
PERSEVERANCE is a very important and formidable tool in the toolbox of reformers, whistleblowers and the exposure of clerical duplicity and cynicism.
DICK AND PHONS
We now have established that DICK PURCELL has a minimum of four strikes against him – the Boilerhouse, Fr. Dargan, Oxford and a farmer in Roscrea who is a lease holding of Roscrea land.
We are no longer seeing smoke and looking for the fire. We are seeing lit and smouldering sparks in the undergrowth.
This blog is more than happy to leave the Purcell thing alone if he and his superiors do the right thing.
If not, as is said by Shakespeare in Macbeth:
“We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking–place, and we’ll not fail”.
We will not, under any circumstances, let this go until right is done.
SOME QUESTIONS
1. Does Richard Purcell have the dirt on others who are therefore afraid to act against him?
2. Is it a cases that if Purcell, a constituent card in the pile, falls, others will fall?
3. Is the Abbot General, Eamon Fitzgerald, himself compromised on some way?
4. Why is it that the local ordinary of Mellerary, with a history of speaking out on moral issues, Phonsie, is now totally silence on this massive moral issue within his own diocese?
Of course, currently, the Irish Hierarchy as a whole are in defence mode, ate are afraid to budge an inch.
As a Kerry priest said recently:
“The main reason Ray Brown ordained Sean Jones was to spite Buckley and his blog”.
So all kinds of people in the Irish RCC are being retained, protected and ordained out of severe episcopal and abbatial pigheadedness and spitefulness.
Two very notable comments appeared on yesterday’s blog about Richard (Dick) Purcell of Mount Melleray.
One suggested that a farmer who rents land from the Cistercian Monastery in Roscrea (where Dick was abbot) was involved in a sexual relation with Dick.
“When I was a (lay) student in Maynooth Dom Richard was still at roscrea. Another (gay) student told me Dom Richard was riding (his words) a local farmer who was renting farm land from the monastery. I honestly thought it was the gossipy ranting of a gay man and there was no way a Cistercian would do that. Sadly it seems I misjudged….”
The other comment suggested that a prominent and respected Dominican, Father John Hyancath Walsh OP, who had been in Oxford with Dick said that Dick had chastity problems.
“Dom Purcell’s friend, Fr John Hyacinth Walsh OP, currently prior of St Saviours Dominican priory Dublin (also the studium) was overheard commenting on the Dom Dick scandal. He admitted that he (Dom Dick) did have problems with it (lack of chastity) in the past, but he though he had gotten over it. They had been in Oxford at the same time: walsh op in the English studium, Blackfriars: Dom Dick at st Benets Hall (EBC). Dom Dicks sexual activities were well known among catholic student circles in Oxford”.
The second comment also said that Dick was well known for his sexual activities among Catholic student circles in Oxford.
ST BENET’S OXFORD
The allegations against Dick are piling up.
1. The original Boilerhouse sauna allegation.
2. The midnight sex in the kitchen of Roscrea with a Killaloe priest – which was confirmed to me personally during a telephone call with the Abbot General Eamon Fitzgerald.
The Abbot General has since suffered a total loss of voice!
3. There arises the continued talk of Richard Purcell’s behaviour at Oxford.
I’ve heard he was particularly found of Jesuits.
4. There now arises the question of an involvement with a farmer tenant at Roscrea.
How long will Richard Purcell and his superiors allow this saga to continue?
****
We would ask the comment makers on yesterday’s blog about Oxford and the Roscrea farmer please give us more information.
bishopbuckley1@outlook.com
BISHOP PAT’S HOMILY. FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT. 21.2.21
The case of Abbot Richard Purcell which has featured on the blog for a while, has now begun to make its way through the Vatican’s corridors of power.
The case is being brought by a small number of Catholic lay men and women – long time supporters of Mount Melleray.
They are using funds they intended to leave to the monastery in their wills to finance the case.
They have employed a number of Roman canon lawyers and an Irish senior counsel to guide and advise them.
Initially they had hoped that Purcell would do the right think himself.
No hope of that I’m afraid.
What has happened to the admirable and godly Cistercians?
LOCAL BISHOPS RESISTING FRANCIS ON WOMEN LECTORS AND ACOLYTES.
Pope Francis recently changed canon law to allow for women to be admitted to the “minor orders” of Lector and Acolyte.
It would involve the bishop enrolling women in in these two “orders” traditionally reserved to male seminarians as part of their journey to priesthood.
