On the Margins

Stories & spritual reflections from meeting those on the margins of society.

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  • Yes, has no meaning if you can’t say no’

    Consent and Crime in the Chemsex Context.

    Stephen Morris – Chemsex Crime Operational Lead – HMPPS & Operational Co-Lead Metropolitan Police (Operation Sagamore)

    (This paper was first published in the journal Drugs & Alcohol Today. Nov 2018).

    (Operation Sagamore was launched in 2017 by Stephen Morris and Inspector Allen Davis as an operational partnership response to chemsex crime)

    The title of this paper is a statement made by a man at the end of his treatment following conviction for several sexual offences. It is powerful in conveying a simple and accurate meaning of consent. Legally, consent is not complicated and can be simply defined as: permission for something to happen; or agreement to do something. The context of consent, however, is complicated and complex, none more so than when it becomes an issue within chemsex.

    If we are to gain a full appreciation of consent-related complexity, we must also gain an understanding of the wider picture concerning chemsex and crime. This paper provides that wider picture. With the exception of breaching of drug-related law, not all men who engage in chemsex are committing offences but, as we are discovering, a not insignificant percentage are, and this needs to be cause for concern.

    Complex and high-profile crimes are usually in the public domain for a very short time. A disturbing headline at the centre of media attention on one day will usually be replaced by an equally dramatic story the following day. The public domain is of course only part of the story; for those more closely involved – the victims, the perpetrators of crime, their families, friends, partners and those professionals who work with them – things do not pass so quickly. Crime, from whatever perspective, outside of media interest is much more complex and multi-faceted then any attention-grabbing headline. For those involved, crime is demanding and absorbing, certainly over months and maybe even years. Throughout the long dark Winter of 2017 two unconnected gay men convicted for the crime of murder filled my thoughts. In particular, it was the context of their crimes that I was not able to distract myself from. The context was new, unheard of and deeply concerning.

    Both men had committed their crimes in the context of chemsex. The defining features of chemsex were present including pre-existing and present vulnerability; the substances used; the means of administration; the vehicle of connection; the motivation and environmental factors. But seldom, it appeared from existing research, had the consequences of chemsex ever been murder or any other crime, with the exception of course of drug offences. The chill of this emerging recognition motivated me to look further and look backwards. I trawled through records of previous clients I had known to be gay men. I looked closely at the assessments and court reports I had written to direct sentencing, to recommend treatment and to ensure a rehabilitative justice was afforded to them as they rebuilt their lives. I remembered their often terror filled faces as they prepared to stand before the judges, their trembling voices as they quizzed me about prison and probation officers and what should they expect. I re-read line by line the detail of their offences and there it was, in the light of my new-found awareness, crimes committed in the full definition of the chemsex context.

    It was a powerful reminder of the dynamics surrounding early recognition of organised child abuse which I had experienced earlier in my career: when we do not know, we do not see. It is what clinicians hear in the consulting room that so often leads the way and invites us to think the unthinkable.

    Crime Profile

    Throughout the remainder of that Winter, I continued to piece together other evidence and conducted a scoping exercise across relevant professional groups. The emerging picture, that until then had not been recognised or reported, revealed criminogenic features relating to:

    ■ complex levels of vulnerability

    ■ combined victim and perpetrator experiences

    ■ lack of knowledge in relation to consent

    ■ confusion as to what constituted a sexual crime

    ■ little understanding of what happens if you commit a crime

    ■ a variety of sexual crimes

    ■ a variety of non-sexual crimes

    ■ a blurring of fantasy with reality

    In relation to the crimes leading to arrest, trial and conviction, the range of non-sexual crimes included:

    ■ domestic violence

    ■ violence (GBH, ABH, assault, stealthing)

    ■ harassment

    ■ possession of an offensive weapon

    ■ stalking

    ■ robbery

    ■ theft

    ■ blackmail

    ■ murder

    ■ drug related (supply, possession)

    The sexual crimes included:

    ■ rape

    ■ sexual assault

    ■ internet crime (downloading, making, distributing, live streaming) extreme pornography

    ■ child abuse

    ■ exhibitionism

    ■ outraging public decency

    ■ bestiality

    Demographics

    This challenging combination of factors was made even more explicit by listening to the men involved. Their accounts were, of course, not shaped by a professional agenda and often did not reflect professional or public held assumptions. Collectively, the overall profile of those involved revealed the following demographics. All ages were represented in a range from 21 to 60+. The larger percentage reflected a middle-class lifestyle with related careers and earnings. The majority had no previous experience of the criminal justice system. Many had experienced multiple loss, including loss of job, income, housing, partner and friends. A smaller percentage of the men had apparent vulnerabilities at the time of offending including mental health diagnosis, homelessness, unemployment and conflicted interpersonal relationships. In common, all men had negative early life experiences linked to their identification as a gay male and included varying degrees of bullying, discrimination, rejection, shaming, humiliation and violence.

    The wider dynamics of consent

    If we are to consider the issue of consent, then our thinking and understanding needs to be informed, not just by what we know and refer to as the “chemsex context” (Bourne et al., 2015) but by the lived experience of the men involved and by an awareness of the forensic dynamics that inform crime. Equally important is awareness of what leads men into chemsex and how, for some, the motivating factors can lead to the commissioning of offences.

    Central to a forensic psychoanalytic understanding of crime is the important recognition that a criminal act is a communication, and usually a communication of something that cannot be said (Cordess, 1996). Applying this thinking to chemsex-related crime, the theme of vulnerability and denied vulnerability, with all its psychological consequences, can be understood as a significant causal factor which when not spoken about, when denied and when pushed away can increase the risk of offending.

    Criminal intent and absence of intent

    In relation to the perpetration of chemsex-related sexual crime it is possible to recognise that there are those who commission an offence with a seeming lack of criminal intent. They have not planned, targeted or groomed but nonetheless they have created a victim and therefore remain subject to the whole criminal justice process. The crime in this situation has usually taken place in a highly sexualised environment where disinhibition and increased libido are powerful influencing factors on thinking and behaviour. Confusion and a distortion of reality are often present in the offence accounts, as is minimisation of the offence and avoidance of taking responsibility. An example of associated confused thinking (this is a not uncommon statement) would be “someone did that to me last week and I didn’t mind”. Also indicated in this statement is the prevalence of men who have offended and also been offended against.

    To commission a sexual offence, research tells us that internal inhibitors need to be overcome (Finkelhor, 1984). The overcoming of a natural locus of self-control is usually enabled by an internal process of “self-talk” which provides a series of reasons to justify committing an offence including motivation to do it, overcoming external inhibitors and overcoming the victim’s resistance. Although someone may not have intended to commit a chemsex-related offence the prosecution will recognise that even with reduced inhibitions, cognitive ability and permission-giving thinking would have all needed to be functioning for an offence to have taken place. A defence may well make a plea for mitigation, but it would be rare indeed for any evidence, for or against, to not recognise these contributing factors.

    Perpetrators

    It is also important to acknowledge the presence of those who have intentionally and knowingly committed offences. Although initially not recognised, over time this group of men has become identified as a significant and concerning proportion represented in both investigations and convictions. These are men who have purposely sought out or created the chemsex context in order to commission offences. They are identified as having an obvious awareness of what they have done and intended to do. There will be evidence involving pre-meditation, grooming and targeting of victims. There will be little remorse, lacking apparent guilt and there is often a previous history of offending. These men will often possess an understanding of the criminal justice system and will seek to justify their crimes. They will be aware of the vulnerability of their victims and those caught up in the chemsex scene. They will know that many victims will not report the crime to the police, due to a fear that the police will pursue investigation and prosecution in relation to the victim’s purchase and use of substances. When the latter is reality, the usual tactics and threats perpetrators use to silence their victims are not required. The silencing on these occasions has been done by the state. This is clearly a very unsatisfactory situation. Especially that the main LGBT agency working with victims of crime report that 95 per cent of victims from a chemsex situation will not disclose their victim experience to the police (Bewley, 2017).

    Professionals working with men who commit sexual crime know that they often talk with each other, network and organise their criminal behaviour together. There are indicators, apparent in recent cases of chemsex crime, of networking and behaviour suggesting an organised approach to the commission of serious offences.

