ST JOSEPH’S COLLEGE IPSWICH – Invitation for Old Boys

There’s an invitation below where someone at St Joseph’s – presumably in authority –  wants we Old Boys to join the Old Birkfeldians. (Well, probably not me!)

The current school seems to want to bathe in golden, nostalgic memories of the past but, as you will see, it is quite dismissive of the bad stuff. To put it mildly.

The invite makes it clear we survivors are just unfortunate collateral damage.  But the majority of boys were relatively unscathed, it says. So that’s all right then, eh?

I also did a double-take at the reference to Joeys. I always thought that was a name for a budgie, but my wife Lisa tells me it is also a name for a young kangaroo.

And now, it seems, for those of us who went to St Joseph’s College, Ipswich.

It’s not even particularly accurate. Serious crimes were not limited to the middle of last century as the writer suggests, they continued right through to the early 1990s. IIRC  a lay teacher in the early 90s took his life rather than face court for abusing children at St J’s.

If you feel the content of this invitation is misguided, you might want to write and tell them so, but don’t expect them to agree.

You see, they only want to hear from Happy Joeys. Not Angry Joeys. Classic censorship and avoidance of the truth. Catholics never change.

So they’ll just ignore any complaints and hope (and probably pray) we Angry Joeys will all be silent and just go away.

It will need an awful lot of prayers, I’m afraid.

I’m hugely indebted to my old classmate John O’Neill for bringing the invitation to my attention.

This is the letter John received.

“Afternoon John. Your name came up when chatting to XXX. They became very nostalgic and talked about lots of boys who were the movers and shakers of St Joseph’s College back in the 1960s. I am sorry to see that very few of them have kept in touch with the school or are even registered as Old Birkfeldians.

In St Jo’s,we are concentrating on building up our alumni database. This is pretty basic –  I am aware of another institution that has over 5000 active alumni. Here we have a few hundred, but it’s a start! The school has been rather remiss in letting go of its old girls and boys, more by carelessness than anything else, and the big change of ownership in the 1990s exacerbated that. The new GDPR guidelines didn’t help either.

There has also been a great concern that boys may have had a very bad time here. Although without doubt there were abuses – find me a school of the middle of the last century where they didn’t occur, the majority of students came through relatively unscathed. We have indeed found that the majority of former students remember their time at St Jo’s very fondly. 

We do hope you look back on your schooldays with pleasure. Would you consider registering as an OB? It is free of course and you would receive OB newsletters and occasional invitations. It’s easily done via the website and if you let us have a postal address we will even send you a badge!

If you are a happy Joey perhaps you might consider writing a piece for a forthcoming newsletter about where your St Joseph’s education took you? That would be terrific”

And this was John’s reply.

“Thanks for your email. Please pass on my best wishes to XXX. Thanks also for the brochures, very professional and very impressive.

It would indeed be progress to be able to see the abuse issue as a mid last century item. Unfortunately until the La Sallians acknowledge what happened, join in a reconciliation and give some value and self-worth back to the boys and their families, many of whose lives were broken – I am not comfortable with taking this any further.”

St Joseph’s College, Ipswich from a Day Boy’s pov PODCAST

I recently did an interview with PIERS CROSS who does the EVOLVING MAN podcast. It has a special focus on boarders.

Many of the Survivors Piers speaks to are boarders and that’s absolutely right. Because they are children held captive at the mercy of adults. Especially so at St Joseph’s College, Ipswich, which attracted a provable unusually high number of pervert paedophiles, mainly amongst the De La Salle Brothers, but also lay teachers.

My interview is from a dayboy’s pov. For years I would wrongly believe that boarders were worse off than me. But boarders, at least, sometimes had witnesses to the crimes of the De La Salles as these perverts roamed the dormitories. Dayboys were also at risk, but it’s so much harder to prove because the crimes were committed without witnesses off the school grounds.

Fortunately, in recent years, the police believed my detailed testimony and one scumbag who was still alive was arrested, but not charged due to his infirmity.

I won’t go into further details that would identify him because I really don’t want to hear any ignorant responses along the lines of, ‘I thought he was a great teacher and a really nice bloke. And he never laid a finger on me. So I know he could never have committed the crimes you allege. I just  know he was innocent.’

Well suck it up, you effing idiot because that’s how all perverts work. And ignorant responses like yours help them to get away with their crimes. And if you think that going after the scumbag at the end of his life is somehow wrong, you should know the police and the judiciary think otherwise and I can assure you it was an excellent catharsis which still puts a smile on my face. I recommend it to other survivors. Justice, revenge, call it what you like, works.

Which just leaves one scumbag lay teacher left to go. He’s dead, so the cops aren’t interested, but I still hope to find some verification so I can ensure the criminal’s reputation, memory and legacy is rightly sullied.

If you think – as so many Catholics do – that ‘You should just get over it. It all happened a long time ago,’ I only wish that were possible. But hardly a month goes by without something triggering a daymare or nightmare about the creep.

Let me share the most recent which happened this week. The St Joseph’s College Ipswich teacher involved seems to have been in some kind of relationship with my widowed mother and – being a typically arrogant Catholic control freak – decided to act in loco parentis where I was concerned. You can imagine how a strict discipline wannabe stepdad went down with a 14 year old teenager! He was rightly suspicious of whatever I was doing and reading in my bedroom. After all, I was secretly reading books that were on the Catholic Index, like Swedenborg – which for Catholics is a really big deal and mortal sin, possibly excommunication, yadda, yadda, yadda.  So he had my bureau (very much the proud symbol of an aspiring writer) brought down to the living room so he could observe what I was doing and what I was reading. And, of course, what I was writing. I was taken aback by how angry that still makes me feel today. I am still furious! Blimey! After all, I didn’t even like the bureau very much – it was a shitty g-plan style from Footmans, which my mother was still paying for on hp (and had fallen behind on the payments) rather than a cool rolltop. Now that would have traumatised me for life. But I guess it symbolised my personal space which he was invading and that’s why it triggers so much anger.  I wish I could remember exactly how it all ended. I’m still piecing various memories and incidents together. But I know I would have made that teacher’s relationship very difficult, as teenagers are adept at, and eventually he effed off out of my life.

My last memory of him was when I was fifteen, kicked out of St J’s because ‘the Church’ (The Knights) had stopped paying my fees. And, with my brother, happily drinking in a pub by the Old Cattle Market and looking forward to going to a gig close-by. (It may have been Murray and the Mints playing)  He came in and had a drink. He had that hunched over, sad look that all male lonely drinkers have. Finally, he drank up and came over. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’ ‘Yes,’ I lied to his ludicrous question, sneering up at him with a look that clearly said, ‘You can’t do anything to me anymore, you shit. So why don’t you just eff off?’ He slunk away into the night. And I had another pint to celebrate.

