Sunshine and oranges
Remember: religion makes people nicer.
On treacherous building sites little boys were flogged if they slowed down, carrying loads of bricks up the scaffolding, lime burns lacerating their legs, hands blistered and cut. This was not Dickensian England; this was Australia and it was happening until 1970.
…
In 1946, at the age of 10, Hennessey was sent from an orphanage in England to the brutal Bindoon Boys Town in Western Australia….
”The brothers and sisters were all together,” he says. ”And then they started grabbing the girls away from their brothers. I can still hear the screams of these kids being separated. Some of them never saw their sisters again. I still have nightmares.”
Life at Bindoon, run by the Catholic Church’s Christian Brothers, was a catalogue of cruelty, where beatings and sexual assaults were daily events.
”Bindoon was nothing more than a paedophile ring,” Hennessey says. ”Most of the brothers were into raping and molesting little boys, sometimes sharing their favourites with each other.”
The boys were put to work building the series of grand buildings that Bindoon became. ”It was slave labour,” says Hennessey. Many of them are now deaf or partially deaf because they were constantly bashed around the head.
He recalls children resorting to stealing food from the pigs they tended – because the pigs were better fed. Brother Francis Keaney, the head of Bindoon, would eat bacon and eggs in front of boys who were fed porridge mixed with bran from the chicken feed. The boys would raid the bins for his scraps.
And so on.
It happened because it is just obviously so much better for children to be raised by nuns and priests — even on the other side of the world — rather than by a dirty nasty slut of a single mother.
It is shocking that these children are not grateful for the “good life” they were given. Their minds must have been corrupted by the free-wheeling secular hedonism of the 60’s and 70’s.
The Christian Brothers did the same things at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It’s a pattern repeated again and again by the churches — Anglican, Roman Catholic, and United Church residential schools for native Canadians were guilty of all sorts of abuse. We keep hearing about all the good work that churches do, but when they can get away with it, they seem to operate in despicable ways. No doubt there are Christians who do good works. However, it should not be assumed that just because these people are religious that they will carry out the work that they do with respect for the people that they help. Salvation Army hostels for men are notorious for the lack of respect shown to the men who come for help. Even Albert Schweitzer, whose work in Lambarene (if I remember correctly) was certainly an important source of medical relief to those who lived there, but he was also a bit of a martinet, and treated the Africans under his care much like children or incompetents. Of course, Schweitzer could only by stretching terms be thought of as a Christian, but this relationship between Christian and client has frequently been one of power to powerlessness. I worry when I hear people speak of the chruch’s good works. Sometimes it is true, but very often the pattern of abuse is repeated again and again. I don’t know whether this has been objectively studied except in signal instances like Mt. Cashel or Bindoon, the “industrial schools” in Ireland or the Magdalene Laundries, but it probably deserves more attention than it is given, especially when people casually mention the good works that the churches do.
Would one need to be very cynical to conclude that these “sins” were put in place to provide free labor for church projects? Prohibiting abortions creates an unwed mother to work in a laundry and a child to work making crucifixes or building church buildings.
Just when I think I can’t have more contempt for “the church” they prove me wrong – again. Those irish “christian” brothers who raped the children of Mt Cashel are the same bastards who flogged generations of irish and english kids (including my father) unmercifully. And if they were bad the fucking jesuits were even worse. I know – I went to a jesuit school for a few years. Those SOBs were merciless sadists who ruled by fear. My close friend couldn’t take it and had a nervous breakdown – at the age of eleven!!! Fortunately one of the jesuits was revealed as yet another kiddie rapist (he was transferred to another parish) and my parents got me out of that gulag.
One can only hope for some justice sopmewhere……….
Cruelty is what the Christian Brothers are/were all about.
I read the whole of the original article, which brought me near to tears. A genuine enquiry does need to be set up, the roles of church and charity thoroughly investigated, and the findings made public.
I am sure you have all heard the saying that the true measure of a person’s character is shown in the way they treat people when the only limits (de facto and de jure) on how they treat those people are those of their own conscience.
So, Woodstock was in the 40s, (right?) because the Catholic Church told me that the Hippies forced the Church to rape children, and Mr. Hennessey was at the Bindoon Boys Town in the 40s.
Those who inspire me get to suffer my poetry.
I detect the influence of Tim Minchin.
I enjoyed your poem, Bruce. It speaks volumes.
Here’s another slice of aesthetic writing taken from the article, which is full of it.
“In the winter the children left blood on the frost. Their bare feet stumbled on rocks that peeled the skin,
but they were so numb with cold that they barely felt the pain”.
I hope the Australian government wakes up to the constant cries of survivors of institutional child abuse. It’s terrific that there are such articulate survivors like John Hennessey to be had to speak on their behalf.
Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland is well known globally. You know, Eric, the name Cashel derives from the Rock of Cashel in Co Tipperary, (where incidentally, the queen frequented during her recent State visit to Ireland). The Irish learned and subsequently adopted a lot from the Canadian model; when thy set up the investigative and restorative schemes. Namely: the commission to inquire into institutional child abuse (CICA ) and the redress board (RIRB). The Canadian and German survivors came to ireland. Perhaps the Australians should also come and learn from each other – that is if they haven’t already done so. Mind you, it is so far away. I wish the Australian survivors all the best.
I have just read the book by Lesley Pearce called ‘Trust me’ which has influenced me to read up on the Bindoon orphanage and the Sisters of Mercy and all the other religious orphanages. I am ony 21 and no little of this awful abuse myself but can only hope these individuals, now fully grown adults, can find peace in life and the people who bought them harm get their cumupence in the after life.