UNITED KINGDOM
The Observer
Eleven men who trained for the priesthood at a Yorkshire seminary have recently settled their claims of sexual abuse with the Catholic order that ran it. In the latest in our series on boarding-school abuse, Catherine Deveney hears of their decades-long struggle for justice and the damage done
Catherine Deveney
The Observer, Saturday 18 October 2014
The face looming towards the rent boy in the London station was familiar. A face from his past: Father John Pinkman. No punter would have guessed that the rent boy had once wanted to be a priest, too. He had spent several years at Mirfield Junior Seminary in Yorkshire which was run by the Verona Fathers, an Italian missionary order. Pinkman had abused him there, was part of the degradation that led to this place, this life. The priest disappeared into the crowd, then reappeared, highlighted by light glinting off his spectacles. The rent boy caught his eye. Pinkman looked hesitant, embarrassed, then boarded a train without speaking. The last, silent goodbye.
The “boy”, who only spent a short time in prostitution, is now in his 60s. He has never had a relationship that’s lasted longer than a few months. Never achieved in life. Never felt good about himself. “I fail because I deserve to fail,” he says. His confusion now is not that different from his 17-year-old self: a boy who had sex with men, then vomited with disgust. “Guilt and fear become part of you, something you can’t shake off. I can’t tell you what a mess I was. I was terrified of growing up, terrified of men. I was all over the place. I was like an empty shell, not knowing what direction to go in.”
He wasn’t the only one to claim abuse at Mirfield. He has never taken a case against the Verona Fathers, but in the past few months, 11 British men have settled out of court with the Order, also known as the Comboni Missionaries. At least two more cases are pending and many corroborating statements have been given to lawyers by victims who want to expose what happened, but cannot face the stress of court proceedings. Confirming the 11 settlements, the Order’s spokeswoman, a solicitor with the Catholic Church Insurance Association, stressed, “the claims were made purely on a commercial basis with no admission of liability.”
The group of 11 is powerful: unified, disciplined and determined to speak the truth. “It would be nice to change the system for the good,” says one. The weight of testimony given to the Observer – witness statements, psychologists’ reports, timelines, contemporaneous diary extracts, spoken accounts – is stark and overwhelming. The witnesses were once would-be priests – the church’s own. Little wonder that one Verona Father told an ex-pupil: “If the abuse that happened at Mirfield is ever revealed, it will destroy the Verona Fathers in the United Kingdom.”
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