Smoking and Guns

I've recently found that with EMDR therapy it's possible for the first time in ... well, ever really, to begin dealing effectively with some of the trauma caused by _.  It costs money I don't have to spare so I've had to stop but I've heard today that it may be possible to find funding so will see if I can continue.

I was very skeptical at first, not least because I have learnt to be suspicious of everyone and everything for some reason I can now actually put my finger on. However I managed to overcome my suspicions using logic.  EMDR, based on eye movement, seemed to make sense to me. Being awake and moving the eyes whilst dealing with your trauma, might do the trick if that's what happens during sleep (allegedly).  How l envy those who reach proper amounts of REM sleep to process stuff!   Anyway, bingo! After all the re-traumatising talking counselling and the therapist who started crying when I told her my story (in fairness, it must be gruelling listening to constant tales of woe), I felt I was getting somewhere. 

I began to have memories come back. Mental pictures of random things I hadn't thought about in 50 years!  Those heavy medicine balls we had in the gym and the relay games we did with them for PE, even as I type this, I recall standing in a circle passing the stupid thing to each other.  Then I got a picture of some white blobs.  What was this now?  Oh, they're not blobs... they're... white... sticks? ....no, cigarettes?  Yes! White cigarettes! Hang on... they're those menthol ones I started smoking... what were they called?.... Oh yeah! Consulate! ... in a green and white packet! Like the JML ad: "but wait... there's more!"  Oh blimey, and there was More too- those extra long cigarettes that came out- just remembered those now).

Yeah, know exactly how you feel!

But why the hell was I smoking? I was an athlete,  picked to represent St Joseph's (until I decided they weren't to gain any glory from my abilities thanks very much) so why would I smoke? But I did start smoking. I absolutely hated it. Why did I start then?.... 

Ohhhh yeahhhh!  Because it was an act of rebellion against a certain teacher (_) with an absolutely obsessive desire to catch someone smoking in the toilets  (presumably for the thrill of carrying out the punishment).  Of course, smoking menthol fags was the way not be smelt out in our childish reasoning back then!

But yes, this guy was obsessed with domineering, controlling behaviour.  There was one occasion when a friend and I were over on the rifle range one lunch break (yeah there was a rifle range, a popular place to go smoking I believe. Has anyone dug there for bodies yet?) We were happily minding our own business digging air pellets out of the tree bark (boys collected random stuff back then - petrol station coins, football stickers, stamps, dust... bits of lead...) when who should drive across the sports field towards us but Mr How-can-I -terrify-you -best?.

He leapt out of the car fully confrontational and accused us of smoking which, to two non-smokers clearly attending to the needs of a tree and not skulking behind it and with nope, no fags in our pockets, seemed a little bizarre to say the least. 

"You were smoking! If I catch you smoking... threat, threat, threat ..."  

Seriously? 

There seemed to be a collective insanity among most of the staff at this so-called 'educational establishment' that almost daily made one appreciate all the more the 'normal madness' of family and home at evenings and weekends for those of us 'lucky' enough to have been day boys. 

That home/family 'normal' was pretty short lived once this same teacher had wormed his way into my parents' social circle. 

It wasn't until I was at college aged 18 where someone said 'Why do you smoke?' and I couldn't answer, that I managed to stop instantly. It was almost as though I'd been given permission to lay that one down. You don't have to do that any more. He's not here.

So, what do we conclude from today's lesson boys?  

There is no smoke if there's no fire, sir.  

Correct, and I can testify now the smoke and smog is finally starting to clear, there was more than one loose cannon / smoking gun at St Joseph's.

Processing .....|||||||||||67% there.....

It's important not to live on 'what ifs' but going to St Joseph's could and should have been a much more positive experience. 