It would be a very positive step towards the integration of women into the male dominated church.
Francis is not getting much of a reaction from the world’s bishops.
The funeral of Monsignor Mark Langham (60) took place yesterday at Westminster Cathedral.
He was more recently the chaplain of Cambridge Univetsity.
Before that he was the administrator of Westminster Cathedral.
No one at the funeral mentioned he liked to French kiss the senior altar boys at Westminster Cathedral – something the senior altar boys did not appreciate. The English prefer their tongue cold.
Why send a priest who tongued senior altar boys to be chaplain to a university full of young males?
Is that why Arnold or Elsie never said a word about Langham at the funeral Mass?
Nor did anyone what happened in the parish of Bayswater when Langham too over from the saintly Fr Michael Hollings who took the homeless into live with him in the presbytery.
As one Westminster priest messaged ne yesterday:
“When Langham took over Bayswater he threw the homeless out – a well known fact in Westminster. It didn’t suit his champagne lifestyle”.
DICK AND BRENDAN:
The pic below of Dick Purcell and ex Armagh seminarian, Brendan Marshall, was taken inaynooth in 2017.
Dick was/is friendly with a few Maynooth sems.
SKINNY DENNIS:
An Ossory priest sent the picture below to the blog concerned at how much weight their new Apostolic Administrator Denis Nulty has lost.
I have always being skeptical of people “giving things up for Lent” – like alcohol, sugar, chocolates etc.
Very often the only benefits of this are the expansion of the sacrificer’s wallet and the decrease of the sacrificer’s waistline.
In that context, I gave always liked Robert Herrick’s poem from the back of the Breviary:
To Starve Thy Sin, Not Bin
To Keep a True Lent by Robert Herrick
Is this a fast, to keep The larder lean ? And clean From fat of veals and sheep ?
Is it to quit the dish Of flesh, yet still To fill The platter high with fish ?
Is it to fast an hour, Or ragg’d to go, Or show A downcast look and sour ?
No ; ‘tis a fast to dole Thy sheaf of wheat, And meat, Unto the hungry soul.
It is to fast from strife, From old debate And hate ; To circumcise thy life.
To show a heart grief-rent ; To starve thy sin, Not bin ; And that’s to keep thy Lent.
As he says if its just replacing expensive steak with expensive fish, what’s the use?
Or like the Pharisees of old – to let everyone know you’re fasting by your miserable look.
He suggests more positive things to do for Lent like sharing your food with the hungry or working on damaged relationships etc.
This is our second Covid Lent.
With government restrictions, etc, we all making lots of “sacrifices” this year.
So why not concentrate on the positive this Lent:
1. Dutifully wearing your masks and washing your hand to protect others as well as yourself.
2. Refraining from meeting in groups for gatherings and parties.
3. Going out of your way to safely deliver needed items to the housebound, the elderly, the sick etc.
4. Pray everyday in private for the sick, the hospitalised, the deceased and the bereaved.
5. Donate a bit extra to charities who are addressing urgent needs at present.
6. Go out of your way to regularly telephone people you know to be lonely and isolated even if such calls are a bit torturous.
COVID brings so much NEGATIVITY with it.
Maybe this Lent is a call to inject as much POSITIVITY into life as we can?
“No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great”.
Catholic leaders and human rights advocates have expressed concern over a bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in Ireland.
The Dying with Dignity 2020 bill has received opposition from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, as well as the Council for Life and the Consultative Group on Bioethics at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
The legislation was introduced in September and has received support from Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, and the Labour Party.
In January, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission warned that the legislation was missing serious safeguards that could lead to abuse. The commission said people with disabilities may be threatened by the legislation. It also called for an additional bill to enshrine palliative care rights in law.
Chief Commissioner Sinéad Gibney said end-of-life care touches on the right to life and the protection of vulnerable groups, including the elderly, terminally ill, and people with disabilities.
“These are fundamental human rights and equality issues and as such, the development of this proposed Bill must be scrutinised in light of relevant human rights and equality standards on these and related matters,” she said.
The bishops also expressed opposition to the bill. In a Jan. 26 submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, they warned that it would normalize suicide and undermine “protections against the non-consensual killing of particularly vulnerable classes of persons.”
“Assisted suicide reflects a failure of compassion on the part of society. It is a failure to respond to the challenge of caring for terminally ill patients as they approach the end of their lives,” the bishops said.
