Author Archives: gerambo

Arrival at Mirfield | Comboni Missionaries

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Arrival at Mirfield

In those days the train journeys were very long. My memory was that the train journey from Glasgow to Leeds lasted for 7 hours.

It was the start of a great adventure. I remember it was a very sunny and hot day (aren’t all your favourite days that way?).

Some of the parents came down to drop us off. We were in one compartment of the train and they were in the one next door.

Even Better

I remember arriving at the bus stop called ‘Robin’ presumably called after Robin Hood who was supposed to have had some connection with the area.

The place was even better than Fr. Tavano had described. It was in quite a few acres of ground. There was a woods – or a Copse as they called it. There was three different football pitches. There was a Grotto to our Lady on the lawn with Primula all around.

There was Fr. Cerea’s garden where he grew all sorts of flowers and vegetables.

There was a Recreation room where you could play Table Tennis, Snooker, Billiards, Chess or Draughts.

And to cap it all it was where the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne went to school.

Holiday Camp

This really was different from Greenock. This really was like a holiday camp. It was going to be fantastic. We were now living in a really great place and we were going to become priests and go to Africa to teach the natives about God at the end of it.

Little did we realise that the holiday camp would turn out more like a prison camp.

After our parents had departed on the first day I asked one of the 2nd year boys if we could have a look around outside and perhaps go down to the local town.

We couldn’t.

We were not allowed to leave the grounds. There was a wall about four feet high surrounding The College.

It might as well have been 40 feet.

Comboni Missionaries Vocations – The Cash Benefits

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Cash Benefits

A new unexpected bonus from having a vocation was that people would give you money – and lots of it. Before I set off to be a priest I was told by my mother to go around the houses of relatives and friends of the family.

This was an absolute goldmine. Generally they would give you a ten-shilling note. This was the equivalent to only 50p in today’s currency but it was worth a lot more then. It would buy 20 chocolate bars.

To give you some kind of perspective my weekly pocket money was 10d, whereas a ten shilling note was worth 120d. So I was getting 12 weeks pocket money at every house I would visit.

And it wasn’t a one-off!

Every time I came home from the college I would go and visit my aunts and uncles and family friends and I would receive more money.

I would usually get between 6 and 8 of these so I was getting around a year and a half’s pocket money from just one trip around the town.

My Brother’s Vocation

Years later my brother ‘got a vocation’ and went off to the same place. My parents always suspected that it was the financial benefits that attracted him but he always denied it vociferously enough that they gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, this was a second chance to have a son become a priest.

I didn’t always get it at the end of the summer either just before I went back. I got some of them at the beginning and this made for very pleasant summers with a whole heap of money in my pocket.

Why they all gave me money I don’t know. A ten-shilling note was a lot of money then and was quite a significant part of their weekly pay packet after tax. In fact my guess would be it would be close to 10% of their weekly take home pay.

I have wondered if I was getting their ‘contribution to God’ and that I would remember them when I became a priest.

Generosity of Heart

I think it was mainly down to their generosity though and their feeling of duty to help a member of what was quite a close family in the early days when there was an opportunity for one of their number to make something of himself at an early age.

One sometimes felt a little guilty at some of the things I spent this money on. Would they have felt that part of their money should go on things like a Lemon Meringue Pie?

I also bought a Brownie camera at some expense and took lots of pictures which were quite expensive to get developed in those days.

I probably had more spare and ready-to-spend cash in those days as an 11-13 year old boy than I would have till I got well into my twenties.

Joining the Chosen Ones

Those were great days – and I had joined the Chosen Ones as well.

Life could not have been sweeter.

The future could not have been brighter here on earth – and then there was a good spot available to be had in the hereafter as well.

This was the mid sixties and it was a pretty hopeful time anyway.

And I was right near the front of the queue.

Verona Fathers Reunion Announced

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Comboni Missionaries Reunion

We received this from im Kirby, ex-seminarian at Mirfield and who works in the travel industry.

“I have just recently returned from Florida and was chatting with Liam Gribben. He will be in Ireland at his usual work conference from Wednesday the 20th May staying in Malahide which is close to Dublin Airport on the coast. He is staying at the Grand Hotel but would love to see if we can get a group together to go over and see him weekend of the 22nd May.