Having deliberately flunked exams to escape St Joes as soon as possible, in my early 40's I decided I really ought to get some qualifications because I knew I wasn't "stupid" as _ had liked to highlight at every opportunity in front of the class.  I now recognise that was all part of his coercive controlling behaviour, to make sure I was as afraid of him as possible and thereby minimise the risk of my speaking to my parents about what he'd done.  There was just no escaping the guy. He went to our church. He lived near me. "Befriending' my parents was also a classic abuser tactic and as my academic career evaporated before their eyes, I'm pretty certain they sought his advice on what to do with me. Such a nice man in their eyes, I'm certain.

Anyway, I like to try and count my blessings and had it not been for _,  I wouldn't have taken such a rocky road. The thing about rocky roads is that on them, you encounter rocks.  My wife is one such and I'm very blessed and thankful that she's had the patience to help me unpack some of this stuff.  (She's as much a victim of the abuse I encountered by the way. She shouldn't be having to put up with all the rubbish that occasionally comes to the surface.)

Regarding education, it came as no surprise to me that I was able to sail through an Access course (A-levels) and get to university as a mature student.  However, getting into campus for a 9 a.m. lecture where the lecturer would swan in late and talk about who wasn't there last week began to grate a bit and I decided I'd bail out because I'd sold my first bit of writing. I didn't need a degree for that.  

The arts was something I would have relished had it existed at Birkfield (St. Joseph's) but as I recall, our career choices were rather imaginatively, the army, Navy, RAF or banking.  I remember many a boarder skulking at the back of class drawing military hardware in their jotters and realising that these poor kids had issues of their own too. 

Anyway, life handing out lemons has always been my cue to attempt making some drinkable wine. It's a difficult thing to do and takes time and miracles but as the weird Brother Ives once said, 'Remember that God can turn any evil situation to his own advantage'.  That was one of only two interesting things that caught my attention at that school.  

As I write, there appears to be a gradual process emerging of former pupils coming forward as De La Salle continue to stay silent and attempt, it seems, to remain unaccountable for the sins of their past. You can't have it both ways guys. God either favours the poor (that includes us survivors FYI) as you teach, or He favours the abuser.  It seems to me that DLS would do well to come clean now, rather than get taken to the cleaners later.  Abuse survivors are highly trained experts in doing things the unnecessarily hard way though so, y'know, your call DLS/St Joes. 

I know there's a lot still to come out for many of us and I know all too well it's deeply unsettling to realise the past wasn't anywhere near as rosy as we like to paint it. Apologies if I have triggered anyone. 

Once again, if any other former (or current!) St Joesph's pupils need to tell their story to someone in confidence re ANY type of abuse experienced there, either this blogger or the police are here for you. It takes an enormous amount of courage but you'll find you're not alone. 

Take care.

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. 

St Joseph's Survivors - still here.

Hats off to Pat Mills who tells it like it is in this blog and podcast.

https://patmills.wordpress.com/2021/04/10/voices-of-awareness-podcast/

I notice another former teacher/abuser died recently and wonder if his family realise yet. My guess is not. 

I'll say it again.  St Joseph's College, Birkfield, Ipswich needs to acknowledge it has a history of child abuse perpetrated by members of staff there.  But not any more, right?  

❓

 

Bye Bye Birkfield.

My last day at St. Joseph's might identify me but I'm beyond caring.  

I had been caught skiving in the o-level year with a friend (for skiving read : avoiding seeing __) at Ipswich railway station so was summoned to Brother Peter, who by this stage had forfeited any respect I'd reluctantly afforded him.  He'd come into class previously saying that if we didn't work hard for our o-levels, we wouldn't be staying on to sixth form, which of course I grasped as my opportunity to not be there a minute longer than was necessary.  He did his usual low-toned, murderous threat act saying he wanted a three page explanation as to why I had bunked off, on his desk, by nine a.m. the next day, or else.

I, of course, relished the opportunity to compose a narrative so compelling in its rationale that my classmates could be left in no doubt as to who was the oppressor and who the victim.  I duly handed in my masterpiece and returned to my classroom to begin the day's lessons. During register, I was summoned back to Brother Peter's classroom by a worried-looking pupil of his.  I walked into a hushed room .