“While palliative care already provides assistance to those who are dying, this Bill provides for the medical endorsement and facilitation of suicide. Legislators need to honestly recognise the difference and call things by their proper name.”
They also said the bill fails to recognize the reality that many patients who participate in euthanasia likely already suffer from mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety. The desire for a physician-assisted death stems from fear, and those fears should be addressed, they said.
“We find it unsatisfactory, therefore, that the Bill, in section 8, gives more weight to the irreversibility of the condition than to treatments which, even temporarily, relieve the symptoms,” they said.
“Depression, anxiety, and ambivalence about dying characterize both medical patients who attempt suicide and those who request assisted suicide. When the physical and psychological sources of the desperation that underlies requests for assisted suicide are addressed, the desire for death diminishes and patients are usually grateful for the time remaining to them.”
The bishops also warned that the bill’s language is strongly utilitarian and treats human dignity as something that can be lost in suffering.
“Whatever our prognosis and however limited our capacity, our value as persons is rooted in who we are rather than in our life-expectancy or our ability to reach certain standards of physical or mental performance,” they said.
“Pope Francis recalls that ‘the current socio-cultural context is gradually eroding the awareness of what makes human life precious. In fact, it is increasingly valued on the basis of its efficiency and utility, to the point of considering as ‘discarded lives’ or ‘unworthy lives’ those who do not meet this criterion.’”
PAT SAYS:
The only people to decide whether or not to introduce euthanasia into Ireland are the Irish electorate.
Private bodies such as the Roman Church are entitled to have an opinion and express it – just like the committee of a large golf club.
But the matter is for the people of Ireland – of all faiths and no faith to decide.
The Irish people should listen to the medics and scientists when deciding on the medical and scientific aspects.
They should listen to the lawyers on the legal aspects and the possibility of abuse of euthanasia.
The Roman Catholic bishops have lost ALL MORAL CREDIBILITY on all these matters as a result of the various forms of abuse and corruption they allowed to happen in Ireland since 1921. The Irish RCC is morally bereft on matters of public morals.
Like abortion, I personally fo not believe that euthanasia is a GOOD thing.
But it can sometimes be the lesser of two evils in some cases.
A number of years ago, a parishioner of mine, Rose, was diagnosed with Motor Nueron Disease – MND.
She went from being an elegant looking lady with wonderful cooking skills etc to being a skeleton drowning in her own saliva.
She woukd have liked to go before the worst of the MND came upon her but was disallowed by law.
Ireland is now a very diverse country and, thank God no longer under the spurs of the Roman church.
We are now also a country of atheists, agnostics, Muslims etc.
Currently I personally hold to the Christian belief that I should die when God calls me and I woukd hope to ride the bucking bronco to the end in companionship with Jesus Christ.
But I am totally opposed to one church, especially a totally corrupt one, imposing their doctrines on the whole people of Ireland.
In the drafting of an euthanasia bill I believe our government and their legal advisors should close every possible loop hole for abuse.
No citizen should ever feel they should have to choose euthanasia for family, economic, guilt or pressure reasons.
But those who do not to spend the last weeks or months of their lives in deep pain and distress should not be forced to do.
And Jesus does not want any of us to go through an ugly Calvary.
We believers know that Calvary has already been done on our behalf – and in a far more perfect fashion than we could ever do.
AND
We already have partial euthanasia in the firm of morphine and other drugs administered to us on our death beds.
My motive for writing this piece is to give hope to people who are suffering with paedophilia.
I myself was a paedophile – a paedophile who never abused a child, either directly or indirectly, through the use of child abuse pornography. I loathe the way that our rulers, the media, and our public institutions demonise paedophiles and ignore your needs for help, your efforts to avoid abusing, and your yearnings for treatments which will free you of this curse.
I was lucky – I was referred by my GP, in 1972, to the NHS Portman Clinic in London, assessed and then treated free of charge by psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with once a week sessions over three years. I even had my train and tube fares paid, for I was a student and low paid worker. By the end of 1975 I had achieved 100% cure of my paedophilia, and my life was transformed. I no longer had to avoid being in the presence of children in case I unwittingly showed my sexual interest in young boys by some eye movement or turn of my head . I no longer had to watch every conversation or social occasion in case, by some slip of the tongue, I revealed that sexual interest, or my fear and inadequacy in the presence of attractive young women.
I will tell you my story, briefly, then I will describe how my treatment and cure worked, and suggest what you can do. Lastly, I will suggest that we all – your allies – must work towards providing more curative treatment resources for paedophiles, as part of a strategy for ridding the world of all paedophilia and all child sexual abuse.
