DENY EVERYTHING

The Life and Crimes of Joseph Marmion SJ

Photo: David Barry, by kind permission

INTRODUCTION

During the first few days of September 1977, I was bored. Aged 18, and with weeks to go before I entered Trinity College, Dublin I was missing the companionship of friends, with all of whom I had shared an education at Belvedere. Those who, like me, had left, were scattered around Dublin and beyond, and those who hadn’t had, for the most part, risen from Poetry or fifth year, to Rhetoric at the top of the school. Those who chose to repeat the Leaving Certificate at Belvedere rather than at the Institute of Education on Leeson Street or at Ringsend Tech, were in a small class called, without any intentional irony, Philosophy.

Dublin was smaller in those days, almost claustrophobic. The same could be said of the country at large. There was one legal radio station, one television station. Buses were yellow, the DART was still seven years away. Divorce, abortion, homosexual acts between consenting adult males, the import and sales of condoms were all outlawed. The institutions misleadingly known as mother and baby homes were doing good business.

On the sunny afternoon of Friday, 5 September, I took a number 11 bus into town and wandered into Belvedere as the inmates were being released. Belvedere was, and still is, a kind of island of privilege in North inner city Dublin. Centred on a fine Georgian townhouse dating from 1775, most of its business was conducted in redbrick blocks and in the brutalist 1970s Kerr Wing.

Chatting with some of my newly elevated Rhetorician friends, I noticed, standing in his usual spot, leaning on the low wall by the Junior House steps, Fr Joseph Marmion SJ. The fact that my friends and I had called Marmion The Turd for the previous few years will convey some idea of how much we detested him.

Marmion was surrounded, as usual, by a handful of senior boys whom we, rather unfairly, referred to as his acolytes. He may have been a monster, but he was a charismatic monster for many. His particular favourites we called, even more unfairly, his catamites.

He was relaxed, leaning back casually against the wall engaging in chitchat, almost certainly making disparaging remarks about some of his colleagues as they crossed the schoolyard from the Senior House to Belvedere House.  No doubt he was also taking the opportunity to eye up the little boys who had just arrived in First Grammar, the most junior year in the Senior House.  He had a taste for 13 and 14 year old boys. Nothing had changed.

But change was coming, the very next morning. His career as a teacher would be effectively over, he would be relieved of his rôle as producer, director and, effectively, dictator of the College operetta. His career as a bully, a sadist and predatory paedophile was about to come to an end.

Well, almost. Wings clipped, but as arrogant, narcissistic and self-serving as ever, he would remain on the teaching staff for the rest of that academic year. Outrageous and extraordinary as this may seem now, his immediate dismissal from teaching was considered to put the reputation of the school, and of the Jesuit order, at risk.

It would be too easy, and too convenient for some, to focus on Marmion in isolation. At the time of writing – October 2023 – a total of 44 Irish Jesuits have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse, one being Marmion, another Paul Andrews SJ. It is bizarre that Andrews was not mentioned in The Jesuit Response. It’s a fact that Marmion operated within an organisation that harboured others who shared his proclivities. Context is needed. Until the Jesuits name these men, it is simply not possible to extrapolate the full story. And, until then, it is convenient for the Jesuits to say – in effect – that nobody amongst their number knew what Marmion was up to.

And because Marmion’s sexual exploitation of boys was so egregious, it is all too easy to lose sight of perhaps his greatest crimes: the emotional and often violent physical abuse of boys. He was somebody who should never have been allowed to have contact with children. And the Jesuits knew that from a very early stage in his career. That they failed to act to protect children, at every opportunity, every cue, is beyond shameful.

This is my attempt to tell the story of Joseph Marmion, of those who protected him, even after death, and of some of those whose lives he damaged and, in some cases, destroyed. I have done my best to be fair to all those involved, even to Marmion himself.

Tom Doorley

October 2023

Acknowledgements:

Most of those whose assistance was invaluable in researching this story prefer to remain anonymous. I want to thank Donal Ballance, Joe Douglas, David Barry, Riocard O Tiarnaigh, Roberta Doorley, Mark Byrne, Maurice Dockrell, Saoirse Fox, the Irish Jesuit Provincialate, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, the National Library of Ireland, the Public Records Office Kew, the Imperial War Museum, Liverpool Public Library, Mrs C Barker of St Francis Xavier College Liverpool, Dom Anselm Cramer OSB of Ampleforth Abbey.