“The weekend is fixed so if you can come I hope you will and if so let me know as soon as possible and I will make arrangements for accommodation at good rates. You can all get easy flights into Dublin . We will make arrangements for people to be met at the airport, so don’t worry about transfers.

“I need to get a rate on hotels. The area in Malahide is beautiful and if we aim to arrive Friday we propose staying until Sunday. Hope as many of you as possible can come and please pass this on to others not listed above as these are the only e-mail addresses I have.

“Martin (Murphy), bring your guitar and I’ll do song books. Danny (Curren) bring the banjo!

“So guys you can either make it or not make it, the date is fixed and the venue. Don’t let yet another year go by again without a reunion and do ask others.

“Let me know as soon as possible if you can make it and so far Liam,Frank Barnes and myself are confirmed”.

Bank Holiday Weekend

It seems that it is a UK bank holiday weekend. Jim is sorting out the hotel and seeing who will give us the best rates.

A further email from Jim states:-

“Ask people to book the Friday and return either the Sun or Mon. Eamon told me tonight that flights from Glasgow are really cheap. Anyway Eamon is doing a wider e-mail tomorrow and hopefully we’ll get a few more to tag on. I will sort out the accommodation, you can let them know and I’ll keep price as best as possible.”

If you want to know more details contact Jim Kirby at jaskirby@hotmail.com

Comboni Missionaries | How I was ‘Called By God’ – My Vocation

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Comboni Missionaries – The Sell

I had already decided, mainly because of Fr. Maloney and my mother’s pride, that I wanted to enter the priesthood, that I was sold on the idea of being a priest. It seemed like a great career move. It had status. I had also wanted to be a footballer and play for Scotland but this seemed equally as good.

So, when Fr. Tavano hit town when I was just 10 years of age I was an easy sell. He had been sent by the missionary order the Verona Fathers, an offshoot of the Jesuits, to find boys who would become priests.

Greenock was a fertile area for him as he grabbed five boys on the trip. Greenock was a place, in those days, where the British Army were able to grab lots of boys to join up. It sounded great – certainly compared to a life in Greenock. OK, you night go to war and have people shoot at you – but at least in the Army that was just a might.

Great Salesman for Comboni Missionaries

Fr. Tavano really sold. He would have made an excellent salesman in another profession. He sold and he sold and he sold. He made the college, where we would be living, sound like an upmarket holiday resort. Then there was the opportunity of foreign travel to exotic Africa when you became a priest.

He told us that we would have a tour of the surrounding district every Wednesday. Little did we know that this would be virtually the only time we were allowed out of the grounds. Even this was heavily supervised. The junior head boy would be at the front and the priest who was head of the junior school, Fr. Pinkman (of him, more later), would be at the back.

Liam Gribben

One of the Greenock boys, Liam Gribben, who joined at the same time as I did felt hard done by as regards the walk around the locale. He had thought that these would be bus tours. After all the local bus company in Greenock, Doigs, regularly advertised tours to places like Loch Lomond at advantageous rates. Unfortunately for us these rates were well beyond the means of our parents.

Maybe he had yearned to do something like that. Maybe he had seen the ads and begged his parents to go. Now there was an opportunity to go on a tour every week.

However, Fr, Tavano was a born salesman and a tour was how he described the weekly walk. I bet he would have sold lots of houses or second hand cars. Unfortunately for us he was not just selling us a commodity that we could sell on. He was selling us a philosophy and a way of life.

With slides of the college and Africa and a description of the lifestyle, he was on a winner. At the end he asked the 10 and 11-year-old boys who wanted to come. I remember that quite a few hands went up. Mine was one of them.

I don’t know what happened to the others. Perhaps their parents told them not to be so daft. Mine were proud of me and proud that the local priests were so proud as well. I volunteered myself they said. It wasn’t down to any of them at all.

Special Summer

It was a great summer. I was special. I was going to become a priest. I had a vocation. I was chosen by God. I was specially picked out of so many other people by God. I was to be his chosen one.

By God those were heady days for a ten / eleven year old (my birthday was in June).

Other people were desperate to know what a vocation was like. How did I know I was called by God? What did it feel like? It was like I had the secret of life, the Holy Grail.

To be perfectly frank I was as in the dark as they were but I explained it all to them – like it was explained to me. They nodded as I explained – but I could see that they still felt a bit on the outside.