My Story
I was raised with my siblings in a loving, secure, lower-middle class family, and my mother was a very caring mum. I was a rather sensitive, shy boy who was a bit of a handful sometimes. There was some intermittent low-level conflict between my parents, and, when it happened, I always sided with my mother, because I saw myself as ‘mummy’s boy’. Our mum usually presided over bath times and made sure we washed and dried ourselves properly. When I was ‘choirboy age’, perhaps less than eight to more than ten, my mum had the habit of drying me on her knee and then playing with my genitals, pulling my scrotum over my penis and then letting it pop out – that kind of thing. She did this often. I never had an erection and never considered these ‘fiddlings’ by her to be sexual. My memory is that she was being curious and playful. I never thought of her feelings as sexual, though of course they may have been.
However, those small but regular ‘interferings’ really did damage. They were, of course, powerfully sexual occasions for me, despite my total blocking – denial – of that fact. My massive repression of my sexual responses to her ‘fiddling’ had huge consequences for my psychic development. Incest in whatever form has huge consequences for the child victim. I did not develop sexual feelings for girls, but instead became sexually fixated on young boys of the same age at which she had interfered with me. I became fixated on repeating in fantasy the sexual behaviour of my mother towards me.
So massive was my psychic effort to repress the horrifying fact that I had repeatedly been in a sexual act with my mother that I developed awful sadistic fantasies, and acted them out masochistically against myself. My fantasies were of castrating or circumcising (symbolic castration) young boys. My masochism was in cutting and piercing my own genitalia. At one point I feared that my genitals had become gangrenous and I had trouble repressing the blood loss – all in secret.
That, I think, was the single worst two days of my paedophiliac youth. My psychic fantasies of castration were a massive attempt to cut away the fact that I had had adult sexual feelings for my mother, and was thus in sexual competition with my father, with whom I already felt myself to be at war, in some way. It was the Oedipus story all over again.
I had no real friends during those years. My feelings towards women were of fear and disgust at their bodies. My whole attitude was one of denial of my perverse sexuality, or of any sexuality. I put massive psychic effort into convincing myself that I was innocent of all adult sexual feelings – a child, a Peter Pan. I did not discover masturbation until I was 17, nor did I attempt to view pornography, and, in any case, I did not imagine that such a thing as child pornography existed. I yearned to be normal, like my brother and other youths.
I went away to university at 18, which provided me with partial independence from the ‘stuck’ relationships I had within my family. I gained a good group of friends, some of whom I still have, became an active socialist, and grew my hair halfway down my back. I lost my virginity, though my lover realised how unsuitable I was as a boyfriend, with my nervous shyness and limited, semi-sexual responses.
When I was nearly 21, I overheard my ‘best friend’ telling my other housemates and best friends that he thought I was a paedophile. I listened from another room to their talk and laughter. I put on my coat and walked across town to the home of the leader of my small socialist group, who was not a friend, but whom I admired and trusted. When I sat down I burst into tears and told him who I really was. Together we worked out what to do. He contacted the Richmond Fellowship to get me a referral. I went to the university Health Centre GP.
He was a young, relaxed, cheerful man who smiled and scoffed at my fears that paedophilia was not curable, telling me he would refer me to a clinic which dealt with problems such as mine. Within a few weeks I received a letter inviting me to attend an assessment for treatment at the NHS Portman Clinic in Hampstead, London. In the second half of 1972 (only a month or so after my assessment) I started once a week psychoanalysis there. By the end of 1975 I was cured. I have never since had a paedophilic fantasy.
Since then my life has been on an upward trend, sometimes bumpy, sometimes with downward dips, sometimes in the doldrums, but always with an underlying upwards lift. I have been with the woman I love for 13 years and am part of her warm family, with lots of step-grandchildren. I am proud of my achievements, which are small but real.
The NHS and the Portman Clinic salvaged my life and gave me this gift of many years of happiness.
My treatment and cure
Dr Glasser, my therapist, and the Clinical Director of the Portman, told me at my assessment interview that the treatment would consist of me ‘free associating’ – talking about whatever came into my head.
He made an analogy with boats anchored on a tidal river. With the incoming tide a boat appears to float a bit upstream. With the outgoing tide the boat appears to float a bit downstream. By watching the boat swing between these changing positions over time, therefore, an observer can work out where the anchor is hidden below.
