Catholic Church's 'scandal' is just a part of the issue.

David Quinn, in his comment piece for the Irish Independent, 4th May, ‘Abuse Cross Church must bear stems from decades ago’ wrote that a large scale study into child abuse, carried out in Holland, found that ‘the prevalence rate in Catholic-run Institutions was no higher than in other Institutions’ that were studied.

This is a fair comment. However, it does not mitigate the Church's behaviour in relation to the suppression of the truth and subsequent (avoidable) harms caused to so many children, over such a long time scale, one whit.

What he misses in his piece is that the abuse of children is a serious problem across our entire Society.

Whilst there is a huge focus on the abuse of children within Catholic-run Institutions, and rightly so, the issue of the sexual abuse, the mistreatment and brutalising of children is much larger than the Catholic Church.

Europeans often lay claim to the centrality of Christianity as a benign force in European development, as a central pillar of our Society. What kind of Society has this as a central pillar?

This is a matter of profound importance to Society at large. The fact that none of this (the 'scandal' of the Catholic Church) would be occurring without the courage of Survivors of abuse, who braved a prevailing societal unwillingness to accept the truth, is something David Quinn ought to have noted. It is something I reflect upon regularly. I am in awe of those who have shown such courage, well aware as I am of the shame, self-loathing, fear and confusion that are the outcomes for so many Survivors.

David Quinn's omission reduces his piece to a defensive polemic, on behalf of the Catholic Church, and does nothing for the children, be it those who have been abused, those who are being abused and those whose abuse might well be prevented, if the work of John Bowlby, (child mother bonding) James Prescott, (origins of violence) Alice Miller, (child abuse sanctioned by Society, intergenerational trauma) JosephChilton Pearce, (prenatal consciousness) John Holt (how children learn) and David Chamberlain, (child birth, infancy) and John Taylor Gatto, (the origins and intent of Compulsory Schooling) all of whom have examined in detail, and with courageous honesty, how we, as a society, treat our children, was not so studiously ignored by Government departments responsible for Education, Health and Child Welfare, so carefully avoided by the leading Psychiatric and Psychological Establishments, so rarely mentioned by leading media, in spite of  the verified and corroborated evidence that supports their collective contention, that the psychology of any given society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that Society relates to and treats the children.

The psychology of Power, (in simple terms, bullying), still dominates our Society and it is perhaps the single most important connective issue that we can, as adults, face in these tremulous times.

Suicide is the 3^rd leading cause of death amongst 10 – 24 year olds. A telling statistic indeed. Physical Health has been improved, yet psychological health is deteriorating.

War, Institutionalised Abuse (children, elders, prisoners, poverty) Ecological Destruction, the Competition of Power, be it secular, religious, economic or ideological are issues that cannot be avoided whilst at the same time the claim that we are a decent society is made.

The intergenerational trauma patterns associated with these issues will not diminish because we mitigate or ignore them. The work that has been done, mentioned above, and is being done is now more widely available, through the dissemination of information in this, the information age. Some of us, with access to that information, are genuinely better informed as a result.

It is surely time now for the organs of public discourse and the organs of Governance to fully engage with that information and that crucial work, to engage with what is known of this matter, in order to build a future that honours all our children, and with that all our peoples, for all of their lives.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

On School History

A correspondent wrote to me saying that "The history taught at schools is designed to dumb US down is a ridiculous statement."

So here's a few salient exposes of the lies and misdirections of School History Texts......

EG: History in School tell us that the 1766 US Rebellion against the British - The American Revolution - was driven by "No taxation without representation" when in FACT it was driven by the desire of the powerful commercial groups in the America's to negate the 1763 Treaty signed by George III, King of England, as a Royal Proclamation, that recognised Aboriginal Title to Land in the America's as Valid, and regarded the Aboriginal Peoples and a Sovereign Polity, who could have equal standing as an Internationally Recognised Nation State amongst the Nation States at that time and sign Treaties that had full legal standing in International Law.

The European Powers had already by this time accorded such status to China and India, and other States. France had also accorded International Nation State Status to Aboriginal Polities in Canada, and elsewhere, recognising Land Title of those who lived on lands prior to invasion and colonisation. That all these Powers later reneged on these recognitions is also true. Just as the USA reneged on it's many, many Treaties with Aboriginal Peoples within the US Conquest.

Why this 1763 Treaty is important, from the Historical perspective, is that this set an international  legal precedent, which would have applied to all America, of recognising Aboriginal Culture as a distinct polity and that their Land Title , in the manner they were accustomed to hold land title, which was collectively, as Valid. To the powerful commercial interests in what was to become the USA, this meant that they would be unable to take the lands from the many 'Indian' tribes that populated America.

They based their 'claim' on the policy of 'terra nullis' which emanated from the Roman Catholic Emperors, who issued Papal Bulls declaring lands inhabited by non-Christians to be places where no-one lived, as non-Christians were in their eyes merely savages, non-people.

These Papal Bulls formed the legal basis for much of European conquest and colonisation. They were issued to Secular Powers to legalise their invasions and conquests as an aspect of the Christian Missionary project to Christianise the entire Earth, and granted the land to the invaders, and the souls of the savages to the Vatican, who decreed that if the 'savages' refused Christianity they could be slaughtered as they were not people, but animals.

This was underpinned with the concept that whilst Christianising 'savages' would liberate them from their 'savage' state, gaining them access to Heaven,if they refused, they were already condemned to Hell by their non-Christian status and could easily be slaughtered without Sin on the part of those conducting the slaughter.