Copyright 2023 Tom Doorley

Chapter One: A STORY EMERGES

In March 2021, unaware that the Jesuits were about to reveal that Joseph Marmion SJ was a predatory paedophile and a violent bully, I wrote about him in the Irish Daily Mail, having first mentioned him in a book of mine that was published in 2004. I was prompted to do so after a former teacher at Terenure College was convicted of the sexual abuse of boys. Why, I wondered, had Marmion got away with it?

At the time, I knew only a fraction of what I know of him now and I had spoken with only a handful of people who – in the words of one of them employing grim humour – had passed through his hands. Some of the details related here were not entirely correct but the gist most certainly was. I should stress that his ability as a teacher is disputed; few believe that he was brilliant.

This is what I wrote as the Jesuits prepared to name him:

“On a fine afternoon in June 1977,  I walked out of my school for the last time as a pupil. I had just sat my Leaving Cert economic history exam and I'd been the only candidate. The place was eerily quiet as I headed towards the big iron gates and suddenly saw the outline of the school bully looming towards me, silhouetted against the sunshine.

“This was not a boy; it was a Jesuit priest and a predatory paedophile. During much of the 1970s he had bestrode the school like a priapic colossus and everyone - including, as I know now, many of his fellow priests - lived in fear of him.

“A few years ago, I tried my hand at writing a novel set in a very familiar school, featuring a familiarly monstrous teacher. Aspiring novelists are told to write about what they know. I named this character Father Oliphant, after a long-vanished shop on Drumcondra Road; it sounded vaguely exotic, like his own surname.

“And, although he is long dead, I'm going to call him Father Oliphant here. He had nephews in the school, all of whom were very pleasant and obviously blameless boys, at least one of whom had a very hard time because of his accident of birth.

“Anyway, Oliphant approached and I realised, once again and vividly, that I hated him and that he no longer had any power over me. I looked straight ahead, and walked past in silence.

“"Thomas, I saluted you," I heard from behind me.

“My stomach turned over and my heart started racing. Somehow, I managed to turn around and face him for a moment.

“"I know you did," I said, and walked off.

“I can't remember when I stopped trembling.

“In the wake of the McLean conviction and the revelations about this serial abuser's activities at Terenure College, I said on Twitter that we had had our own monster at Belvedere in my time. Over a dozen people contacted me to share their memories of what had happened to them and to their friends.

“My dismissal of Oliphant on that last day of school felt terrifying at the time, but I was one of the lucky ones. Yes, I ascribe my lasting phobia of reading in public to him and he did write a message in felt-tip on my bare chest in front of the class when I was fifteen. But I got off very lightly. For a long time he seemed vaguely to like me but, not in "that" way. As I got older, I recognised him for what he was: a bully to everyone and a very particular menace to the little boys who formed the "female" chorus in his annual Strauss operettas.

“When anyone who had been at Belvedere in the 1970s read the newspaper reports of McLean measuring young boys, stark naked and alone, for costumes that never fitted properly, we instantly recognised this gambit shared by the two paedophiles.

“Oliphant was large by any standards - his hands, of which he was very proud - were like hams, his head the size of a pumpkin, although mothers would sometimes say that he was a fine looking man. But when you were in First Grammar - first year in the arcane nomenclature of Jesuit schools - he could block out the sun, literally and metaphorically.

“A talented linguist, a brilliant teacher, he was immensely clever, and could call on limitless reserves of charm when he wanted to. In that cynically subversive way that can be so attractive to teenage boys, he would speak slightingly of other teachers and even impute pederastic tendencies to several blameless men, one of who he used refer to as "Mary", often in his presence.

“The testimonies of those men who, when they were twelve or thirteen, underwent Oliphant's costume measuring routine are all essentially the same.

“Conor (not his real name) recalls "He would take you, on your own, up to this room full of old clothes and there was a screen  in the corner. And he'd tell you to strip, underpants and all, and when you were completely bare and feeling really bloody awkward and embarrassed, he'd help you on with a pair of tights - like nylons - and you could see everything through them. And then he'd tell you to stay there, sitting on one of those grey, plastic chairs while he went behind the screen for what seemed like ages. And it was obvious what he was doing there because he'd emerge all sweaty and kind of flustered and tell you, a bit sharply, to get dressed. But I don't think he ever actually touched anyone's genitals. At least, I never heard that."

“Tim (again, not his real name) told me: "The little fellows' chorus was divided in two and to put it bluntly, the pretty kids were chosen to be 'girls' and the plain ones, like, me got to be boys. It was the pretty kids that got measured."

“Conor, again, recalls "It just felt weird, sitting there, starkers. But when you're twelve and you're new to the Senior House, you think, well, maybe this is just normal here. And now I realise he was looking at me from behind that screen while he pleasured himself. I feel sick, to be honest."

“"It was all about power," Luke (not his own name) told me. "I had a good voice in first year and I have this memory of being alone with him doing scales and it was dead quiet, after school. Suddenly he spread his hand out on the table and it was huge. And he said put your hand on top, and I put my tiny hand on his. He didn't say a word but he didn't need to. It was 'I'm big, you're tiny, and I have all the power.'".

“This was a common experience.

“The favoured boys in Oliphant's German classes would be invited to spend a few weeks in August in Vienna. Usually they would be required to go through Confession with him. Darragh (not his real name) recalls: "When I was in first year an older boy told me that if Oliphant asks if you masturbate you say 'I don't know father, but I'll ask my parents.'" Darragh used this ploy and was left firmly alone.

“In Vienna he would tell boys "masturbation is a sin, but not if you do it in your sleep". On the pretext of "checking for a rash" he had Keith (not his real name) strip in his room for a thorough examination. "He said I seemed to have a tight foreskin and that I should try to loosen it. I remember he was wielding a tube of Savlon and I had to think really fast. I said 'wouldn't that be masturbation, Father?' and there was a silence for a minute and he said, yes, maybe I was right."

“It was in Vienna that the most sinister part of the Oliphant saga unfolded. He was constantly alert for any sign of a cough or cold or a temperature, which some, but not all, remember as being checked rectally. Two of the boys on whom he had preyed told friends that on the pretext of some mild or imaginary illness, they were required to sleep in Oliphant's room. They were given "medicine" and have no recollection of the next 36 hours. It seems likely that others went through the same ordeal.

“Keith told me "I'm still amazed that after what I'd experienced, I went back the next year. Somehow it felt better to be in the inner circle, to be approved of, instead of outside, where most people were. It made you feel special, which is, frankly, horrifying".

“Another, who preferred not to talk in detail about his experiences, told me "That bastard couldn't get enough of me. He tried to sleep with me in Vienna."

“On the very rare occasions when a boy dared to challenge what Oliphant was doing - and very, very few had the courage to do so - his response was always the same. "I'll deny everything".

“Whenever a boy was summoned from one of his classes to see the Headmaster he would always say, jokingly, "deny everything".

“Keith told an older boy what had happened to him and the response was, "if that gets out, you'll have to leave the school." And as Keith says, "he was just a kid, but it was terrifying".

“By the start of the Autumn term in 1977, matters were coming to a head for Oliphant. One boy, who had not been abused, reported the conversations he had had with those who had been. One of them was Keith who was summoned by the Headmaster and asked if the story was true.

"And of course, I panicked. I did exactly what he always said. I denied everything".

“Another boy who was questioned told me: "Look, it was good that I probably would have been believed. I know that now. But I was thirteen and I was scared of that bastard and I was scared that I'd get into trouble, that I'd be seen as doing something wrong. So, yes, I said it wasn't true. There was always this sense of menace when he was in the room. Actually there was a sense of menace when he wasn't there. You just had to think of him."

“I used to wonder how it took the school so long to take action but now I think I know. Such was this man's hold over virtually everyone, that boys lied for him. But it seems that the Headmaster had the wisdom to see through this. He placed "Mary" in charge of the opera, with Oliphant reduced to playing the piano. At the end of the academic year, he was sent to Gardiner Street parish as a curate, still uncomfortably close to the school.

“The boys who had accused him were told to report any further bullying or inappropriate behaviour and none, it seems, occurred.

“"He would still stand in the corner of the schoolyard, preening himself, against the Junior House steps," recalls one of those he had abused. "And a few acolytes still stood around him. But everyone knew he was finished. It was around that time that we started calling him The Turd. How's that for revulsion?"

“Keith recalls having to face him every day after being abused.

