Page 39 - Phonebox Magazine April 2013

The Paradox of Abuse
abhorrent and strategic been removed.
Because of a pending court case the names of all involved have
nature of child abuse. Read next month how the charity Instead of cycling to the ClimbYourMountain helped this
Cathedral on my BMX bike, person to rebuild their life.
The Dean offered to pick me up and drop me off in his Peugeot 206 1.6 Gti. I was in awe of that car and slowly but surely my trust and respect for this man grew. He treated me
choir so that I might concentrate more on my GCSE exams. I wrote the letter in my handwriting on his desk addressed to The Voluntary Choir. I remember being upset at this, but I trusted him. Soon after, our relationship fizzled out and I saw the Dean less and less.
I read today that one of Jimmy Savilleʼs victims was told that she had to pay for her nice day out in the back of his Rolls Royce by returning the favour in a sexual manner. “The nice day out didnʼt come free”, Jimmy said. Having witnessed this allegation, there is no doubt in my mind that this woman is telling the truth and subsequently I started to write this letter. “The lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”, is a phrase most of us have heard but in my case I have a very unpleasant but vivid firsthand experience.
like a father would and subsequently our friendship reached heights that involved
I went to college and found girls and smoking. I failed all of my A-levels and instead took up smoking marihuana. I dated girls, they finished, and I found another girl and that ended. This was to be the pattern of my life. I questioned my own sexuality and I escaped in many ways, often becoming drunk on nights out, out drinking my friends. I was opinionated and on the surface I was very confident and articulate with the ladies. On the inside I was torn apart. Between the ages of 16-22 I saw the Dean a couple of times a year, and it was still not transparent to me the abuse I had received. He always insisted that if I were to get married that he would want to marry me, as he did when I got married at the age of 25. I never spoke to him again after that day and it was like a two fingers up to him in many ways. I still never told anyone about the depths of the relationship. My marriage was a failure and that ended some six years later and I remember being devastated. I swallowed some pills and all the time I was doing this I was thinking of him. I remember hating myself and shouting at myself and crying uncontrollably. I lost my home, my job and I was left staring at the abyss for a period in my life. I will never have a true and solid relationship with my parents due to the fact that I hold them partly responsible for what happened to me.
During this period a new Dean was ordained. I had no idea what a Dean was as I concentrated more on the crotchets going up and down on the music score than the hierarchical structures of the Church. All I knew is that he was a friendly boss of the Cathedral. No sooner had he arrived, he asked for volunteers to help him clean the gold railings of the high altar. They were dusty, and so as the new Dean, not afraid to get his hands dirty and willing to set an example, I helped him in the six weeks school holidays to clean the railings. There were two or three helpers at first which eventually fizzled out to just the Dean and I. “Shit”, he said, as he dropped his paint brush which was covered in cleaning material suitable for gold leaf. I remember looking up at him in absolute amazement that this man with such stature had indeed swore in Godʼs house. I was after all around 11 years of age at this point. The Dean simply laughed at my reaction and settled me down. We both giggled and spent that afternoon singing the word “shit”.
The simple fact is that we, the abused, at this point donʼt think it is wrong. They are your friend; they are helping you and so why couldnʼt it be escalated to physical? You are loathed to punch them on the nose because these are the people you trust. The kissing continued after the washing up or during a game of scrabble and gradually he groomed me to thinking that it was ok in some countries for a minor and a man to have a relationship. I even inclined to agree with him.
