Suffer Little Children

I was fifteen years old. It was around midnight and I was lying in a bed in Longford County Hospital. I had broken my left arm two days earlier and it was hard to sleep. It had been a bad break; both bones. We had been playing soccer on tarmacadam and I had rushed out to try and block a shot. I put my foot out and the ball was kicked under it. For the briefest moment I was like some ballet dancer balancing on the ball. Then it was gone and I slammed forward and down. Snap.

A hospital worker – whose name and exact position I have since forgotten – had frequently dropped by to see how I was getting on. He knew me because of my brothers, who were well-known Gaelic footballers. He loved sport and he told me that he thought very highly of my brothers. He was friendly, always joking and laughing.

He said that he could see by the look of me that I was a pretty good athlete too. He joked that I’d probably be better than either of my brothers. He decided to make some form of test of this theory, placing his hand on my leg and gently squeezing my calf muscle. Yes, he was impressed by it. So impressed that he moved his hand up my leg and began to rub my thigh.

What he was doing was so unexpected that what I did, essentially, was to ignore what he was physically doing to me and carry on our conversation about who’d win what that year. Even when he moved his hand in under my underpants, I basically ignored it. I was reacting as if having a stranger’s hand in my underpants was the most natural thing in the world.

He did ask me if it was okay. Well, I’m not so sure about the reasoning behind my affirmative reply but I’d say it went something along these lines: I was from rural Ireland where the only thing I was taught about sex was how to use a public phone to ring the A.I. man for a cow in heat. I was taught other things in great detail though, and one of them was respect. Respect for your elders. So, I said: ‘Yes’, not really knowing what was or wasn’t okay. Not really knowing what was happening to me.

I did know that I had an erection – although I wouldn’t have called it that at the time – and that I was to at least some degree enjoying the encounter between my penis and this man’s hand. And if you’ll excuse the pun, it was all virgin territory for me. Yeah, we’re all tough when we’re lounging in the dark of a handball alley, smoking a butt of a cigarette that’s fucking choking us, but we dare not cough, no we dare not cough. And we’re acting wise and yapping away about ‘screwing’. Yeah, we’re using words about whose meanings we have little clue. But they sound right, and once nobody asks us what they mean, we’ll be alright. Cool. Fifteen-year-olds like to think they’re cool. That they’re grown up and in control. (Remember, this is down the country in the Seventies; fifteen-year-olds knew very little then.)

He asked me again if it was okay. What could I say? Then he began to ask me if I liked it. What could I say? Yeah, I did like it. This was my first experience of masturbation and as everybody knows, masturbation may not be the real thing, but it’s one hell of a substitute.

So, he had me by the balls, so to speak. I was in his grip and I was riding down a sexual roller coaster and there was no way I wanted it to stop, even though he asked if I wanted him to stop. I remember him asking me. It was like some sharp knife into somewhere soft. Part of my mind sensed some sort of trick, but I was overcome by what was happening to me.

But still I sensed that there was some sort of turning of the tables going on. That what he was doing with his honeyed, concerned words, was making out that it was really me who wanted it and that he – being a friend – was doing me a favour. Well, maybe I wasn’t thinking that as I lay there after he had left, the sheet wet, my heart pounding. Maybe I hadn’t reasoned it out much at all, that night or the next morning. But some part of me didn’t like him anymore.

And I knew that something was definitely wrong. Because, otherwise I’d have been bursting to get to the handball alley and tell them all about the porter’s hand. I knew something was wrong but the idea of reporting it never even entered my mind. For two reasons I’d say. Number one, to report on anybody – let alone an adult – was not the done thing. Number two: how could something be wrong which I enjoyed? Because if it was wrong then I was wrong. If there was guilt then I would have to share in it. If there was punishment . . .