“"I have vivid memories of him in English class spending a disproportionate deal of time during Macbeth lessons on the theme of Jesuitical casuistry, the irony of which will not be lost on anyone. I do remember a favourite quote of his was actually from King Lear “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” You’re left wondering who were the flies and who the gods in his particular scenario."

“There is no doubt that he destroyed lives. One boy was so badly bullied in class that he could never recite a poem or speak in public. "That man ruined my teens and my twenties. I will tell you what he did to me, but please don't write about it."

“He was violent too. It was said that he had kicked down a door and broken a boy's jaw when he was teaching at Clongowes. And it was rumoured, when he suffered a fracture in the early 1970s, that he had been beaten up one night by four of his former victims from there.

“When I was fifteen I found a first year crying outside the music room and I asked him what had happened. Oliphant had not taken kindly to a remark and had literally thrown him out of the class. He had landed where I found him in a mess of dust and tears. He became a great friend and Oliphant would direct his laser-like stare at us in the yard, but we revelled in it. He hated to see older boys talking with younger ones. He feared what would be revealed about him.

“This friend died young and I recall saying to his mother who, in turn, became a great friend, that I had the gift of these great friendships to thank the monster for.

“It is said that Oliphant caused at least one suicide, several instances of alcoholism, drug abuse leading to homelessness in one case, and, in the words of one survivor, "plenty of mental scars that will never go away. He gloried in cruelty. Do you remember he'd always identify the shy, quiet, vulnerable boy in each class and then he'd regularly say 'go on, get so-and-so' and, God forgive us, we would? And at the time we thought it was just horseplay but God almighty, just think of what that did to people."

“The people with whom I spoke were all survivors, ones that somehow got through the varying degrees, and kinds of abuse. Most of them are conspicuously successful in their fields, high achievers.

“I asked one of them why this was. "Maybe it's because we just couldn't bear to let that fucker win." I'm sure that's true, but I know that some fell by the wayside.

“One old school friend of mine asked me why I was writing this. I said I just wanted these stories told. These events happened the better part of half a century ago but they need to be known.

“"You know he groped my scrotum" he said. "And to her dying day my mother used to say that there's never been a whiff of scandal about the Jesuits! I didn't disabuse her."

“This Jesuit died in 2000, aged 75, shameless to the end.”

I, and those with whom I spoke at the time I was writing this newspaper piece, loathed Marmion. For most of us, it was pure hatred. This is problematic because those of us whose lives he affected when we were children find it hard to acknowledge that Marmion, who we knew physically and in every other sense, as huge, was once a little boy.

There were, of course, those who seemed to like him, at least at the time. Some have spoken of how it felt to be approved by Marmion, to be part of a group that had his imprimatur, in a sense. Some, as Marmion himself recounted, kept in touch with him after they had left school. These people, as far as I can gather, were a very small minority.

And so, I set out to find out as much as I could about his origins.

Chapter Two: THE EARLY YEARS

Two things are terrible in childhood: helplessness (being in other people's power) and apprehension - the apprehension that something is being concealed from us because it is too bad to be told. 

-       Elizabeth Bowen

One thing of which we can be certain is that Joseph Ignatius Hayes Marmion was born in Liverpool on Tuesday, 24 November 1924, the third child of Dr Joseph Aloysius Marmion and Brigid Josephine Marmion, née Hayes. His birth was registered, including the name Hayes which he later dropped, in January 1926.

The Marmion family had moved to Roselands Cottage on Woodlands Road in the Liverpool suburb of Aigburth in 1924. Before that they had been living in Dodge Street, much closer to the city centre and in an area that was far from salubrious.

Given the move to Aigburth a few years later, it seems that Dr Marmion had been casting around for a suitable practice. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was the first such specialist institution in the world, founded in 1898. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine opened the following year and this is where Dr Marmion had spent some time in post-graduate training. It is possible that he may have worked at the Liverpool institution until an opportunity arose in general practice.

Joseph Marmion senior was the nephew of Dom Columba Marmion OSB, the abbot of the Belgian monastery of Maredsous in Wallonia, a relatively recent Benedictine foundation having been established in 1872. Christened Joseph Aloysius in 1858, the son of an Irish father and French mother, he was educated at Belvedere, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Portraits show that he shared the same kind of  large somewhat square head with his grand-nephew.

Photo: Abbaye de Maredsous