My Vocation to the Priesthood

I was not on the outside. I was right bang on the inside. I was chosen and they were not. I must admit it was hard not to get a superiority complex. How could you not when God had specially picked you out? He wanted you and not the rest of them. He didn’t want them. He wanted you.

And I was only just reaching my eleventh birthday. Life was so full of hope. This was the sixties when hope abounded among the young anyway. And the rest of them weren’t even God’s chosen ones.

We had it in spades!

A Gang of Brothers

I was put in touch with the other guys who would be ‘entering the priesthood’ as we thought at the time. In total there were five boys from Greenock, including myself. It was a particularly good catch by Fr. Tavano. I don’t think that he got as many anywhere else including London.

We spent the summer together – the Chosen Few. It was a time of great optimism. We had a whale of a time together. I remember that we hit it off greatly and we laughed a lot – in fact a hell of a lot. It seemed that people chosen specially by God had quite a lot in common. We were like brothers in arms. In fact looking back perhaps that was the greatest summer of my life. Life stretched out long in front of us – and we were going to be in God’s special legion.

We really believed that we were all going to be priests – the whole five us. We felt that we had already passed the audition. We believed that we had already been selected, that all we needed now was the training.

Vocations Lost

Fr. Tavano didn’t tell us otherwise – although he must have known. It seems that only about one in twenty of the boys ‘chosen by God’ in this way actually make it through to the priesthood.

Some of them leave having ‘lost their vocation’ along the way. The majority, though, are simply ignominiously dumped. There remains the strong suspicion that some were dumped to save paedophile priests from being found out when the boys got a little older and wiser.

Can you imagine how it feels to be selected by God and then dumped by his emissaries on earth?

What would you do after that?

I remember once reading that John Lennon said that when the Beatles broke up when he was in his late twenties he wondered “what do you do after you’ve been a Beatle?”

When Your Vocation is Gone

I think that, to an even greater extent, we could ask the same question. “What do you do after you’ve been specially chosen By God – and then he no longer wants you”?

The answer sadly for many of those who were rejected is ‘not much’.

As I said, only about one-in-twenty of those ‘chosen by God’ actually make it through to the priesthood and Fr. Tavano didn’t tell us about that when we signed up. We thought we were already there.

We were called by God – and then, seemingly, he dumped us because we had become’defiled’ by one of his servants.

Comboni Missionaries | The Beginnings of My Vocation

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Implantation

“What’s the half of two and two” asked Fr. Maloney. I knew the answer as he had asked the same question many times before. I wasn’t sure if he was forgetful or whether he just liked to hear the answer. Some of the other altar boys preferred to indulge him by giving the wrong answer so that he could gain great delight from explaining it. I swapped about, sometimes giving the right answer and sometimes the wrong one.

“Two”, I replied.

“No three” he said.

“Why is that?” I indulged him.

“What’s the half of two” he asked.

“One” I replied.

“So what’s one and two” he asked and waited for the trap to be sprung and realisation to happen.

“Three”, I said, caught again by his ruse.

That pleased him a lot.

Father Maloney

Fr. Maloney was a very holy man. He was proudly Irish, proudly Catholic and proudly priest. He wasn’t one of those holier than thou religious people. He wasn’t using his religion or position to feel better than other people or to look down on them. His holiness was genuine.

However, it was now time for his half-a-crown question.

“So what are you going to be when you grow up?” he asked.

This, of course, was another question that he asked heaps of times. He asked the other altar boys as well, but he asked me the most. He knew that my father was in hospital with tuberculosis and that my mother was struggling to get by, and there wasn’t much spending money.

Vow of Poverty

Priests, although they take a vow of Poverty and are supposed to own nothing of their own and get no pay, get bits and pieces from parishioners. If they officiate at a wedding or a funeral they tend to get a ‘bung’.

I don’t know what most of them do with it, but Fr. Maloney tended to look for ways to give it away again. He was a redistributor of wealth in his own small scale.

When he first asked his ‘career’ question, the altar boys gave all sorts of things that they wanted to do when they grew up. However, we had worked out long ago that ‘footballer’ or ‘doctor’ was not the right answer.

The Right Answer

I think that I was the first to say ‘priest’. The other altar boys were still slightly behind the times. After a while they started to say ‘priest’ in answer to teh question or if they were feeling brave ‘bishop’. However they weren’t ambitious enough.

