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?
Abused by Fr. James Robinson 