The Power Elites in America, in conducting the propaganda war to gain support for a split from Britain, used 'taxation without representation' as one of a series of cover stories to convince the white lower class people of the USA to enlist to fight a war with Britain, so that they could ignore the validity of that 1776 Treaty (validated by the British Parliament) and therefore treat the Aboriginal Land Title as a 'domestic matter' subject to internal Laws, rather than dealing with the Aboriginal Peoples as Internationally recognised Polities.

The fact of the matter was that the vast majority of people within the US Polity after the Declaration of Independence were taxed without representation, as the vote excluded, women, labourers, blacks and native peoples. It applied only to land owners.

They wanted the land that was occupied by the American Aboriginals because if thay had the right to grant land title, they could make a huge profit by selling that land, the best of which they kept for themselves as vast estates, the rest was to be given to white settlers who would become the new market for the products of the emerging factory system.

In the process they carried out more than 200 years of genocide, which continues to this day, to appropriate the lands of the people who had been living there for well over 30,000 years.

This is well documented, in both private and public archives of those involved…. and it the mass trauma inflicted upon countless millions of Aboriginal lives, families, communities over 5 centuries...


For a fuller account of this, I suggest readers get a copy of "Earth into Property" by Anthony James Hall.

--------------------------------------

Reflecting on your school history, ask yourself these questions....

Do you know who John Lilbourne was, and what he wrote about during the the English Civil Wars of the 1600s?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Do you know WHY the Enclosure Acts coincided with the emergence of the Factory system in England?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Do you know the purpose and inspiration for the Sunday School System that emerged within the factory system in the 1730s-50s? And how Methodism, which was until then a fringe sect of puritan Christianity, was introduced into the Factory system and WHY this was engineered by the Factory owners?

What did they teach you about that in school?

So you know full story of the origins of Compulsory State Schooling? How the powerful coal barons of North America, Britain, France and Germany spent huge fortunes lobbying for such a system worldwide and why they did this?

What did they teach you about that in school?

Questioning what we are taught is essential to anyone who wishes to understand the world Polity we live in and why it is the way it is, violent, destructive, angry rather than nurturant, creative, loving.

Furthermore the constant conditioning of schooling trains one to read and take in without subjecting the material to a critical analysis, or to a reflecting based on what one FEELS about what one is reading?

What kind of person has the child become when they can read of wars, of torture, of mass laughter and glorify it as 'part of our great history', and exciting tale.....?

And what kind of adult will that child become, and what will his or her role in the community be determined by, what outcomes for future generations will ensue?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

I Don't Fit In!

I am working on a song entitled "I Don't Fit In!"

I don't fit in to a Society that accepts War as a tool of State Policy.

I don't fit into a Society that tells children what to think and applies sanctions against them for dissent against the prevailing ideology.

I don't fit in to a Society that segregates children and elders from the activities of Governance.

I don't fit in to a Society that accepts poverty as a necessary outcome of the concentration of wealth.

I don't fit in, and I am glad of it.

After many,  many years of self criticism because I felt that I did not fit in, and was therefore somehow inadequate because so many others seemed to 'fit in', and also because of the frequent criticism from many others, not least people in positions of Authority such as politicians, clergy, social workers, media pundits etc,  who use the term 'misfit' all too frequently,  which appeared to corroborate and support that self criticism, I can finally say with utter clarity that I know why I don't fit in, and that my knowledge is absolutely evidence based and accurate.

This is not to say that 'the world we live in is rotten or horrid' - it is to say that the Earth has at this time a Dominant human Culture that is abusive, and that the self criticism I and many others experience is an internalisation of the values of that Dominant Culture, and that that internalisation is part of the self policing that culture depends upon to maintain itself.

From my experience and perspective, I say that Earth is a biologically nurturant environment, where natural processes function to improve the conditions of life, for all life, in a manner that can best be described as responsive learning leading to precise adaptations to the variations in the environment.

Here is an essay by David Smail (short video of David Smail speaking about psychological distress and depression) entitled "The Experience of School: Empowerment or Oppression" that looks at this, and contains some valuable insights into the dynamics of 'not fitting in', the aggressive attitude directed towards those who 'don't fit in', by both friends and family, by co-workers, and by Institutions and how to counter it....

What kind of human being would even want to fit it to such a Society?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Letter : Church’s brazen request for more funds: and a response from a Catholic supporter!

Church’s brazen request for more funds

Letter published in The Examiner, Friday, October 21, 2011

A Chara,

PARISH priests in the Cork and Ross diocese have introduced two new quarterly collections to meet a deficit in their finances.

One of the costs they are claiming is that of implementing best practice child protection policies.

Diocesan leader Bishop John Buckley said: "Two collections would be needed every three months from now on, to ensure the diocese had enough funds to carry out its day-to-day duties."

How brazen a move is this, in the aftermath of the Cloyne Report, to urge parishioners to cough up the cash that ought more properly be sourced from the Diocese’s property portfolio, or the Vatican direct, whose fiduciary responsibility in this matter is abundantly clear, in that it was the Vatican’s instructions to bishops that led the policy of denial, intimidation, secret settlements and avoidance of their legal and moral duty to report criminal acts to the civil authorities?

Given that the Irish taxpayer is facing a bill of €30 million, under a contractual obligation entered into by Bertie Ahern’s government, to pay the legal costs of the Church’s "contributions" to the various Governmental Statuary Reports, is it not time to counter sue the Church?