“Pope”, I replied, whereupon he immediately fought his way through his cassock to pull out a lovely big silver half-a-crown.

“Here you are” he said delightedly. “Get something for your brothers and sisters too”.

The other altar boys usually got a sixpence if they got anything. I was never sure if it was my brave replies that got the half-a-crown or whether he was just looking for a way to give me the money anyway. I suspect it was the latter.

Family Struggles

My father was in hospital with tuberculosis and my mother had a family of seven to bring up on her own.

This was a princely sum of money and he gave it on a fairly regular basis.

Whenever he met my mother he would tell her, often in my presence, that I had told him that I wanted to be a priest. He would put his hand on my head and look delighted. My mother looked suitably delighted too that her young son had brought her such kudos from the local holy man.

Gradually it grew in my head that a priest was a good thing to be. It seemed to be a career with a lot of kudos and my mother would be in seventh heaven to have a son who was a priest.

Brainwashed?

I’m sure that I could look back and say that Fr. Maloney was not all that he seemed, that he was a conniving person who gradually brainwashed little boys, using cash rewards, into wanting to join the ranks of the priesthood.

I’m sure that, like many others in the church, he was worried about the falling numbers of boys who wanted to become priests. However, it was the profession that he had chosen, which seemed to give him personal fulfillment, and which, I’m sure he felt he could recommend to other people.

However, I suspect that if it was the local Accountant who was dispensing money for the ‘right’ answer to his question about what I was going to do when I was older, then there is a good chance that I might now be an Accountant (although I’m not sure what the equivalent of Pope is in that profession).

Parish Priests

To my mother, and many of the people of the parish, priests were the local equivalent of pop stars or movie stars.

Maybe not too many people aspired to become priests, but those who did received a tremendous amount of admiration and respect for doing it.

So that was how the idea formed in my head that I wanted to be a priest!

Comboni Missionaries |The Rise and Fall of My Vocation

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Comboni Missionaries

This website was set up, originally, so that people could post their memories of the Comboni Missionaries (ex-Verona Fathers) and especially of their seminary in Mirfield from the early sixties to the mid eighties.

It has been dominated, recently, by bad memories of the appalling sexual abuse perpetrated by Comboni Missionary priests on young boys as young as 11 in their care. The cover up by the Comboni Missionaries continues to this day.

I had set down my memories of Mirfield and the seminary of St Peter Claver at Mirfield, Yorkshire a few years ago. I haven’t done anyting with them. They have just been lying in my Word folder, although I have sent them to a few of the ex-Boys.

Good and Bad Memories

What I’ve decided to do is to serialise them here. There are good memories and bad memories. I hope they entertain you.

It, also, shows the methods that Father Pinkman and Father Valmaggia used to lure, and groom, young boys. At the time I thought I was the only one. Now, it seems, that it was rife.

I have learned, that someone that I considered my best friend at Mirfield, Frank McGinnis, was being abused by Father Pinkman. I learned this around fifty years after the events took place – although he said some things to me, at the time, about it which I wodered at and didn’t understand at the time – but it seems obvious what he was talking about now.

I’ll publish the first episode shortly.

Paedophile Priests / Great Friendships

Incidentally, if anyone has any good memories of Mirfield, please send them in to us and we’ll publish them.

To me, it was a place with some bad memories but also lots of good memories. I made lots of friendships there – as well as being chased by paedophile priests.

Let’s hear your memories, good and bad.

Comboni Missionaries | Were You Abused by Them?

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Comboni Missionaries

For the past few years we have been compiling a list of those that were abused by the Comboni MIssionaries at their seminaries in the UK and especially at St Peter Claver’s College, Roe Head Mirfield from the early Sixties to the mid- Eighties.

Some of us have sued the Comboni Missionaries and they have settled with us outside court rather than go to court. However, two things that they have refused to do – admit that abuse took place and apologise.

So, the fight continues.

Publicity

We have had some success in publicising what happend all those years ago and the extent of the cover up then and now.

There have been articles in the Sunday Observer, Daily Mail Online, Liverpool Echo, Greenock Telegraph (front page), Mifield Reporter and on BBC Yorkshire amongst others.

