Catching Escapees

By the beginning of second year, Pinkie seemed to be taking a bit of a shine to me and was giving me more responsibility, which I appreciated. I knew from the previous year that the reason that we were told to leave our outgoing letters unopened was that Fr. Rector would read them first before sealing them and sending them out to our parents, friends, or anyone else.

It seems that when some of the eleven year old boys, who came from all over the country, experience what it is like both to be away from their parents, family and friends for the first time and experience the harsh unchanging regime, that they immediately ‘lose their vocations’ and wanted to go home.

They, of course, told their parents this in their letters of the first few weeks at college. They were sad and lonely. They missed their Mum. They missed their Dad. They missed their favourite brother or sister. The missed their dog. They missed their friends and the places they grew up in. They wanted to come home immediately.

Not Allowed to Leave

However, they couldn’t abandon their vocation just like that. God had called them and this was just a temporary weakness on their part. Once they settled down and got used to the place they would be all right.

So, the parts of the letters where they said they were completely miserable and just wanted to come home were censored by Fr. Rector’s stamp. If it was the theme of the whole letter then the whole letter was simply binned.

All incoming letters were also opened and read. If the content wasn’t approved they were inked out or binned altogether.

Wanted to Go Home

I knew when I was in first year that several of the boys were distraught that all their entreaties to their parents to come and get them were simply ignored. The letters that they received from their parents ignored what they told them of their loneliness and their despair and their wish to come home. Little did they know that their parents knew nothing of this at all.

These eleven year old boys were, in effect, prisoners in the heart of Old England in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Some of them actually tried to escape and were caught and brought back. This was a children’s Colditz in West Yorkshire – and nobody, even a hundred yards away, knew it was happening.

Collaborating With Pinkman

As I said, previously, Pinkie was starting to give me more responsibility by the start of second year and I was very proud of it. He seemed to be taking me into his inner circle. We had only one Dad to share between all of us and I was very happy that it seemed he was starting to favour me.

Anyway, he took me aside and told me he had reason to believe that one of the new first year pupils might try to escape. My job, he said, was to watch him at all times especially during periods when we were outside, for instance at recreation. I wondered how he had got that information. How did he know that the boy would try to escape?

The Police State

However, the state knows everything. The poor boy must have been pleading desperately with his parents to come and take him home. The powers that be there would have been aware of that from his (censored) letters home. They would also know, from past experience, that boys who were in despair because their parents seemed to be ignoring their pleas to come home would eventually try to escape.

The boys never had much chance. Many came from parts of the country perhaps hundreds of miles away. He would have had no money as we had to hand that in at the start of term. It could only be spent at the inhouse Tuck Shop. Even those who lived a mere twenty miles away couldn’t have made it.

They were doomed but they were desperate. No one ever successfully escaped in all the time I was there. It had a better record than Colditz. It had a better record than Alcatraz.

Part of ‘State Aparatus’

I didn’t really expect the boy to try and escape. However, I was now a privileged part of the ‘state apparatus’ and I kept my eyes on him at all times. I couldn’t believe my luck when on the second day after I had been told to watch him, the poor guy looked around and then made a break for it up the driveway from the lower school recreation area.

I immediately darted in and got Pinkie. What kudos I would get for that. I was now an accepted part of the establishment I felt. He would be so pleased that he had picked me. He could see how I had performed.

The priests immediately got their cars and went into operation. They grabbed the guy less than a few hundred yards from the college. I can’t remember the guy’s name. To this day he still wouldn’t have known what happened.

He must have been astonished by the ruthless efficiency of the system. He had waited until there were no priests around before he made his break for freedom. How could he have been caught so quickly?

Repressive Systems

The truth is that in all repressive systems you never know who is the informer. He could never have guessed that I had been recruited into the state structure and that it was I who was spying on him and who had ‘handed him over’.

Even though I was only twelve years old when I was ‘recruited’ I still feel a little guilty that I succumbed so easily. I suppose that it was the desire to fit in, to be a valued member of the system. I suppose it is this that causes people who live under repressive regimes to become informers on their own friends and colleagues.

I learned a valuable lesson there. I have always rejected all attempts by systems elsewhere in my life to suck me in and make me a part of it.