We could do so in the light of the Cloyne Report, to void those contractual obligations on the basis of fraud — that the Church made public commitments to the welfare of children and survivors it had no intention of delivering on.

Bishop John Buckley also noted that the extra funds would not be "used to compensate abuse victims".

How sad it is that parishioners are still willing to contribute to a Church so utterly unwilling to behave in an honourable manner on an issue of such grave importance, not least to the welfare of people from within their own communities?

What would Jesus say?

Corneilius Crowley 

Harrow
London
England

---------------------------------
On Wedensday, 26th October 2011 I received by post the following letter.

"Dear Mr. Crowley,

Reference to your letter in the Irish Examiner as to the priests in the Cork & Ross diocese seeking extra collections. Glad to hear that somebody in London is suffering from anxiety about the Church affairs and the need to sue it.

Many regret they were not abused, as they could afford to have a good deposit on a house - maybe you yourself are suffering from this regret or possibly not being able to claim from Bishop Buckleys collection like many are or is there some innate desperation still bugging you -- you need help or counselling without delay.

You ask what Jesus would say? He'd say 'get behind me you Pharasee.'

I enclose an article of defamation against a priest which you can read, this is only one of many cases brought  to court by priests here against false claims.

I trust that the counselling sessions will help you in so many ways, especially if you are working with others in your job.

Yours sincerely

"

I leave the senders name out for now....The article he sent was cut from The Universe, Dated October 16, 2011 (page 2) and told the story of the return of a priest ( against whom allegations were made, that have been proven false, but were broadcast as valid, by RTE, the Irish State Television station, in a program produced by  Prime Time, entitled, "A Mission to Prey") to his parish.

--------------

I WILL respond, and explain the situation in some detail. I am not offended by this letter, because it says nothing about me, though it says volumes about the person who wrote it!

Being offended is a choice, as Australian comic, Steve Hughes points out :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycXuYzmzNg

I choose because I am mature enough to understand what Steve Hughes points out.

2. The assumptions the writer makes about me are without foundation. I KNOW this. The writer does not. His assumptions reveal more about him than they say anything about me.

His assumptions are false, yet the intent of his words are intended to be abusive, in that he makes a number of rather snide allegations:

I will deal with each point in his letter, in due course....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Limbic Imprint and The Emergence of Behaviour and Violent Societies

How Society Normalises Dysfunctional Behaviour.
An optimistic view.

Limbic Imprinting at Birth and The Emergence of Dysfunctional Behaviour

”We come into this world wide-open to receiving love. When we do receive it, as our first primal experience, our nervous system is limbically imprinted with an undeniable rightness of being.”  Elena Tonetti-Vladimirova 

Limbic Imprint is the term used to describe the processes of experience 'writing' the neural networks , the connections within our brain, heart and body during our time in the womb, and in particular during birth, and often in the immediate aftermath of birth.*

That is to say that our rapidly growing neural systems record whatever occurs, and that then becomes the base pattern from which we will evolve. In babies this growth is incredibly rapid, in the region of 200,000 connections per minute being created. Being held in our mother’s loving arms, feeding from her breast and other sensations provide us with a natural sense of bliss and security which forms the neural networks that will be the loving base from which we grow into loving adults.

If our first impressions are anything less than loving (for example, painful, frightening or lonely), then those impressions will imprint as our valid experience of love, and of life itself. It will be immediately coded into our nervous system as the norm, our comfort zone, acting as a surrogate for love and nurturing, regardless of how undesirable the experience actually was.

As adults, we unconsciously, automatically recreate the conditions that were imprinted at birth and through early childhood. Research conducted by the pioneers of prenatal psychology, such as doctors Thomas Verny, David Chamberlain and William Emerson, shows that an overwhelming amount of physical conditions and behavioural disorders are in reality symptomatic of unresolved traumatic gestational experiences during pregnancy and complications during delivery.

This is compounded by how the child is related to as he or she grows. If the child’s symptoms of distress are misunderstood, and treated as ‘bad behaviour’ and subject to sanction, this deepens the problem, the child becomes identified as the problem and will in turn internalise that identification.

Fortunately, not ALL children exposed to this dynamic will be overburdened by it, and many do 'escape' the worst affects, either through their own efforts of if they meet what Alice Miller calls an 'enlightened witness'. However enough do not survive intact, and may become as adults less than empathic, and will be absorbed by the Power structure where they will be 'successful'. Others are afflicted with the symptoms of thier distress, and are demonised by the Power structures and used as scapegoats. All of which, is of course avoidable....

Imposed Societal Values and How They Emerge.

The psychology of any given society is revealed in how that society treats their children. The adult world is created in the womb, the cradle and throughout childhood.

If a child, or adult for that matter, for whatever reason, is traumatised, and is unable to resolve that trauma, they remain in the 'coping strategy' stage, that is to say they will shut down awareness of aspects of their experience and feeling. As survival strategy; coping is a useful temporary strategy, but becomes adverse if extended, and it is this extension of the suppression of vital information (what is alive in the person) that leads to a growing loss of self-empathy, which undermines the development of empathy.

This compounds the fear inherent in traumatic experiences, and leads to an unconscious drive to exert adverse control over others (including the environment). Any adverse control imposed on a natural organism will meet resistance, and that resistance becomes the focus of violence, applied to overcome that natural resistance.