Thus, my seemingly random talking could reveal to us the underlying – subconscious – patterns of my mind. He also advised me not to read any psychiatric literature for the duration of my treatment, so as to concentrate and avoid creating diversions.
The weekly sessions with Dr Glasser entailed me lying down on the couch in his consulting room and talking, with only occasional comments and interpretations from him. The underlying causes of my paedophilia in my past family relationships were uncovered and explained by Dr Glasser within a few months. His suggested explanations were a surprise to me, and made complete sense. They gave me a new confidence and self-respect, but they did not change my attraction to young boys, at that stage. I did much crying in those sessions – over and over again, session after session, through the years. At first, I was surprised by my crying and told Dr Glasser of my puzzlement. He suggested that I was crying in pity for my past boyhood self, in the same way as one cries in pity when one sees or reads of someone else in distress. There was nothing negative in this pity for my past self. Such things now seem so self-evident to me, but they were all a surprise, back then.
Incidentally, Dr Glasser never used the term ‘abuse’ to describe my mum’s behaviour. His stance was simply to explain, not to blame. It was not until some 10 years after my cure that I ever heard anyone describe my childhood experience as one of abuse. It happened when I was telling my story to a woman friend. I was shocked when she said to me: “your mother abused you.” I think that, technically speaking, my friend was right, but I also think that the word ‘abuse’, in this case, does not best describe what happened. My mother made an important mistake. She crossed a crucial boundary, but I don’t think she knew she was crossing it, and I am 100% certain that she would have been mortified if I had accused her of being an abuser.
Such mistakes can have huge consequences. We all face that reality in our lives. We can all, therefore, forgive ourselves and others.
Things did change for me over the years of treatment. I stopped neglecting my studies and worked hard to gain my university degree. In the second year of my treatment I met an attractive young woman on a working holiday and started seeing her. I was glad she did not press me for sex (for she was a traditionalist Christian) and I strongly avoided pressing her for it, though we did much kissing and stroking. I quickly broke with her, for I still felt my old inadequacy and my horror at adult sexual exchange. Later, I got close to another sexually active woman, but could not respond to her sexually when the opportunity came. That was humiliating.
During the third year of treatment I felt more and more that I was ‘stuck’. I understood why I was like I was, but the final loss of my paedophilia did not happen, and I could not see how it would go. The problem was that I hadn’t grasped that I must work for that. Explanation was not enough. Dr Glasser broke this stalemate by challenging my inactivity and suggesting that we set a date for the treatment to end that I could work towards (the end of 1975). In that last six months I focussed completely on challenging myself to be in normal social situations with women and seeking out sexual opportunities with them. It worked.
By the time my treatment ended I realised that my paedophilia had disappeared and my sexual interest had been fully transferred to women. That change, when it came, was dramatic. I had a job in an office with several attractive women and I had, up till that point, been bashful and intimidated by their sexual banter and liveliness. I suddenly found that I could cope with – and enjoy – all that normal fun. The women were as surprised as I was, and I overheard them remarking on the sudden change in me. That was nice. I was still naive and very shy and frightened of sex with women, but the deal was done. It took me a while to be ready for full sex, just as it does with any normal adolescent, but I met and went out for some months with a woman who did not press me or want full sex (for she had just left a long relationship and didn’t want to dive into another) and we had a lot of fun.
As for my paedophilia, I now found that I could enjoy the company of children. I no longer had to fearfully retreat from them in case I revealed my old sexual feelings to myself and those around me. All those paedophiliac feelings vanished like frost when the warm rays of the sun at daybreak first shine upon it. Children are a delight, and I am so very glad to have them in my life in the way any normal adult can.
The options for cure that paedophiles now have The NHS Portman Clinic still exists and still treats paedophiles with in-depth psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It also treats many other sexually deviant people and those who have been violent.
Its criteria for accepting a patient, however, are now narrower than they were, as a result of cuts to NHS spending and an increase in demand for its services. This increase in demand is fuelled both by the huge increase in internet pornography and the equally huge exposure of the extent of child sexual abuse. The Portman now only accepts referrals of people who have committed offences. That is a major change from my time there. If I was a youngster now, I would not be accepted for treatment at the Portman, because I did not abuse children.
There are, of course, huge numbers of people who have succumbed to temptation and the belief in the ‘lesser evil’, and committed abuse byusing on-line pornography, as well as all those who have directly abused children.