    An informed criminal justice response

    Both intentional and apparently unintentional sexual crime need to be met with an informed criminal justice response and an increase of awareness from within the LGBT community, sexual health services and the judiciary. The response that I have been responsible for developing within the London Division of Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service recognises the need for victims to know that those who have offended against them by inflicting often long-lasting physical and psychological harm will be subject to a relevant sentencing, and that those who have offended, regardless of intent or not, will receive appropriate assessment of risk, and opportunity for reparation and intervention to address their needs to prevent the creation of more victims.

    Following conviction, care is required for all involved to not repeat the factors that have informed the development of offending behaviour. This means respect for the fact that it is the sentence that is the punishment and not how the sentence is carried out. Prison or a community probation sentence is required to be rehabilitative and not punitive in application. In recognition of this, for a full restorative justice to be applied to chemsex-related crime, the following features are required:

    ■ Criminal justice agencies to assist the LGBT community in increasing awareness of chemsex crime, its causes and its consequences.

    ■ Opportunities for agencies from both sectors to work together to increase awareness and skills that enable greater recognition of victim experiences, offending indicators, provision of preventative measures (e.g. media campaigns addressing vulnerabilities and consent) and opportunities for community inclusion for those who have been convicted on release from prison or whilst serving community sentences. ■ Information-giving briefings to criminal justice professional groups to enable a full understanding of chemsex, its causes and its context in contemporary sexual health and gay male culture.

    ■ A chemsex court assessment tool to enable early recognition of cases, especially where the chemsex element has not been recognised at arrest. The tool has been designed to utilise user friendly language, to encourage sensitive responses to the presence of shame and prevent repeated experiences of misunderstanding, exploitation or oppression. It also enables the provision of specific information given to sentencers with the aim of encouraging appropriate sentencing options and avoiding setting an offender up to fail due to lack of awareness of related life-style and impact of chems.

    A treatment tool kit for use by probation officers enabling appropriate intervention. Existing standard programmes within many criminal justice agencies (Ministry of Justice, 2013) are characterised by heteronormative assumptions and language. On the whole they are alien to gay males, and particularly those who have committed a chemsex-related crime. They also require a group treatment modality, which for many gay men risks repeating dynamics of shaming and discrimination. The chemsex tool kit (Morris et al., 2018) has been designed to meet the requirements of a Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) (HMPPS, 2014) that can be attached to a sentence. It comprises ×36 sessions and is delivered on a one-to-one basis. The intervention covers chem use awareness; offence-focussed work; self-development; resilience; self-esteem; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and management of the criminal justice experience. Again, the provision of the tool kit will enable sentencers to consider noncustodial options and greater use of meaningful intervention within the community.

    ■ The provision of in-depth training to prepare identified probation officers throughout the local area to deliver the RAR intervention tool kit. As well as familiarisation with the various sections of the tool kit, those training were also provided with the opportunity to explore the construct of gay male sexuality, its discrimination, effects and an overview of trauma informed self-development.

    ■ A professional support structure for probation officers holding cases. The complexity and extreme nature of behaviours associated with the crimes and related issues can and do cause distress to staff. Overwhelm, not understanding and lack of experience of gay sexuality can leave staff feeling inadequate and vulnerable. A regular multi-agency professional peer support group has been operating in the London Division (Morris and Stuart, 2018) for several months and has provided a rich learning experience across the professional groups involved. It has increased networking, sharing of resources and the provision of wider resources to the men involved.

    ■ In relation to the above needs, the provision of individual case consultancy to officers holding cases has been an essential and useful provision. Officers without any awareness of chemsex, gay male sexuality, gay culture and the gay scene can feel out of their depth. Chemsex and its dynamics extend far beyond the principles of diversity, and unless the risk of professional limitation is recognised and remains unaddressed the impact on the case work relationship can impair the establishment of trust, the presence of a therapeutic alliance and ongoing management of risk.

    ■ Many of the crimes reflect the secrecy and isolation associated with chemsex behaviour. It is widely recognised that effective intervention in criminal justice needs to be based on connection and an appreciation of the unique dynamics involved in any offending behaviour and offence. Other opportunities for professionals outside of gay culture and sexual health were needed and a variety of scoping meetings, workshops, conference events were held and are ongoing to facilitate connection and to ensure replication of offence dynamics remains conscious in the professional context.

    ■ Connection with LGBT community events and encouragement for the men and their probation officers to attend is a practical means of addressing the causal factors of isolation and lack of awareness. Creative client supervision remains a seldom recognised but important means of intervention within probation practice.

    ■ What we hear in the consulting room must also lead into and inform research. As indicated, there is a paucity of research covering chemsex-related crime. I have identified a three-phase approach in our research that will evidence and inform the areas of: offender profiles and demographics, intervention and sentencing. Each of these domains will need evidence to shape and resource continued responses.

    From pain to violence

    At the core of forensic psychotherapy practice is an often uncomfortable landscape that reveals itself as a journey from pain to violence (DeZuluetta, 2006). We know only too well in criminal justice that unaddressed hurt continues to hurt. Those hurting will, if ignored, marginalised and rejected, eventually communicate their experiences and hurt others. In recognising chemsex-related crime, it is impossible to dismiss the degrees of vulnerability and the inherent pain that inform the associated offending behaviour.

    Whilst inviting those men who have been convicted to take responsibility for their behaviour, related professional groups also need to take responsibility to develop a thinking, a way of being and a response that recognises the need and pain of those involved. We need to be mindful that despite the achieved milestones of gay liberation, the gay community holds a collective experience of trauma from all that was symbolised at Stonewall, to the AIDS crisis and, in recent years, the rise of hate crime; like it or not, experiences like these leave their mark. Such legacy remains in our collective experiences and is activated into painful consciousness millions of times in a gay life time.

    Compared to the heterosexual population our demographics are not an easy read. Self-harm, depression, anxiety, PTSD, psychosis, suicide and addictions are all significant percentages higher for gay men. Such experiences repeat over and over again the vicious cycles of shame and guilt. It is hardly surprising, then, that the self-medicating balm of chemsex holds a powerful attraction. Not all will get into difficulties but for those that do, the cost can be very high indeed.

    We are now approaching another Winter (at the time of writing – October 2018) and I am aware that there are currently 52* men in London serving sentences for chemsex-related crime. Another truth known all too plainly to the Metropolitan Police Service is that many crimes do not get to the court room. It is to be expected that these findings are being replicated across the UK. A national criminal justice response is at project planning stage and is further indication of a need we are only just seeing as the tip of the iceberg.

    *This number had increased to over 600 men just five years later. All were assessed as high risk of causing harm and high risk of reoffending.

    References Bewley, K. (2017), “GALOP – chemsex, consent and sexual assault”, presentation to the London Chemsex Network, London. Bourne, A., Reid, D., Hickson, F., Torres-Rueda, S., Steinberg, P. and Weatherburn, P. (2015), “ ‘Chemsex’ and harm reduction need among gay men in South London”, International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 26 No. 12, pp. 1171-6. Cordess, C. (1996), “The Criminal Act and Acting Out”, in Cordess, C. and Cox, M. (Eds), Forensic Psychotherapy: Psychodynamics and the Offender Patient (Forensic Focus), Jessica Kingsley, London, pp. 13-23. De Zuluetta, F. (2006), From Pain to Violence: The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness, Whurr, Chichester. Finkelhor, D. (1984), Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. HMPPS (2014), “The Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014”. Ministry of Justice (2013), “Update on the new sex offender treatment programmes”. Morris, S. and Stuart, D. (2018), “Interagency professionals chemsex and crime peer support group”. Morris, S. et al. (2018), “Connection and Community”, Rehabilitation Activity Requirement Tool Kit for Chemsex Related Crime, HMPPS, London. Further reading Crozier, T., Evans, K. and Morris, S. (2018), “Connection and community”, HMPPS RAR Toolkit for Men Convicted of Chemsex Related Crime. HMSO (1988), “Report of the inquiry into child abuse in Cleveland

  • Hidden Worlds

    ‘Hidden Worlds’ Chemsex Crime and the Wish Not to Know

    This paper was presented to the chemsex crime conference held in London in 2022 by Br Stephen Morris fcc. Operational Lead for Chemsex Crime  –  HM Prison & Probation Service and Operational Co-Lead London Metropolitan Police (Sagamore)  It contains material which some may find distressing.