When any individual or group in this condition builds a societal structure, those structures will contain expressions of the unresolved fear and the drive to adverse control. This is how Hierarchically Violent Societies have emerged. Such societies codify their psychology over time, and thus behaviours such as war, concentration of wealth, racism etc become normalised and institutionalised. They are therefore more willing to inflict trauma than other more empathic societies, who are vulnerable because they are less likely to engage in whole sale violence to meet their perceived needs. To heal this dynamic is now the single most crucial work ahead of us. 

Fortunately Nature is With Us.

This dynamic does not affect every child in the same way, and therefore many people do recover to some degree. Were it not so, then we would not notice the costs. There would not be people like you, like me, like the many that are outraged with the harms associated with the current status quo. We would all of us be 100% normalised to the abuse. The urge to grow, to live as an empathic, connected, sensing member of our families, communities as a part of our Earthly environment is perhaps the deepest, most naturally embedded drive of all.

There is also ample evidence to suggest that people afflicted with dysfunctional behaviour can be nurtured in ways that enable them to recover. Thus it is also possible for entire societies. If the will is there. It is a question of making a choice.

The Current Situation

The current situation, of wealth and power disparity, of widespread institutional violence, of environmental degradation with all the costs to real peoples lives associated, is the result of the interplay of the limbic imprint and imposed societal values.

We know all to well what the dry facts and statistics tell us. To change how our Society behaves and operates, we must understand its roots, and learn again how to live without adverse controls on our natural growth. We must address how we treat our children, part of which is personal, resolving how we ourselves were treated as children, and part of which is societal which is where we must engage in peaceful, determined and well informed direct action, collectively, to confront the current situation. They are all of a piece.

 * a similar process also applies in the aftermath of any serious trauma....

Resources :        

http://www.whatbabieswant.org- a well researched and powerful documentary

http://www.birthpsychology.com-web portal for the research of Thomas Verny, David Chamberlain and William Emerson

http://www.alice-miller.com– pre-eminent researcher and writer on the sociological influences on parenting and child 'rearing' and the processes of recovery

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com– award winning teacher, author of the definitive history of Compulsory State Education

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Julia Gillard and Monsignor Dean Cappo's appointment..

Letter to Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister, on her appointment of Monsignor Dean Cappo to Chair the National Mental Health Commission.

sent today, via her Parliamentary email.

Dear Prime Minister,

It has come to my attention that you have appointed Monsignor Dean Cappo as as the chairman of the National Mental Health Commission.

How is it possible that you could appoint a senior Catholic Official, whose primary allegiance is with The Vatican, which we all know is embroiled in a world-wide scandal - part of which has been played out to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of children, Aboriginal and European, in Australia - The Scandal of long term Institutional Child Abuse of such utter cruelty, that is well documented, that was actively covered up for many, many years, that only came out due to the bravery of Survivors, (many of whom would have been labelled as mentally ill, when in fact they were, and are distressed, and expressing that distress) in spite of intimidation, manipulation, bribery and Vatican 'secrecy' and, given that the Vatican is even still attempting to manage this scandal as a crisis for the Vatican rather than focus on the needs of survivors and the necessary work to bring those who have abused children before the courts and the urgent need to review those Catholic teachings that underpin the brutality meted out to children - Original Sin, the Devil within the child that must be beaten out, the lack of a commandment to HONOUR THY CHILDREN......?

You are being observed, by Survivors and their advocates all over the world, and your actions are being noted, and YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE. The Vatican IS responsible for Criminal acts, as are many State bodies, and that liability has now become YOUR PERSONAL LIABILITY.

I urge you to rescind your appointment of Dean Cappo, and to appoint someone whose concern for the welfare of children and adults is well known, is proven in the field..... someone such as Helen Caldicott comes to mind.....

Yours sincerely.

Corneilius Crowley

---------------------------

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Alcoholism, Institutional Abuse and The Cloyne Report

A Chara,

The Examiner, The Irish Independent and other media in Ireland, has reported on the increase in deaths involving alcohol.

I studied the dynamics of Alcoholism many, many years ago, and the evidence suggests strongly that rather than it being a 'disease' or the FAULT of the alcoholic, it is a behaviour pattern that emerges in communities where feelings and experiences are not allowed to be fully expressed, where pain is suppressed and it's very much about masking subconscious, hidden or 'unwanted' feelings.

What was also clear from those studies was that children who grow up in an Alcoholic home environment also learn to mask certain feelings, and tend NOT to become Alcoholics BECAUSE they have seen it, yet DO still mask their feelings, and adopt other strategies to maintain that mask. And what these studies also showed was that there was a tendency or a trend whereby the NEXT generation, who hadn't seen the Alcoholic behaviour would be likely to use alcohol to mask pain and feelings....

You see, the child grows up in the psychological milieu of his or her parents and his or her social structures and has to 'adapt' in order to 'fit in'. That adapting process most often means that certain key needs are not met, that many feelings are not expressed, and that the pain of not being treated with empathy is masked by : consumerism,adverse  nationalism, religiosity and 'addictions' : behaviours that are learned.

Consider this. The Irish History of the last 200 years includes the FAMINE, two world wars and a civil war, and intense poverty.

The vast majority of the people who went through these TRAUMA were able to resolve those painful experiences ... and so the patterns of intergenerational dysfunction continued, as they will always do, until they are recognised and dealt with, with empathy, with nurturant intent, with grace....


I wrote some years ago about the need for empathy, for honesty, for the placing of the needs of all our children at the very centre of Society such that then we may say : Our Society is truly decent.


The Cloyne Report is published today, and we can say that the behaviour of the Churches and Orders, and the Government and HSE thus far has left so much undone that needs to be done with regard to the honest appraisal of the realities.


