Think that my determination not to endlessly reproach myself might be working at last.

Woke up this morning and the first thing that happened was I did not start reproaching myself, which was really amazing.

Richie got me some THC as he heard me moan as I woke and he also could see and hear my legs kicking around because of the spasms.

The THC made the spasms weaker and then less frequent, but they did not stop altogether, one pulled me down the bed.

Could see my feet touching the end of the bed, at that moment my arms locked solid and I decided that it was best to do my arm exercises.

This as always loosened up the muscles in my arms and I could lie here quite peacefully even managed to weave all the sounds from the street into my dozing dreams.

Typically just when the street went quiet and I was drifting off to sleep again Richie got up and I realised that was the end of sleeping.

Shame if only my arms and leg had not been so active I might have drifted off after inhaling the THC.

Still great Richie got up when he did as he massaged my legs and did extra leg exercises to ease the tension.

It was very noticeable that there was considerable tension in my legs this morning that is something that happens regularly.

Very changeable weather again today, very much the sort of weather you would associate with April and not middle of July.

All the seasons seem to be mixed up now, guess that is global warming and that is the price we are paying for the rampant consumerism which is I guess needed in order to keep the economy ticking over.
Was listening to the BBC World service this morning about the situation in Burma, how the dictators would not let Mr Moon from the UN visit Aung San Suu Kyi who has now been twenty years under house arrest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi
Richie then switched over to Radio 5 and we heard about a Libyan man who was one of the many anti Gaddafi groups who were invited to base themselves in Britain in the 1970’s.
Then they were given offices and all the facilities they needed to run their propaganda campaign against the Gaddafi regime.
This intensified after the police woman Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead during a siege of the Libyan Embassy in the 1984.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Fletcher
Then Britain were anti Gaddafi, this changed once they needed Muammar al-Gaddafi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_al-Gaddafi
Who was seen as the Muslim leader who was not aligned with El Qaida and therefore the West needed his contacts to mobilise against Bin Laden and El Qaida.
Seems various people have been under house arrest since 2005 when Gaddafi became a friend and as Richie put it at that moment the Libyan State and Libyan rule of law was being applied through British courts.
Jack Straw, the Home Secretary is in fact acting for Gaddafi in keeping the man we heard about on house arrest.
He has not been told what the charges are against him just that it is secret, so he was asked to plead guilty to something he and his lawyer do not know what the charges are.
A strange affair and all because they wanted to get closer to the dictator Gaddafi.
Truly amazing.
On a more micro view of the world I really enjoyed having another look at my childhood with Richie; his comments are very useful and have given me another piece of the puzzle.
Think that I have finally worked out why we had to leave Trinidad when we did.

In April 1962 Independence from England was imminent and I guess my parents panicked and decided to move to England really quickly.

Shame they did not try U.S.A of Canada or even Australia, although do not think they would have taken my dad as he was too dark skinned.

Also finally worked out after talking with Richie, that my parents were very hurt individuals, my dad lost his mother when he was young and so his father and two sisters, the aunts raised the children.

His father seemed to only be around to discipline the boys and dish out castor oil and cod liver oil and other heavy laxatives at the start of the long holidays to purge them and then again at the end of the holidays.

For the most part he would be travelling around dispensing justice as a District Magistrate and the children were in the care of the aunts.

During the war there was always the prospect for my father of being called up to go and fight in Europe.

For a pacifist a horrendous prospect indeed.

Also for a father of a young child it was a huge relief when peace was declared in 1945 just as his second daughter was born.

By 1949 my father’s first wife met another man and divorced my father.

This was frowned on by the Catholic Church who excommunicated my father, in such a small island not a good state of affairs.

My mother was born in Germany in 1925 and lived through the war years at home
in Eschweiler, the First World War had killed quite a few relatives and in the Second World War my mother’s mother was killed by the one of the last air raids before peace was declared.

The trauma of the WW 2 plus personal traumas meant that both my parents were very hurt when they met in post war London in 1950.

Both were free of their home environment, they met and had fell in love and next thing my mother was pregnant.

They returned to Trinidad still two hurt individuals with not much in common and the prospect of a child.

After some time the hostility from the church, which had increased because my parents had married in a registry office, made them decide in 1962 to get out to England.

So finally the mystery is solved for me of why we had to leave Trinidad.

I can leave it all in the past and concentrate on the present which is sunny weather toward s the end of the afternoon and the prospect of a pleasant evening.

"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."

Baudelaire




Been thinking about my childhood in Trinidad and been wondering where my distrust and dislike of the church comes from.

They, my dad’s family were quite a crew; dad had 3 sisters living, Auntie Evelyn, Auntie Verna, and Auntie Josephine my favourite Aunt and my dad’s favourite sister and 6 brothers of which I only met two Edgar and Hugh.

The other brothers had long left Trinidad and had lost touch with the family; three were believed to be in America and 1 in South America.

