Category Archives: 1961

31 August 2011

6. Lonsdale

By Geoff Smith

Then one day, Robinson turned up at my house after school. My mother was cooking the tea. He walked straight in, saying hello to my mother, and presented me with a brown paper bag. He told my mom and I he had brought me a present, as he was leaving to go back to college. I opened the bag, and took out a pair of professional boxing shorts, with the word LONSDALE sewed into the elastic waist.

Even today this word makes me feel sick.

I cannot remember if those shorts were red or blue, but I remember they were stained with his blood. Blood which had dripped down onto them, whilst fighting. The blood was black. To this day I remember, black. He then said to us goodbye Mrs Smith, goodbye Geoffrey.

Jimmy Robinson turned and walked out of my life. He walked down the entry, got on his bike and away he went.

Within one minute, in front of my mother, I threw the shorts into the dustbin. When I say threw, I mean at speed with such force. My mother looked at me, but nothing was said, only silence.

A couple of weeks later, I got a letter from him, at a college, I think it was Osterley, in Kent. This also went in the bin. After this, my mother and my father never mentioned his name again, which suited me.

I have just mentioned my father not saying anything. I have had 51 years to think over this. But I don’t think my dad ever met Robinson. Maybe that was part of Robinson’s plan, who knows.

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26 August 2011

5. Paedophile

By Geoff Smith

Robinson used to take me to his mother’s house probably twice a week. Every week for I would say, three months. It was always the same routine, him laying on me and thrusting, me wanking him off, the kissing, the drowning inside my chest. I switched off. He never tried anal sex. But what he did to me was, as the police told me 51 years later, rape.

I switched off mentally, but emotionally no. The worst thing that he did to me was the kissing, the tongue down my throat. It was and still is pure terror. That and the fact that I was short of my next breath. Yes I was drowning. Of course, looking back, not only was I in a very dangerous situation, I firmly believe today, here and now, the next step for him, the paedophile Jimmy Robinson, would be murder. That is the next step. We all know the cases of child murder. It seems always to go from the act of paedophilia to murder. They want to cover their tracks.

Over the course of the next three months, I would be coming out of school, in Tynings Lane and Robinson would be waiting for me. It got to the point where I would come out of Quicksand Lane. I would make my way back to home avoiding being seen or followed. But Jimmy Robinson would always wait for me. And if I wasn’t there, he would come to my home to collect me. Often when I came out of school he would be at my home, with my mother, having cake and tea. Laying in wait for me to arrive, so he could take me to his “mother’s house.” This went on for months.

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23 August 2011

4. Leigh’s Road

By Geoff Smith

I went inside. My mother asked how I enjoyed the ride. I said it was ok. I went upstairs and lay on the bed. What do I do now? I was, and I still am, convinced my mother would not believe me. How could she? She had tea with a trainee priest. She wouldn’t believe me.

Not only was I sexually abused by this man. What he did caused me to doubt my mother, my father, my brothers. How could I say such things about a future priest?

I was 11 years old. I had in my short time met a vicar and a chaplain. But I had never met a priest. What were priests all about? Robinson introduced me to Catholicism and, as I told the Judge 51 years later, “I didn’t like it.”

I was just a lad, nothing special, a nobody, my word against his. I remember thinking to myself, I mustn’t tell anyone because, they would not believe me. And I would get into trouble. I never said a word to anyone, not even my friends. I kept quiet, kept it to myself. After all I had survived this torture.

A couple of days later, after school, I was at home. Robinson came through the back gate. He knocked the back door and walked in, telling my mom, he was going to give Geoff a ride. He did, but not the kind my mother was thinking about. My mother told me to go with him. I didn’t want to, but I did.

We always ended up in Leighs Road, Shelfield, his mother’s house. Although I never met his mother. Did she even exist?

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19 August 2011

3. Following Orders

By Geoff Smith

Following Robinson’s orders I walked upstairs first and he followed. I still did not know what was going on, and we walked into a back bedroom. He followed and closed the door.

He turned to me and told me to take off my trousers and underpants. As I was so scared, I did as I was told. He told me to lie down on the floor, which I did. I still remember he didn’t close the curtains and it was always a sunny day. He got down on the floor with me. He opened his zipper and got his p**** out. I remember it was so hard, I had never seen an erect p**** before. It was sticking into me as he kissed me over the next 15, 20 minutes. He played with my p**** and my t*******, he got me to wank him off. But as I didn’t do it quick enough, he finished it himself. I remember having his ejaculate all over my belly and legs.