Let us not waste any more time. There is work to be done, and our children's children will thank us for it, let alone the relief it will provide to living survivors and their families.

Kindest Regards

Corneilius Crowley

London

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Speech to Rally Trafalgar Square June 4th 2011

This is the text of a speech I was to deliver at the Rally Against Child Abuse, hosted by Truth and Hope, on June 4th, 2011 @ Trafalgar Square. 

I was also asked to deliver a message to the gathering from Kevin Annett, my friend whose pioneering research unveiled to the world the full horror and extent of the Canadian Indian Residential School System, and forced the Canadian Government and those Christian Churches involved in running that system to finally and grudgingly acknowledge what was done in the name of the Canadian tax-payer,  and of 'civilisation'. His work continues, as does mine, with regard to a full and open accounting for these crimes, and a demand that Society address it's profound lack of empathy and it's resultant adverse behaviour.

There was not time enough to do both. I read Kevin's message, and have published the text of the speech here.....

Child protection is many things.

One of the things it is not and never should be is a set of regulations to be followed willy nilly,  so often 'following orders' whilst ignoring the distress that the enforcement of ill-designed bureaucratic rules results in, because they reduce what ought to be a humane interaction to the ticking of boxes, the filling of forms, the application of formulae, the submission of the human being to an order that is un-natural, and ultimately the rejection of the meaning of the lived experience of children and their parents.

Child Protection must be something far deeper than the dry application of the Law, the provision of a Service, and above all it must be humane, empathic and acutely sensitive to the natural needs of the children, the natural needs of families, of parents and of their communities. 

It takes a village to raise a child. Parents MUST BE SUPPORTED in every way possible.

Child protection, if it is to have any meaning, has to recognise a number of key biological realities.

These realities are felt by most mothers, most fathers and not least, well understood by many Scientists researching the biologically mandated developmental realities concerning the consciousness of babies, in the womb, in infancy and throughout childhood development.

Science and Reality meet in best practice. 

Most parents are doing their best. Under the circumstances.

The Reality is this : The Human Child is expecting to emerge into an empathic and nurturing Society.  The Institutions of our Society are neither in great measure. These are the circumstances that mitigate against natural development.

Our Biology is clear: we observe the presence of mirror neurons, which fire the same neural networks that would be required to make the movements that have been observed, that have been seen, and this tells us yet again, that empathy is very much a multi-sensory ability that is innate, intrinsic and absolutely fundamental to the human being. That is to say, that what we experience is written into our physiology, our neurology. The environment in which we grow is of vital importance, and nature has much to offer in this regard. So much to offer.

Empathy is our most basic nature, not fear. We learn best through love. Self empathy is the basis for empathy with others.

The image of mankind as a potentially rampaging, self destructive mass is a fundamental error. Original Sin and The Fall are fables, malign metaphors, and  they do not describe the biological reality at all.

WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!

We know that love starts with loving oneself, with self-empathy.

What we also know through experience and through developmental Science, that from within the womb, through birth, infancy and childhood, the development of empathy, as is the case for the development of any other aspect of the child, requires certain biologically mandated experiences that nurture that development.

Being treated with empathy nurtures empathy in the child.

There is a multi-sensory bonding, an experiential process of securing one’s sense of self and this is a learning process, one that is biologically mandated, a process which if disrupted leads to pathology. It cannot be stated any clearer than this:

If Society damages the natural empathic child, then Society will create empathically damaged people, who will potentially repeat the cycle. If those people build Institutions, make rules, effectively codifying their own neuroses into the common lore, they will repeat the cycles.

If ANY Society permits these bonding experientials to be disrupted, then that Society is creating the pathologies that ensue from that disruption.

Where is the empathy and nurturance in our Societal Institutions?

And, as we, the Survivors and the distressed, are all too familiar with, it is those people who are harmed and who suffer, who present the symptoms, which we know as symptoms of distress,  which in truth reveal the presence of Societal pathogens, yet which Society labels as disease, or worse, as dysfunctional behaviour to be judged, who are then scape-goated by this exclusive and judgemental diagnosis. 

If the Society itself is not also diagnosed as part of the problem, and then treated accordingly, and that means a change in the behaviour of Power, of Societal Institutions, then those who suffer the most, and reveal the trauma creation that Society is responsible for, are yet again betrayed.

This omission is the essence of institutional cruelty. Society blames the Survivor. It cannot stand. This is why we are here today.

Institutional Care Protocols, Policies and behaviours cause more harm than good. The proof of this is the re-currant intergenerational trauma patterns, transmitted through each successive generation. The wounds of the fathers and mothers are visited upon the children, because the fathers and mothers are not given the healing support they need and because the judgementalism of Social Services and Organised Religion and adversarial family courts prevails.

Thus the question arises.

Is what we, as a Society, are doing truly Nurturant?

Is what is being done to the Survivors, to parents under stress, by the Institutions of Society truly Nurturant?

How can it be considered Nurturant to NOT support parents whose lives may well be influenced by intergenerational trauma patterns, whose lives may well include incredibly difficult circumstances, such as poverty, sudden bereavement, perhaps even severe trauma, circumstances beyond their control and for whom the ensuing symptoms of these difficulties can make a prison even of what was formerly a home.

The evidence is clear: Institutional Care does not work in the best interests of the children when they remove children from their homes, and when they do not support and assist parents who are stressed and under pressure to the extent that is required and is relatively easy and inexpensive to implement?