    “Hidden Worlds’, as a title, was not plucked from the air. The two words describe perfectly where chemsex crime takes us. In criminal justice we are of course familiar with a range of the hidden worlds where crime takes place. We know that to manage the risk and dangerousness that hidden worlds pose we need to fully understand and appreciate, why they exist, how they have come into being, the needs they meet and how they function – without this awareness we cannot have a hope of protecting the public or changing the lives of the people under our management and in our care. This is especially so when a ‘hidden world’ is unique.

    In relation to chemsex crime I want to address two issues; (a) what it is that makes chemsex behaviour and its hidden world unique (b) the risks this hidden world presents to criminal justice professionals. A lot has been written to address the risks it poses to those involved but we seldom recognise or think of the risks is poses to others who come into contact with this hidden world.

    It is crucial that our understanding of chemsex behaviour is informed by a clear recognition of the relevance of diversity to chemsex. Chemsex behaviour is defined by and occurs in the context of experiences of diversity. It is this defining fact that makes chemsex unique and what makes the context of the associated crimes requiring of unique consideration. About chemsex behaviour must be understood through the lens of diversity and specifically diversity as experienced by gay / bi-sexual men, MSM and some within the trans community.

    The term chemsex is often misused by the media and can be misunderstood by some academics who, misleadingly use the term to describe heterosexual sexualised drug use. This is a distortion. It lacks respect for the specific community in which chemsex emerged and dismisses the defining factors that make it unique to the precise sexualities involved.  

    Misuse if the term chemsex implies some inaccurate assumptions by asserting, it is only the drugs that define chemsex or their use in the sexual context, the drugs used in the main have histories that pre-date the emergence of the chemsex scene and there are indications that non-gay male populations use them. No, what defines chemsex are the actual uniqueness’s of gay sex and gay culture.  It is how gay sex ‘homosex’, is responded to by wider culture / society. It is these responses often manifest as attitudes that impact powerfully, not just on how gay / bi / msm and trans people see and think of themselves.

    For men who identify as gay, bi, msm and trans, societal attitudes impact powerfully on the capacity, ability, enjoyment and pleasure of gay sex. The responses having such powerful impact involve:

    • Societies attitudes on homosexuality and particularly those associated with disgust
    • Cultural and religious attitudes – particularly those that label gay sex as sinful, perverted, disordered, less than
    • The remaining, often unaddressed, trauma and stigma of the AIDS crisis – gay sex = death
    • The impact on the contemporary a gay scene of the dynamics of objectification, the marketing of ‘self’ via use of hook-up apps and the associated consequences of community displacement resulting in isolation, loneliness and distortion of connection, intimacy, love and relationships
    • The emergence of a gay specific rejection culture – enabling shaming because of age, shape, race, looks, wealth, status – all the hallmarks of internalised homophobia.
    • The experience of pre-existing and vulnerabilities resulting from early developmental experience involving – bullying, rejection, homophobia, hate crimes
    • The impact and the often life distorting experience of growing up, developing in an invalidating environment.

    Collectively and overtime the impact of such experiences make, at a deeply psychic level, disinhibited sexual pleasure and sexual enjoyment almost impossible. They impact negatively on sense of identity and particularly on the processes of relational intimacy and connection These experiences lock people into toxic shame about who they are sexually, what they do sexually and indeed who they are in the world and additionally influence a toxic perception of how the world experiences them.

    Such shame is massive in its effect and implications. It is an influence that seldom gets mentioned, but it is rampant. The most significant consequence of shame is that is makes connection and intimacy almost impossible. Hardly surprising then that research finds again and again that the motivating factor behind immersion into the chemsex world is the desire, longing, and search for toxic free connection. Although of course consciously it seldom looks like that.

    On the surface it appears that we are not back in the 1950’s. Liberations have been hard fought and won, but not all. Do not be seduced by the rainbow flag flying from almost every building for one week each year. No, Toxic shaming, toxic pathologizing and toxic hate still define the formative experiences for many.

    There is another side to the rainbow and its dark indeed. It is evidenced in the hideously tragic rates of suicide, self-harm, depression, anxiety, mental health diagnosis and addictions. I personally know of 5 gay men who have taken their own lives in recent times. But this other side of the rainbow again is seldom talked about.

    When such formative experiences and their consequences are not talked about, are not recognised, the real and full picture is denied. In such conditions the attractiveness of an alternative hidden world becomes very attractive indeed. The hidden world of chemsex is difficult to resist. It is for many a very attractive option. Those of you who have spent time listening to the experiences of those engaged with chemsex will know how quickly, immediately in fact chems reverse this experience. One slam, smoke, snort of crystal methamphetamine and the disinhibition, euphoria and pleasure is immense – totally immersive. In a nanosecond such self-medication makes everything internally and externally appear to be alright. This hidden world is experienced as an amazing alternative to the toxicity of the wider world or indeed of a shaming, rejecting gay scene. In the chemsex world all appears well … for a time ….

    But like all experiences of denial our most favoured defences tend to take us back to the very thing we wish to avoid. The often-extreme harms and crimes have been evidence in my work for over seven years. My work makes clear exactly what it is that happens when the chemsex bubble bursts. A powerful reminder that denial, psychological avoidance is a dangerous thing.

    The self-medication of denial does not stand still, it is dynamic in its function and changes overtime, to preserve and maintain its function.  So, we should not be surprised to hear that the chemsex world has changed, has evolved over time. What it was ten years ago is not what it is in 2025 and the lives that it hides, the lives it consumes are not ending well.

    Two years ago, I was asked to review an investigation and viewed some evidence that enabled me to recognise with confidence that what was emerging was indicating all the dynamics and consequences of sub-culture. The evidence was a live recording made by a young gay man who regularly hosted chemsex parties at his home. In the days following the recorded party, this young man recognised that he was becoming unwell. He was also aware that on occasions he would become unconscious at his parties due to use of GHB. Given his symptoms he wondered if something had happened to him whilst under the effects of this powerful drug. The recording did indeed show him unconscious. He was laying on his living room floor with his hands tied and was being anally raped by four other men. To see this was of course horrifying but what I found most disturbing was the fact that in the same room were several other men, none of whom were responding appropriately too the crime that was unfolding before them. The men were looking at their mobile phones and commenting to each other.    As I processed this I was struck by an apparent level of well-established desensitisation. It was clear evidence that the chemsex sub-culture enables the normalisation and further denial of an immense range of harms. Indeed, the level of apparent callousness and paradoxically vulnerability surpasses anything I have ever come across in over four decades of working within criminal justice.

    The behaviour described in the incident of chemsex rape does not stand in isolation. Neither does its normalisation. A whole lexicon has emerged harnessing a permission giving language to a whole range of harms, many criminal. A language aimed at making it ‘ok’ to do and to experience.

    In London alone, I was overseeing x600 cases of men convicted of crimes commissioned in the chemsex context. I would be hard pushed to find a handful of those that did not involve extreme harms and extremes of behaviour. All were rightly assessed as high risk or very high risk of harm.

    Such a high-risk cohort, needs to sound a warning to all because inherent in identifying and confronting extremes of human behaviour and that which involves abuses, is the wish not to know. Criminal justice professionals are not removed from human responses to the pain and horrors of the human condition. Our willingness and capacity to know is tested again and again, by that which we are called to investigate and manage. We too can be at risk of denial and our own wish to be seduced into not knowing. We too can be at risk from seeking a comfort zone, by avoiding instead of challenging, accepting instead of questioning, by not looking beyond what is obvious and by not having essential courageous conversations – by ‘backing off’.

    We know only too well the tragedy that can unfold when criminal justice professionals choose not to know.  Those seeking to offend know that even better than we. It is they who have taught me over the years, of the importance of professionals to resist the dangers of being drawn into the dynamics of secrecy and the silence of collusion. Hidden worlds of harm, abuse, the hidden world of chemsex crime depend highly on fear, secrecy, and collusion. If we are not aware of our own resistance and what causes it there is a real risk, we can replicate all of that in a myriad of different ways.