West Yorkshire Police have investigated and are confident that ‘a crime has been committed’ and that if Father Pinkman and Father Valmaggia were alive then ‘arrests would be made’.

Comboni Missionaries Cover Up

They also want to interview Father Nardo Romano who is accused of abusing Mark Murray and other boys on multiple occasions. However, the very top of the Order has refused that request saying that he the paedophile priest is not mentally fit to answer questions. That is very convenient.

This is despite the Order telling Mark Murray, when he made the accusations, that Father Romano was being brought back from teh missions in Uganda immediately and would never be allowed to be near children again. If they did that, they must have had at least a slight suspicon that it was true. He is now ‘holed up’ at their house in Verona.

The Comboni Missionaries never reported any of the this to the police as they are required to do.  In the UK, the Government is plannning to make it a crime with up to five years in prison for not reporting suspicions of child abuse to the police.

Home Office Panel on Child Sexual Abuse

In the UK they have set up a Home Office Panel to investigate Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. The Comboni Missionaries actions come under that remit, the Home Office panel has decided. Comboni Missiories will be asked to attend and be legally bound to comply.

We are putting together evidence to put to the Panel.

Already, we have uncovered, and documented, hundreds of incidents of child abuse at Mirfield by Comboni Missionary priests.

However, we think that this is still the tip of the iceberg.

It is most important that we get all the evidence that we can. This is a one-off and there will never be another opportunity.

Your Evidence Needed

If you were abused at Mirfield, or elsewhere, by the Comboni Missionaries, this would be the time to let us know. If you know of anyone that was abused by them please let us know. If you have any knowledge or suspicons of any sexual abuse incidents please let us know.

Your evidence will be kept in whatever confidence that you want.

Anyone who was abused is entitled to anonymity in any investigation and newspapers are not legally allowed to use their names.

Don’t let the Comboni Missionaris get away with it.

We need your help – and we need your help now!

Questions for Comboni Missionaries on Clerical Sexual Abuse

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Comboni Missionaries

Some of us are very confused as to the reactions of the Comboni Missionaries to accusations of clercial sexual abuse by priests at their seminaries of boys as young as 11. Here are some questions for them. If they want to answer them for us we will gladly publish their answers.

Questions for Comboni Missionaries

Do you agree that sexually abusing young boys is a sin?

Do you agree that not acting on reports of sexual abuse is a sin – especially when the abuser continued to abuse children after you had been told?

Do you agree that sexual abuse of young boys is a crime?

Which course of action do you agree is most appropriate when you have been told that a crime, i.e. sexual abuse of a minor, has been committed:-

a) You report the crime to the police or

b) You hide the crime from the police and you protect the person who has committed the crime?

Psychological Damage

Do you agree that young boys who have been sexually abuse by priests will be psychologically damaged by it?

If the police contact you with questions about sexual abuse perpetrated at a seminary where your order operates do you:-

a) Tell them all you know about the crime (for that is what it is) or

b) Tell them that you know nothing about it (when you did)

If a boy tells you that a criminal act has been perpetrated on him by one of your priests do you:-

a) Report this accusation of a crime immediately to the police

b) Bring the priest home from the missions, hide him away in a Comboni Missionary house in Italy, tell the boy that the priestwill  no longer have access to children and tell the boy that he you are sorry and that he is in your prayers?

Aiding the Police

If the police want to ask questions to a priest who has been accused of sexual abuse do you:-

a) Tell the police “We will help you in any way we can” or

b) Refuse the police permission to interview the accused priest telling them that he is not mentally able to answer questions

Do you belive that the correct response when a crime is commited is to:-

a) Report the crime to the police

b) Hide the perpetrator of the crime?

Jesus Christ

Jesus said “Suffer little children to come unto me”.

What do you think that Jesus would have said if he had been told that some of his followers were sexually abusing young boys?

Lastly, are you happy with the way that you and your order acted when told about child sex abuse at the hands of your priests?

Are you happy with the way that they are continuing to act when they have overwhelming knowledge of crimial acts by members of your order?

When contacted by journalists about these crimes are you comfortable telling the press that “We will never know what happened all those years ago?”

Ninth Commandment

Are you aware of the 9th commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbour”? Do you remember you used to teach us about Sins of Omission? Does this not cover this?

