When I first wrote about the case I was referring to in the piece below, I was unable to mention it by name. I was still involved with the case as the eight defendants were appearing at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey. The men involved were all eventually sentenced and are still serving their considerable sentences.
Initially consulting on the investigation, I later consulted on each of the very detailed court reports. I knew the collective sadistic sexual behaviour of these men very well indeed and I knew their individual stories, perverse, motivation and distorted minds even better. Horror upon horror that will never leave my mind.
When working with such challenging material and people, I learned long ago that the way myself and my colleagues survive and manage the impact on us, is to remain close and seek comfort in each other. Even if we could talk about these things to others, I think we have a moral responsibility not to. I would not want to be responsible for putting what I know into the mind of another. It is always worse than the media can every portray. The media referred to the main defendant in this case as ‘The Eunuch Maker’ .. that is all you need to know. The piece below is another expression of my immense thankfulness to my fellow professionals who have always made it possible for me to hear a fresh set of horrors ….
For the past year, I have been listening to a fresh set of horrors that have taken me and my fellow colleagues in criminal justice beyond even our seasoned imaginations. Although the media have started to report on this case, the full picture won’t be in the public domain until the eight men involved are sentenced. I won’t be alone in breathing a sigh of relief.
This recent process of horror is no different of course to the many that have filled my working life since the early days of my first child sexual abuse cases and those involving ritual abuse, mind control, spiritual abuse, satanist abuse and the more recent extremes of working to address crimes occurring in the chemsex context. Those involved in these dark worlds are difficult to think about. Outside of the professional context both perpetrators and often their victims are not only placed outside of the mind, but they are also placed outside of society. They go to the bottom of the pile.
I guess it is at the bottom of the pile where most of my work takes place. Some, and I, refer to it as ‘working on the margins.’ An attempt I guess to give such a shitty place some sense of dignity. But I know for certain the realities of the bottom of the pile. as when you speak out about what happens to those in our society that are at the bottom of the pile. It’s not long before others, in all kinds of ways, place you with them. No matter what you have done before, no matter your achievements or professional standing, if you start to speak out the unthinkable and the unbearable then you soon discover the investment many have in their wish not to know.
When you know a reality that others cannot bear to share in, you dwell in a very lonely place. This is a perilous place, as to do this work alone is not only dangerous, but also impossible. No one would survive it. It is this unique position that places us as close as is perhaps possible to get to the experience of the victims of the perpetrators we are tasked with bringing to justice. Some of them survive and so must we. We all therefore have over time developed connections and networks of support that enable this survival.
I treasure my immediate colleagues in the Sagamore team dearly, they are family. But I treasure beyond measure my first specialist clinical supervisor Dr Valerie Sinason. Valerie supervised my clinical work on a weekly basis for six years. So powerful was that formative process that almost thirty years on Valerie remains my internal supervisor. So often when a new case takes me once again into the darkest places of the human condition, it is Valerie’s voice I hear. I hear her skill of psychoanalytic thinking, her ability to comprehend even darker content to what someone is presenting, and I hear her immense compassion and willingness to be there at the bottom of the pile with them.
My learning from Valerie, all these years on, continues to serve me well. You can listen to Dr Valerie Sinason for yourself on several YouTube videos in which she talks about what it’s like to work in this territory of risk, dangerousness, and vulnerability. I am privileged indeed to have such an immense person as my foundation stone. Another cost of doing this work is that we are seldom afforded a public arena in which to express our appreciation to each other. This is perhaps the only means I have.
Br Stephen Morris fcc