    We know how victims in the chemsex context are so often silenced and controlled by immense fear. The high price of fear usually manifests as secrecy and a conspiracy of silence. Professionals are not immune from this. We need to be acutely aware if the dynamics within ourselves that can result in us not speaking out.  What use are we to anyone but the perpetrator when that happens.      

    Professional silence, if not overcome, can make the chemsex context of crime more dangerous than it already is.  If we meet any part of it with minimisation, silence, or our own wish not to know then we too become victim of the power of sub-culture and all its harms. 

    The first two years of speaking about and revealing the truth about chemsex crime, was a lonely experience. In some sections of the LGBT community, I was not popular. But that was just the start. When it became clear that child sexual abuse was significant in the range of crimes being committed in the chemsex context, I became even less popular. This was response is familiar territory for me. Throughout the 80’s and across the decades that followed, I and a very few informed colleagues worked closely with the aftermath of Cleveland. We travelled the country training other professionals how to recognise the signs and symptoms of the sexual abuse of children. Our invitation at the time – ‘think the unthinkable’. We did the same in the early 90’s speaking out about the abuse of adults with learning difficulties within institutions and by the mid 90’s my work caused even more disturbance when I and very few other clinicians at the time spoke out about the realities satanist abuse.

    So, when in 2022 I speak out about the sexual abuse of children within the chemsex context, I do not do so naively. I know only too well what is means to go into families, institutions, and specific communities and expose the abuse that is occurring within them. I know what it means for me, for those communities and for the victims within them.

    The chemsex context of crime is full of invitations to remain silent, to tread on eggshells to not know. But to do so risks repeating the horrors that have occurred before and indeed recently.

    The recent enquiry findings into the failure of Government agencies to appropriately respond to child sexual abuse occurring within a specific identified community in Derbyshire is a chilling example of the consequences when police, social services, probation council officials and others start to tread on eggshells and follow a ‘we must not upset – remain silent’ agenda, the maintaining a comfort zone. The avoidance of action in Derbyshire by those responsible for the protection of children to remain in favour with a specific community all enabled networks of sexual predators to continue to abuse a thousand plus child victims over time.

    It is not unusual for me to notice similar dynamics of avoidance with those working to address the chemsex context. Officers can be nervous, frightened even of causing offence, of being accused of being homophobic. Such lack of confidence with the issues of diversity does not serve any community well. In trying to protect them from offence the risk is we increase their vulnerability and at worse we are complicit.   The message that professional silence gives to victims in such situations is chilling for is it in fact no different from the message of the predator.

    Child sexual abuse is taking place in the chemsex context. I am often asked for the number of those convicted. But I am unable to recall ever being asked about the number of victims of those convicted. Behind such a question is the wish not to know, as somehow a number will give permission for the issue to be minimised, for it to be avoided, denied even, to be met with silence. For me, x1 perpetrator of CSA is x1 too many, but of course it is many more and to give an indication of the number of victims, in a recent case x1 24 year old perpetrator was found to be in possession and sharing over x14000 images of children ranging from babies to post pubescent.

    My call to all professionals within criminal justice, within sexual health, within drug services and for all those with a pastoral responsibility for the GBT and MSM community is a call to arms. It is a call for the establishment of a specialist unit, national governance, development of specific risk assessment tools, but mostly from my perspective it must be a call to renewed confidence, a call to awareness and excellence in diversity practice. It most certainly is a call to knowing what we would rather not know and tragically it needs to once more be a call to think the unthinkable. It is a call to meet chemsex vulnerabilities with compassion and it is a call to meet chemsex harms and dangerousness with our ability to protect the public and enable justice.

    I conclude with words from Donald Winnicott Paediatrician and child psychotherapist. From the childhood game of ‘hide n seek,’ to responding to cases of child sexual abuse, Donald knew all about hidden worlds their attraction, risks and their dangers. He said, “It is a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found”. Those words of Winnicott make our task abundantly clear.

  • No Faith in the System

    ‘No Faith in the System’ is the title of a book by Sister Sarah Clarke which documents her work with the Irish prisoners of war serving sentences in British goals and their families. Across three decades, it was a work we shared together and wisely only together. For much of the time it was a sensitive and dangerous work, it certainly was not a poplar work. It was a work that, placed us both in that immensely challenging place of paradox – the very point where opposites come together. Here I’m referring to ourselves and to ‘the system’ of which neither of us had faith.

    As then, I am often asked by many, how do I manage to work in a system when at the same time clearly, think different to it, behave differently to it and often oppose it? Indeed, there was a time when both church and state attempted to stop our work. Thankfully they did not succeed. Sr. Sarah worked up until her death in February 2002 and I of course have continued I(beyond retirement), albeit in a clinical and not political role. Working in ‘the system’ being part of ‘the system’ and remaining different to it is a strange, often uncomfortable place to be; it is a place of true paradox. How I achieve that from day to day? to be honest I have not thought too much about it, I’ve been too busy being me and I guess therein is the answer.

    Paradox exists because of difference and never once have I ever compromised on my difference from ‘the system’. Over time I have in fact made it my selling point. ‘The system’ is very predictable, it is not creative, is rigid, often unthinking, not connected, remote and often without humility. Being true to myself, my true self and all I encompass, is and has always been the opposite of all of that. What allows me to work from this place of difference is a willingness to be responsive and not predictable, to creatively think and act outside of the box, to be flexible, to have a mind which is curious and questioning, to be available for connection and attachment, to be present and not remote, to forever be willing not to know and remain open to the humility of learning. As long as I’m being and doing those things, as long as I am faithful to my difference, I can absolutely have no faith in the system but be very much part of it.

    Of course, it is not just me, I am not alone in ‘the system’. Surrounding me is a formidable range of inspiring, committed, creative and deeply human people who are also being faithful to their difference. ‘The system’ may well try to cover them up, silence them and challenge them, but crucially I have learned that they are there. It is they who make the paradox bearable. Last year, I and others hosted a bringing together of criminal justice agencies and sexual health providers to celebrate some of the early developments of creating a compassionate criminal justice response to chemsex related crime. One of my senior officers was asked how was it possible to be compassionate with people who had caused great harms? Her response explained how even when working within ‘the system’ it was still possible for her to work to get the best sentence for that person. The best sentence being a just response for the victim and a rehabilitative process of change for the criminal justice client. Again; wonderful and inspiring evidence of paradox in action.

    To remain true to your individual difference in the context of ‘the system’ is not easy, is not comfortable and often does not allow you to be popular. But since when was anything achieved by being popular. Being popular may well stroke the ego, but the end results often fail and usually do so by means of collusion. No, being faithful to difference often means a fight, often voicing and questioning the unthinkable – that is not the path to popularity or fame. Just last week an unthinking, uncreative, non-responsive, disconnected and arrogant meeting process decided to cast an individual away from their local responsibility and indeed if they had their way to cast the person concerned into a process of repeated mistrust, shame and vulnerability. It was not comfortable to stand up to that powerful group, to voice an alternative and to speak for his vulnerability and powerlessness. It was not easy to get my voice heard when it was saying something very different and opposite to what people wanted to hear, this too is paradox in action.

    In the 40 or so years of working in the place of paradox one most powerful thing I have learned is not to be silent. In the early days of fighting for the release of the Maguire family, those convicted of the Guildford and Birmingham bombings, Judith Ward, Gussepie Conlon and others, no one believed us. This was long before the likes of MP’s, journalists and noble Dukes got involved. Cardinal Hume himself, told us to ‘go away’ and not to have anything to do with ‘thugs and murderers’. So often we would return to the convent from the rich and powerful, from the courts or from the prison gates and wonder if we should carry on. At such times Sarah would remind me that if we did nothing else at all, we should make sure that no one could ever turn around and say they ‘did not know’ those words of wisdom, all these years later, echo in my ears and my soul several times most days. I may struggle with the place of paradox but I remain committed to the task of never being silent.

    By my desk is a print made by Sr Sarah. It is a crucified figure bowed down holding its own crown of thorns. Printed over this powerful image are her words ‘A spirit thus outraged will ever turn and come again demanding justice’ It invites me every day to remain outraged.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • Gorgeousness, Dangerousness and Sexy Serial Killers

    James Dornan, the immensely talented Irish actor, will forever sit in the mind of many as a serial killer. A lasting impact I guess, of the unrelenting intensity he conveyed in his portrayal of Paul Spector via the awesome production of ‘The Fall’.