The National Coalition for the Reform of Child Protection Services in the USA has helped three states avoid removals of children, by providing the kinds of support that works best for families, for children, their parents and ultimately, for Society. Their work shows some of the possibilities. They have saved State Government many millions of dollars, both on frontline care and in terms of outcomes requiring intervention in later life.

Why is the UK Child Protection System so judgemental, so secretive, so ill informed, so far behind the curve on what really works for children, for parents, for communities and ultimately for Society?

Why does UK official policy mis-interpret the truth that whilst neglect and abuse occur, that their presence has more to do with the kind of Society into which people are born and to which they are forced to conform to, than it does the kinds of people who  are born, who grow up in and become parents in a Society that does not support natural empathic parenting. That lack of adequate support fro nurturant parenting eats away at the very heart of what it is to be human, to be a child of life.

Economics, with which most officials are obsessed, is not the measure of a good life.

Why are those influences, that affect so many peoples lives so adversely, left out of the diagnoses of ‘at risk parents’ when it is OBVIOUS that these influences are very much part of the causality and indicate the societal pathology which these parents reveal as they present these symptoms?

Who benefits from this persistent refusal to admit a holistic diagnosis?

Is that refusal not irrational, or even insane, in and of itself?

Do we not meet this irrationality in our lives, every day?

Are we not the living witnesses to this cruelty, we who have suffered as children and continue to suffer as adults the adverse affects of this Institutionalised, legalised, codified lack of empathy, through no personal weakness within ourselves?

Are we not correct to demand that justice be fully served where real harm and loss has  occurred, and are we not also to make of our efforts a call, a cry from the heart, to place empathy at the very core of how our Society relates to all children?

Who will join this call?

We ask : Will you join this work?

On Anger, Reform and Diarmuid Martin in Ireland

Here's an article by John Allen, a reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, who met with Survivors outside the recent  Conference in Ireland, a the Jesuit Milltown Institute titled “Broken Faith: Revisioning the Church in Ireland. He listened attentively to what the survivors had to say, and was well informed, and cogniscant of much of the story. You can view that meeting here .

I read the article and the very first sentence drew the following response from me........

‎

"Although the sexual abuse crisis has been devastating for the Catholic church everywhere it’s erupted, the meltdown in Ireland is fairly unique in scope and scale"

1. 'devastating for the church' : hmmmm compare that to the effects of the brutality and sexual abuse perpetrated upon those who Survived, and worse, on thos who did not Survive, whose pain was such that they committed suicide. And remember, that the Living Survivors are but the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many generations of dead who never spoke of their suffering, primarily because there was no one to hear it, no means to tell it such that it might have been understood or even believed.

2. 'erupted' : that's a violent word. It implies that the giving witness to what occurred was and is a violent act. That telling the truth is a violent act. What would Jesus say of this?

3. 'meltdown' again implies a catastrophe. How can the truth be considered a catastrophe, unless one wishes that the truth be suppressed?

4. "Ireland is fairly unique in scope and scale" : hmmm again, there are number of studies* of the world wide Residential Boarding School systems operated by the Church, set up by State Legislation, that show that the experience in Ireland is unique only in the most insignificant of ways. For example, there are or were no Aboriginal Residential Schools in Ireland. Just Industrial Schools for the poorest people.

It is also true that the sexual abuse of children occurred outside such Institutions, in Churches, Sacristies, Vicarages, Parish Halls, and even in the childrens own homes, and that this abuse was pretty widespread. In every country in the world where the Catholic (and other Religious denominations, to be fair) Church held some Power.

Thus even in the first sentence, the psychology of mitigation reveals itself.

Let me be clear here. This issue is a Societal issue. It is to do with the existence of Hierarchical Power, and the language and culture of violence that Hierarchical Power has always been associated with. While I will not mitigate in any way the responsibility of individuals or Institutions, I will not accept any analysis that stops short of the fullest acknowledgement of the truth of the matter.

The Dominant Cultures that comprise Industrial Civilisation are founded upon the Power to abuse and with that the ability and intent to mask that abuse, rationalise it or suppress awareness of it; be it by propaganda, indoctrination, by intimidation or by violence.

If Christianity - irrespective of what denomination, irrespective of it being evangelical, charismatic, ecclesiatic, had any moral or empathic compass,it would understand that Jesus was born into that same culture and spoke out, directly and with clarity, against that culture.

And the base of that culture's grip is this: the ability to abuse children, be it by gross and extreme acts which survivors are giving witness to or by the more subtle processes of indoctrination, propaganda and grooming which far too many people take as 'normal'.

The vast majority of pre-literate, 'uncivilised', aboriginal societies, which ranged in group size from small family groups to very large settlements, were and are empathic egalitarian societies, where the childs safety, well being and nurturance is paramount. They knew and know that the psychology of the future society is nurtured by how the society relates to and treats it's children, that empathy is the key to all healthy human relationships, and also key to a healthy relationship to the habitat, that empathy is key in an environment that has many variables, as do all natural environments, because empathy is responsive, rather than reactive.

The reactive nature of the Church Hierarchy speaks volumes. The fear that those who are of good heart who live within that Hierarchy must be very great indeed if thay feel they cannot speak out honestly and with passion against the crimes that have been committed within that Institution.

Diramuid Martin has a long, long way to go to meet the demands of empathic honesty. And the Institutions of the Christian Churches, and those of State Governance, even further.

--------------

*Here's a report prepared for the UN back in 1997 which is a brief comparative study of Indigenous Residential Schools operated by the Churches, legislated into being by State Governments, across the world.