If you are one of those people, and you are sick of your behaviour and keen to change, then I strongly urge you to seek a referral to the Portman. They will assess you and be looking for you to show an interest in exploring the roots of your sexual damage and offending, as well asa lively wish to be rid of that behaviour and thinking. If you abuse alcohol or drugs, then that will be a problem in getting accepted for treatment, for your attention needs to be unclouded.
The Portman’s criteria for success in treatment are also narrower than they were in my time. They now judge success by whether the patient is able to control his or her offending and securely manage their behaviour so that they do not re-offend. Given the intrinsic curative potential of the treatment they still do achieve real cures, but they do not judge their success by such cures.
It is a tragedy that the Portman has had to narrow its criteria for treatment and success in these ways, and non-offending paedophiles should not simply accept their exclusion. In my case, for instance, paedophilia was not just confined to fantasy. I repeatedly self-harmed genitally, and may have put my own life in danger by my mutilations. Would a history of self-harm, perhaps, tip the balance in favour of acceptance for treatment?
For non-offending paedophiles there are private psychoanalytic practitioners who will accept paedophiles for treatment and have appropriate expertise. There are not many, but they do exist. Two years ago I made contact with a woman who shared a somewhat similar developmental history to me, though what she suffered as a child was far worse. She had been repeatedly abused by multiple abusers, from inside and outside her family, both in her infancy and through her childhood. To her great horror, she discovered in early adulthood that she could be strongly sexually attracted to infants of the age at which she was herself first abused. It took all her strength to resist the temptation to abuse, and she succeeded. She found herself a private psychotherapist whom she trusted, and is now cured of her past paedophiliac desires and has much love and achievement in her life.
The specialist psychoanalytic literature has good examples of deeply disturbed paedophiles (again, far worse than I was) who responded over time to caring psychoanalysis and managed to rid their lives of their old damage. For those at the worst end of the paedophile spectrum this process takes long years and full psychoanalysis, with several sessions a week. If the patient sticks at it, they can succeed.
Of course, such treatment requires time and money, and most of us do not have that. It is our job – as your allies – to work to make sure that in the future this will change.
Ridding the world of paedophilia and child sexual abuse
Over 40 years ago, when I was at the Portman, we lived in a time of hope. I wanted to see (and still want to see) the example of their treatments reproduced until every town across the country has such a clinic. Everyone, child, woman and man, who needs them, deserves the chance to be assessed for the proven treatments which are capable of curing so much sexual distress. Though this expansion did not then happen, it still must, and still can. The world can again turn away from the darkness.
It may seem that the demonisation that is directed at paedophiles, irrespective of whether they have offended, is undefeatable, and it is not surprising that many people are so angry at the child abuse which has afflicted so many of us. Yet there is an abundance of good people who realise that many paedophiles were themselves the victims of child sexual abuse, and that other paedophiles will likely have suffered other forms of childhood trauma and abuse. Paedophiles are a sub-set of those many adults damaged in childhood by abuse and adult mistakes.
It is clear that most victims of child sexual abuse are as starved of in-depth psychotherapeutic treatments as paedophiles. We live in a time when the rhetoric of government, state, and media anger at child abuse is demonstrably hollow. It is not matched by widespread resources made available for the support of all those affected.
There is room for us all to make the argument that we need these potentially curative resources to be universally available. There is room for the argument that the healing of paedophiles brings nearer the day when the horror of all child abuse is a thing of the past. There is room for the argument that all childhood psychic damage that can be healed should be healed…and paedophilia can be healed.
PAT SAYS:
Paedophilia is a condition – the condition of being sexually attracted to prepubescent children. The condition in itself is not a crime.
Sexual abuse is an action – the sexual abuse of another human being.
Some paedophiles never act out their sexual fantasies and are therefore not guilty of sexual abuse.
Many sexual abusers are not paedophiles eg rapists, flashers and those guilty of various kinds of sexual assaults.
In society we try and prevent things like Covid happening.
Does it not make sense that we should prevent paedophiles from acting out too?
Prevention is better than cure and in the long run possibly less expense from both the financial and human suffering points of view.
Would it not be a good thing to encourage non-acting out paedophiles to come forward for help by letting them see that the medical profession regards their condition as manageable or curable.
I think that what Jack Dawson’s mother did to him at bath time was very, very strange and may well have amounted to abuse.
I would imagine that too early sexual experiences is not good for development.
Could a child not think: “If it was ok for my mother to do that to me is ot not ok for me to do that to other little boys”?
