Tag Archives: child abuse

8 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.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in 1961

6 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?

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in 1961

3 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.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in 1961

1 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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30 July 2011

7. Trust No One

By Geoff Smith

So as far as I was concerned, this was the last I would ever have to do with this homosexual, Jimmy Robinson.  I say “homosexual” because that’s what I thought Robinson was.  It wasn’t until I got to about 40 years of age when I suddenly heard a new word, paedophile.  Upon using a dictionary I found out that my abuser was a paedophile, not a homosexual.  That confusion, that fear and misunderstanding, is just one of the after effects of my abuse.

Over the years, I have seen hundreds of reports in the newspapers to do with priests going to court for abusing children.  I have never shied away from wanting to know about the subject or to try and find the whereabouts of my abuser.  But I never came across anything.  I have often thought about my abuse, wondered about any other victims.  But something always told me Jimmy Robinson was dead and rotting in hell.  With this, I was happy.

The abuse I suffered and the experiences that I had to endure, had a terrible effect on my life.   These visions of Robinson, live with me every day.  But I learned from a very early age to bottle things up, to switch my mind off.  I became very hard mentally, take it or leave it.  I have had to learn to look after number one, stuff everyone else.

When the abuse happened, I look back to my schooldays, when they should have been the best days of my life.  I see now that I withdrew, went back into my shell.  I am ashamed that for the next 4 years at school, I sat looking out of the window.  I switched off, I wouldn’t, or should I say couldn’t, learn anything at school.  I am ashamed that I have never passed one exam, not one.

In the last year of my schooling, I spent nearly all of the year in the metalwork shops, with a school teacher named Mr. Sam Taylor.  I never confided to him of my abuse, but I think he suspected there was something wrong with me, or should I say he thought I had troubles.  For nearly a year I spent all my school hours cleaning, tidying and generally helping this teacher in any way I could.

Or is this the story of an idle mind.  As I say I could never concentrate.

I have had 51 years to lock away my demons, lock away my childhood, hide my innermost fears.  The main thing I learned, so many years ago, was that I am a survivor.  I was victimized, but chose to get on with my life.  I am what I am, you see what you see.  If you don’t like me, that’s fine.  I stick up for number one, me.  I’ve always had to.  I say what I think.  I come straight to the point.

I learned one thing, trust no one and I won’t get hurt.

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26 July 2011

8. A Lifetime of Shame, Guilt and Fear

By Geoff Smith

I have had a lifetime of shame, guilt and fear.  I put it all away in the back of my mind and get on with life.  But although these feelings are locked away, they are not gone.

All my life I’ve heard Jimmy Robinson walking around in my head.  And every so often I hear the floorboards squeak.  Yes, he’s still there.  But at least I got on with my life.  I made the best of a bad job.

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23 July 2011

9. Leaving School

By Geoff Smith

After leaving school I was thrown into a world I didn’t know.  A world that probably didn’t care what had happened to an 11 year old schoolboy.  I left school at a time that today seems far away.  I had many jobs after leaving school, as employment was easy to come by.  In those days you could have a new job every day of the week, such was the norm.

I flitted from job to job.  You name it, I’ve probably done it. One of my jobs was as a van driver.  I drove all over the country, delivering bone china mugs.  The hours were long but I enjoyed the excitement of being my own boss, calculating my route.  Learning so many things as I went.  I spent many years doing these various jobs, finally getting a job as a postman with Royal Mail.  I was at the Post for 18 years.  It was a good job and I was both punctual (4am start) and a valued member of a team.  I found this on occasions very difficult.

For all these years I was haunted by my past and the encounters with Robinson.  Jimmy Robinson never really went very far away.  He was always close at hand to give me the self doubt, the feelings of revulsion, pain, shame, guilt, and above all anger.

On one particular day, I was in my van, waiting at a set of traffic lights.  Parked in front of me was a car and in the back seat was a lad, 12 or 13 years old.  He was facing the rear of the car, looking at me through the window.  As is my nature, I put my thumb up to him to say hello and he smiled at me.  Then out of the blue I was overcome by fear.  Fear that the lad would tell his dad, the driver, that there was a man behind him saying hello.  I was in a cold sweat.  I was afraid that my friendly thumb up may have been seen as something quite different.  I drove away and never would I wave to kids again.

I have, looking back, been scared of kids, nervous.  I was always feeling ill at ease, and it’s very hard to explain to someone who has not been abused.  For the same reason, I have always been very nervous of being touched.  I feel it is quite alien.  I cannot stand anyone who is touchy feely.

You see all my life I have read newspaper reports of priests being prosecuted for being paedophiles.  In nearly all cases they state in court that they were abused in their childhood.  I believe this is an excuse, not the reason they did it.  After all, we are all taught to know right from wrong.  I do believe that all men are capable of rape.  But 99.99999999% of men, do not rape, because they know right from wrong.  The people abusing children in my early years, just like the men today on the internet grooming children, know it’s wrong.  They know it is illegal.  But that doesn’t stop them.

I have spent a lifetime in Robinson’s shadow.

I decided at an early age he wasn’t going to ruin my life.  After all, he left my life in 1961.  But yes I do have to suffer the after-effects.  I am still suffering.