    Just as the books about ‘Fred and Rose’ flew off the shelves in their millions, so too does the darkness of ‘The Fall’ appeal to a society which still struggles to really comprehend the capacity of the human condition for the vilest of offences. The only way it seems that we can get our heads around the fact that the human condition can be murderous is to convert it into entertainment. As long as we place the dark capacity of the human condition into a book, painting, play, poem, dance or TV series, especially one as good as ‘The Fall’, then we can keep all our primitive darkness, murderousness, perverse desires, violence’s, rages and destructiveness separate, away from us, unintegrated and, just as dangerously as the serial killer does, ‘split off’.

    Evidence of our need to ‘split off’ our capacity for primitive violence is also expressed by many who conveyed their surprise at how handsome, sexy and good looking was Paul Spector. Such comments, and they were many, reminded me of the very first group therapy I facilitated for men who like Paul Spector had raped and murdered. In the weeks leading up to starting the group myself and my co-clinician met with about fourteen referred men to carry out individual assessments to see if they were ready and suitable for intervention. We needed a group of no more than eight. Over several weeks we divided up the men and conducted the assessments on a one to one basis. My co-clinician and I shared an office. I remember well him returning after conducting one assessment looking red in the face, slightly energised and unsettled but grinning all over his face. He noticed my immediate curiosity, sat down and said to me “Oh my God! that one was absolutely gorgeous”, We laughed long and loud.

    Murderers, rapists and especially serial rapists are not meant to be ‘gorgeous’ and certainly not sexy. The fact of course is, that there is absolutely no reason why they should not be and, having met many, I can evidence that many are indeed ‘gorgeous’. The issue for the forensic setting, for the wider community and my co-therapist, is not that they cannot be ‘gorgeous’ but that we should not be seduced by it. Gorgeousness and dangerousness are not as incompatible as we like to think.

    I loved the fact that Paul Spector was not only sexy, he was also a bereavement counsellor. What a great role for us and for him to fulfil the task of ‘splitting off’. Both, accurately fly in the face of the monster we need him and other men and women like him to be.

    My business is public protection, working with the human condition to make our world a safer place. The biggest challenge to achieving this is not the Paul Spector’s I meet; the real dangerousness and risk is in the minds of those who need monsters to look and sound like monsters. It is in the mindset that can entertain Fred and Rose when they dwell in the chapters of a book but not if they are living next door. Fred and Rose did not do what they did once we knew about them, it all happened when they were just neighbours.

    Paul Spector did what he did at the same time when he was busy being a; bereavement counsellor, a loving father, a boring husband and of course, being gorgeous.

    If we can bear to think what ‘The Fall’ invites us to, it could well be the biggest public protection crime prevention campaign we have ever known. We, and the unintegrated monster in us, needs it.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • The ‘Piss Pots’ we Desperately Need

    Serial killers, celebs and monarchs have a shared purpose for all of us. They receive on a 24/7 basis all that we desire, long for, aspire too, want, need, hate, cannot bear, loath, wish to deny and want to banish about ourselves. They are the receptacles of all that we consciously and more often unconsciously project. Yes, those we place on our pedestals of adulation or render to the depths of hell are really, as far as our psychological processes are concerned, never anything more than a piss pot.

    We are, at this very moment witnessing or joining in with a massive collective projection. The presence of a dead monarch is enabling an equally massive outpouring of what appears to be grief. The streets are lined with tear-stained faces and, just in case no one notices, some are taking to social media describing in detail the crying they have done. All believing it is for the dead queen.

    It is a tragedy of the particularly English human condition that as a people the English people are not conditioned to mourn. If they do then it is usually a prescribed version (e.g., an instruction of ten days, up until the funeral, only until return to work / school etc, until Aunt Sally has visited, until the reading of the will etc etc). No, the English version of mourning is not respectful of psychological need. Such need does not get a mention. As with the death of Diana, what we are witnessing now underscores that for the English to grieve it seems they need permission.

    Unlike cultures and traditions, the world over the English people do not ‘do death’ or indeed loss of any kind, not consciously at least. The British defining Victorian ‘stiff upper lip’, although thankfully in decline, still has a determining influence passing as it does in the English psyche from generation to generation. For something that is upheld as a personal quality, it comes at an extraordinary high cost.

    The denial, minimisation, disowning of grief, the resistance to successfully mourn, is evidenced by the long waiting lists for counselling and psychotherapy. Grief denied, is what informs the thousands of admissions to the countries psychiatric hospitals and prompts the prescribing of millions of doses of anti-depressants year upon year. For as Freud made clear over a century ago, when we don’t mourn, when we don’t allow for grief, we do depression instead.

    I’ve lost count of the number of people I assess for clinical intervention who have self-diagnosed depression.  I routinely enquire as to what losses have, they experienced over the previous three years. The answer is nearly always ‘none’. If there has been a bereavement it is often mentioned almost as an afterthought. The myriad of other kind of losses those not requiring a body count, do not get a look in. They are of course still a loss and often a profound one; – job, home, pet, status, identity, esteem, confidence, health – life at some point rips all these things away. So not surprising then that further deeper persistent digging by the therapist always, always reveals one or more profound experiences of loss. It’s not antidepressants that are required, its surrender to the process of mourning. No one cannot skirt around grief, it cannot be bypassed or jumped over. Grief must be owned and allowed to happen. 

    When any individual or culture invests in avoidance of the mourning of individual losses, something must be done with the grief. The most common way of enabling the expression of what is not allowed or banished is to project it. We place what is forbidden onto something or someone else. Then with great relief we ‘piss’ what we do not want onto and into that chosen receptacle. In English culture the death of a monarch or indeed anyone with celebrity status is perfectly placed to fulfil this role. They are a safe bet, remote and distant enough to give the impression that the loss of them is breaking our heart, when all the time they cannot possibly do. We don’t know them. We care only for the loss of what we have made them to be, how we’ve allowed them to sit in our minds, how we need them to be.

    On the occasions we are forced to take the delusion of projection back into ourselves we do not respond well. We do not cope well with a ‘saintly’ monarch who treated a dead daughter in law with total contempt or a ‘saintly’ king who has a liking for tampons, or a ‘noble’ prince who has sex with a child and worse still in the thinking of some a ‘noble’ prince who marries someone who is black. The evidence reveals much about the desperate need for a ‘piss pot’ and how people behave when it leaks or indeed when we see our own reflection in its steamy putrid content of revealed reality. We do not like it.

    Projected grief does not work, it fails us again and again.  Like all defences it takes us eventually back into the very heart of the thing we desperately are seeking to avoid in the first place. In relation to a dead monarch, the projection wears thin in a relatively short space of time. Attempts to maintain it are evidenced in how quickly the focus shifts from the royal corpse to everything else surrounding it; selfies when the coffin passes by, analysis of queuing, near hysteria when another famous ‘piss pot’ joins in, and for some…. opportunities to commit sexual crime and I guess a range of other disturbed behaviours we are yet to hear about.

    Failure to grieve about the real losses in our lives and not the losses of our chosen receptacles, leaves us numb. Being numb with grief stops us feeling what we need to feel. When we are stupefied, the consequence is that we tend to act stupidly. Need I say more.

    When this current ‘piss pot’ has failed, the invitation remains to take back the projection of our own unique losses. those losses that are real to us because they are intimately closer to home. The losses defined by connection, relationship. The searing losses of attachment that, for a time, we can only bear by projecting out the raw pain of loss.  

    Projection hinders real grief and distorts the mourning we need to do. Collective projection makes mourning about everyone else and not about its uniqueness to us. When we can bear to welcome it as solely ours, then and only then can we be healed. Mourning is an innate process that enables healing.  Mourning calls, us with dignity to be with our losses, to own them, feel them, allow them. It is a lonely process, a process of the soul that only our very own self can do. Far from the madding crowd mourning gives permission for our lives to be rearranged because that is what loss does.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • Not Planning Another Year

    Taking notice, observation, listening with ‘the third ear’ defines a large part of my working day. The forensic settings of prison, probation and policing are full of professionals like me all ‘taking notice’ in a hard-earned way. I seldom apply this way of being when not at work, unless that is when something really pulls me in, grabs my attention. It does not happen often. Whilst having lunch last week it did.