Auntie Evelyn had 3 kids and Auntie Verna also 3 and Auntie Jo had 8 living kids, she had 4 girls Maureen, Doreen, Aileen and Coleen and 4 boys Angus, Mark, Desmond and Vincent.

After early mass we would quite often drive over to St. Fernando where Auntie Jo and Uncle Keith lived for Sunday lunch and lime with the whole family.

Church was as usual abit strange as the priest seemed to always greet my father in a slightly odd manner never looking at him directly.

He was always by the door greeting everyone as they walked in and I observed that it was only my father that he greeted without looking him in the face.

The same priest was very cold to me after I asked him questions in catechism classes, first he invited all us kids to ask anything we liked and when I did he got very frosty.

Very strange, as a kid I did not understand that at all, why I couldn’t ask questions when first it was encouraged.

After all I was only asking why things were not fairly distributed and why we as good Catholics did not seem moved by the poverty and injustices around us.

Surely it was written in the teachings of the church that you helped each other so why was that not happening why were so many others suffering.

I really believed what I had read about caring and sharing, surely as good Catholics we should be doing something, with hindsight realise now this was all too much for the poor priest.

So he resorted to ignoring me or he would ridicule everything I said and would treat me rather unkindly.

On top of this my poor dad seemed to be being treated strangely and when I asked him he would not talk about it.

One time the Bishop was there to do the First Communion and he called my father to him after the ceremony and spoke to him on his own.

My father never mentioned what the Bishop said and we knew, my mother and I, better than to ask if he said nothing.

Not talking was what my parents were experts at; well not talking about the things that mattered like the stresses each of us experienced settling into life in England.

I was only when I was fifteen that I found out why the priest in Trinidad had been strange to my dad.

One day my dad called me to him, my mum was in Germany visiting her family, and dad seemed desperate to talk.

It took him ages to tell me what was on his mind, first he alarmed me as he was muttering that what he had done was a dreadful sin.

And just w hen I thought here it comes I am adopted he said ‘’ that he hoped I would be able to forgive him some day’’

Was really alarmed thought that I was about to hear something really bad and instead heard that he had been married before he met my mum.

He told me that he had 2 girls from his first marriage and one of them, the older Yvette, would be visiting us the next day.

I was amazed, more so that he had thought it was a sin, but of course did not realise he was only repeating the official church line.

Divorce was seen as a huge sin by the church and marrying again the worse thing you could do and my dad had done both.

It is only now years later that I understand the situation for my parents.

Dad was excommunicated and although they would not physically stop him from being in church he could not receive communion.

The time the Bishop spoke to my dad, he told him that he was surprised that seeing as he was such an embarrassment that he was still living in Trinidad.

The Bishops advice was do everyone a favour and leave the Islands, which is what we did do in 1962 when we moved to England.

I had huge question marks about the church and its teachings and did not believe what they said.

It seemed hypocrisy to me and hearing my dad’s story convinced me that my gut instincts had been correct.

Once I left home I never went to church and decided that I did not need any big daddy figures telling me what to do.

I did not like the hypocrisy that I had seen and felt that I could and would take control of my own life.

I would make my own decisions based on principles of justice and equality and human compassion and not based on any superstition and prejudice.

I would take full responsibility for my life and my actions, which I have done, have also never insulted or abused anyone for their beliefs.

As far as I am concerned everyone is free to believe what they want as long as they do not force me to join them.

I like to treat everyone with the respect that they deserve as human beings, and believe that everyday we should carry out random acts of kindness on the principle that what goes round comes round.

We human beings need each other to survive.

Official Report of Child Abuse.

Abuse of children was 'endemic'

Report identifies more than 800 cases of abuse in institutions run by Irish Catholic Church
By David McKittrick in Dublin
The Independent
Thursday, 21 May 2009


Kevin Flannigan of the Survivors of Child Abuse group, protests at not being allowed into the launch of the report.

An official report into abuse – physical, sexual and emotional – in Catholic schools in Ireland produced a harrowing picture yesterday of ill-treatment which it described as endemic.

The long-awaited report, nine years in the making, blamed church leaders for doing nothing during decades of abuse but also blamed the inactivity of the Irish education ministry which it said was aware that brutality was common but had failed to act on it.

The government-appointed commission's inquiry covered industrial schools, workhouses and orphanages run by the church from the 1930s to the 1990s.

It found "a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence".

"Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions," the report said.

Sexual abuse has been revealed in numerous cases over the past decade and many priests and religious brothers have been imprisoned but the scale of the problem was yesterday regarded as freshly shocking.

At almost 3,000 pages, the report represents a monumental judgement on what has been exposed as a monumental problem.

About 30,000 children were taken into the care of church-run institutions between the 1930s and 1990s, often for minor acts of truancy, petty theft or for being unmarried mothers.

The inquiry identified more than 800 individuals as having suffered physical or sexual abuse in more than 200 mostly residential institutions.

Physical abuse was found to be commonplace in boys' schools, with "prolonged excessive beatings with implements intended to cause maximum pain occurring with the knowledge of staff management."

