God Reality? A Testimony (3)
September 16th 2009 06:42
Under Attack
‘When they find, they will be disturbed—Jesus, The Gospel of Tomas
The two main problems with being the only child of ambitious publicans were loneliness and constant relocation. No sooner would I become settled in a school than the hotel was sold and off we’d go again. By the age of nine, I’d been to five schools and my grades were suffering as a result. That’s when my parents made the unfortunate decision to send me to boarding school. On advice from a family friend, they chose Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Bowral, on the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, with the intention that when I finished primary levels, I would attend Chevalier Secondary College just down the road.
My two years with the nuns at O.L.S.H. passed in uneventful normality. Anyone that received Catholic schooling during the sixties and seventies will testify that the nuns although firm and not afraid to use the cane, were a cakewalk compared to the priests. The few excursions we had to Chevalier College, coupled with the stories we’d heard, had those in my class destined for enrolment expecting a prison camp run by malevolent priests wielding huge leather straps. That would prove not too far off the mark. Of course, not all the priests were nasty.
The College was a massive complex, a mixture of new brick and original weatherboard buildings. First and second form dormitories were housed in one of the original buildings at the front of the complex. It was there that I first encountered the personification of evil. I shall call him Brother M. He was a paedophile, a cruel, vindictive little man with a heart as dark as his persona. M quickly turned my stay at Chevalier into living torment.
As dormitory master, M’s room was situated in the main dorm-room itself. His modus operandi was deception. He would select his target and tell the unlucky boy that he wanted to see them in his room after ‘lights out’. I was targeted shortly after arrival. At first, I thought I must have done something wrong and was destined for my first strapping. Of course, now I dearly wish that’s all it was. I remember asking one of the boys I’d seen going to his room a few nights prior what it was like, did it hurt? However, my questions met a stoney silence, a shake of the head and running off.
One trick I was told: don two pairs of underpants. Of course, this only works if you were not told to drop your pants, but it was all I had. So henceforth padded and scared, when the lights went out, I made my way to M’s room. (Cont.)
‘When they find, they will be disturbed—Jesus, The Gospel of Tomas
The two main problems with being the only child of ambitious publicans were loneliness and constant relocation. No sooner would I become settled in a school than the hotel was sold and off we’d go again. By the age of nine, I’d been to five schools and my grades were suffering as a result. That’s when my parents made the unfortunate decision to send me to boarding school. On advice from a family friend, they chose Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Bowral, on the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, with the intention that when I finished primary levels, I would attend Chevalier Secondary College just down the road.
The College was a massive complex, a mixture of new brick and original weatherboard buildings. First and second form dormitories were housed in one of the original buildings at the front of the complex. It was there that I first encountered the personification of evil. I shall call him Brother M. He was a paedophile, a cruel, vindictive little man with a heart as dark as his persona. M quickly turned my stay at Chevalier into living torment.
As dormitory master, M’s room was situated in the main dorm-room itself. His modus operandi was deception. He would select his target and tell the unlucky boy that he wanted to see them in his room after ‘lights out’. I was targeted shortly after arrival. At first, I thought I must have done something wrong and was destined for my first strapping. Of course, now I dearly wish that’s all it was. I remember asking one of the boys I’d seen going to his room a few nights prior what it was like, did it hurt? However, my questions met a stoney silence, a shake of the head and running off.
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