I had a lengthy conversation today with someone whose life was destroyed by Joseph Marmion SJ. Heroin addiction, alcoholism and more. He is now in recovery, but there is a long way to go. There is no complete repair.
In due course, I’ll tell his story here, with his permission, and suitably anonymised. But it strikes me that we may be inclined to think of Marmion’s crimes as just seriously inappropriate behaviour to which no child should ever have been exposed. As one of his targets, once said to me, something that could be just laughed off.
That is not the case for several of Marmion’s victims who experienced violence and sheer, unadulterated hatred - apart from the sexual abuse. It is in such cases that Marmion exposed his pure evil. His victims are now 60 years old or above; and that is how the Jesuits, no doubt, see them. Men of a certain age, nearing retirement or beyond.
For me, I see these men as what they are in this context: children of 12, 13, 14 years of age. Tender, vulnerable, in need of protection and nurture and care. The people on whom Marmion preyed may now be very grown-up indeed; but let’s not forget the actual person on whom he preyed: the child who is still there within the adult, however damaged, however successful in overcoming their experience. It was that child that Marmion abused.
Many lives destroyed Tom, and nobody who can do anything about it appears to care. The focus of the old boy advisory fora is regrettably more on the Jesuits than the victims. Many are dispirited at these so-called men for others. Justice delayed is Justice denied.