Sexual abuse was less common, taking place in secret rather than openly. Those who complained were often punished while the perpetrators were allowed to continue their activities, sometimes at a different school.

The report concluded that corporal punishment in schools for girls was "pervasive, severe, arbitrary and unpredictable, leading to a climate of fear amongst the children."

Sexual abuse of girls was not systemic, though it did occur, often when they were sent to host families for weekends, work or holiday placements.

But girls in some institutions "were humiliated and belittled routinely and treated with contempt by some staff members. Corporal punishment was often administered in a way calculated to increase anguish and humiliation for girls."

Overall, the report will deal another crushing blow to the image and authority of the Irish Catholic Church, which over the years has taken a battering as a stream of revelations has detailed abuse by priests and others.

Earlier this year, an Irish bishop stepped down from his post after allegations surfaced that he had not adhered to church promises to do everything possible to co-operate with the authorities in abuse cases.

One of the church's original lines of defence, that only a comparatively the small number of "bad apples" was involved, has been swept aside by the report.

So too has the argument that the church itself was largely in ignorance of this misbehaviour by its servants.

The commission uncovered a file held in Rome that referred to an industrial school in County Cork. Covering a 30-year period, it contained 68 documents detailing that seven known sexual abusers had worked at the school.

The commission presented a grim picture of everyday life in some institutions.

Witnesses described "pervasive abuse as part of their daily lives," the report said.
"In addition to being hit and beaten, witnesses described other forms of abuse such as being flogged, kicked and otherwise physically assaulted, scalded, burned and held under water.

There were many reports of injuries, including broken bones."

Much of the report concentrates on schools run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, which was the largest provider of residential care for boys and the institution most associated with rough treatment of pupils.

Disturbingly, the report found that children with special needs, learning disabilities or physical and sensory impairments, as well as children who had no known family contact, were especially vulnerable.

It said: "They described being powerless against adults who abused them.

Impaired mobility and communication deficits made it impossible to inform others of their abuse or to resist it.

Children who were unable to hear, see, speak, move or adequately express themselves were at a complete disadvantage."

Witnesses said their adult lives had been blighted by memories of fear and abuse; about half had been counselled.

"Witnesses described lives marked by poverty, social isolation, alcoholism, mental illness, sleep disturbance, aggressive behaviour and self harm.

"Approximately 30 per cent of them described a constellation of mental health concerns such as suicidal behaviour, depression, alcohol and substance abuse and eating disorders, which required treatment including psychiatric admission, medication and counselling."

Colm O'Gorman, who was abused by a priest for more than two years and has led the victims' campaign for justice, said the report was "no surprise" yet "horribly, horribly shocking".

"There were church leaders more concerned about the cover up of these crimes than about the welfare of children and that extended all the way to the Vatican," he said.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland's four million Catholics, acknowledged that "great wrong and hurt were caused to some of the most vulnerable children in our society".

The report had documented "a shameful catalogue of cruelty: neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse".

He said: "I am profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that children suffered in such awful ways in these institutions."

Taoiseach Brian Cowen said that everyone in society had to be "vigilant to what is going on in our communities and have the courage to intervene when the welfare of a child is put at risk."

Catalogue of shame: 'Floggings were inflicted for minor transgressions'

The following excerpts from the report highlight the conditions in two notorious institutions.

The activities of one Christian Brother are also detailed
Christian Brothers' school, Letterfrack, County Galway:

"The school was founded in 1885 and was situated in a remote hillside location in Connemara... It was an inhospitable, bleak, isolated institution... Physical punishment was severe, excessive and pervasive and by being administered in public or within earshot of other children it was used as a means of engendering fear and ensuring control. Sexual abuse was a chronic problem."

Daingean Reformatory, Co Offaly:

"The physical abuse of boys in Daingean was extreme. Floggings which were ritualised beatings should not have been tolerated in any institution and they were inflicted even for minor transgressions. Children who passed through Daingean were brutalised by the experience and some were damaged by it.

"Apart from a cruel regime of punishment, Daingean was an anarchic institution. It was run by gangs of boys who imposed their rules on the others and the supervision by the religious Brothers and Priests was minimal and ineffectual."

John Bander: Taught children in the primary and secondary school sector in Ireland for 40 years.

He was eventually convicted of sexual abuse in the 1980s.

He began his career as a Christian Brother and after three separate incidents of sexual abuse of boys, he was granted dispensation from his vows.

The report] goes on to describe this man's progress through six different schools where he physically terrorised and sexually abused children in his classroom.

At various times during his career, parents attempted to challenge his behaviour but he was persistently protected... moved from school to school.

Fall of the Irish Catholic Church

3 The number of priests who were ordained in Dublin, Ireland's largest Catholic diocese, in 2008.
100 The number of priests who were ordained in Dublin in 1986.
56 The percentage of Irish Catholics who attend church once a week. In 1986, the percentage was 63.