It was a terrible thing I did and I’m thoroughly ashamed of it. How many people who were informers under the ex-Soviet bloc, and the dictatorships in South America must now feel the same.

At least I was only twelve years old when I was recruited.

Father Pinkman and the Cold Showers

I used to wet the bed when I was at the college. I had ust turned 11 years old.

I tried to cover it up in the first few days when I was there but nothing gets covered up there. Within days Fr. Pinkman approached me and said he knew about it and that I should take the sheets down to the nuns whenever I did it.

There were two of us but I’ll spare the other guy by not naming him.

I never ever did see a doctor about it but Pinkie used to feed me advice about what the doctor was advising. I have no idea whether there was ever a doctor involved but I believed him implicitly.

Why wouldn’t I? Why would he lie? He was there to look after us. All the time that I was there I never even questioned for a minute whether he was telling the truth or not.

Different Answers

As I’ve said before in other parts of the book, it is strange re-inputting the data that was previously only put through your 11- and 12-year old mind again and processing the information with an adult brain.

My conclusions are obviously very different now.

His first theory was that I should sleep with extra blankets and to keep adding blankets until it stopped. The warmer I was, presumably, the less likely I was to do it. I remember, at one point, that while the other boys were sleeping with just two blankets, that I was actually sleeping with twelve blankets on me.

Supposedly the ‘doctor’ had said that this was what I should do to cure it. It is possible that he did. However, it seems more like something a layman would advise rather than a doctor.

Cold Showers Best

However, when the warmth didn’t work the ‘doctor’ gave completely the opposite advice.

Indeed Pinkie said that what the doctor was now recommending was that I should have a completely cold shower as soon as I got up at 6:35 in the morning. We were now well into the winter and it was bloody freezing to be frank.

Not only that, I shouldn’t have the shower where the other boys were washing but I had to have it in the basement, in the single shower that was down there. There was never anybody about at that time of the morning down there.

Except, of course, Pinkie.

Pulled Back the Shower Curtains

I remember on the first morning of the cold showers Pinkie suddenly pulling back the shower curtains. Why he needed to watch the ‘treatment’ I don’t know but I never questioned it at the time.

I didn’t even know about sex at all at the time, didn’t know heterosexuality existed never mind homosexuality. I had definitely never heard of the term paedophile.

However, I sensed something was not right as he stood there rubbing his hands over and over again. He seemed just too intense.

He told me I had to use soap as well. Why soap was part of the ‘treatment’ I don’t know – especially as it was only the normal carbolic. What curative values did it have?

Offer of Help

“I’ll do it for you” he said.

Even though I was eleven years old and we were completely captive to those in charge of us and especially to Pinkie, I said “no”.

I had been very, what they used to call ‘modest’ in those days. I really instinctively didn’t like being seen without my clothes on. Even more so, I wouldn’t have liked to be touched without my clothes on.

Just before I came to the college I had had to have a medical where I had to lie on a table and the nurse checked my testicles, presumably to see if my balls had dropped. That was excruciatingly embarrassing and was still fairly fresh on my mind.

I wasn’t having it.

Not Streetwise At All

I think that this actually saved me from Pinkie. I think he took it to mean that I was extremely streetwise compared to my peers when the opposite was actually true.

He actually said that when he gave me the sheet with the facts of life on it when I was in second year. “You probably know all this” he said, “you’re a lot more streetwise than the others”. He said it with a good deal of malevolence and scorn in his voice.

Father Pinkman and the Facts of Life

It seems that the ‘facts of life’ revelations session was one of the major times that he used to compromise the boys. After all he needed to explain some things by showing them what he meant using their bodies as illustration.

I was one of the last ones in my year to get the ‘facts of life’ from Pinkie. By this time he really had it in for me. There’s no anger like a paedophile priest who has been scorned.

He came for the first few shower sessions but then came less frequently. However, I had to continue this morning by morning. He never ever told me to stop. It was just a case of I started to skip it more and more and he never did anything about it.

How I managed to leave the college without being seriously molested by Pinkie, I think was mostly down to luck.

I’ve joked about it since on our reunions. I told the other ‘boys’ that I hadn’t actually been booted out like some of them but had only been suspended for a year. They would ask why I didn’t go back. I would say that after the year was up I considered it and thought to myself “I’ll be buggered if I’ll go back there”.