In this whole matter which does the Coomboni Missionaries resemble most:-

1) A responsible, godly organisation which respects those put under its command and respects the laws of the land

2)  The Mafia with its code of Omerta?

the cover up of sexual abuse against children goes right to the top of the Comboni missionaries Order. As regards the Comboni Missionaries, their actions, their leaders and those who are amongst them, Jesus once said “By their Followers Ye Shall Know them”.

Are your actions in this matter more akin to:-

a)  The actions of those who want justice and the rule of law upheld

b) The actions of those who want to preserve as much of the wealth and reputation of the Order no matter the rights and wrongs of the matter?

Meeting Your Maker

Lastly, when you meet your maker, do you think he might mention your part in covering up the sexual abuse of young boys as young as 11 years of age and the mental damage your order did to them and which is continuing to affect many of them?

When you meet your maker, you will not be able to equivocate like a Jesuit by using Canon Law.

You may think that the needs of your order and the needs of the Catholic Church are above the laws of the land.

You may find that different on Judgment Day!

Members of your order abused children in their care. There is overwhelming evidence of it. You are still covering this up till this day?

Do you never feel any shame?

How can you continue to go out and give Catholics moral advice when you have helped cover up terrible crimes that would have had Jesus in a rage?

Abused by Father Valmaggia, I Got Father Pinkman Removed Instantly

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Comboni Missionaries

Francis Barnes has told us his story and it is in the Boys’ Stories Section.

He reveals how he was abused by Father Domenico Valmaggia and managed to resist Father John Pinkman’s advances.

He also says that other priests must have known what had happened and reveals how Father Fulvi helped him to put his case together before handing it over to a weeping Father John Fraser.

Read it here by clicking on Francis Barnes’s Story

Why Do Comboni MIssionaries Collaborators Collaborate?

Posted on by gerambo

Stockholm Syndrome

I remember, a number of years ago, when an aeroplane was hijacked that those who were victims of the hijackers became sympathetic to them and started to help and advise them.

It seems that this is not unusual.

A new syndrome was founded called the Stockholm Syndrome called, presumably after the place where the plane was hijacked from, or taken to.

I’ve noticed two curious syndromes at work as regards the sexual abuse of children as young as 11 by the Comboni Missionaries and those who have covered it up.

I don’t know if these syndromes have names.

Needing an Apology

Firstly, there is the syndrome where the victims need to meet those who abused them and to receive an apology from them for their abuse – and, indeed, to be able to forgive their abuser.

Not all of those who were abused want this. Some of them would like to hang them from the nearest lamp post. However, a significant number of abuse victims do feel this need.

Indeed, they are massively frustrated when they find out that their abuser is dead and that they will never have the opportunity to be apologised too and to forgive the abuser.

If it doesn’t have a name, let’s call it Mirfield Syndrome.

Need to Collaborate

The second syndrome I have noted is the desire of some of the St. Peter Claver Seminary Old Boys to collaborate with the Comboni Missionaries to hush up, or suppress, the accusations of child sexual abuse.

When an abuser in a family is first found out the immediate instinct of family members is often to protect the abuser rather than the abused.

This syndrome that we have is probably similar to this. It’s probably close to the Stockholm Syndrome as well. They bond with their ‘captors’.

Refuse to Testify

There are boys, even those who were abused, who refuse to testify against their abuser and those who help to cover up the abuse of others whom they know to have been abused.

I’m not talking, here, about those who were absued but just want to leave it in the past and don’t want to take any action. They want to leave it in the past.

I’m talking here of those who can talk about their abuse but who take an active part in helping to cover up the abuse pepretrated on others.

Swimming Without Trunks

There are others, still, who weren’t abused, but who knew of the abuse, who are prepared to say that they didn’t – to help out those accused of the cover-up.

There does seem a need to ‘protect’ the abusers and those who covered it up at the time and new.

I suppose that this would be the equivalent of kids in a family siding with their father who abused their sister and who were prepared to tell the authorities that nothing happened or they knew nothing of it, when they did.

If it doesn’t have a name let’s call this one Vichy Syndrome.

Of course, it will all come out ‘in the wash’ when the Home Office Panel sits and when the high court cases come up.

As Warren Buffet once said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you see who was bathing without trunks”.

The tide is going out for the Comboni Missionaries and their collaborators.

They have no trunks!