He then put his p**** between my legs, making thrusting movements on top of me. I now know these are the movements for love making. This was not lovemaking. This I now know to be rape. At the same time he was kissing me, putting his tongue right down my throat. I remember looking at him, my eyes wide open, his eyes closed. All the time I was fighting for breath. I was, in effect, drowning. I still remember whilst this was going on the sunlight coming through the window onto my face. We take our next breath for granted, until we can’t breathe. That’s when terror strikes. It was at this moment that I learned to switch off my emotions. I concentrated on surviving.

When he had finished with me, he wiped my belly, and my t********, wiped his p**** and stood up. I then got up and put on my pants and trousers. It was at this point that he physically threatened me. Not by any words, but by shadow boxing me. I backed away from him, he followed, always threatening to hit me. I was 11. He was once a pro boxer. Yes, I was scared. I was petrified. We then went downstairs to the front door. He opened it, we walked to the bike, and he took me home.

When we got home Robinson dropped me off outside my house and drove away.

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16 August 2011

2. Triumph Bonneville

By Geoff Smith

Whilst I was standing looking at the bike a man came out of the shop, dressed in a white butcher’s coat, covered in blood.  He asked me if I would like to have a go on the bike.  I said I would.  Even now, so many years later, I remember I was so excited.  I went home and told my mother about the motor bike.  I asked if I could go for a ride and she said yes.

A few days later this man, Jimmy Robinson, came to my home on his bike, and introduced himself to mother.  I remember him having a cup of tea and explaining to my mother that he was a trainee priest, working his summer holidays in the butchers shop. We were also told that he had been a professional boxer, before going to training college.

Jimmy Robinson was about 23 years old.  He had the looks of a boxer:  very short cropped hair, he had swollen eyebrows, broken nose, and swollen ears.  He looked just like Henry Cooper, but was slightly smaller.  I use Henry as an example.  We all know Henry Cooper was a pure gentleman, unlike the man I was about to get to know.  Robinson had the walk of a fighter; the way he held his arms, his hands.  His posture was very threatening.  As far as my mother was concerned, he was a very respectable young man.

I think we children were sent to the Methodist chapel in Aldridge because our aunty Mabel was the head of the Girl Guides in Aldridge, and they met at that chapel.  Mabel’s husband, our Uncle Jack, was in the Aldridge Band.  He played the big drum, carrying it on straps on his belly. Those thoughts bring back my innocence, and such happy memories.

I remember when he had drunk his tea, Robinson said, “Come on Geoff.”  He told my mother we would be gone for a ½ hour ride.  We walked down the entry, between our house and next doors, out to the road to the bike.  Robinson got on, and told me to hang on, my arms around his waist.  No crash helmets then.  We shot off up the road.  I kept putting my head out around his body to see where we were going, not as I knew many areas other than my local area.

It is now 51 years later.  I realize that me being on the back of his bike, holding on for  grim death, my arms around his waist, was not the thing to be doing.  But I was 11, innocent, very vulnerable, and yes, somewhat scared.

We drove for 6 or 7 minutes, and suddenly stopped outside what I now know was a semi detached house in Leigh’s Road, Shelfield .  When the bike stopped, he switched it off, and we got off.  Robinson told me this was his mother’s house.  We walked up the path.  He unlocked the door and pushed me in.  At this point I had no way of knowing what was going to happen, I stood there waiting.

Jimmy Robinson told me to go upstairs.

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11 August 2011

1. Summer 1961

By Geoff Smith

Well, where do I begin, I am 11 years old, I live in Oakley Avenue, Aldridge, West Midlands together with my two elder brothers. We are from a working class family.  My father worked one week days, followed by one week nights, at a steel foundry.  I remember being normal, just like all the other lads in the street.  I had many friends.  We spent time playing football, going down the railway tracks hiding behind bushes, watching steam trains shunting in the goods yards.

When I was 11 years old, I attended Tynings Lane Secondary Modern School, In Tynings Lane, Aldridge, just ¼ of a mile from home.  I didn’t like school, because I wasn’t the brightest of lads.  My problem was that I found it very hard to concentrate because there was so much going on around me.  My brothers and I were taught to respect, the vicar, the policeman, the doctor.  Many a time a policeman in the same avenue would belt us one for climbing over his wall to get our ball.  We took it.  We didn’t tell our mom or dad because you would get another belting, when dad got home.  That was how things were.

On a weekly basis my mother used to send me to Poxon’s butchers, in Station Road, Aldridge, next door to Aurthur Thomas, fruit and veg shop.  I went to the shop probably twice a week to get meat or sausages.  This I did after school, or Saturday mornings. This went on for a few years.  After all, it was safe for kids to be on the streets in those days, or so my parents believed.  On one day, just like any other, I walked to the shop only to find a Triumph Bonneville motor bike standing against the front of the shop.  I still remember standing looking at this massive machine, trying to imagine what it was like to ride.  This was the day that my life changed forever.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in 1961