I knew something pretty big had happened in Australia when I looked at my FB page this morning and saw about fifty notifications all from "Down Under" !
Pell charged- with multiple historic sexual abuse charges!!!
Now we have to just hope that the police have done all their homework properly to make those charges watertight!
This breakthrough is, I am sure, very much due to the fierce warrior survivors in Australia! They have never stopped their fight.
They are EPIC!
Now I don't want to hear any sanctimonious bullshit about "witchhunts" and the like! These bastards have been getting away with their crimes for years!
Here is the thing! They just simply do NOT care! they don't give a shit about how many people's lives have been destroyed, they pose for the cameras and squirm with obsequious and meaningless apologies, and even then have the sheer audacity to trivialise the damage and devastation caused.
So Thank you all you warrior survivor "Beauts" in Australia!
Perhaps we might possibly even dare to hope that Francis will be the next to be charged with the appalling cover ups he was responsible for in Argentina!
It is high time this dreadful criminal religion is consigned to the history books!
Nobody says it better than Tim Minchin!
https://youtu.be/EtHOmforqxk
I was talking to someone who was interviewing me about childhood clergy sexual abuse. That is something I have done a lot, ever since I "came out" as it were, it was a choice I made.
I knew that to stay silent wasn't working for me, and it occurred to me that I may help others if I spoke out.
That was a long time ago, and a story often told. I don't care for doing it, but sometimes it is necessary.
But I was overwhelmed with this particular interviewer's naiveté and his complete missing of the point!
He was very quick to keep pointing out that after everything I told him that "I was alright now" that everything was "now ok" and there was a "happy ending". Wasn't I "lucky"? This was of course, a religious interviewer!
I am seventy now, and while it is perfectly true that I have a very different and fulfilling life now, and I am grateful for that, I am, like many others like me, mystified why these people do not recognise the LOST years, the ones we cannot have back!
The early teens when we should have been forming friendships and alliances instead of hiding away our "secrets", sabotaging relationships rather than showing our wounds.
Instead of being able to talk to our peers about our blossoming womanhood, we could not allow anyone to see the sordid reality of our lives.
These early years are so important, you can't "catch up" you cannot go back to being ten again and start over!
When other girls were dreaming of Elvis Presley, I was having nightmares about a fat drunken smelly pedophile in a cleric's collar, and fearing he may come after me again. I can't recapture those times, and make them rainbows and buttercups!
I cannot go back and be a better parent to my children, instead of a clueless one!
I cannot "undrink" all the booze or "untake" the drugs!!
The inadequate pedophile and his narcissistic church took away my PRIME years, as a teenager and a young woman and I cannot have them back.
I was damaged, abused, alone, afraid, mentally and emotionally disturbed. It was only sheer bloody mindedness that I survived at all!
And now I am in the "twighlight" years, and I am very happy in my personal life, my default position is still unworthiness and guilt, and despite any of my successes, I still consider myself to be an alien in this beautiful world.
That's what a "happy ending" looks like you stupid sanctimonious prick!
I have been teaching now in the substance misuse field for 23 years, and have personally taught 15,000 health care workers. I have taught in 128 UK prisons, as well as the Health service, community drug and alcohol services, mental health services and military mental health.
I don't go to conferences, I don't advertise, I don't "sell" my ideas, because I just simply want to do the work!
My main loyalty is not anything to do with kudos, acupuncture, or anything other than the very BEST authentic treatment for addicts, like me, and survivors of abuse, also like me. I am also committed to the people I have taught and continue to teach, they have in truth taught me so much!
When I hear of things being done badly or in a mediocre way, or to make money, using addicts or abuse survivors as a commodity, I feel something akin to a "primal scream" It is physical, it hurts, it could be me!
I got upset recently when I heard of something that smacks of exploitation, and I turned to one of my very wise friends and fellow "travellers" who gave me his very sage wisdom "F... them" he said, "don't let people live rent free in your head"! "Just do what you have always done , keep your side of the street clean, always do the next right thing and let everyone else get on with it"!
Of course he was right, which is why I always turn to him in times of turmoil! Thankyou (again) Richard Kingdon!
Mine isn't just a job, it is a passion! And when I think it might be threatened I feel very unsettled.
Throughout my life though, it has always been people of passion that have helped me most, helped me get sober, helped me through enormous difficulties, held my hand in times of despair, because it also mattered to them, It has not been any "words of wisdom" from people who relish the chance to spout, or feel they have superior knowledge, but the fellow "travellers"with their simple but very profound wisdom.
Their lessons are in compassion and honesty.
My wish is to be more like them!