So that’s a dayboy’s perspective on the esteemed teachers of St Joseph’s College Ipswich. There’s more of the same on the podcast. Here are the links:

Youtube: https://youtu.be/XUCmeTEybgg

Facebook: https://fb.watch/ns-7fhXOqW/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3qwkfX5U4qL02nGDkFECZP?si=a3f2ceda3f634c44

TWO DE LA SALLE SURVIVORS MEET

It was my great pleasure to meet Rafael Viola yesterday in Spain where I live. Rafael has just published a book on his boyhood experiences at the hands of  cruel, paedophile De La Salle brothers and also the most appalling Catholic nuns.

It prompted me to progress the RLSS for an update on the crimes of the DLS.

Thus far the De La Salles are running 8 months over on the date they promised to explain their behaviour and to do something about it

Typical Catholic prevarication when they know they’ve been cornered and finally have to answer for their crimes.

‘Typical’? Look at the Vatican.

Rafael went to St Gilberts DLS school which I’ve written about previously.

DE LA SALLE ABUSE AT ST GILBERT’S

Also, to quote a BBC account, one survivor said he was raped by the headmaster, sexually abused by another brother and by a visiting priest.

“I remember lying in my dormitory, hearing the screams of other boys echoing through the house at night.

“I remember being beaten. I remember blood running down my legs. And then Brother Joseph tried to interfere with me.

“One minute you’d be singing hymns in church and everything and you’d come out and that’s what they’d do to you after church.

“One minute you’re on your knees praying to the Lord and then you’d be doing things the good Lord said you shouldn’t do”.

I thoroughly recommend Rafael’s book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stealing-Lives-Smokescreens-Organised-Criminality/dp/1739422007

Rafael’s experience and those of pupils at my school, St Joseph’s College,Ipswich, are remarkably similar.

Rafael told me he called the brothers ‘flippers’. One moment they’re good and holy teachers. Next moment they flip and are raging psychos and sexual abusers.

Brother James at St Joseph’s College Ipswich and Beulah Hill was a prime example.

Rafael told me he ran away from St Gilbert’s at least ten times.

But those evil De La Salle filth didn’t break him. Bravo, Rafael!

The difference between our schools is that St Joseph’s was (and is) ‘posh’. This means that pupils who were not abused are wrongly defensive of the De La Salle criminals and their dark legacy.

‘Well, it didn’t happen to me, so many of those boys who say they were harmed by the De La Salles must be lying. Or exaggerating. Probably trying to make money. And, anyway, physical abuse was normal. They were different times. It didn’t do me any harm. It made me the shut-down, miserable prat I am today.’

There are other reasons such old boys keep quiet.

‘Having St Joseph’s College, Ipswich, on my cv looks good and it helped me get a good job and an education so I owe the De La Salles. Or I owe my parents for sending me there, so I need to keep my mouth shut. So screw the survivors. I just need to think about me. I come from a good Catholic family. Maybe their family was dysfunctional, so that’s why the De La Salles picked on them. Maybe they had it coming.’

Or they talk about the few good apples in the otherwise rotten barrel.

‘Brother X was such a good and holy man. In the true La Sallian tradition. We need to remember Brother X, not those perverts Brothers James, Solomon and Kevin.’

It’s all lying, self-delusional crap and shame on those who lie to themselves and perpetuate the lies.

And they do. I see many Old Boys comments on this site, trying to make such excuses for pure evil.

But the truth is on this blog, on other sites, and in endless court cases where the De La Salles have reluctantly admitted they were guilty of the most disgusting and heinous crimes.

It bears repeating:

The De La Salles were a criminal organisation of men, many of whom practised systemic sexual abuse on children and who have still not fully acknowledged their crimes. And those De La Salles who didn’t abuse children still knew and looked the other way.

This won’t be over until the De La Salles stop wriggling and prevaricating and finally acknowledge the full extent and the horror of their crimes.

That they were a religious order which had many evil and mentally sick paedophiles in their ranks.

Not to mention the current St Joseph’s showing off about the brilliance of the school’s past, but having nothing to say about the vile crimes of the school’s past.

Such typical Catholic hypocrisy needs more exposing so it cannot happen again.

I’ll do my best.

Anything you know about these criminals, do please tell. It could make all the difference.

AFTER THE RLSS INTERVIEW. INFORMATION UPDATE

Inspired by the interview I did with the RLSS, a Catholic survivors group linked with a diocese have set up a Survivor FORUM as I suggested. It has the potential to be a valuable ‘Mumsnet’- style information source, controlled by survivors. Previously, no such forums existed for RC survivors. Useful contact information tended to appear as long threads in unlikely places like the Crystal Palace football supporters website. One such thread there described in gruesome detail the pervert De La Salle monks of St Joseph’s Beulah Hill and was quite harrowing to read. Notably Brother Solomon and Brother James – two sexual abusers of children we knew well at St Joseph’s Ipswich. But it could easily be missed, not least because it’s a little challenging gaining entry to the site.  

So I feel a Forum is a useful step forward. The one I’ve described is for survivors in a large UK city, but could act as a role model for others. Or maybe it will expand in time.

My energy is currently focussed on the Ipswich Knights of St Columba – who were a paedophile ring and criminal organisation when I was a boy. They had close connections with St Joseph’s Ipswich. In fact they established the school and silenced children alleging abuse by the De La Salles – as I’ve described in a past blogs. Then, mysteriously, they seem to have disappeared from the public face of St Joseph’s Ipswich. Doubtless preferring to do their holy work in secret today. Thanks to the RLSS, I’m making progress there, although I fully expect the current Knights to try and deny the formidable list of their predecessors’ crimes. 

So thus far the RLSS have delivered on what they promised in my interview with them. And with others.

If you haven’t listened to it, it’s a dense, information-heavy hour with surprising reveals that I wasn’t aware of previously. Some of them are very positive. There’s a summary on a past blog.

 I haven’t forgotten the outstanding allegations with the De La Salles which are well overdue for a response – 7 months in fact. But on a scale of ten, my anger towards the DLS is ten. Whereas the Ipswich Knights of St Columba are off the Richter scale – not least because I’m the only one who has gone public with their crimes. And they need exposing. The idea that the Catholic laity were not involved and knew nothing of the crimes of priests and De La Salles is beyond naive, it’s wilful burying heads in the sand.

