No One Is Listening

Preface

This book is a novel, which means that it is made up out of my imagination. The events, the explanations for the events and the motivations of the characters are all made up by me. I believe that what makes a novel worth reading is the author's ability to imagine convincingly what is going on in the minds and lives of their characters. Though I am against research by novelists - they are writing fiction, not sociology, geography or history - in this case research has forced itself upon me, because it felt as though every time I mentioned the subject of the novel to someone they told me their own personal horror story.

I have also followed the common instruction to write about what I know, and after forty years of involvement with psychotherapy my clients have taught me a great deal about sexual perversion and about the depredations of the Catholic Church. I also read the newspapers and have seen how widespread and pervasive is the abuse of power in the Catholic Church and how that abuse relates specifically to matters sexual. I am also aware that these abuses exist in other religions, so don't think I am only trying to expose Catholic abuse.

In a long career I have worked with both abusers and victims and in this novel I have tried to explore the life and motivation of a fictional abuser who knew what she was doing was wrong, but was incapable of controlling her perverted sexual drives. I believe that this is true for many abusers. My character, Mother Superior, is based on what I have been told about a real life Mother Superior and her cruelty to her charges.

I have said that this novel is made up, and it is, but sadly none of the types of events depicted in it are without foundations in fact. I know as a fact of the physical abuse of girls by nuns in convent schools with the strap, and am personally convinced that the nuns received a sexual kick from it. We all know of the sexual abuse of boys and women by priests, but less is written of similar abuse by nuns.

Also there really are sadomasochistic clubs known as S&M clubs, where people give and receive severe pain. The Spanner Case referred to in this book is real.

Sadly, in researching this book, people have told me that the abuse they received was far worse than that which I have described. One friend has permanent injuries given to him by nuns purporting to be teaching him his times tables. Sometimes it has seemed as though the whole world has suffered from abuse at the hands of nuns.

In publishing this book, I hope to open up the abuse children received from nuns and give them a voice. The more unbelievable you find the story the more likely it is to based in truth; none of the punishments inflicted on children in this book are made up.

Mexico February 2013

After this preface was written I came across the story described in the links below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/12/religion.childprotection

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/1357314/Victims-throw-coins-as-cruelty-nun-walks-free.html

PART ONE

SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN

BOOK 1: BIRTH

Margaret Ruth de Vere Mahoney screamed and then she screamed again.

She had promised herself that she would not let herself down by giving way to the pain of childbirth and showing it to the strangers around her. However, the pain was so intense that even she found it overwhelming. She lost all self-control and her involuntary screams seemed to tear apart the sterile white surroundings of the delivery room, just as she felt the process of birth to be tearing her body apart. It had been bad enough when the pain had caused her to whimper and make loud sounds with her breathing, but this screaming was totally humiliating.

As the pain reached its height she lost all self-control and screamed loudly and lustily, and with each scream she experienced a complete and irrevocable loss of her self-worth. Then, in one of the lulls in the pain, Margaret made an irrevocable pact with herself: she swore that she would never have another child. She was after all one of the Lincolnshire de Veres and they were not a family to expose themselves or their feelings to public gaze, even if that gaze were that of a doctor or a nurse. She had never before been so naked in front of anyone.

Margaret's Catholicism was something like the clothes that she wore to dress for dinner, a social nicety she put on and slipped out of with ease. She had of course prayed before the birth, but she had no confidence in its efficacy and the reality of childbirth proved her right. She went to church on Sundays, because that was what was expected of her, and she went through the motions of prayer, communion and of course confession, but it was all for show. Margaret had no belief in God or the Catholic Church, and while she had to go to confession in order to take communion, she did both purely for show and never confessed anything of significance to her priest, nor did he ask her to.

Once a young priest standing in for the usual incumbent had challenged her confession, saying that there must be more that she could confess and that he could not give her absolution, if he did not believe her confession to be sincere. In payment for his efforts to purify her soul he had received a strong ticking off from his superiors, who, unwilling to cross her, had exerted a heavy brake on his professional progression. It was many years before he was considered mature enough to have his own parish. Every time Margaret heard that he was still in a junior post she smiled.

