Tag Archives: rape

9 December 2011

30. The Score

By Geoff Smith

The Honourable Patrick Thomas QC started his sentencing speech.  He looked straight at Robinson and said, “you are the most wicked, evil man I have ever had brought before me.”  He went on to tell the court of his findings,“it is not my job here today, but I recommend that there should  be a Public Enquiry into the handling of this priest by The Birmingham Diocese and, in particular, the Catholic Church.”  He spent, I would say, 10 minutes elaborating on the handling of this case not only by the Church, but also the Police.  The failing in 1985 by the Police, when the church got the investigation dropped.

Judge Thomas sentenced Robinson to jail for 21 years and stipulated that he cannot be put forward for parole for 14 years.  Having heard this, I was shocked; such a long time.  He then told the Prison Staff to take him away.  I looked at Robinson for the last time.  Yes he hurt me and the other lads, but I felt sorry.  I took my share of the guilt for putting an old man in prison for such a long time.  But that soon disappeared as the Judge said, “he has never shown any kind of remorse.”

Yes he got what he deserved.  21 years for raping children.  21 years for a lifetime of offences, stretching back over 51 years.  His door opened, he went out, the door closed, and that was that.

Judge Thomas thanked the jury for what he described as a truly horrendous case and then I think he relieved them of jury service for life.  He turned to G and I and thanked us for being so brave to come forward to face our Demons.  He thanked the other victims, who were scared to come to court to hear the conclusion.  He thanked the police, the CPS and the Court Staff.  Upon this the court arose and the Judge walked out of our lives.  But I will never forget that man.

From the moment I first met Patrick Thomas I was put at ease and treated with compassion.  But I had just witnessed the other side of a genuine human being, his controlled anger.  He had, in fact, turned on Robinson.  He left no stone unturned, telling the prisoner of his wicked life, of rape, and betrayal of all he had been ordained to do.

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5 December 2011

29. The Verdict

By Geoff Smith

My brothers and I sat outside the courtroom, still waiting.  The jury had been out for 5 hours, over two days.  Today was Friday 22 October 2010.  We were sitting there seemingly waiting, in a state of nervousness, anticipation and dread.

Miss R appeared, and said, “The barristers for both sides have been summoned to the Judge’s chambers for tea.”  I enquired what this meant and I was told that, “it always happens when the jury have reached their verdict.  Soon we will be in court.”  It was 12 noon.  At 12.30 we were ushered into the courtroom.  I sat next to GS, less than 8 feet away from where Robinson would be seated.

A door opened and in came Robinson.  He sat down, having never taken his eyes away from the Judge’s chair.  This was it, Robinson, the former professional boxer, winner of 31 professional fights.  I can now recall thinking, will he be winning his 32nd fight?  The outcome of this fight would be felt by all the victims, their families, the Police and, more importantly, Robinson.  After all, it was given in evidence that he never lost a professional fight.  Would the now grown up lads end his distinguished career record?  We all hoped and prayed we would.

The Judge entered and we all stood up.  I looked at Robinson and I saw an old man, having aged many years over the last few hours.  He looked vulnerable, scared and somewhat “not quite with us” as we all sat down.  The Judge asked the foreman of the jury, “have you reached a verdict?”  The foreman responded “yes.”

The Judge then went on to ask the most important question of the trial:  “On charge No 1, do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?

G and I looked at the foreman.

“Guilty.”

I grasped G’s hand and the Judge asked the foreman for the answers to the other 20 charges.

On each charge James Robinson was found guilty.

I still cannot believe the atmosphere.  There was no sound at all in court, no talking, no rejoicing, no nothing.  Then at the end of the charges the Judge adjourned the court for ten minutes.  The court stood up and the Judge walked out.  I looked at the clock.  It was 12.45 pm.  We all remained seated, not wanting to leave our seats.  Robinson too remained seated.  I watched him, there was a tear in his eyes.  The tear didn’t run down his face, that would have shown weakness.  But his eyes were far from dry.  I thought to myself, now he feels the threat, the pain, and the fact that everything happening is out of his control.

I thought, welcome to how we felt, as young lads, the difference is, you deserve the feeling, we did not.

At five to one, the court arose, and the Judge walked back in, taking his place, Lord of all he surveyed.  He spoke to the barristers for both sides and then, having reviewed some notes, looked up at Robinson.  It was now.  Now was the time that Robinson’s professional career would take a nose dive.  He had lost his 32nd fight, the most important fight of his career.  In fact, the most important fight of his life.  The grown up little lads had won, now it was time for the Official Referee to announce the score.

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29 November 2011

28. He Had No Defence

By Geoff Smith

I sat there listening to the history of his abuse to the 5 other victims.  He accepted he knew them, as there were photos to prove it.  With me, no photos.  I and my brothers are liars, crooks, conmen trying to get compensation.  He repeatedly said he did not know us and did not know where we lived.  I sat listening, getting angrier, hearing what he had done to the lads, going into detail of the abuse.  I was gutted.  I felt very angry and very guilty that if I had stood up when I was 11, these lads would not be here now.

Lies, lies and even more lies.  That is what was being put forward by this priest, or should I say bastard.  In the end, the prosecution sat down and Miss B, the defence, stood up.  I can only say now, what I said then; I think she was on our side.  She handed him over to the jury.  He had no defence.  His actions over the last 50 years were indefensible.

I could not believe my ears.  We then spent a half day listening to the Judge doing his summing up.  I sat there in the front row, less than 8 feet away from Robinson.  I listened with disbelief that any human being could use, abuse and rape children.  I found it very hard to hear what this man had done for 54 years.  I was truly shocked.  I just sat there shaking my head.

The Judge adjourned till tomorrow Thursday.

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21 October 2011

20. Good, Sound Advice

By Geoff Smith

A week before the trial I phoned a friend of mine, he is in the legal profession in Ireland.  We spoke on the phone and I told him that I had a problem.  I had to go to court.  He told me he could not talk about the trial.  Then I told him it was in UK, not Ireland, and he asked what it was about.  I told him in less than 60 seconds; at which he said to me, “Geoff, I’ve known you for many years and I know you can stick up for yourself, but be warned by me, do not tell one lie in court or you will be found out.”  “One lie and your evidence will be rubbished.”  With this advice I was asked to go see him, upon my return, to report on the proceedings and to arrange to do a lot of interior decorating for him.  It’s nice to have a friend.  I got good, sound advice and I got work for three weeks.  Great.

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27 September 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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14 September 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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9 September 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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2 September 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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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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