Confessional culture

If you were sexually abused by a Catholic priest nearly 50 years ago, and that priest was now dying or dead, would it not be wise to keep it to yourself? This awkward question invaded my mind as I watched last week’s BBC1 documentary Abused: Breaking the Silence. It featured mature, respectable and successful men recounting in eye-watering detail what was done to their penises by priests at a Rosminian boarding school in Tanzania in the 1960s. We were meant to be shocked by the alleged foul behaviour. I found myself more shocked by the willingness of these otherwise decorous men to make an emotional spectacle of themselves.

Of course the allegations are very serious. It sounds as if these children of the 1960s suffered a terrible ordeal of fear and abuse in a remote, inescapable school. The men claim that Father Kit Cunningham MBE and other priests groped and fondled them when they were pupils at the school more than 40 years ago.