Six weeks later I was back in the hospital getting the plaster off. This man engineered – I’m sure – the situation where we were alone in a room together. He tried to move on me, but whether it was shame, courage, fear, cowardice, confusion, or a mixture of all and sundry, I managed to push past him and leave the room. I went straight to the toilets though, and there I had a masturbation experience for the second time in my life. Do you know what the strange thing was? The strange thing was was that there was a thought going round in my head and it was that the porter would know where I had gone and would follow me and would . . .

I’m obviously evaluating this with hindsight and I’m thinking that what was happening within my head was that I was somehow connecting sexual pleasure with this man. I had connected my sexuality with this man. He had weaselled his way into my mind. He had created a friendship and then carefully exploited it. He had set a trap for me and then knowing that I couldn’t or wouldn’t leave it, had asked me if I wanted to leave. If the experience with him had been one of pain, then I believe that it would have been so much easier to deal with. However, it was emotional and physical exploitation, mixed with the natural and spontaneous sexual pleasure that all of us have. He was a master pervert and I was easy picking; a sexually uneducated country boy who had no understanding of his psychological tricks and schemes.

I don’t really know what impact the experiences with this man have had on my life. I’m not sure that they were that significant because they only happened twice. However, had it been daily, for a year or years, then I could imagine how the paedophile’s worm would have wound its way deep into my psyche. But I can’t really say what impact it had on me. Because in classic Irish fashion I buried its memory away, never talking about it to anybody until very recently, and then only briefly.

I was worried for years, though, that I might be homosexual. I’m not sure if I felt betrayed, tricked and used. I certainly do feel that now. I feel that this man had it all planned. He knew the psychological games to play. He knew how to exploit innocence and ignorance and he was expert at it. Rural Ireland must have been nirvana for this man and his like, full, as it was, with young boys with no sense.

How many people are there in Ireland today who have been abused by such men (and in rarer cases, women)? How many are there who had just one or two encounters? For how many was it a regular occurrence? And why weren’t we educated and given some way of being able to deal with such attacks on our bodily integrity? I was just a naive, innocent young lad. I should not have been left as easy fodder for a pervert. I should have been taught.

There is something strange and even dis-turbing underlying the Catholic Church’s role in all this. Because, for starters, the Church regards itself as the primary teacher of Irish society. It educates us for the spiritual world at Sunday mass, and it is a fundamental part of our education for the material world by its control of so many of our educational establishments.

We were all brought up to believe that the Church was the great teacher, and that if we followed such teachings, we’d be alright. The Pope is infallible, we are told. He is God’s representative on earth. Yes, the Church has power and wisdom.

Not universal wisdom it would seem though, if we are to judge by its representatives over the last two weeks talking about paedophilia. Something of a blind spot there. Yes, somehow when it came to the abuse of children by paedophiles, the Church had suddenly become ignorant. Now, I have heard the Church called a few things in my day, but to hear its bishops call themselves ignorant in relation to sexual morality is one hell of a surprise.

Actually, it’s not. Nothing much surprises me about the Catholic Church. What did surprise me was that more people are not surprised that the Church should be going around calling itself ignorant. Because this is an extraordinary occurrence. I mean, for this all-knowing, direct-route-to-God-institution to call itself ignorant is some event. But then maybe God isn’t that well up on child abuse. Maybe he needs to take a few extra-mural courses, him having not been around much when Jesus was growing up, and all that.

I would like to ask the question: Why has the Church been so ignorant in the past in relation to the abuse of children? This is an organisation whose very self-ordained role in society is to educate, lead and guide. So why has it had a blind spot about child sexual abuse? Isn’t the Church at the forefront of protecting the rights of the unborn child? Then why has it paid so little attention to the rights of born children?

I’ll be crude and I’ll be cynical here and I’ll say that the Church cares little for born or unborn children. That it protects the life of the unborn for the same reason a farmer would protect a pregnant cow; for the future profit potential of that church-going, alms-paying animal. That a fundamental objective of Church doctrine had been to keep people ignorant of things that might empower or liberate them, so that they can remain good sheep to be easily led. That, in fact, it does not care. That quite possibly it has accepted paedophilia as a necessary ‘evil’ of the celibate life.