Every continent apart from Antartica and the Artic has examples of this system, and in many places in Africa, South America and Asia, the systems and schools are still operating.

'Scope and scale indeed!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Garda Rape 'Jokes' and the Abuse of Power: An open Letter to Media and Dail Eireann

 A Chara,

I wrote about the pervasive abuse of power in November 2009, in a letter published in the Irish Times.

This is part of what I wrote:

“the problem is best described as the abuse of power, in all its forms, from the personal to the institutional, for control or profit. Resolving this will protect children, and much more, in the future. It is linked in essence to all struggles for liberty, and must be at the heart of and visibly resolved in any decent, healthy society that dares to call itself decent.”

That call remains as clear today as it was when it was published.

The recent reports of Gardai ‘joking’ about raping a protestor are yet another warning sign.

Time and time again, we are seeing people in positions of Power and Responsibility engage in behaviour that fundamentally undermines their right to that position of power, that denies the meaning of the word ‘responsible’, that breaks asunder the sacred trusts inherent in positions of responsibility, that indicates that the issues this ‘incident’ highlights are still largely unresolved, and furthermore, that places all of Irelands people at risk.

Ireland cannot call itself a decent Society, until the denial stops, until the work of honesty, integrity and of restorative justice is underway. This is a matter of duty of care.

This the people of Ireland must recognise, and if those in positions of power and responsibility will not act, then the people have to. Or we too lose all credibility amongst the children of Ireland.

Yours sincerely

Corneilius Crowley

etc etc..

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Forgotten Australians : A letter to Australian Senators

preamble: 

 

Survivors of Institutional Abuse are an international community.

Committed to seeing that full Justice is served, we co-operate and seek to inernationalise our efforts. We support each other across borders, oceans, moutain ranges, laguage barriers, creeds, skin colour and culture. We seek to ensure that no Survivor community is isolated. This is not an issue that pertains to any one country in isolation. 

The crimes and the perpetrators are international in scope, and so the response to their abuses  and to their cover-ups and with regard to all failings with in serving Justice, Reparation and support for recovery must likewise be International.

This is the just one of many such letters, seeking to remind those in positions of responsibility, that they are being observed, locally and internationally, that their responses to the testimony of witnesses and to the demands for Justice, demanded not only by Survviors, but also by their relatives and advocates, and by the Law itself to which all must submit, are being carefully scrutinised, documented, compared and evaluated for efficacy.

In the case of Crimes Against Humanity, the Nuremburg principles apply. Diplomatic Immunity does not exist where Crimes Against Humanity have been committed. All member States of the United Nations General Assembly, bar two - USA, Somalia, - have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of The Child and are bound under Law by this convention. Breaches of it's principles are crimes. The Institutional Abuse of Children is a Crime Against Humanity, and whilst it is not yet defined thus at the United Nations, the UNCRC binds all to it's principles.

Many hundreds of millions of Parents are deeply concerned about these issues. This is a public process, and as such it is designed to inform the wider public, the media and all other interested parties. This process is designed to gather momentum and support for the full accounting and exposure of those Institutions culpable of such abuses to the full force of the law, to the fullest force of the publics concern. It is designed to publicly evaluate the response of Governance to the issues.

THE LETTER:

TO THE HONOURABLE THE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

I am writing to you because I am a concerned citizen of Ireland, and also a World Citizen, and a Survivor of Catholic Residential School Abuse.

I wish to draw to the attention of the all Australian Parliamentarians the following :

Having studied the matter in some detail, I understand that the Forgotten Australians Enquiry did not uphold all of its stated terns of reference. The result being, the enquiry did not get to the bottom of ALL problems and cases of child neglect, including but not limited to - clergy abuse, institutionalised neglect and agent abuse.

This is pattern that is well documented, and is sadly replicated in Ireland, Canada and many other States where Survivors have come forward to give heart rending testimony to the abuses they have suffered, often decades after the abuse occurred. This delay in coming forwards is well understood in therapeutic and clinical practice.

The shame, fear, confusion, dissociation and distress that affects Survivors make coming forwards extremely difficult, and with the generalised unwillingness of culpable Institutions, individuals and others concerned – insurance companies, faith groups, communities, Police Forces, News Media etc - to hear these testimonies, to face the full truth and meaning of these testimonies, those effects are compounded.

Accordingly victims of this abuse remain unable to access proper legal redress. Also certain departmental faults leading to abuse remain unattended. The eventual findings of the Forgotten Australians enquiry was not on all of the points of reference nor was it on all the topics based on the evidence provided

I therefore call on all Australian Parliamentarians, men and women of good heart, men and women of integrity, parents and others, that you proceed as follows:

Open an Independent and verifiable Enquiry which will allow all evidence of child neglect, institutional neglect or other agency neglect to be bought to an Enquiries attention.

If not an Enquiry, then I ask that you request that a government body with the authority to receive and investigate all evidence of child abuse and provide feedback to the Federal Government be so instructed.

I am requesting that the Australian Parliament to be made aware that many cases of child abuse/neglect have gone un-investigated because certain terms of reference of previous and existing Enquiries were not upheld.

I am requesting that all efforts be made to do this. I urge you to take a determined stand on this issue, so as to verify the public’s perception that Justice is for all, that Justice is at the heart of good Democratic Governance, that the prevention of re-traumatising of Survivors (due to any failure to fully investigate abuses) is ensured and that the prevention of further abuses is also ensured by all those whose responsibilities with regard to Governance and Justice is underwritten by taxes, by the electoral franchise and by our common trust, which is key to the conduct of any decent Society.