    Having ordered, I gazed around the small tearoom and immediately noticed that a couple sitting opposite had the same diaries. I tried to dismiss the observation, reminding myself I was not at work and that the observed total match was of no relevance at all. Too late, I was already seduced. So not only did I look, but I also started to listen…..

    Over the next 20 minutes, it became apparent that this couple were not only to share matching diaries for the remainder of the year but that much, if not all the year would be shared between them as well. Week by week, weekend by weekend, month by month, they planned and plotted their lives. Life. Their lives, I continued to hear, were planned moment by moment into a schedule of; walks, camping trips, festivals, long weekends away, weeks away and in August a whole month away. Oh, and the occasional mid-weekday off. The prospect of which seemed to excite them greatly. The planning also included modes of transport and where they would stay, B&B, hotels, tent and Airbnb.

    I don’t think I acknowledged the arrival of my lunch so aghast was I that we had gone from Easter to Christmas and yes, next new year, all within thirty minutes or so. Maybe they were just free thinking? just having ideas? But no, just as I was preparing to leave, out came a laptop and the whole planned year started to be transferred from matching diaries into a calendar spreadsheet. As I left contemplating at least three different versions of what my afternoon may look like, in contrast, this couple had the whole of the year set in stone.

    My lunch time experience stayed with me. The couple, their new paper diaries and the not so new laptop floating in and out of my mind for the remainder of the day.

    Time, its planning and passing, also featured in a dream I had the same night. It was a fun dream, and I was sad when my waking up brought it to an end. In the dream I, along with all the other characters, was part of Mike Leigh’s 2010 film ‘Another Year’. There I was in every scene, written in and participating. I was very much at home in all the scenes as, for whatever reason, I always associate Mike’s films to be set in NW5, I don’t know if they are or not, but for me ‘Another Year’ fitted well into all I associate with NW5 and the fact that in real life, other years of my life, 14 of them in fact, were lived there.

    In the film, Tom (Jim Broadbent), a geologist, and Gerri (the wonderful Ruth Sheen) a counsellor, are an older married couple who have a comfortable, loving relationship. The film observes them over the course of the four seasons of a year, surrounded by family and friends who mostly suffer some degree of unhappiness. Watching the film and observing my dream, the seasons were beautifully experienced by Tom and Gerri’s tending to their allotment. The seasonal fruit and veg of their toils moving us through another year of their lives and life itself.

    In my real-life Kentish Town years, I didn’t have an allotment, but I did have Parliament Hill. As the years passed, season by season, I looked down from that awesome vantage point. The span of London made miniature by the hill’s height. Me, the season, London and all its people carried moment by moment, year by year through our lives.

    The lives captured in ‘Another Year’ are skilfully revealed to us. One by one, except for Tom and Gerri, we learn of their life’s dreams and plans. Equally, we learn of their disappointments, dashed expectations, let-downs, trauma’s, the unexpected which comes knocking on all their doors and yes, we witness what the unplanned in its various guises visits upon them. The film’s theme, life’s passing of time, is also communicated in more subtle ways. Tom on a London building site examining layers of London clay, each sample holding centuries of London life. Gerri trying her best to get her new reluctant counselling client Janet (Imelda Staunton) to talk about the years that run through the core of her life. Occasions of birth and death are also weaved into the story.

    Tom and Gerri are about the total opposite as you could get from their fellow characters and indeed from my real-life lunch time couple. Tom and Gerri, without any obvious planning, allowed themselves to be carried by the seasons of their allotment and the seasons of their life. In doing so, they brought to the world around them a sense of security, stability, steadfastness, and peace of mind. Tom and Gerri were at one with themselves and with life. For it seemed that they had learned the art of being in the moment, to have faith in the unknown, to be willingly accept experiences of not knowing and to find happiness in the mysteries of life including the unfathomable depths of messy humanity manifest in those they loved. Life without a diary or spreadsheet was a joy to behold.

    I’m not sure when planning the life out of life became popular. I guess it’s been around as long as uncertainty and insecurity. Delusion also runs as a thread through time memorial and informs many if not all of acts of planning. A whole industry has developed to support it from ‘Filofax’ to my café couple’s shiny new diaries. Time planned it seems offers certainty and the secure base many crave. Time planned and planning time is popular.

    What are we to make of this craving for certainty? The longing for a secure base I guess commences the moment we fall out of our mother’s womb. We yearn sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously, to get back into that symbiotic state. Impossible. It can take much to reach a realisation of that, not to mention an acceptance of that.

    From the moment we fall out into the world we continue to fall into life. Many will recall the trauma they experienced witnessing those falling from the ‘Twin Towers’ on 9/11. Later, I worked with many who developed full PTSD having seen those incidents of falling. Yes, traumatic in itself but also because there is a personal identification. We may not have fallen from the ‘Twin Towers” but we all know what it is to fall and the not knowing if we will be held, rescued, or if the ground will save us. This example alone tells us something of the primitive that lurks behind the need to plan the life out of life.

    I am reminded each day that life is bigger than myself. We say every morning in the Divine Office that God is a mighty God, that he holds the depths of the earth in his hands, that the mountains as well as the sea and the dry land is shaped by his hand. For me this is a daily reminder to surrender to the act of falling. It’s an invitation to bin the ‘to do’ list, and to know that falling into the present moment of not knowing is really all I can do. All I can know. It a most alarming and at the same time deeply comforting way to start each day.

    Chögyam Trungpa, puts it much clearer than me or the Divine Office when he says, “The bad news is your falling through the air, noting to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground”.

    I don’t know how the year will unfold for the couple in the café. Truth is, despite all their planning, all their attempts to put ground beneath their feet, neither do they. Fact is, time planned, more often than we would care to acknowledge, flies in the face of faith, strips life of its mystery and at its worse chokes the life out of life.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • My Difficulty with the Sixth Commandment

    ‘The Sixth Commandment’ is an exceptionally written drama, matched in its excellence by the skilful portrayal of its main characters, particularly by Ann Reid and Timothy Spall. I’m in awe. As the episodes unfold, we are taken into the world of a real-life crime story. A murder committed by Benjamin Field. The acted persona of Benjamin is accurate to perfection. Eanna Hardwicke manages to, look, sound, and move just like the real Mr Field. Again, I am in awe.

    As crime drama goes this is not your highly charged gruesome sensationalist indulgence. It’s. not ‘Line of Duty’. It is calculated, measured, dignified, chilling, understated even. Just like in fact the real-life Benjamin. He most certainly was all those things. But that is where my awe ceases. Because we’re not getting the full story, the full picture, that I understand is intentional. The writers have made very clear statements that they didn’t want the focus on the drama to be on Benjamin. The reason for this; respect for the victims and their families. I get that and it disappoints me.

    No victim of murder stands in isolation. Much like there is no such thing as ‘just a baby’, there is always a baby and a mother. There is also never ‘just a victim’ there is always a victim and a murderer. Whilst the human condition can get its head around mother and baby, it struggles to hold both victim and murderer in mind. This separation, this splitting, may enable a kind of comfort, but it is never helpful and is particularly unhelpful for the understanding of murder, what we need to do to prevent it and how best to respond to those who do.

    A life’s work with those who have murdered and on occasions the victims’ relatives, has never failed to keep me curious. My asking ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ has never ceased. What must be now hundreds of cases, have all provided, eventually, their own unique answers to these questions and in so doing I’ve been able to make meaningful contributions to the management of risk and the task of public protection. Key learning in this process has been recognition of the fact that focusing on the victims’ experiences tells us very little that we do not already know. It is to the behaviour and into the mind of the creator of victims that we must go. This task of course is much less attractive and is without the reward of making us feel good about ourselves.

    For the last six years leading on the criminal justice response to chemsex crime for London, it has meant a lot of murder has come my way. 16 victims created by 12 perpetrators. The 4 victims of Steven Port will come easily to mind. But what about the others? No, most will struggle to name any of the other victims of chemsex context murder and certainly not those who murdered them. When it comes to murder, we are in fact very selective in who and what is remembered, this despite the assertion that it matters terribly. This selective remembering, this selective knowing, this selective recall, and as reflected in the decision of those responsible for ‘The Sixth Commandment’ to only focus on the victim’s story does us no favours.