Margaret made a decision that she would never again experience the pain of childbirth and the humiliation that it involved. She took a vow of celibacy, and to ensure that it was efficacious, she refused to have any further physical contact with her husband or any man. Never again did she kiss him or even allow him to touch her. She never again visited his room and never invited him to visit her room. In church she ensured that her husband never sat next to her.

Margaret liked sex enough to know that unless her celibacy was complete she would not be able to stick to her resolve. And she stuck to her resolve for the rest of her life, except on one single occasion.

And so she changed from a woman who craved sex and sometimes exhausted her husband, to a woman who never had sex at all. As Margaret thought about her decision it seemed to her that it solved two problems at once. The obvious one was that she had decided never to have another child, the other more complex one she found harder to understand.

Until her daughter Lilly was born, Margaret craved sex, but she was always disappointed. She sought warmth and physical contact and love, but somehow by the time it was over and often before it was over she was dissatisfied. She would have liked to blame her husband for this, but she knew that he was a good lover and that she had more orgasms in a week than some of her friends had had in their whole lives. Margaret had tried other men, some of whom she knew loved her and one or two of whom she even loved herself, but it made no difference. There was an acid in her soul which made it impossible for her to feel satisfied, even when her body was telling her differently.

Margaret knew sex made her vulnerable and that the moment she felt that vulnerability she closed down her feelings and only her body remained. She craved that feeling of completeness that she knew sex could bring, but it eluded her, and instead of realising that the problem was in herself, she had sex more and more often, hoping that the physical act itself would cure her. She was like a rabid dog that craves water, but at the same time fears it. She craved the feeling of warmth and care which would lead to her feeling totally vulnerable and totally cared for by her partner, but as soon as she felt any hint of its approach she fled into a locked room in her brain and stayed there, hammering on the door to be let out at the same time as she was barricading the door to prevent it getting in.

Once she had made her decision, all her problems were solved and she never craved sex again. She just decided that she would be alone, and she was. To ensure that she was left alone, she employed maids that were as young and attractive as possible.

Margaret was addicted to sex, but the pain of childbirth and the humiliation she had suffered was stronger than her addiction. She had been told that women forgot the pain of childbirth, otherwise they would never have further children. To ensure that she never forgot and that she never had another child, she eschewed sex and so was never humiliated again. She had the inner strength to swap an addiction to sex for an addiction to celibacy.

Her husband who was a young and healthy man, found this enforced celibacy unbearable and occasionally succumbed to the need to engage in paid sex with women who frequented a certain part of the town. He became fastidious about his bedroom and often found the need to have some of the young and pretty maids visit his bedroom to re-do some piece of work he was not satisfied with. Their work in the master's bedroom seemed, often, to take a very long time and they were left red in the face from their exertions.

One day he approached Margaret and mentioned his conjugal rights. It was after dinner when they were sitting in the lounge, he on one side and her on the other. The sun was setting over the terrace and was just sinking behind the ha-ha. The maid had just cleared away the coffee and he was alone with his wife. He made every effort not to look at her or let her catch his eye.

Er…Margaret, he said, looking past her out into the grounds as if he were searching for a cow or a horse which had broken through a fence in the distance, I want to talk to you about marriage and the existence of conjugal rights in a marriage.

There was a pause in which he thought that perhaps she would ignore his statement and pretend that it had never been uttered, but then she replied, and her answer was brief and completely to the point.

If you require a divorce I shall be pleased to grant you one.

Margaret…

Let me finish, please! But I shall be forced to mention in it, your having caused several very good maids to be sent packing and your trips to Back Donnelly Street.

He was shocked by her reply and made the obvious retort: But Margaret there is no divorce in the Catholic Church.

Margaret smiled and said, But we were married in England where divorce is quite legal, if somewhat shaming.

The implication was obvious: Margaret's family would use their power and influence to ensure that all the shame of the divorce should fall on him and that he would be portrayed as a shameful scoundrel. This was a shame he would never wish to endure and he never mentioned the subject again. He had no idea how she knew about Back Donnelly Street, but her mention of it merely made him more confused about it. Sometimes, from shame, he fought the urge to go there so fiercely that he was celibate for six months or more; sometimes, convinced that he had his wife's permission to go there, he was there every day and sometimes twice a day.