I can't recall his exact words but it would have been something along the lines of, "So gentlemen, here is our Clever Dick Sluggard. And this, gentlemen is what he has to say about his conduct..."  He thrust it to me. "Read it!"

I began.

"Louder! So they can all hear you Jonny!"

I got to about half way through and could see Brother Peter turning a particular shade of dark puce, his rage barely containable.  It was when I got to the sentence , "but it wasn't my fault because..." that he finally flipped and everything sort of went into slow motion!  I knew exactly what was coming. I'd seen it a hundred times. I knew which fist it would be and how the arm would draw back before the swing, and at what height (short).  So I ducked. There was a collective intake of breath and some laughter.

If memory serves me correctly, and I think it does, ducking wasn't allowed in his playbook and he may have even hit the backboard which was just behind me.  At this point I simply walked out to the scream of "Don't you dare duck! Come back here!"  There may have even been applause, I can't say. Certainly in my mind there was. 

I walked down the corridor, out through the doors and into the sunshine and across the grass towards town, taking off my tie and thinking, "why did I not do this years ago?"

Of course, I'd have to come back in the summer to flunk all those o-levels. Well, all except the one I wanted most and the one which was considered least valuable there. Art.  

In my forties I decided I ought to put an education where one should be. I did an Access to Humanities course and according to my tutors, excelled. I began a degree course which confirmed what I always knew; I wasn't "Stupid".  Okay so maybe I never will "never amount to much" but I tell you this:  In spite of childhood physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse by a former lay teacher at St Joseph's College, Birkfield, Ipswich (who, by the way, as a school have still to acknowledge this went on (Feb 2021) and could help us all to heal by doing so) I am more determined than ever to live better than any of the (mostly) miserable gits I had the misfortune to have as my teachers. 

They say you never forget a good teacher. Just one inspiring one would have been helpful!

As previously mentioned,  I have now listed 90 or so first and surnames of my former year group plus a few others from years above and below. Some of them may well be survivors too so if the list of former teachers below looks familiar and you need some help, I'm listening.

Bro Dennis Robert (Squealer)

Bro (Sicker) Terence

Bro (Fluffy) Cuthman

Bro (Jonny) Peter

Bro Benet

Bro Ives

Bro.Richard

Bro. Anthony

Bro Bernard

Mr McGlaughlin

Mr Wilcox

Mr Rae

Mr Hughes

Mr Smith

Mr Hawes

Mr Thuell

Mr Moss

Mr Kearney

Mr Krajewski

Mr Rix

Mr 'Snoddy' Taylor

Mr Sumner

Mr D Bevan

Mr Keenan

and you guessed it, 

__

Labore et Tenacitate - "work and stick to it" 

(I do bro,  I do.)

Blogging this stuff is quite hard sometimes so I have to take time out to do life and focus on the good things.  Also, I believe it's important to spend more time looking forward, not back to abuses of the past in order to live as best you can. If you've come through abuse, don't forget to congratulate yourself and your clever brain for coming up with the most amazing survival strategies.  

In spite of the damage done, in spite of the daily battle just to feel "normal" (and boy, you don't half notice when a day feels something like it should), I'm learning that my self-image or belief  is actually a lot stronger than I'd thought. Which is good.

Recently, life has been challenging with COVID etc but I've quite enjoyed feeling one step ahead of many when it comes to the emotional chaos of having to deal with issues one can normally avoid by keeping busy.  (Tip: We are human beings, not human doings.  Learn to embrace yourself.)

Be that as it may, the struggle continues, most notably in that place where sleep meets waking.  If anyone has any tips on how to manage the morning panic attacks when subconscious hasn't fully transitioned to conscious, let me know.  I do all the breathing/grounding techniques like a pro but am pretty certain (probably blogged this before) my dreams are so incredibly detailed because it keeps my brain fascinated enough to not go to the recall of trauma.  They're pretty exhausting dreams and most mornings I wake feeling as though I've just run a marathon. So thanks for that __. 