    For the armchair detective, there is an excellent documentary on the investigation into Benjamin. ‘Catching a Killer ‘– Ep 5 ‘Diary from Beyond the Grave’ (Channel 4). It’s an inspiring example of highly professional and compassionate policing. But like ‘The Sixth Commandment’ it only provides part of the picture. There are however some teasing glimpses that hint at the fuller story of Benjamin. His exquisitely polite behaviour in the custody suit. His stretching exercises on being remanded and his request to the custody Sergeant for reading material delivered in the manner of requesting a copy of something by Socrates from his local library. ‘You’re in a Police Station sweetheart’ I think I said to my television screen. ‘You’ll be lucky if they can conjure up a stained aging copy of the Sun’, I continued amusing myself. His request however is met with equal exquisite politeness and that starts to reveal to us something of the bigger picture. It’s a great, example of offence paralleling behaviour, and it worked.

    Fact is, if our fascination is to be more than indulgence, is to be more than ‘concern’. If our fascination can be harnessed to play a role in the prevention of crime, in the management of risk and in public protection then Benjamin deserves a drama all of his own.

    The real-life drama of Benjamin would have started at least three generations before he was born. That’s the number of generational influences we all hold within our unconscious processes. From his birth there then would be a range of biological, environmental, and psychological factors that combined to enable the development of a problematic personality structure or structures. It is these that played out and communicated themselves not just in his murderous behaviour but in all the ways he went about it and indeed in all the ways of his lived young life.

    Since sentencing, Benjamin has not stopped being Benjamin. Within our custodial estate he continues to be exquisitely polite, highly intelligent, charming, helpful to others and he will continue to be all of this and more on his release. Therein lies his dangerousness and the vulnerability of many.

    It is the ‘how?’ and ‘why?’, on release, that becomes crucially important for the management of risk and public protection. ‘Risk is Everyone’s Business’ is the title of ongoing training in this important task for officers within HMPPS. My conviction is however that ‘Everyone’ also needs to include the wider public including you. Benjamin committed murder in plain sight, as most people do in fact. It is that fact that needs to inform our awareness and thinking.

    Benjamin is on my radar in the context of my current specialism, chemsex context crime, I and others have assessed him as ticking enough indicator boxes to be considered what we refer to a ‘chemsex nominal’. Suffice to say, from thinking about the whole picture of Benjamin the chemsex context could be very appealing to him on release and for all the reasons of power, risk, and vulnerability it encompasses. We need to be prepared and we need to think.

    Holding someone in mind who has murdered, thinking about them is the only way anyone can come to an understanding of the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’. It is thinking about them that repetition can be managed, and the influence of causal factors minimised. I’ve often wondered if the Benjamin’s of the world have any comprehension just how much thought is invested in them and of the sort that goes way beyond news headlines, documentaries, and television dramas, no matter how good. Problem is that this thinking tends to happen after the event. Benjamin’s now known behaviour started long before he committed his crime and he’s not so unique. There will be other Benjamin’s building up to the commission of a similar offence right now. Only by us all having a mind for all of this will there be any chance of them being stopped or in the case of the Benjamin we know, being prevented from doing it all again.

    As for, ‘Thou shall not kill’, not always as, as well as easy as perhaps we would care to think, but I guess we, as well as Benjamin all have a responsibility.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • A Letter to Lucy

    Dear Lucy

    I’m writing to say how sorry I am that we won’t get to meet. Some years ago, we would have perhaps met in HMP Holloway. The Lifer Unit there was very well resourced with pets and everything! sadly it’s now no more. Demolished. Although no longer in HMP Holloway, I’m still working with people who have killed in a similar way to you by weaponizing drugs, surprisingly they are exclusively men and within the context chemsex, not nursing or hospitals I’m afraid. Anyway, I thought I would write, just to let you know the sort of things we could have talked about.

    It’s a shame we won’t get to chat as I also some questions that I think you may have found refreshing. Unlike it seems the world and its mother, I would not need to ask, ‘How could you murder those babies?’ The act of murder is, I’ve come to understand, really very simple. I get it. Your own method in fact, easy as pie. No, my main question would be, why so many?

    I’m also wondering if you got as bored as I did with people being so shocked about the fact that a nurse could murder? and that you didn’t look like someone who could murder? Gosh people are so predictable. Yawn.  

    O Lucy!  you have made an awful lot of people so very angry indeed. But here’s the thing, they don’t appear to be angry about the fact that you have murdered many, but rather than you don’t look or sound like someone who would. One journalist. Judith Moritz, I think it was, wrote columns about you and clearly could just not get her head around the fact that at no point have you fulfilled whatever image it is that she holds in her mind of what a murderer looks like. Her lengthy piece for BBC News ended in despair. “I just don’t understand” she says. Bless. But seriously though, it’s about time that Judith Moritz, her other journalist friends, and the many despairing others stood in front of a mirror and realise what they see reflected back is what someone who murders looks like.

    Lucy, the fact that you were a nurse and chose your nursing context and environment in which to kill comes as no surprise to me. I would go as far as saying, if one wishes to commit murder, it’s a perfect role and hospitals are the perfect setting I’m more shocked in fact about you getting found out, caught. Mind you, it took them quite a few years.

    Despite all the interest in crime fiction, thrillers, real life crime genre and the like it does seem that the collective response of disbelief, in relation to yourself, reveals very little imagination.  Think nurses. Think doctors. Think hospitals. These roles and institutions clearly sit in our minds in a very particular way. A way in which we are heavily invested and need to maintain. There are reasons for that investment. It offers the illusion of comfort. We need nurses, doctors, and the places we go to when vulnerable with sickness to be safe, kind, caring, empathic, often to a level that is superhuman. So much so, we end up referring to the personnel as ‘angels and the buildings as sanctuaries of healing.  My guess Lucy is that you knew this fact very well indeed. Which makes me want to ask another question if I may; At what point did you decide to use your context, your ‘angel’ identity to transfer your own imaginations into reality?

    Yes, you and I Lucy appear to have a shared knowledge about the idealisation of those involved in health care and how such idealisation is born from the primitive fears and anxieties of our own vulnerability. In vulnerable situations, we need to make nurses ‘Angels’ and doctors ‘Saviours’. Anything less is just too risky. For those on the receiving end of such powerful projections that is a lot to live up to. It’s not just murder that challenges this delusion. Just look at how quickly adulation changes to denigration when nurses and doctors dare to go on strike.

    Lucy, I want to go back a bit if your able to; Can you recall for me the very first moment you put on your nurse’s uniform. Tell me what did it feel like? How did other people respond to you? What did their reactions make you feel about yourself? Does power have a role to play here? Narcissism perhaps? Definitely even.

    My guess is Lucy, what you are likely to have described in response to my curiosity , would be very similar to what other nurses have told me.  What you and they recognise is the associated unconscious dynamics that until now have been a powerful part of your working life. This is especially so in relation to your very particular setting of the Special Care Baby Unit. Here, even more dynamic influencing factors would have been at play. Infant vulnerability confronts us with our very own. Not surprising then that such a unit and all those that work on it again need to be seen and thought of as deeply caring, dedicated, able to banish pain, suffering and able to achieve survival. Tell me how aware of those beliefs of others were you?  what did that make you feel? And what did you think of those who had those expectations of you? Sorry, a lot of questions I know. 

    Lucy, what I’m going to say now is related to what we have just recognised and again, I think this is something that you have known and understood for a very long time. Please correct me if I’m wrong.  But with all those parents and others so deeply invested in seeing only positive things about the unit and its staff, then the other part of the until and its staff does not get recognised or even thought about. I’m talking about the not so benign aspects of the unit and of hospitals in general I suppose. Because also present, perhaps even more so, are the realities of pain, risk, suffering, disappointment, not knowing, loss, sadism even, death even. Gosh that is heavy, and one can start to understand, just a little as to why the delusional belief of ‘angels’ becomes so important.