I look forwards to hearing from you in the very near future.

Yours sincerely... etc

Corneilius Crowley

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

‘No record’ of how Cork charity spent state funds : Irish Examiner, my response

http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/politics/no-record-of-how-cork-charity-spent-state-funds-136526.html

A Chara,

With regard to Right of Place, we are seeing a problematic lack of transparency similar to that of the Catholic Church Bureaucracy, past Irish Governments, and others involved in the Residential Schools horror story.

...

This is in stark contrast to the open-ness of many Survivors, who have had to deal with an unwillingness to believe them, fear and ridicule, intimidation and, not least, the adverse affects of what they endured.

Let it be said that those who deny, turn their backs on the story, or for whatever reason feel fearful of facing the truth, have not and will not suffer anything like the Survivors themselves if they face the truth.

Right of Place and others in similar positions must be made 100% transparent and be subject to adequate oversight.

Their staff must be subject to the same oversight, and also rigorously checked for their backgrounds and expertise in this area of supporting Survivors.

Failure in this is an abdication of duty of care, and will inevitably lead to the totally avoidable re-traumatising of those who need all the support and nurturance that Irish Society can generate.

Yours etc

Corneilius Crowley

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Letter published 19th March 2011 : http://www.examiner.ie/opinion/letters/church-must-be-open-with-abuse-survivors-148683.html

My Single Issue Obsession - The Facts.

Here are the facts. It's NOT all doom and gloom. Some seriously good work is being done in understandtng the dynamics of abuse relationships, the intergenerational and cyclical effects of PTSD, with an eye to prevention, (founded upon proven practice, biology and science) as many are concerned that thus far, the vast maority of abuse remains, in relative terms, a largely misunderstood by the general populace, and is still very much a hidden, denied and masked reality.

However...... truth beckons.

One out of every four people in Ireland  will have experienced a serious sexual assault or serious abuse during their childhoods.

This pattern is replicated across the entire developed world. No Child Left Behind rings hollow and echoes down through History.

Informal networks of organised, self protecting abusers exist in EVERY area concerning children – sport, drama, education, scouting, state care, psychiatry, psychology, health, religion.

Governments and Churches have created, funded and operated  well documented systems, that purported to ’care’ for children, and other vulnerable people, yet have seriously abused the majority in their care. These are called Residential School Systems. Social Services Care Homes. Juvenile Offender Prisons. Schools. Care Homes for the Elderly. Psychiatric Units. Orphanages.

The history of childhood ‘rearing’ texts is littered proffering ‘good advice’ that is on the face of it abusive. This literature is known as Poisonous Pedagogy.

Rather than empathy, manipulative techniques of control are espoused as best practice for parents, teachers, and others responsible for the care of children. Behaviour Modification techniques. Ritalin. Seroxat. The DSM.

These same organisations, Religious and Secular, launch wars, trade in arms, people and in drugs, send mercenaries to do their bidding, employ manipulative strategies against all their perceived enemies, in particular the whistle blowers, and are corrupt to the hilt.

The adverse effects of Industry on the habitat are also part of this abuse picture. To deny the ‘external costs’ of Industry to both people and the habitat is abusive.

Green-washing is an example of the manipulative means by which those who abuse the environment portray themselves as saviours. The best paid lawyers in the world are those who defend the Corporations who pollute, who bribe officials whose role is defined by a duty of care to those they purport to serve.

Foot-washing in Churches follows this same pattern.

Meaningless gestures, empty words.

Any Survivor who dares to speak the truth is a whistle blower. Bradley Manning.  Colm O’Gorman. Paddy Doyle. Noam Chomsky. Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. David Shayler. Julian Assange. Kevin Annett. Ward Churchill. Russel Means. Howard Zinn.

All Survivors are treated as potential enemies, as a potential threat to the status quo. Why is it thus?

Not only by those who abused them, but by others in positions of responsibility and power, who feel threatened by the disclosures.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report. The Ryan Report. The Ferns Report. The Murphy Report. The as yet unpublished Cloyne Report.  The Forde Inquiry.

The many documentaries on the Residential School systems designed by Governments and run by clergy for Indigenous or Aboriginal Children. The Forgotten Australians. Hidden From History.

The Canary Effect. Deliver Us from Evil.

The Murphy Inquiry into Irish Swimming and similar reports into UK Sports. 

I have omitted more than I have excluded here.

This list is only the tip of the iceberg. 4 Dioceses reports exist in Ireland’s investigations into criminal child abuses in 26 Dioceses.

There are reports due from Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the UK. Work has started on similar investigations in Africa, South America and Asia.

The Chilcott Inquiry. The 5 Inquiries into UK Government decision making regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. These all follow the same pattern of half truths, denials and white washing.

How many scandals in various arena’s have blown up in the past 40 years where people who were abused went public and those who had official responsibility, who were often colleagues in work of the accused, refused to accept the truth of these public statements, who hid the facts of specific accusations, allegations and actual reported crimes, investigations and trials from the people and constituencies they served?

How many more will it take before the pattern now absolutely clear to anyone who reviews the data is made clear to the general public, and is tackled by those good people within Governance, Policing, Health Care, Education and Religion in areas concerned with the well-fare and care of children, in meaningful and effective manner, leading not only to the prosecution of abusers and those who covered up, but also and importantly to educational campaigns, founded on solid scientific understanding and proven practice, to prevent more abuse, to break the intergenerational cycles of abuse?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe