Ampleforth the reality of Sexual Abuse........ the military and more........

Priests at a leading Roman Catholic school abused boys as young as six, including beatings and sexual assaults, the national inquiry into child abuse has heard.ormer pupils at Ampleforth College in
 North Yorkshire gave evidence to a hearing in London on Wednesday, and written statements by other former pupils were read.

Many of the allegations centred on two priests, Piers Grant-Ferris who was jailed for two years in 2006 for 20 counts of indecent assault on boys in his care, and another priest referred to as RCF4.
One witness who spent 11 years at Ampleforth College and its preparatory school Gilling Castle from 1965 to 1976, said RCF4 had treated him “disgracefully”. “He was physically violent from the outset… I was physically and psychologically abused,” he told the hearing. RCF4 had been “nasty, cruel and physically violent towards me”.

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In his second year, when the witness was eight years old, he said Grant-Ferris would walk behind boys sitting at long refectory tables for meals and select children for beatings. “If he stopped behind you and tapped you, then you knew it was you. If he stopped behind someone else and tapped them, one thing that disturbs me to this day is the feeling of relief that it wasn’t going to be me,” he said.
Once he was beaten in the chapel confessional by the priest after being told to take off his clothes. “It was always with his hands … and his hands would always linger on one’s bare bottom after each smack.”

On another occasion, the witness said Grant-Ferris told him to undress and lie face down on the priest’s bed. “He proceeded to take my temperature rectally. I didn’t even know people could have their temperatures taken rectally, I’d only ever had a thermometer put in my mouth. I begged him not to do it, because I didn’t know what was happening, but he continued anyway. I think technically that was a form of rape.”

Grant-Ferris, the son of a Tory peer, was “the full authority figure” the witness told the hearing. At the school, there were “sexual overtones and currents all the time”, he added.
After he left school, the witness suffered a “total psychological collapse” which lasted seven or eight years. “I wasn’t able to do anything, I couldn’t function.”
He said he believed that Basil Hume, who was abbot of Ampleforth Abbey for 13 years until appointed archbishop of Westminster in 1976, had been aware of abuse at the schools. “I have no doubt he knew exactly what was going on at the time.”

Another witness, who was sent to Gilling Castle at the age of six, told the hearing that he and other boys would cry under their blankets at night as monks wearing long black robes patrolled the dormitories. Grant-Ferris was known as “Pervy Piers” among the children, he said.
According to yet another statement, Grant-Ferris was “handsome and aristocratic” with a perpetual mood of excitement.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/29/former-pupils-tell-inquiry-of-sexual-abuse-by-priests-at-ampleforth-college
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This witness also described how another teacher had put his hand down the boy’s trousers “to check my breathing” when he was auditioning for the choir. As a result of his experiences, he said: “I became a very quiet child who didn’t talk to people much.”
The inquiry also heard from a female former pupil at Ampleforth College, who left the school in 2010. She said that a music teacher, Dara De-Cogan, had sexually abused her over a period of years.

De-Cogan was jailed for 28 months earlier this year pleading guilty to 10 charges of engaging in sexual activity while in a position of trust. The witness said that he had groomed her from the age of 13, and his abuse resulted in her self-harming. “I thought I deserved to be punished somehow for what I was doing … [self-harming] gave me a sense of numbness.”
On some occasions, De-Cogan gave her marks out of 10 for oral sex, she said. “He would comment on it as if it was a piece of homework.”

Child protection procedures at Ampleforth were “very poor”, she said. Because of earlier convictions of monks, the college had an “obsessive emphasis on the completion of paperwork, but common sense and looking at what was in front of their faces - that went by the wayside.”
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse began a three-week hearing on Monday focusing on the Benedictine schools of Ampleforth and Downside. In some cases, abusers were permitted to stay in their posts and allowed to have contact with children and other vulnerable individuals, the hearing was told earlier this week.

Dispite the revelation of false sexual abuse allegationwe still have an abuse scandal in the armed services and the cadets that dates back over a period of six years. 360 complaints have been received over the last few years and 260 of them have been referred to the police. Once more we have seen another institution of the state avert it's eyes from the reality of powerful men having power over young women and men. From Deep Cut Barracks to the Sea Cadets those who deny what has happened simply end up serving and protecting the needs of the abusers. Just as Jimmy Saville went unnoticed or ignored for so long does not mean that powerful institutions like the armed services should be able to hide from scrutiny.

The plague of sexual abuse haunts the upper reHes of the state. In the armed services the nature of authority and a culture of command, control and obedience makes it easier for the purveyors of sbuse to disguise, hide and deny their actions. The barked orders, the regimentation, the need to fit in all go against the power of the abused to stand up and say what is going on. The very abuse that occurs behind the scene where power is exercised in such ways that are itself a contributing cause to the possibility of abuse. From the Public schools and private education comes equally such abuse. Those like myself who experienced the English Prep school recognise the realities of what has been going on within the armed services . Those who wield power often fail to understand how power works and is experienced by those who feel it's actions. Revelations emerging from Panorama must mean thata full investigation should iccur to explore the nature of systemic sexual abuse that runs through the institutions of the state. From Donald Trump's locker room attitude to women to the power of paedophiles drawn to positions of power there is no difference .Each has an intersection of attitude that is connected and similar in nature. The women in the USA complaining of alleged assault by Trump are kept as silent by power and are the victims of abuse who are kept silent by authority within the private schools or the armed services. It must end...this scandal too like Saville goes back to the 1970s...it's how society has been and it time to reveal the truth...

Black Swan theory deals with effects of highly improbable events that once occuring are then treated as inevitable and that there consequences that change perceptions. These interpretations often appear when Historians look back on events. Black Swan theory has an important psychological lens as well as a political and sociological one. Bismarck's unification of Germany in the 19th century was presented as that of a master plan originating from the dark whispers of Machevellian mind. All our interpretations of events, motivations and other people frequently arise from the principle that we apply our own personal wounds, hurts, the weaknesses and strengths to others without seeing our own, to quote

Nietzche that " our moralities are our wounds". Conspiracy theories , belief in the illuminati and seeing a web of plotting and subtefuge all originate here, secret societies can all be explained in history by this approach. The alleged threat of the Jews, the Free Masons, Witches, the anarchists, the Communist Party all originate from the same lens. Emily Dickinson said something like "witchcraft is hung in history, but I see Witchcraft all around me everyday".The point remains that so much has emerged since the Jimmy Saville revelations that the denial of wide spread abuse amongst the ruling classes to the rest of us cannot be denied. As somone who went to an English Prep school in the late 60s and witnessed and experienced circumstances and situations that were dubious and frightening....I have no doubt of the reality of wide spread child abuse. This is one Black Swan that should change things for ever.