If the Church has had no interest in protecting the rights of children, then why hasn’t the State and its system of law seen to it? Because, as always, the first to get the protection of The Law are those best able to demand it; those who have power. It is a lie and a myth to think that laws were made to protect the weak. Laws were made to protect the strong and the property of the strong. You will notice that in the Ten Commandments, for example, that there is one which tells you not to touch your neighbours’ property. Funny how the Holy Church managed to be so well educated and enlightened on property rights. Funny how there wasn’t a commandment which stated that thou shall not molest your own or your neighbours’ children.

Children are not just physically weak; they are politically weak. They have no voice. They are dependent on others to speak for them and there is no more certain way to ensure that your rights are minimised within any law structure than to be dependent on others to uphold these rights. Particularly when many of those supposed to uphold your rights belong to the very section of society who are most likely to abuse your rights in the first place.

Disease is no longer a child’s worst enemy – in the Western World anyway – the adult male is. And the adult male protects its own. Because, give me a break, do you honestly expect me to believe that the Catholic Church was genuinely ignorant of the abuse of children? That it didn’t know the effect such abuse had on children? That in 1994 this knowledge has been suddenly bestowed on it like some sort of revelation? That if the same sort of abuse was being meted out to its own priests, it would have not acted to protect them? It was not a blind spot in Church teaching but rather a blind eye which was turned to paedophile priests and men.

A blind eye that winked while its head was nodding at offending priests, advising them when things got too hot, to pack their bags and head for another parish with their paedophile routine. The victim of the abuse mattered little, and would still matter little in Ireland – as anywhere else – were it not for the fact that over the last number of years the Church worldwide has been hit by an ever-increasing number of lawsuits. To get action from the Church – or from any other institution, for that matter – involves hitting it where it really hurts; in the pocket. That is why, of course, the Catholic Church in Ireland has been busy over the last four/five years getting its own experts and civil lawyers together so as to minimise any losses due to court actions for compensation by abused children. (Far busier than in setting up counselling services for abused children.)

At this point, I feel I need to say that I spent five years as a boarder in St. Mel’s College, Longford. It was run by priests, and in those five years I was never once sexually abused, and very rarely physically mistreated by a priest either. There were a few priests who I disliked but by and large I regarded them – and still do – as good and decent people.

I saw one of these priests recently. It was like he had become a moving statue; his body a tribute to sexual repression. It was sad to see. Why? Because the Catholic Church is bent on the pursuit of pure power. It sees sexuality as a weakness, as something which takes its concentration away from managing and expanding its vast empire. It may have good and decent members who do good and decent things, but these good and decent things can never overcome the fundamental perversity of Roman Catholicism. It is unnatural to deny your sexuality. It is perverse. It is also perverse to have a organisation which is entirely controlled by men, particularly when that organisation seeks to talk for all humanity. The Roman Catholic Church was born out of a male obsession with power. Much of the rape and child abuse which happens in society is merely another expression of this obsession.

Everything has its price. Priests have gained power and unquestioned respect. They live well; a nice house and a change of car every few years. And they pay by having their bodies turned into stone. If they can’t do that, they fish in their parish for young boys, girls and married women.

They have made us pay too, turning sexuality into something dirty, a crime. Strange then, that they who were so severe about the sexual activities of their flock, should be so lax when their priests turned paedophile. Strange that this Church of Jesus should have so little concern for hurt, confused and frightened children. Suffer little children.

Suffer little children no more. I have two sons and I will make damn sure that they will receive a proper sexual education. I will make sure that they have a strong and confident sense of their bodily integrity. That they will know why to say ‘No.’ That they will know when to say ‘No.’ That they will know how to say ‘No,’ and how to explain and report what a paedophile might have attempted to do to them.

We were all children once. Many of us were abused. Let us learn from that abuse and – at minimum – make sure that our children will never have to face the face of a paedophile in ignorance.