 I’ve cross-referenced with a number of survivors confirming their crimes, but there’s a reluctance to talk publicly. Maybe it’s the masonic, secretive and powerful nature of these Catholic men who are largely professionals in positions of power: army, lawyers, police, surveyors, teachers etc. 

It’s like survivors seem more afraid of the Knights than they do of priests or the De La Salle brothers. Like so many secret organisations, the rule of omertà is still in force. I find it quite curious that they can have such an impact on survivors. I’m simply indifferent to the threats a survivor related to me.

Welcome readers’ thoughts.

 So it’s important I stay focussed on this order of self-described Catholic ‘holy’ men until I’ve made more progress there.

ST JOSEPH’S COLLEGE IPSWICH 1963-1968. AN OLD BOY REMEMBERS

‘Denying our collective history does not just ignore our past, it weakens our present and cauterizes our future potential’

Bettany Hughes

Dear Pat, I was a boarder at St Joseph’s College, Ipswich from 1963 to 1968. I remember those days fairly well. Some memories are pleasant, like contact and continuing friendship with a great friend from all those years ago, some are disturbing.

One thing I’m sure of, our families entrusted the De La Salle Brothers to safely and kindly look after, protect and educate their children. Some Brothers failed this duty of care.

I find it difficult to imagine other Brothers who weren’t involved in the physical and sexual abuse of the students being completely oblivious to the events that were taking place. Surely some of the lay teachers and the school nurse must also have been aware. If they did, then they as adults, are as complicit.

My story is certainly not as harrowing as your account or others on your blog, far from it, as I emerged relatively unscathed. I was never personally sexually abused. However, I write to you in case it could provide a reference point, a timeline to help you and others in any way.

As a British Army family based in Germany my Mum and Dad thought it would be best for me to go to boarding school to finish my last few years of schooling. I started mid term in 1963 dressed in a dull grey suit that completely enveloped me. I felt awkward and apprehensive.

That night in the refectory I met and dined with boys the same age. Once dinner was over we all went outside and straight away, first night, a boy had a go at me. In a moment a cheering crowd of boys encircled us. Having been in a number of Army schools I was capable of looking after myself and after a few seconds punched the other boy in the nose, we wrestled around, and it was all over and the crowd dispersed. I was never picked on again by fellow students at St Joseph’s and to be honest wasn’t aware of too much conflict between students.

However, I was desperately unhappy being parted from my family and friends at home and remember sometimes at recess and lunchtimes sitting hiding in a cubicle in the toilet block feeling so sad. It took many months to get over the separation from my family. I felt very lost and alone.

I started off sleeping in the large dormitory by the main building. After lights out I used to lay quietly alone with my thoughts and prayers for a long while. I longed to be back home.

It was during these times when I found sleep difficult that I became aware of a Brother wandering around the dormitory in the dark by the beds of certain boys. I was a reasonably aware teenager with my upbringing. I had a strong sense that what he was up to was wrong and vowed that if he came anywhere near me I would lash out and scream the place down.

However, it was always the much younger, quieter, vulnerable boys he targeted.

Dare I say something? Should I say something? Best keep my head down was my first instinct. Isn’t that the way perpetrators get away with these offences.

Early in my first year I remember being given six strokes of the cane. I think it was for something trivial like running up the stairs in the main building. Each cut of the cane left severe bruising and broke the skin. It was a real beating and my bottom was achingly numb and sore. For a few days there was blood on my underpants. It probably took a week before it started to heal and the discomfort eased.

I had never been hit by anyone with such force and certainly not by any of the Army teachers who had taught me at the schools on the bases. They tended to be kindly, good natured and well meaning, so this absolutely shocked me.

I remember the distorted, flushed look on the Brother’s face when it was finished. I felt humiliated and certainly the punishment did not fit the crime. That was the first but not the last time I was caned, being caught smoking numerous times and other misdemeanours.

When I moved into the older grades I opted for a gardening punishment, for the whole weekend if necessary.

The following year, despite being a year younger than most, I was placed over in the GoldRood dormitories which was a blessing. I enjoyed being there. In the grounds you could play ‘headers’ soccer and simple things like watching the life cycle of the frogs in the large tank half way along the path. Also there was the TV room where we all watched ‘Top of the Pops’ hosted by Jimmy Saville. How apt.

The smaller dorms at GoldRood had a quieter feel to them and as we grew older we had more latitude. It was here I made a close circle of really good mates who looked out for and helped one another.

I never told my parents about these early events and canings. I felt I was being protective of them, but in hindsight I believe I was ashamed and didn’t want to expose my Mum and Dad to the fact they had placed me in an abusive situation. They seemed so proud that their son was going to St Jo’s.

In fact I have never discussed these days with anyone apart from my wife and a counsellor whilst undergoing recent treatment for anxiety.

I wonder how many students kept quiet? Many.

How many remained stoic? Many.

How many accepted events as ‘normal’?

This is the essence of systemic abuse, secrecy.

I remember Louis M well. He was a very stocky type with a shock of dark hair and a fellow smoker. It came as no surprise that he took Brother James apart.

I believe Brother James was suffering from PTSD, perhaps from the war. Some said he had been a fighter pilot, others a POW. With his psychotic temper and uncontrolled violence he should never have been allowed near children, ever. He was sadistic and a man to keep well clear of as he was capable of flying into a rage and lashing out with a flurry of fists, sometimes at the nearest student.

I recall in our lessons at the top of each page of the exercise book we used to write ‘JMJ’ and I often wondered how writing what amounted to a small prayer for guidance reconciled with boys being educated by teachers like Brother James.

During a time with my family in Germany my parents took me on a visit to the site of Belsen Concentration Camp. My Dad had been there the day after it had been liberated in WW2 and the visit had a profound effect on me. As a reminder I sticky taped a small B&W picture of Adolf Hitler on the underside of my wooden desk lid to remind me of the horrible events surrounding the monster.

Soon after, when I was at another lesson, Brother James was alerted to the picture. Apparently he flung open the wooden desk lid with fury. The other boys present thought he was going to have a severe fit as he was literally purple in the face as he tore the picture to shreds. He had lost all control and had to be helped as he was apoplectic. Luckily, I wasn’t there as I believe I would have been beaten senseless. Most surprisingly, I never heard any more about this incident.

As I grew older I became really very good at athletics and represented the school in the AAA County Championships and inter-school competitions. I won a number of county cups and medals. I believe this athletic ability, like the students who played senior rugby, gave me a certain profile and helped protect me from some of the harm meted out to others.

This is where dates and years fail me, but one memory that has stayed with me was an incident with Father Jolly.

As teenagers most of us were in the habit of smoking. Weekends were fine as we could go into Ipswich and go to the dark of a movie or a park and smoke our heads off. Later it was the pub at the bottom of the hill where the publican turned a blind eye. During the week was a different story and we were all hanging out for Saturday.