    Look Lucy, to be honest, I thought it was quite unfair that some media and some people who looked at you in court then went on to describe you as cold, unfeeling, disconnected. There was no recognition that for you, your fellow nurses, doctors, and managers there is a massive need to remain distant, not to show feelings, to even cut feelings off. It’s something you would have learned to do very early in your career. It’s how you and clinicians manage to survive the full reality of working in a hospital. Had I been in court or if I’d written your report, I would have pointed out that outside of stressful situations away from the unit and indeed away from the court room you would and clearly had the capacity to feel fully, connect with friends, show emotion and to engage well with others. There was loads of evidence of such fact. But your career required you for long periods of time not to think and not to feel. For you, like many other health care professionals it had become a default way of being.

    I think it would be helpful to both of us if you gave some time to thinking about the process I have just described and then write it all down. When did you start to be able to control your feelings by numbing them, but not feeling? Did this start at work or had you achieved the ability to do this before, maybe a long time before? Then describe for me the occasions when you did allow yourself to feel, when you connected, when you expressed ranges of emotion. Then please, if you would, describe for me the range of feelings you experienced when bringing about the deaths of the babies in your care. I know that won’t be easy, so perhaps do that starting with the first one and then work your way right up until the last. In that way we might start to see how the feelings you were experiencing changed over time. Usually, I would very much want to be with someone when they did this task and I’m sorry I’m asking you to do this alone. Maybe I’m being over concerned for you. Revisiting the moments of the babies deaths need not be horrific for you, those moments in particular may have been moments of extreme pleasure, immense powerfulness, omnipotence.

    I hope by doing the exercise I suggest above that it will help us to think about you more wholly. I’ll be direct. I know some have labelled you as having a psychopathic personality structure. I’m not convinced. I think there may be other issues at play. You gave me a clue when you made the arresting officer adjust the seat in the police car because of recent knee surgery. Such was your concern, it made me think of your narcissistic needs. We all have them, but to varying degrees and yours, in that moment, seemed quite acute. I’m cheeky to say that without even doing a full assessment – apologies. Oh yes! There was one other thing that made me think the same. Your hair. You’ve changed its colour but not its style. You still wear it as you did in your school photograph. I’d love to ask you about that.

    In closing, I just want to indicate where ongoing discussions would go if we were to work together. Childhood. Yes, that old chestnut, or more precisely, parents. Both your own and those of the babies you killed. Yours were present in court for the whole trial, this is highly unusual. Was this out of their love and concern of you? Was it that they hoped to learn something about you? or about themselves? or was there presence a sign of knowing? A knowing about you and themselves and the three of you together. How did you experience their presence? Was it Supportive? Oppressive? Controlling? Accusing? Shaming? Or all these things? and what about their presence throughout your life, how was that? How will it be now? You also formed attachments with the parents of the babies you killed, and it does seem that you went out of the way to do this, to include them in some way. Simply Lucy, was it about the babies or about the parents? If I’ll be bold and again correct me if I’m wrong. I think it was about the parents, yes?

    Finally, I just want to recognise that your sentence is the loss of liberty, that, and nothing else is the punishment. The lifer progression process is not and should not be a punishment. I think you will come to know that. Although life will be very different for you, you will have a life and you’ll need to live it as fully as you can. You’ve created enough loss. Enough is enough.  I say that to all the lifers I work with.

    Your sentence is also about protecting the public. But truth is, that responsibility sits with the rest of us and I’m convinced it starts with us surrendering our immensely dangerous need for angels.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • Lest We Forget – The 206 Male Victims of Reynhard Sinaga

    Being a victim of rape and sexual crime is not a competition. When media coverage on such crimes is partial and does not reflect the whole picture however, it becomes an important justice to name a truth.

    Over the last few, days headline news in a wide variety of media has reported on the case of Zhenhao Zou a 28-year-old found guilty of drugging and raping 10 victims. He is thought to have at least 40 more.

    This recent case is not dissimilar to another quite recent case that of Reynhard Sinaga who was convicted of 159 sexual offences of which 136 were rapes. Further evidence indicated that he had 206 known victims.

    Both of these extremely dangerous men have an extraordinary range of common factors, which even a superficial reading of the cases reveals. There is one factor however that is different. All the victims of Zou were women. All the victims of Sinaga were men.

    It is not possible to ignore the vast difference in the victim statistics. The media coverage on Zou however has done just this. Zou is being portrayed by some as the ‘most prolific rapist’ and by others who hint of wider picture by referencing him as ‘being among the most prolific rapists. This distorted reporting erases the male victims of Sinaga and in so doing plays directly into the massive problem we have in the UK which is the failure to recognise, name and be pro-active about the vulnerability of men, especially when that vulnerability is linked to men’s experience of rape and sexual assault.

    I have worked with many hundreds of rapists and sexual predators. I worked on the Sinaga case for several months both pre and post sentence. I come to know his thinking well and like many others who commission crimes against men, he was very well aware that the targeting of his victims would be relatively easy, that they would be unlikely to report their victimisation and would quite likely not be believed if they did. All because of the fact that they were men. He was right. Many of his victims did not report and were only discovered because he had filmed them. Many were never identified, and many exist that we do not know about, of that I am certain.

    The case of Zou has been and remains in the spotlight now for several days. That was not the case with Sinaga. It was headlining news on conviction in some media only. This failure to recognise and name male vulnerability comes at a very high cost. Perhaps the most horrendous cost is the continued silencing of men who experience sexual crime and evidenced in the fact when research tells us that on average it takes men 25.6 years before they tell anyone about their experience. Important then to recognise that for the year 2022 the crime survey identifies 275,000 sexual assaults against men. What would that figure be we must ask if men were not so conditioner to remain tragically silent so for so long.

    I say all this whilst working to highlight the failure to recognise, investigate and respond pro-actively to the vulnerability of men who go missing. In a significant number of cases, the police response in particular can only be described as beyond woeful. It is markedly different, in the most unhelpful of ways, when compared to the approach applied when women go missing.

    I am not competitive. All victims are victims and their individual experienced cannot be devalued statistically.  But all victims regardless of gender are deserving of justice and for male victims of sexual crime that, if the media is anything to go by, is absolutely not happening.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc

  • Beginnings and the Grief of Endings

    Beginnings and the Grief of Endings

    I only really like the first lines of Minnie Haskins poem ‘God Knows’, more commonly known as ‘The Gate of the Year’. I recall it along with many others I guess at the close of each year. But its poignancy for me is more associated not with the opening of a new year but with the closing episode of the 70’s television series ‘A Family at War’.

    The series, based in Liverpool, told the story of the Ashton family living through the war years. It aired for 52 episodes and took its audience into the family experiences of the external war and the almost equally disturbing dynamics of the internal wars within the Ashton family.

    As a child, it was an intense experience to watch it unfold week after week, yes because of the skilful writing and also because there were few scene changes. Typical of its day, most of the drama seldom ventured beyond the Ashtons living room. The wider world was however brought to that living room, as it was to all our homes, by the medium of the wireless.

    In the closing moments of the last episode, we are again back in the Ashtons living room. The family diminished and depleted. The past echoes around the empty walls in the voice of King George reading to the nation as he did in 1939 Haskins poem “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year ….. “ The vulnerability of that moment in time poignant in the timbre of his voice.

    Endings are a vulnerable time for the fact that we usually know what is ending but seldom do we know what is beginning. ‘A Family at War’, from it’s very beginning, like life, was all about endings and what they do to us. How sometimes we emerge better from them and other times less so. But episode after episode, as in the days of our lives, what we witnessed is how endings change us. Endings, one by one, took hold of the Ashton family and changed it forever. After an ending life is seldom ever the same.

    The endings and the vulnerabilities of the Ashtons were not unique to them and were not confined to the experience of war. No, far from it.

    Endings for us all in one way or another are defined by loss and the vulnerability that meets us in our response of grief. No matter the nature of the ending or the cause of loss, the deeply human response of grief is forever the same. 1939, 2023 and 2024 separated by time but not by internal experiences of sadness, sorrow, diminishment of hope and yes, life rearranged.

    Whatever endings greet us at the gate of the year. Whatever our griefs and vulnerabilities, may they, may we, be met with peace of mind and a hope in the breaking of a new day.

    And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

    “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.

    And he replied:

    “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

    That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.

    So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.

    And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

    Br Stephen Morris fcc