I am now 39 and was engaged to be married again until January last year. Again I was devastated and had my trust smashed once more as I found my ex with her boss. This started me on a downward spiral and in March of this year I admitted myself to hospital after a 400 mile drive. I was full of fear and devoid of sleep. I spent five days there as I had not eaten much in several weeks. I trusted no one. Again, throughout all of this, I could not help thinking about my days in the choir and the impact it clearly had on my life. The Dean had confused me. He had interfered with my natural choices in life and where I should have been spending my social time with people my own age, it was interrupted by a man with an ulterior motive. The paradox is the simple fact that in one way the paedophiles give you nice things, but take something from you in another. The above story is the complex unfolding of what they have taken from you, the freedom to live a normal life. The general public are unaware that grooming is a very complex and strategic entity and reporting that against a public figure, whilst the person is still alive, is a legal matter where you could lose. The biggest fear above all is to not just be the victim of abuse but to be legally condemned a liar in the event of a court case. The stigma attached to abuse and the unwillingness to be associated with it by others has seen friends of mine disappear as a result of me telling them.
We had become friends. The Dean was fifty something, and I, 11. He was not married, had no children and yet, he had very cleverly befriended me. Even to this day I remember that day with a kind of fondness despite it being the first step to a life where later on I would eventually look back, as expressed in this letter, uncovering the absolute
The choir master at the time, during the short walk from the cathedral to the Town Hall, asked me if everything was ok with The Dean and myself. Looking back now, he was probing me and could possibly be the reason why I had been prior groomed about the possible approach of the press. After I told the Dean about the short walk and the conversation with the Choir master, it was put upon me to write a letter to resign from the
Celebrities and public figures who have been convicted of such offences have all used their power of authority and it is therefore the sheer size of the mountain you would have to climb to seek justice that keeps you from making the call. This is my call... E
me going to his house. Later on I would eventually start to stay there. He taught me to cook, to write poetry, to enjoy classical music and he corrected my English at every available opportunity.
I, a 7 year old boy from a poor background, sang at my local church in the choir, but my mother took me to an audition at the Cathedral on the advice that my voice had more promise. Out of six boys, two of us were selected to join the Cathedral choir. I remember feeling overjoyed and sang all the way home holding my motherʼs very proud hand. We didnʼt have a car and so I cycled my BMX bike to the Cathedral every Friday evening and Sunday early afternoon for choir practice and evensong. I had no idea what benefits being a part of the choir might bring. I sang in Notre Dame, Paris, The World Council of Churches in Zurich and several other churches and Cathedrals in the UK. This was indeed a world far removed from the council estate concrete and burnt-out car background I had grown up in, just a solitary mile down the road. The choir was made up of around 50 members in and around the early to mid 1980s, comprising of upstanding and educated members of the community who I had previously had little or no association with. Because of my voice, I had been escalated to a level in society which took me away from the noisy police sirens and graffiti tormented mills. I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.
Now I know what you are thinking at this point and yes he went to see my parents and explained to them that he had decided to help me. He was going to aid me with my education and as he called it, “lessons in life”. My parents too trusted this man and were happy, therefore, to see him take an interest in me and give me the opportunities other lads from a poor council estate would never get the chance to. Looking back now, it is plain to see how much of an easy target I was. My family was. How this man, a pillar of the community, had used his trust to take a chorister under his wing. I was his project.
At high school, I did have a girl friend, but that ended when I was 13 and I remember being rather quite upset by it and it was at this vulnerable point in my life that the Dean saw his opportunity to escalate our relationship to a physical level. He consoled me in his study, in the basement of his house, next to the garage where his new car was. As I cried on his red leather armchair about the girl from school, he put his arms around me and consoled me. He kissed me and he told me that he loved me.
A part of me knew it was wrong, but I didnʼt want to lose my friend. I had spent a lot of time with him: Holidays in Cornwall, the Lake District and mini weekends away to York. He bought me presents on a regular basis including a mountain bike to go cycling on Saturdays with my school friends. I never told any of them what was going on though, although I donʼt know how I got through the taunts made by kids my own age, about me being in a choir etc.
I referred to the Dean as my godfather as this was easy to escape any criticism or odd looks that we may receive. In fact, this is what we agreed so as to answer any questions that might arise from what he described to me as, “members of the press”, or The Evening News. He explained to me that should anyone approach me, that I simply say to them that we are just friends and that he is helping me with my GCSEs.
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