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21 July 2011

10. Shooting Pigeons

By Geoff Smith

I was working with a mate of mine, C.  This one day he asked me if I would take out his nephew, an 11 year old lad, called G.  G wanted to go shooting pigeons.  It was one of my favourite pastimes.  I said that I would, and so I met G and his mother J.

J was married and had three children, G 11, L, 6, and K,1.  I took the lad shooting many times.  In fact, I gave G a shotgun when he was, I think, 14 years old.  This was the friendship we made.  As much as I met G, I met J.  Despite the fact that we were both married to other people, J and I spent much time together over the next few years.  At that point I have to say that I started treating the three children as my own.  To this day, 32 years later, they are still my children.  I would die to protect them.  I am very proud of them.  And yes I do moan about them, but I love them all.

When G was 16, and about to leave school, I asked what he wanted to do.  He replied that he wanted to be a gamekeeper.  So I advertised in the Shooting Times magazine, and got him a job in Anglesey, North Wales.  We went up to Anglesey many times, me J and G.  They had become my family, or should I say the family I never had.

Just prior to G leaving for his job I told G and J that I had been abused by a priest in 1961.  I didn’t go into details , but I had to tell them.  They deserved to know.  We are after all, subjects of our history.  They deserved to know who and what I am.

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15 July 2011

12. Dead and Gone from My Life

By Geoff Smith

In April 2009 I was in Lichfield working at a Health Centre, doing some painting.  When I had finished and before coming home I called to see a friend of mine, M.H.  We have been friends for 40 years.  M.H. makes false teeth in his Dental workshop.  Whilst he was working I was sitting next to him and we were talking.

I mentioned a friend of ours P, and I asked M how is he?  M replied that P and his wife were having a rough patch with one of their two sons.  I asked why and M told me that one of the lads had come out, i.e. he’s gay.  Straight away, without thinking, I said to M, “could be worse, he could be a paedophile.”  M looked at me with tears in his eyes and said words to the effect, what are you trying to tell me?  In tears I explained what had happened to me when I was 11.  M told me that I should go to the police and that he would go with me.  I said no, James Robinson is gone out of my life, he’s dead and rotting in hell.

Little did M or I realize, the boot was about to be delivered.  I thanked M, gave him a hug and left for K’s.  A couple of days later I returned to Ireland.

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15 July 2011

13. He Walked Right Back into My Life

By Geoff Smith

It was Saturday August 8th,  2009.  I arrived home from work and J was cooking the tea in the kitchen.  I went into my lounge, sat down and, just as I had done hundreds of times before, put Sky news on the TV.  It was a Saturday night the same as any other Saturday night; probably have curry and a glass of Port.  As the news came on, I pressed the red button and up came the news stories of the day.  My eye caught the story about the “priest extradited from LA.”

So many times in my life I have done the same thing, to find out that some old priest, has been prosecuted for abusing children.  But I noticed this was not the usual story, for I recognized the name of the priest, Richard John James Robinson.  Then it hit me, this was THE priest who abused me.  I don’t really remember, but I think I called out to J to come quickly, to read about the man that abused me when I was 11 years old.  I sat in horror as J came running in.  I had witnessed the man who abused me, his story, walking right into my home.  What happened to me 49 years ago was here, now in colour in my home.

I phoned K to get the phone number of the West Midlands Police, at Lloyd House, Birmingham.  I dialled only for some computer to tell me they were shut.  So I again phoned K to get me Walsall Police Station’s number.  This she did and I phoned them to report my abuse.  I was told that there were no Officers about and that they would phone me on Monday morning.  I phoned my middle brother B, telling him to get onto Sky TV and press the red button.  I put the phone down.

This night was the start of months and months of sleepless nights, of nightmares and being totally distraught.  I was awake all night.  At 5am, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I got up and went to my golf club to play.  I have always been a good golfer, always playing once or twice a week.  I managed to play 2 holes, taking about 12 shots on each hole.  I can now say that I could not concentrate on the ball.  So I gave up and went home.

I had been home half an hour when the phone rang.  I picked it up.  It was Detective Sgt HM.   He asked me if I recognized Robinson.  I told him that I would, as Robinson was a former pro boxer, beat up forehead broken nose, cauliflower ears.  Then HM asked me if I had been an altar boy.  No I explained, I went to his butcher’s shop in Station Road, Aldridge, to collect meat for my mother.

Over the course of the next few days I went on the Internet to see if I could find anything about Robinson and there it all was.  I found the news reports because for the first time I had Robinson’s full name.  For 49 years I had never heard his real name.  We all knew him as Jimmy Robinson.  Later on my brothers and I called him Pope John.  Robinson was the first Catholic me and my brothers had ever met, as we all went to a Church of England school.  Over these days, I walked around like a zombie.  I could not concentrate.  I could not do anything.  All I thought about was Robinson.  He was in my head.  Only this time Jimmy Robinson was running around in the open, smashing up all of my life.  I am now at a point that I can see what I was like.  I feel sorry for J.  She, like me, did not ask for this.  But we got it.

It was arranged that I go to the UK to give my statement.  I packed my bags, leaving J behind.  I set off with all the feelings of anger, rage, guilt, shame, and exhaustion.

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