Margaret gave neither a jot nor a tittle what he did, as long as he didn't touch her and her comfortable well-heeled Irish country life was undisturbed. She did as she pleased, saw whom she pleased and came and went as she pleased. Often he did not even know where his wife was, because she found it unnecessary to tell him.

Nor did she care what the Catholic Church had to say on the matter and her husband knew that. The fact that the Catholic Church would not allow a divorce would be no bar to her suing for one in a civil court and she had ensured that they married in England, so that if the worst happened she would not be bound by Irish law with its entanglement with the rules and regulations of Catholicism. Margaret certainly had no intention of marrying again, so being barred from so doing by the Catholic Church was not something that worried her.

Margaret was a Catholic by birth and when it suited her she went to church and occasionally even to confession and took communion, but to her it was all a load of mumbo jumbo and she had no more prayed to the Virgin Mary to help her with Lilly's birth than she believed that the wine and the wafer turned into the body and blood of Christ.

For Margaret de Vere, appearance was everything, and she ensured that her family ran along the strict lines that she laid down. No maid or other member of her household staff ever dared to gossip and therefore, while her celibacy was obvious to her maid, it was never discussed below stairs by anyone. Margaret had her spies and her staff made sure not to be caught, for they knew full well that her revenge would spill out not only on them, but their families and friends as well. She had power and wasn't afraid to use it.

By the time she was old enough to have sex without the possibility of conceiving, she had become so cold and shrivelled inside, that the idea of physical warmth and intimacy with another person were anathema to her. She hated her daughter Lilly for causing her to be so humiliated, and never forgave her. She was God's curse. If there was a God, he had cursed her for her disbelief and for that cursing, Lilly had to suffer.

BOOK 2: CHALLENGES

CHAPTER ONE Mrs Jackson's Visit

Mrs Jackson didn't knock, she merely said to the novice sitting at a desk where she did nothing more than guard Mother Superior's door, Is she in there? In fact she didn't even reply, but gave her answer by the look on her face and a nod of her head in the direction of the office door.

As she opened the stout wooden door, almost black from age, the novice sprang to her feet, terrified that someone had crossed the invisible line into Mother Superior's office, and began to say something to the effect of, You can't go in there, but Mrs Jackson was already ‘in there’.

Mother Superior sat behind a wide mahogany desk, on an upright wooden chair. Her desk had a neat pile of papers on it, a Bible, and a wooden cross of dark ash placed in a crude stone plinth. The aim was to convey that quiet, contemplative work was taking place there, in the secular world, but always connected to the spiritual and heavenly. In reality the school was run by others and Mother Superior had little work to do, which was fortunate as she spent so much time praying.

There were not many books on the shelves, as if to state that the Bible contained all necessary knowledge, but there were religious relics and religious objects, such as water from Lourdes and some lurid religious pictures and cheaply produced plaster models of saints and of the Holy Family. The room combined the dignity of the ages which had passed since its construction, nearly two hundred years ago, with the sort of taste to which only religion can reduce an educated person. It was if the British Museum with all its dignity and knowledge had suddenly been taken over by ten year olds and filled with ‘nice things’.

Mother Superior saw little dignity in Mrs Jackson's entrance, although for Mrs Jackson the dignity of knowing she was right supported her anger and confirmed her conviction. Mother Superior's tone was quiet, controlled and icy cold.

What do you mean, barging in here without permission?

It was not clear if she was speaking to the novice or to Mrs Jackson. She looked directly at neither of them and didn't call either of them by name. The novice, terrified, withdrew and hovered by the door.

Mrs Jackson had neither time nor inclination to answer that question. Her anger had made her brave and she launched directly into the speech she had rehearsed all night and repeated to herself over the breakfast that she couldn't eat and in the bus on the way to the school.

My Mary come home last night covered in welts and she told me that you made them with a belt on her bottom and legs. Now then, is that true?

Mother Superior's methods had never before been questioned, nor had aspersions ever been cast upon her veracity, but her mind was on other things and she did not immediately answer Mrs Jackson. The imminent death of her long time father confessor had been filling her with a sense of dread for the last thirty six hours since she had learned that he had been given the last rites. And to make matters worse, just before Mrs Jackson's arrival Mother Superior had been informed that the crack in the chapel wall was getting worse. The architect had already said that it would cost more than the convent could ever afford to have it mended. In the mean time a close watch would have to be kept on it and if it got any worse it would have to be declared out of bounds to children and, in the end, to everyone.

Mother Superior had been worried ever since the cracks first appeared that this would happen and knew that the Order would never pay for the necessary repairs. The school had to be self supporting. The Order itself had too many other calls on its meagre resources to pay out for repairs to the fabric. Fabric repairs were the responsibility of rich benefactors. But people no longer contributed to the Order or felt any need to. Like so much of the Holy Mother Church it was becoming an anachronism. It would never have occurred to Mother Superior that it was to her that people were resistant to giving.

Mother Superior seemed to be transfixed by something happening outside the leaded window of her office. She was staring into space. If only Father Murphy were not dying she would be able, as she always had, to rely on his wise counsel. He was a rock, a man as strong and old as bricks and mortar, and as the old bricks and mortar of the chapel were cracking, so was he. Both were soon to meet their end. In Father Murphy's eyes, Mrs Jackson would be a speck, to be dealt with by a flick of a duster; Mother Superior might even have sent her to speak to him. But to day she was on her own with this angry woman.

Are you listening to me?

Mrs Jackson said, in a voice whose authority surprised her, and Mother Superior's attention was snapped back to her visitor. She looked straight through her at the heavy mahogany book shelves which lined the wall of her office and the antique tomes which stood on them, searching for solace and inspiration. It hadn't yet penetrated her consciousness that Mrs Jackson was one of her problems. The big soapstone crucifix, the ornate picture of Mother and Child and the model of St. Sebastian pierced by arrows which were supposed to give solace, for some strange reason seemed to be challenging her and making her feel weak. It was as if they were saying, Look at us. We are strong and grounded, we are belief and we are faith! You are weak and have no security in prayer, faith or belief. You are nothing. Mother Superior, during her novitiate, had fought such feelings with prayer and they were a long forgotten memory. Why were they surfacing now?

She grabbed for a way out and said in slow deliberate tones, as though she were talking to an uncomprehending child, I can not talk to you now, I have more important things to do. You will have to make an appointment for some time next week or the week after. Mother Superior never made appointments for a time less than a week ahead. It gave the impression that she was important and busy.

Listen to me, woman! If you don't speak to me now, I'm going straight to Police and taking my Mary with me.

Mother Superior lowered her eyes from the bookshelves and looked directly at Mrs Jackson for the first time. The look said it all; there was no need for her to speak. However for the first time in her life Mother Superior's look didn't work and Mrs Jackson was menacing her over her desk. This angry mother was on her feet and leaning across at the nun with a look which was so full of passion it was frightening.

So what's it to be, talk to me now or talk to Police? The edge of a Yorkshire accent came out in her voice, as it always did when she was determined to be heard.

Mother Superior stood up from her desk to close her office door. Mrs Jackson, thinking she was attempting to leave the room, sprang towards the door and blocked her exit. There was a moment of comedy, as they tripped and tangled, but it didn't last. Mrs Jackson was on serious business.

Listen to me, I'm not bluffing.

She caught hold of the nun's habit and her voice was loud enough to be heard beyond the outer office, although as lessons had not yet started it was lost in the general din.

Can we at least close the door, Mrs Jackson? But the novice, for once acting on her own initiative, was already closing it. Mother Superior removed Mrs Jackson's hand with the slow deliberate actions of someone who despises their assailant, or as if she had a nasty disease, and returning to her seat asked Mrs Jackson to sit down opposite her.

Mrs Jackson, having vented her anger and realising that she had achieved her desired aim of getting the nun's attention, calmed down a little. Her careworn face relaxed, and she tugged nervously at her rose patterned headscarf. But Mother Superior's next words made her boil up again. Now what seems to be the trouble and how can I help you to calm down? Mrs Jackson was not an educated woman, nor was she rich. She was greying and tubby, a typical working class mum, worn down by hard work and poverty and the effort of looking after and loving her family. Mary attended the school almost for free. Mother Superior was tall and gaunt. It was difficult to say what she looked like, because of the habit, but she had a long, very fine nose, deep blue eyes, thin, mean lips and the complexion of someone who rarely saw daylight and fresh air. It was conceivable that in different clothes and a different context that she might have been pretty or even beautiful.

Mrs Jackson may have been poor and uneducated, but she was worldly and knew a thing or two about fighting. She had fought all her life. Her Dad had been a fighter, first in the boxing ring, then in the War and then at the factory. He had taught her how to fight. As an adult she had fought for her family, to make them a life, and she knew it was not always brawn which won the battle. Mrs Jackson sensed that this battle was going to be won by calm reason, not by shouting. So she mirrored Mother Superior and took her time, waiting for her own breathing to calm, before she spoke.

Well, did you give my Mary those welts?

Mrs Jackson, I had cause to punish your daughter yesterday. That is the case.

Her tone was not so much icy as dead and it inspired the fear of death in people. She had cultivated it over many years and, like her look, it had always stopped people dead in their tracks before.

And what could my Mary possibly have done to deserve a punishment like that? The extreme self restraint, in Mrs Jackson's tone was not registered by her adversary, who had never had to do battle with anyone in the ten years of her life as Mother Superior and who therefore, foolishly, answered directly and truthfully.

She had low marks in her homework and was inattentive in class.

If Mother Superior had learned to fight, she would have known that by answering the question she had in effect said, You are right, the punishment was excessive. In so doing she gave Mrs Jackson the upper hand. Now it was Mrs Jackson's turn to use her tone of voice, not one always as universally successful as Mother Superior's, but Mrs Jackson was fighting for one of her cubs, and the sheer determination to protect her cub was strong enough to overcome any respect she had for the nun's habit, her tone of voice and her acknowledged power. Her response sounded cool, calm and collected and it sucked the nun into making the fatal error of underestimating her adversary and answering truthfully and directly. Mrs Jackson asked her,

Do you always do that to children who have low marks and are inattentive in class?

Yes, Mrs Jackson. I find it to be a most effective form of motivation.

Behind Mother Superior's head were the few books on education that ever came her way and Mrs Jackson glanced at them, momentarily catching the title of one, Education and Motivation, a tome which Mother Superior found almost nonsensical in its modern ideas, but one which pleased the school inspectors to see, so was kept on prominent display. Mrs Jackson was so calm by now and her voice so low and so cool, that the nun had to strain to hear her.

I'm going to tell you something very important, something which is … the most important thing you'll ever hear in your life.

I doubt it Mrs Jacks…

But Mrs Jackson was not going to be interrupted.

What you have done to my Mary could land you in jail. It's against law what you done to my Mary, I saw it on television. It's a sin against our Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother, and against the Church. If it was known about there'd be such a scandal!

Mother Superior was so astonished by this, that the words which were forming in her mouth, And do you presume to lecture me on theology? melted away and all she could say was, Well! She repressed a sudden urge to say I know, and throw herself into the woman's arms. It was a feeling she had never felt before and it was most disconcerting.

Mrs Jackson knew instinctively that her prey was wounded.

If you ever do anything like that to my Mary again or even lay a finger on her, I give you my word here today as a Catholic, and she extended her hand to the big black leather bound Bible on Mother Superior's desk, I swear before God that I'll see you punished, whatever the consequences for the Church and for this school.

And how, pray, would you do that, Madam?

Mother Superior had recovered her composure and was feeling that she had given this hysterical woman more than enough of her time. She felt herself recovering her power and enjoying the exercise of it, as she had enjoyed punishing Mary. She would end the interview by expelling the child and that would be that.

But it wasn't. Mrs Jackson knew better than to answer the question, because to answer it would have brought her into dialogue and what she wanted to do now was to attack. Her father had always told her not to parlay with an adversary, but to keep attacking, till you have them down. It had proved good advice.

What you don't seem to understand, she continued in her very quiet and controlled tones, and this was the speech she had rehearsed, is that children need love, warmth, affection, cuddles and understanding, not whipping. We live in nineteen ninety not the nineteenth century and we don't treat children like that any more. When I want Mary to do something, I explain to her what I want and why, and because she knows I love her and she loves me, she does it. Children need love and they thrive on it. If Mary is inattentive then she is bored, not naughty and it is the teacher who should be punished not the child.

She paused for breath and looking at her adversary saw in her face that she had truly caught her attention. She looked her directly in the eye. Perhaps you have never experienced although God knows there is enough about it in our church. Or maybe you are just an evil woman, but one way or another you are going to change.

Mrs Jackson's motherly love and her anger at what had been done to her child cut through years of training in respect for the Catholic hierarchy For a moment she was no longer afraid of the power of her adversary, and she spoke from her heart, in a way that in other circumstances she would never have dreamt of. The clergy and nuns had a privileged position and you were respectful to them at all times and most certainly never challenged their authority. But for Mrs Jackson, today was different.

Mother Superior was as astonished to have been spoken to like this. Mrs Jackson would have been astonished herself, if you had told her only yesterday, that she would speak to a nun like this. But something more astonishing was happening to Mother Superior, and that something she found impossible to understand. For the first time in her life since she was a child, Mother Superior cried. Not as most people do, with tears on her cheeks, Mother Superior cried inside and it was inside that she felt the guilt that she had often felt and had thought that, with the help of her father confessor, she had banished forever.

She was amazed to experience the feeling of tears. It took her breath away, like a punch in the solar plexus, so that although her mouth opened, no words came out. This allowed Mrs Jackson to continue.

I intend to keep Mary at home for a few days and I hope that my love will help to heal her and undo the evil you have done to her. When her wounds heal, then she will come back to school, and my daughter will never be hit again by you or any other nun.

Like most of the parents of children at the school she was not against corporal punishment in principle and she had on occasions had to spank Mary herself, but never anything like this. Mrs Jackson thought of herself as a bit of an expert on love; as she had no money it was all she had to give. Mrs Jackson sat back and took time to breathe. She had said all that she needed to say and was now ready to continue her journey to work and let Mary return to school the next Monday. However, the Head Mistress had other plans. Mrs Jackson, she said imperiously, Your daughter will not be returning to school here in a few days time or ever, on those conditions or any other.

Mother Superior felt her authority returning to her. She had wanted to say something else about Mrs Jackson's daughter having an assisted place, ‘a charity place’ as she called it, but strangely the tears returned and she could not say more. It was as if, suddenly and from nowhere, the feelings that she should have had as a woman, motherly feelings which every woman feels biologically and which she had so successfully repressed, revived themselves and came to life. She had nearly killed them, but now that they were surfacing, she experienced their power. These feelings, like those associated with her addiction to pain, were more powerful even than she was, and they silenced her for a few moments, before she exerted her mastery over them and pushed them down again.

As her feelings came under her control, she thought that the few pounds Mary's parents paid would make no difference to the school's parlous finances and indeed, once the child had been removed, a rich parent might appear whose child could take Mary's place at full fees.

Mrs Jackson was unprepared for this turn of events. She knew she had wounded her prey severely and now she knew the fight was still not over. She thought for a moment and noticed a change in the face of her adversary; one might even call it a softening, although she couldn't have even an inkling of its cause. She paused. It was a good school, a school where her daughter had the chance of gaining an education which would allow her to better herself. She wanted her child to remain a pupil in it. She thought again, before saying in determined tones, If my Mary is expelled, I'll have no reason to keep my mouth shut about what you've been doing, will I?

And with that, pleased to have got one over on the ruling class, she rose and left without taking her leave of Mother Superior, but she turned for a moment at the door and saw that the nun had her head bowed. Later, she remembered thinking that she could even have been