One day a friend and myself decided to go into Father Jolly’s unit and help ourselves to some of his cigarettes.

This was wrong, and we both knew it.

He lived in a small cottage just on the edge of the school boundary. We knew he had a cigarette box as we had visited his living room during one of his ‘getting to know you, group chats’

Seeing his car was gone we crept into the lounge and just before rifling some of the cigarettes we heard the crunch of the car wheels on the gravel outside. We were trapped and so just sat there. Jolly came in and asked what we were doing and to this day I don’t know how but we said we were waiting for him as we had a matter of abuse to report. My hands were shaking but I went into detail about the history of what I had previously witnessed in the large dormitory. Jolly started writing all this down. Pretty soon after the Brother departed the school.

In my mind I can to this day feel the panic as Jolly entered the room and my face flushing as we spoke about the sexual abuse we had witnessed. Of course for many years I saw Jolly as protecting the students and getting rid of the abuser, whereas in actual fact I now know he was giving the bastard the heads up to move on before the evidence was mounted and he was charged.

Naturally I never confessed the sin of attempting to steal cigarettes to Jolly.

I have seen another boy’s statement on your web-page about reporting abuse to Jolly. The date and timing is somehow out of kilter with my memory and it cannot be the same incident.

There were good teachers at the school and two lay teachers stand out in my mind. My English Literature teacher during sixth form gave me a love of poetry which has stayed with me all my life. My Economics teacher, a family man from Doncaster, Yorkshire was easy to relate to and kindly.

I loved travelling back to Germany to see my family. It entailed travelling by train to Harwich, then ferry over to the Hook of Holland and then catching the Moscow night express to Celle in central Germany. I hated the journey back to Ipswich.

As I grew older I enjoyed the company of my friends at St Joseph’s. Close friends meant emotional security and a clubbing together.

I know when I look back at this period I found the Brothers as a group to be a vulnerable, raw, clumsy group of men, out of touch with a rapidly changing society. Not all were bad, but most could not relate. I wonder now what early experiences they themselves had been through.

Certainly the ones meting out physical punishment and abusing the younger children in their care must have had awful upbringings to carry out some of the harrowing events described in your blog.

This in no way condones their awful, terrible behavior.

All of this is nearly sixty years ago now but parts I remember as if it were yesterday. Through it all I’m reminded of Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘This Be The Verse’ which is worth reading in it’s entirety.

‘Man hands on misery to man

It deepens like a coastal shelf’

Best wishes,

SP

CATHOLIC KNIGHTS AND DIRTY MONEY

I was prompted by a recent letter from a St Joseph’s Old Boy to take another look at Catholic Knights and their Dirty Money, specifically the Ipswich province of the Knights of St Columba.

The Old Boy advised me:

I was at St Joseph’s in Ipswich from 12 to 16, funded by the church to then go on to a minor seminary to train to become a priest.

The mysterious phrase ‘The Church’ is often used to explain funding. No one seems to know how that actually works in practice and I doubt the Old Boy in question knew. When I asked my aunt, she said the same thing to me: ‘The Church paid your school fees.’ When I asked what that meant and why the Church would do that, she didn’t know and quickly changed the subject.  But I know the answer now. In Ipswich ‘the Church’ was the Knights of St Columba and they were the writers of the cheques.  This is proved by my own recollections and those of another Survivor whose testimony has been previously covered on this site.  Elsewhere, it might be the Catenians, Catholic Women’s League and so forth.

The source of the Knights’ money I would assume comes from a number of sources:  fund raising, donations by wealthy Knights, and, I would guess, a significant allocation from the diocese itself. So it can rightly be called the Church’s money.

The diocese would need considerable confidence in these Knights to leave them to manage their affairs. It’s a confidence that would be misplaced were the diocese not equally culpable for the actions I’m about to relate.

It’s what that money is spent on by the Knights that is relevant both in the past and today. And that’s what makes it dirty money.  

1)Paying  St Joseph’s school fees for children to go on to be priests as in the example above.  As I know from my own experience, it can bring strong psychological pressure on a child to fulfill the demands and agendas of adults, but I would assume that did not apply in the case above.

2) Paying St Joseph’s school fees as a reward for silence on a serious sexual assault by De La Salle Brother James Ryan.

I’ve related the details previously. That account, by another Old Boy, proves the Knights of St Columba were guilty of corruption and covering up a violent paedophile crime.

And not for the first time.

Something similar also happened to me.

3)Paying St Joseph’s school fees for my brother and I for a total of nine years.

For two of those nine years the fees were paid by the Knights to prepare me for the priesthood. They intended to send me to that same junior seminary at age 15.  It was also to silence me. Instead, I bailed.

But that still leaves seven years unaccounted for. What possible reason would the Knights pay two boys’ school fees for seven years? My explanation is below. If you, or a Knight reading this, can shed any further or alternative light, I’d love to hear from you.

But I believe there’s more than enough evidence to back my explanation.

                                                THE KNIGHTS’ MOTIVES

All organizations need to recruit for their next generation and that’s particularly true for the Knights.

My family consisted of my devout Irish Catholic widowed mother and her two sons. She had great aspirations for her sons but no financial resources, no job and serious mental health problems.  The Church was her whole life and could do no wrong.

There is no way she could afford to send her children to an expensive grammar school for seven years.

Her vulnerability made my brother and I a prime target for the Knights, under their benign guise of caring for and taking a special, charitable interest in widows and children.

We were perfect assets for the Knights.

In effect, my mother abdicated her authority and passed it over to these ‘protectors of children’.  I doubt there were other recruiting opportunities quite this good.

Also, a paternity DNA test I took recently strongly indicates that a Knight was probably my biological father, rather than my legal father. Bearing this out, the Knights also acted ‘in loco parentis’ assuming a paternal role over me which – because they were sick abusers –  I rejected.

But, even without that DNA connection, I think the Knights had enough incentive.

So what did recruiting involve?  Today we would call it grooming and the form it took varied amongst the four to seven Knights involved over my childhood. Some were pleasant, some were aggressive and one was life threatening.

So my brother was given a brand new bike by a Knight who was also a Catholic priest (Canon Burrows).  I was similarly given a brand new bike to silence me about abuse by Brother James.

I was present at several of their misogynistic ceremonies which were closer to a rugby club night or a frat initiation than Eyes Wide Shut.  They seemed designed to be rites of passage experiences, presumably conditioning me to be a future Knight. Pedophilia was an important element at these events.

I assume pedophilia was part of some twisted bonding process and also the price for admission. At the same time, they were instilling conservative Catholic values in me. It’s a contradiction in behavior that’s commonplace in the Catholic religion.

So, in summary, the Knights of St Columba  (aka ‘The Church’) used their money, power and psycho-coercion to recruit children to the priesthood, to buy the silence of victims, and to corrupt, sexually abuse and recruit future members.

                                    THE KNIGHTS TODAY

If even half of what I’m alleging is correct, these individuals and their successors should never be allowed near children.  Because the  Knights are provably transgenerational.  

Consider the following:

In 2016, in Colchester, Ronald Smith, a Knight of St Columba, was found guilty of sexual abuse crimes on eight children, some under ten years old, carried out while he was taking advantage of his position as a Knight, ‘organizing parish family events’. He was given a 19 – 25 years prison sentence: https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/14650497.churchgoer-finally-jailed-after-40-years-of-child-abuse/ That’s an incredibly long sentence, yet, astonishingly, the story never made the national press. The Knights killed it. So no one knew Smith was already a convicted sex offender in 1973. Or that there were three reports to the police about him since 1973 which were never acted upon.

I also know from an insider and from the Ronald Smith case that some Knights, at least, have not had DBS checks.  Otherwise Smith would never have been allowed near children. Yet they have sworn an oath to ‘develop young people in their journey of faith’.

Catholic Safeguarding were not interested when I brought this current danger to children to their attention numerous times.

                                    CATHOLIC SAFEGUARDING

There are two Catholic safeguarding organizations and both are relevant. The CSSA which are mainly part timers and are only interested in current cases, no more than two years old, and auditing unpaid diocesan safeguarders. They supposedly investigate but I know from personal experience they don’t. They simply dump cases on the police. The CSSA replaced COPCA

And there’s the RLSS – hired by religious orders, like the De La Salles, to protect them from Survivors. It’s meant to be a sub-division of the CSSA, but it seems  autonomous and the CSSA have never shown any interest in religious orders abuse. The RLSS has some supposed investigative powers and recently replaced the SCOE. Why the SCOE became mysteriously defunct has never been explained.  Important records from the SCOE where the DLS were concerned were never passed onto their successors the RLSS. Instead, I had to brief the RLSS. The DLS didn’t seem able to or chose not to help, even though they were central to the issues and had all the information.

Then there are the De La Salles own safeguarding officers who only speak to the press when they are cornered after many phone calls.

There is also a different Catholic Safeguarding set-up  for Scotland.

If you’re wondering about the confusing and frequently changing names, you are right to be concerned.  It’s an ingenious technique used by the Church as noted here:

 https://ello.co/countesssigridvongalen/post/p-opcvqmcco0gkp4bdhfrq… Safeguarding in the churches does not work, as all recruitments are done by & within the perpetrator networks that regroup in ever changing charities & positions of trust that they abuse to ensure supply chain & cover ups…

I suspect in a few years, as Catholic scandals grow as usual, the CSSA and RLSS will mysteriously become defunct and be replaced by ‘dynamic new organisations’ to reassure the Catholic faithful that something is being done, even though it’s not.  

So the situation is now worse than before IICSA.  

Consider the laconic response of the CEO of the CSSA to my concerns about the Knights:

I agree with you over this issue around abuse by the laity does seem to be largely ignored and certainly has given me some pause for thought. I think that in our future audit and review processes we need to give this more consideration.

He seems quite relaxed about it, doesn’t he?  He didn’t know about it before?  Until I told him? It took me about two years to confirm – with hard evidence – that the Catholic laity was involved in organized sexual abuse. Yet safeguarders have access to far more information on this subject than myself and they don’t know?! And they don’t want to consider the past to identify the pattern of a Catholic laity pedophile ring as run by the Knights?

Whatever else you may agree or disagree with my analysis, I think you’d have to recognize all this shows a shocking lack of transparency. This is classic Catholic ‘smoke and mirrors’ at its worst.

Both the heads of the CSSA and RLSS are ex-cops but I do not find that impressive or reassuring, despite their protestations that this surely proves their sincere characters and their supposed value to Survivors.  In practice, both are provably useless but some Survivors have drawn a more sinister conclusion. Namely that their policing skills are being used to effectively block the truth getting out.

Given the way the Knights have behaved (and there’s much more to relate on these gentlemen) I think anything is possible.  

But the RLSS have a responsibility to look at the connection between the abuser Knights and their paymasters the De La Salles.

As a survivor of this joint abuse by Knights and De La Salles, I have a right to know when their criminal relationship ended. If it did.

It’s there on the long list of things the RLSS have done absolutely nothing about, despite their promises to the contrary.   

An ex-FBI agent said that if you found paedophiles in an organisation and it didn’t deal with them then it was effectively a paedophile network.

The RLSS has not dealt with the issue it was supposedly set up for. The RLSS have admitted to me that their paymasters, the De La Salles, have the final say and their hands are tied and this is confirmed by the RLSS broken promises.

In my view this amounts to worse than negligence.

It’s collusion.

Fortunately, this site is read by national journalists and the leader of at least one most relevant organization.  So the head of the RLSS might want to reflect on this and how he will eventually be called upon to explain his actions.

Or his lack of action.

Hopefully before the next enquiry and before he’s had a chance to escape responsibility for his betrayal of De La Salle Survivors.

THE RLSS – THEIR TIME IS UP

As you probably know the RLSS (Religious Life Safeguarding Service) is the new ‘go to’ Safeguarding organisation for religious orders, including the De La Salles. They promised to be different – a new broom. But nothing’s changed and their time is up.

Unlike the CSSA, the RLSS does actually have investigative powers.

(So, too, do the unpaid Diocesan Safeguarding officers who I know from past experience in the Copca era were a waste of my time.  But the RLSS seem different)

The RLSS promised an outcome to De La Salle issues of ORGANISED PAEDOPHILE RINGS in their schools. That promise was well before Christmas and we’re now in Feb.

So their time is up.

I believe what is delaying them is the De La Salles trying to wriggle out of their agreed apology for Brother Laurence and their promised investigation.

All over a year old.

My guess is it’s the Catholic insurance company who are saying, ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t admit anything. Maybe Mills will get tired and go away. Survivors often do. We just have to hang on in there.’

Mills is not going away.

The RLSS does seem to have some genuine people, but that’s part of the problem. They’re tethered, as they admit themselves, their powers are limited, so they are as much of the problem as the criminal  De La Salles who are hiding behind them.

To me that’s COLLUSION.

And  just in case someone challenges me on ‘criminal’ DLS,  I’d say an organisation that allows over a hundred cases of child sex abuse by De La Salles and their lay teachers to go without investigation is a criminal organisation.

Especially when there is evidence it’s organised sexual abuse. Not odd rotten apples.

We survivors are not collateral damage, much as I think some Catholics would like us to be and just shut up and leave these “”””holy””””” men alone.

Here’s my TWEETS on the subject of the RLSS.

I’m sure I’ll be returning to this matter again soon.

I’ve felt out-manouvered by Police Hydrant and Catholic Safeguarding. Catholic Safeguarding knew I would be wasting my time by reporting historic crimes to Hydrant, but they let me go ahead. But I wanted to see what the 'new broom' RLSS Safeguarding was like. (1/4)

— Patrick Mills (@PatrickEMills) February 18, 2023

The serious issue of Brother Laurence's demotion and promised apology & promised De La Salle investigation into their child sex abuse crimes at DLS schools in Ipswich, Bournemouth,Beulah Hill etc is still on the table. I'm not letting the DLS monks get away with it. (2/4

— Patrick Mills (@PatrickEMills) February 18, 2023

The RLSS did some good work on the Caldey Island case, so I cut them some slack. But their time is now https://t.co/w02XL569a1 I am tweeting & posting that they are just as questionable as their paymasters the criminal De La Salles whom they are safeguarding, NOT survivors. (4/4

— Patrick Mills (@PatrickEMills) February 18, 2023

My twitter handle is

@PatrickEMills

So if you were able to find those tweets and retweet them, they would reach a wider audience and show the Catholic Church and its organisations for the shameful entities they really are.

BROTHER LAURENCE HUGHES – THE MISSING APOLOGY

THE DE LA SALLES – THE MISSING INVESTIGATION

As you may have seen on my previous blog, the RLSS  – Religious Life Safeguarding Service –  have successfully arranged for DBS police checks on Cistercian monks on Caldey Island.  

So it’s a great step forward for Caldey Island Survivors and the RLSS are to be congratulated for their supportive work.

It suggests that, despite, IMO, the questionable nature of all Safeguarding organizations as ‘fronts’ to protect religious orders and priests, that individuals can still work within the system and create real change.  Even though independent agencies are the real answer.

But this still leaves the serious matter of the De La Salles and the RLSS long outstanding.

Currently there is a missing apology and a missing investigation.

Both are of considerable current importance to survivors of the De La Salles.

 I’ve got a little tired recently of reading in posts here how wonderful the DLS  were with barely a grudging nod to survivors, and often with the qualification, ‘But I never saw the brothers do anything wrong myself.’

Well, of course you didn’t because you weren’t at risk!  

It’s like we survivors are necessary collateral damage to fulfill the perverted desires of the De La Salles, while you high achievers got on with your splendid careers, thanks to these wonderful and ‘holy’ brothers you admire so much.

Such high achievers should reflect that, in my era, at least 10%  of every class were physically and sexually abused by the DLS. (I can break that down for skeptics.) That makes the DLS a criminal organization and it’s impossible to identify, with any certainty, who was good and who was evil. Only the blatant ones, a very few of whom were caught. Please reflect on that before you continue to sing the praises of a questionable organization that is still operating today and still has its hand out for more funding to continue its ‘holy work’ in the Global South.

So onto the missing apology and investigation.

I’ve been holding off for some time on both the foregoing, not least because the SCOE, the Safeguarding organization for religious orders of which the De La Salles was a client, was disbanded earlier last year and replaced by the RLSS, a new safeguarding organization.

Before it disappeared, the SCOE didn’t pass any information about these two matters above onto the RLSS.

But of course the SCOE was directed by the DLS who could have easily updated the RLSS.

In both instances, the Safeguarding organizations are limited by their client, the DLS, who actually have the real power as the RLSS have indicated to me.

To reprise, when it existed, the SCOE/DLS assured me there would be a public apology for the horrific corporal punishments delivered by Brother Laurence Hughes previously head of the DLS. He has been ‘reduced to the ranks’ following an investigation which is now complete without criminal charges being made.

I’ve been told that it’s almost impossible to bring criminal charges for physical abuse after such a long time period.

The important issue of how Laurence Hughes dismissed abuse complaints while he was head of the DLS has never been addressed.

Given that he has been reduced to the ranks, it should be.  It means that those complaining of child abuse received a hearing from a man who committed savage physical abuse on children.

Here’s what the SCOE actually said to me on 15^th July last year.

I have been waiting for confirmation on the outcome to the investigation
following receipt of allegations made against Bro Laurence Hughes (LH).

De La Salle (DLS) in the near future will be making a statement about of the
outcome of the investigation and I understand this statement will contain an
apology to victims and will be published. I will ask DLS to make the
statement easily accessible, through their website or to others if/as
requested (* see note below).

I understand that LH no longer holds any leadership or safeguarding role
within DLS.

AFAIK the DLS did not make a statement in the ‘near future’ as promised.

It was also stated, as you can see, that it would be a prominent apology, rather than the earlier example of a DLS apology on a separate and general matter. That was a vague and general apology to all survivors of DLS abuse. Such a cursory ‘sorry’ was buried on the DLS website only after I’d shown the announced apology was actually missing.   Even the Tablet had to acknowledge this was untoward.

And the DLS also said in a newspaper interview last year that there would be a thorough investigation of all the allegations about the DLS in Ipswich and elsewhere in the South of England which it suggested were ‘unheard of’.

As I’ve told the RLSS the cases against Brothers James, Kevin and Solomon in particular are overwhelming and need public acknowledgement by the De La Salles.  They also involve the Catholic laity who helped cover up the crimes of James and Solomon.

Since then, there has been nothing about this ‘investigation’ which I do not believe even exists.

There have been meetings between the RLSS and DLS with no outcome and emails from the RLSS assuring me of their best and genuine intentions.

Because they are a new organization I believed I should give them the benefit of the doubt and also in the interests of due diligence.

So – after an extended delay on the apology and the investigation – we are no further forward.

The DLS have done an excellent job of stalling for most of last year and their RLSS has played a role in this. 

The DLS – according to the RLSS – have not been very communicative with them either. Whilst I have some sympathy with them and the frustration they must feel, my priority is we survivors who have been harmed by the DLS.

The comments below relating to the CSSA (the ‘general’ Catholic Safeguarding agency) apply equally to the RLSS.

I think both commentators on twitter put it very well.

Reference Group 

@Smartcairns11·

Nov 11

Every ‘respectable’ persons engaged as the face of ‪#CSSA‬ must be responsible for their use by church leaders as a ‘smokescreen’ of safeguarding to disguise, facilitate false trust &  add more layers to leaderships cover up and concealment of clerical sex crimes.

‪@nazirafzal‬ ‪https://twitter.com/Smartcairns11/status/1590654903328051200…‬

Countess Sigrid von Galen

@instcrimjust

Nov 10

Those ‘respectable’ persons are dangerous accomplices, as they create a smokescreen & illusion of safeguarding to disguise & facilitate cover ups & ongoing crimes. All inquiries have shown that the churches can’t be trusted & safeguards are PR stunts. ‪https://twitter.com/Smartcairns11/status/1590654903328051200‬

Despite the positive result at Caldey Island, after my personal experience with the SCOE, the RLSS and the DLS, I see nothing to disagree with here, not least because Safeguarding organizations have very limited power.

Of course the real culprits are the De La Salles who would seem to be more formidable opponents than the Cistercians and who are treating survivors with absolute contempt.

Not the behaviour of supposed ‘holy’ men.

MIKE KEARNEY (1): RECOVERING MEMORIES

I’ve been prompted to write again about Mike Kearney, the lay Irish chemistry teacher at St Joseph’s College, Ipswich. For anyone not familiar with this man, he taught from the late 1950s to the 1980s. There’s plenty of accounts of his brutality on this blog, seen by apologists as ‘normal’ for the time, and one account by an Old Boy of his racism. Whether this is connected to Kearney having spent some time in apartheid South Africa, I have no way of knowing.  It has been challenged by a white Old Boy as ‘not true’. Several Old Boys also thought he was a poor chemistry teacher. Personally, I thought he was ‘okay’, but then I was a poor chemistry pupil. I think Old Boys generally are divided between seeing him as ‘stern but fair’, ‘his bark worse than his bite’ and others regarding him as a violent, cruel sadist. Given that he punched a boy in the face and had to apologise to him, I subscribe to the latter camp.

i don’t accept these were ‘different times’. Punching a child in the face, then and now, is a criminal offence.

St Joseph’s today, although it claims to have no connection with its dubious and  criminal De La Salle past, where organised sexual abuse in the 1960s and beyond is now a matter of record, had a Mike Kearney Memorial Chemistry prize. I think this has now been withdrawn, I certainly hope so because this individual does not deserve to be remembered in a positive light.

But my concern has always been about a much darker side to him which resulted in my spending considerable time and money in therapy trying to make sense of really terrible memories about him. The more I looked into them, the worse they got.  Daymares, nightmares, PTSD flashbacks, you name it. I tried blocking my memories of him, but it  didn’t work.  My experience of recovered memories was similar to the account below.

Where other St Joseph’s abusers are concerned, I’ve pretty much laid them to rest. Although, I’m touching wood here, of course.  Kearney was more problematic and there’s a reason for this. The awful events concerning him happened outside the school, so there were not the usual witnesses to validate my recovered memories.

 Nearly all survivors who write into this site are boarders and I used to thank my lucky stars I was a day boy.  In fact, it’s an illusion I used in order to survive. Day boys could also be in danger and I’m sure I wasn’t alone.  My mother was a devout, Irish Catholic widow with no income, no job and recurring mental health problems, probably worsened by medication both legal and illegal. Father Jolly, our parish priest and St Jo’s chaplain, whose crimes have been detailed on this blog by at least one other Old Boy, was a drug supplier which may sound unlikely but I can assure you is true. He was not the only one. Leaving aside for now the question of how my mother could afford to send her two sons to a posh Catholic grammar school (neither of us had passed the eleven-plus), it meant we were a prime target for Catholic predators.

These predators, from my primary school days through to secondary school, were sometimes given the right to act  ‘in loco parentis’. It was felt boys needed ‘a strong fatherly hand’, especially in 1950s Britain and –if they had been genuine – I would possibly agree.  It’s also the supposed norm in Catholic communities that the poor and the widowed are supported and so a series of predators used this to their advantage. In our tightly knit Catholic community, Catholic widows were also considered ‘fair game’ and a better alternative to having affairs with Protestants or not ‘sullying’ unmarried Catholic women. I’m pretty certain it also had some pseudo-religious rationalisation.   

I’ve been able to prove the conduct of a number of these predators to my satisfaction: Canon Burrows (Knight of St Columba), Father Wace (probably KOSC), Father Jolly (KOSC, St Joseph’s chaplain and our local parish priest), two or more lay Knights of St Columba, and… a couple of lay teachers from St Joseph’s. That sounds like an awful lot, but we’re talking over a fifteen year childhood and some of these characters may have only had brief involvement as ‘do-gooders’ or rather ‘do-badders’.

Kearney had such a ‘loco parentis’ role.

The predators’ exact terms of reference and their relationships with my mother must have varied considerably.  Some may have been interested in my mother, others her sons, yet others in both. Certainly widows – then and now – are prime targets for predators and it’s a well-known technique for abusers to relate romantically towards the mother in order to get at the kids.  Canon Burrows, the first, typically always around our house doing ‘little jobs’ and mysteriously paying for school extras,  was a truly vile sexual abuser. So were most of the other ‘father figures’ that  I’ve listed that followed him, although not necessarily all. Some may well have just been interested in my mother and not her children.  It’s not easy to be sure every time. In some cases I’ve had to speculate about the real nature of the relationships and, of course, it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty. Much of the time everyone was very ‘discreet’.

The dynamics of just how Catholic predators exploit Catholic widows like my mother and the way she would have been groomed to fulfil a certain role in her Catholic community, I would only have been dimly aware of as a kid.  It’s a role Catholics will, of course, deny then and now.  Like they’ve denied so much abuse that’s subsequently been proven.

Here’s a brief example. She was ‘put in charge’ of a young French Father Gonnet who, mysteriously, was having an extended ‘holiday’ in our industrial town. She was told to ‘look after him’, so he was always round our house having tea when I came home from school. They got on extremely well and he was always making a fuss of me, too. We would also go on picnics to Stratford St Mary, a couple of miles down the road from East Bergholt where Gonnet was staying with the local Franciscans . Their place was a very convenient location for him to abuse.  Gonnet and these far from holy Franciscans left a deep trauma scar on me, which I still resent, because my abiding recollection of this particular predator is ‘The bastard was only staying in Ipswich for a few weeks.’  A few weeks is all it takes.

 I knew my mother had a kind of exalted status in the parish and this was certainly her own perception of herself, but I knew also there was something ‘not right’, something ‘odd’, ‘evasive’ and ‘mysterious’ about her. Trying to make sense of her behaviour, her constant absences for instance, I was a latch-key kid yet she had no job, I read everything I could about fictional women like her and that helped considerably. As an adult, I can  fill in the blanks from my life experience and examples such as Gonnet. Doubtless you can do the same. I’ve had to outline the role of my mother because it’s most relevant to Kearney as he, too, had this loco parentis role which will be more defined in later posts.