I walked past his house recently with a friend who commented it looked more derelict than others in the road. Couldn't quite bring myself to knock on the door as didn't quite trust myself to not keep knocking if it was opened. 😂

Anyway, more snippets of memory still incoming.  I mentioned I'd made a list of my year group peers before. well, another name popped into my head randomly in the wee small hours so that makes 88 now, which must be most of three classes of 30 ish surely.  Names of some older guys and some prefects too.  

Anyway, someone let me know when St Joe's gets taken to court.  More than happy to testify.

Pointers

Another pointer to, and one of the main causes of my beginning to wake up to my own past:  my  brother, the family discovered, had been abused at St Joseph's by another teacher who, for the time being shall remain nameless.  But that's his own story to tell, not mine.  Hearing about my brother caused me to ask the question, "Did something happen to me as well then?"  The more I tried to ignore it, the more things I'd never understood about some of my own behaviours began to make sense. 

My sister and I got chatting about St. Joseph's when we found this out about our brother. She knew I'd had issues with __ but then she said something that shook me. She said, "I remember when you started refusing to go to school and missing the bus. That's when __ started giving you lifts into school, to help Mum and Dad out." 

I felt as though I'd been punched in the guts. Oh, my, God. He actually did, I remember it clearly now! I remember leaning away from him as close to the door as I could get. I remember feeling sick. Possibly even having to stop to be sick, and I think he came over all 'caring and concerned for me'. That bit might just be my imagination filling in the blanks but I would put money on it being a case of him playing the chummy role in private and belittler in the classroom. I can still hear him posing some question to the whole class before saying, "Oh don't ask him (me), he's stupid".   

And guess what; those journeys  with him were never my favourite car rides ever because guess what, he would rarely drive me into school by the most direct and obvious route. It was always the most convoluted route. Out of interest, I took the time to drive both recently. The route he took would always be through some of that lovely, quiet Suffolk countryside. Now why would that have been I wonder, from a "professional" obsessed with punctuality and all things ordered? Oh the power and control.

I've since discovered I've quite a keen interest in some of the subjects he managed to put me off completely.  I know you can't live your life on 'what ifs' but I do catch myself wondering how much easier growing up and just living well every day might have been were it not for this teacher.  I think I can count on one hand the times I've woken refreshed by sleep since puberty. Normally I wake feeling as though I've just run a marathon. I suspect I've always had incredibly vivid dreams just to keep my mind distracted enough from remembering the truth in what sleep there has been. I remember what it used to feel like to sleep well and for decades I've rationalised the disturbances as being normal hormonal changes sparked by puberty. Now I begin to think that it was around the age of 12 or 13 that sleeplessness began for another, much darker reason. 

Was it the case that this guy who watched and chivvied us all in the communal showers was busy forming a plan and selecting his easiest target? Again, I'd put money on it. I think there was a network of teachers like him too, given accounts from other former pupils, and I know there are more stories to come out. 

A couple of years ago I looked at the St Joseph's governors list and noticed a former classmate among them so I've not been too encouraged to contact them directly about abuse as it's a bit re-traumatising.  Frankly they should be dealing with their ugly history before being asked to. I was speaking to one former pupil, a few years older than myself recently.  He told me, "they're terrified there's something in the pipeline". Well there is. It's deeply unpleasant and it's coming out now. But you know what, it needs to, and denial is not an option any more. We're not going away and our blogging is here as our legacy if you're waiting for us all to die off. Personally, I have zero interest in tarnishing any reputations or revenge, but the more silent any organisation stays on a problematic past , the more complicit they appear to me.  Acknowledging your failings  and learning from them is not weakness, it's strength. And if you're not teaching that to your kids they're still being ripped off. 

You never forget a good teacher, they say. Yeah well, just one might have been helpful.