Lifelong Learning

Another penny has finally dropped this week.  When I was twelve or thirteen, knowing me as I do, I would have told myself I wasn't allowed to remember the trauma of St Joseph's until I was really, really old. Well here I am and surprise, surprise, the teacher abuse is all coming back into focus.

I may or may not have already have mentioned an incident in my teenage years when, being from a Catholic family where the mysteries of sex were kept undisclosed for as long as possible, I decided the only way to find anything out was to steal a book.  As stealing was so obviously a sin, I had to keep the evidence hidden in my padlocked box of 'secrets'.  At some stage, my dad must have realised something wasn't quite right at school and decided to break into that box and confront me with my copy of the A-Z of sex.  Uh-oh, I thought, I'm in trouble for stealing again (My mum had once frogmarched me back to the newsagents to apologise for stealing a Beano annual). But no, this time it was, "Why have you got this? I mean look at all this nonsense (line drawings telling me things you haven't, Dad) And this! (flips to back three pages on homosexuality) You know this is all rubbish, dear boy, rubbish!" 

I hadn't even read that far!

He proceeded to give me a lecture on all the misinformation there was in the world concerning sex (which is arguably better than zero information) and I got the distinct impression he was worried about me being gay. I have always wondered why he immediately went to the back pages to confront me.  How could you even think such a thing Dad?! Then he made me burn the book, my extremely hard-earned effort, in the Aga. Yes, we were that posh. 

Well now it occurs to me in a flash of light that he thought that I may be gay because he was told to think that by a certain teacher. The same teacher who had recently palled up with him by buying his old car and had, to my great distress, promoted himself to first name terms.  Naturally, my Dad would have been concerned about his son's declining school career so who better to ask what might be going on at school than one of his teachers?  

I would bet my house on my trusting father being told by this coercive controlling teacher that I was probably struggling with my sexuality. Poor old dad, always believing the best of people, would have easily bought this line and worst of all, not wanted to see what was really going on.  This manipulative teacher was clearly covering all bases so that if he did get caught interfering with me, in his defence he could then say my own father had had doubts about my sexual orientation.  My God, if my dad could've known the struggles I've had to avert my eyes when women are around, I think he might realise he was duped. 

So well done little me for storing all the information I thought was forever blanked out.  The bigger picture is coming into focus at last. I'm writing this simply to log it but boy, am I ever still learning how these creeps operate.

St Joseph's College Ipswich, I and several others are part of your dark past. Please do yourselves and all us former pupils a massive favour and acknowledge publicly there are casualties of your de La Salle era.