Kearney was a particular threat because I was older when we clashed and starting to make sense of the world.  And, unlike the previous men, he didn’t have a  typical ‘cover story’ for his involvement with my mother AFAIK,  e.g. he wasn’t in the church choir. In fact his cover story was to go boot camp on me, to ‘bring me to my senses’, to stop being a rebellious teenager. But there was much more to him than this.

As you can imagine, in such a world, everything is ‘smoke and mirrors’, everything is deliberately mysterious, vague and hard to pin down in order to keep victims off balance.  

My agenda in writing about Kearney is firstly as a catharsis. Secondly, because it may help other survivors dealing with recovered memories and highlight how predators work. Thirdly, it’s to name and shame him.

Finally, because it may resonate with other Old Boys who may have other information about Kearney that dovetails with my account, although – as I’ve said – because this happened outside the school, it’s far less likely. But do get in touch if you can shed any light.

And this account, of course, bears out that I have no financial agenda. The De La Salles can’t be held responsible for or be financially liable for what this creep got up to outside school hours.  And so it adds to the validity of my case. Why would I spend so much time and energy on Kearney, when I have far better things to do with my life?

I’ll write more about Kearney in subsequent blogs.

This woman’s experience below of recovered memories (she’s not a Catholic AFAIK) pretty much dovetails with mine and I’m sure with many survivors of the De La Salles.

I realise all this may be upsetting or triggering to read for some, so I’d like to end with a cheerful anecdote to show how, despite everything, we survivors can beat these scum.

I was sixteen. I would leave home a few months later and Kearney’s connection with my family was over, as short-lived as all the previous predators.  My brother and I were drinking beer in a pub by the Old Cattle Market –I think it was the Plough.  I was excitedly talking to my brother about a gig we were going to at the Assembly Rooms next door. I believe it was Murray and the Mints,  they were St Jo’s boys who had a real ‘Animals’ sound, mouth organ etc, and I’m a huge fan of the Animals. ‘We’ve got to get out of the place’ wasn’t just an anthem for Vietnam soldiers, it was my anthem to escape the Catholic Church.

Then Kearney came in, ordered a pint and sat at a table on his own. We both recognised each other but said nothing.  There’s a look lonely men who drink alone in pubs have, which we all recognise, and Kearney had that look big-time. His shoulders were rounded, drooping with depression, as he stared down into his pint. I think his first-wife had died some years earlier, but that was something I’d been told on the playground grapevine, so I may well be wrong.  Whatever the reason, he was definitely down in the dumps.

Then he looked across and I could see he was weighing up whether or how to rain on my parade. As he had done until recently. In those days, there was no ID and anyway, like any self-respecting 16 year old, I’d have lied. And bar tenders don’t care. So he knew his options were limited.

I knew he was going to do something, because he always had to win, but I was ready for him. I’d taken more than enough shit from him and I was a very feisty teenager.

He finished his pint and came over. He looked sternly down at me, hoping to intimidate me.

‘Does your mother know you’re here?’

‘Yes,’ I lied defiantly, ready for him to use physical force on me.  Again.

The expression on my face was clearly saying, to paraphrase the Animals, “It’s my life and I‘ll do what I want. Drink what I want. I’ve left school, you’ve got no power over me anymore.’

There was an awkward pause. Then Kearney nodded, defeated, impotent to do anything other than show his disapproval. He stumbled off into the night. A sad, lonely loser.

That was the last time I ever saw Kearney and I can still remember the feeling of exhilaration that I’d defeated him.

Then I got back to talking about much more important matters than this odious prat – like that forthcoming gig watching Murray and the Mints.

I was finally free.

Below is a survivor’s account on Instagram which I found incredibly useful and sums up how recovered memories work.

INVESTIGATION INTO DE LA SALLE ABUSE

CURRENT POSITION

desbill.scoe@gmail.com

SCOE  – Safeguarding

Dear Des Bill

I wanted to see what the latest situation was regarding the numerous allegations of abuse by old boys, including myself, at the hands of the De La Salles. Not only at St Joseph’s Ipswich, but also Beulah Hill and elsewhere. As you know, they are all recorded on this website and have also been available in summary for an investigator’s convenience.

I’m aware that they have been sent to police Operation Hydrant, via yourself and Catholic Safeguarding, and I look forward to their response in due course. 

The DLS have also contacted Suffolk police  – see below – and this may be part of the Hydrant investigation or separate. It’s not been made clear and it would be useful to know.

It was also stated by the DLS spokesperson that an independent investigator would be commissioned to look into these allegations which he said were  ‘unheard of’.

‘ most of the accusations made on Mr Mills blog were “completely unheard of”, he (Hudd) said. 

See EADT December 11 2021

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/st-josephs-ipswich-abuse-monks-ask-police-8553626

“With regards to St Joseph’s, we’ve put the ball in Suffolk Constabulary’s court”, Mr Hudd said. “It’s up to them to work out what happened and if the abuse truly was systemic. 

“We’ve also hired our own independent and experienced child abuse investigator to assist the police. 

In fact ‘most’ allegations were ‘heard of’ and were  familiar to the DLS as survivors of Brother Kevin’s abuse prove on this site. And the Beulah Hill survivors who have made numerous allegations on line about Brother Solomon. 

For the DLS to claim they were unaware of these allegations and more is unconvincing.

The DLS own records will confirm that ‘most’ were ‘heard of’ as I’m sure Hudd knows only too well.

Moving onto the investigation, I have not had any contact from an investigator. But how else are they to reach the authors of the various allegations on my site?

We have been waiting these many months and nothing has happened. Who the investigator is has not been revealed to us.

I have the strong feeling that the investigator – six months later – has done nothing.

Is that the case?

You will recall that when the DLS provincial Laurence Hughes was being similarly investigated for allegations of his violent abuse of children, I put your independent investigator’s details on my site. Consequently, several Old Boys got in touch with the investigator.

As a system, it worked well and I have no complaints.

Surely that is the way to go here?

On which subject, I’m sure survivors of Hughes’s alleged violence would like to know what is happening. I understand that police action against Hughes is not proceeding? Is this correct? But I believe you said that – whatever the legal outcome – there would then be an internal inquiry? 

Is Hughes now reinstated as head of the DLS or has he ‘retired’ ? I think the survivors of his alleged assaults would like to know. 

I’m putting this letter up on my blog so survivors can be kept in the loop. I look forward to hearing from you.

Pat Mills