Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 1
R. J. Stove,
SEX ABUSE IN VICTORIAN CATHOLICISM:
THE RONALD CONWAY CONNECTION
By R. J. Stove,
1. INTRODUCTION 2
2. THE BROKEN RITES FILE ON CONWAY 4
3. THE REMNANT FILE (MINNESOTA) ON CONWAY 13
Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 2
R. J. Stove,
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.The opportunity to give submissions to the Victorian Parliament's
enquiry into child abuse by religious, and other, organisations is one
for which all true Catholics I am myself Catholic should be
grateful. Most of them, indeed, are grateful.
1.2.At the same time, in studying the truly vile cases of sexual abuse
within Victoria's Catholic parishes by priests, we must not fall into the
common media error of imagining that they are isolated phenomena.
They are not.
1.3.To appreciate the gravity of the situation, it is insufficient to
concentrate on individual Victorian clergymen's crimes, however
heinous. The circumstances which enabled them to become clergymen
in the first place, and to commit these crimes in repeated abuses of
public trust, need also to be examined.
1.4.A question therefore has to be asked, and asked aloud. How did men
so obviously unfit for Holy Orders which the Catholic Church
considers to be nothing less than one of the Seven Sacraments get to
acquire Holy Orders to begin with?
1.5.In many cases, we shall be able to trace the problem back to faulty
admissions processes within the Melbourne Archdiocese. This
problem proved especially acute between 1967 (the year Archbishop
Justin Simonds prematurely died) and 1996 the year Archbishop
George Pell was installed).
1.6.With those processes, the name of one sinister figure recurs. That
figure is Ronald Conway (1927-2009), who during the relevant period
was employed, on a part-time basis, as archiepiscopal consultant
vetting seminary candidates, and also advising on marriage
annulment procedures. Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 3
R. J. Stove,
1.7.Conway was also a prominent non-fiction author, at the height of his
fame during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. He contributed regular
articles to Quadrant, The National Times (now defunct), The Advocate
(now defunct), The Weekend Australian, The Age, and elsewhere. Several
of his sociological books notably Land of the Lost Weekend, The Great
Australian Stupor, and The End of Stupor? - sold very well.
1.8.Unfortunately Conway totally abused his position of trust as
(unqualified) "therapist", as will be indicated in the pages that follow.
These pages draw largely upon the Broken Rites webpage concerning
Conway (
http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/
nletter/page196-conway.html), and upon subsequent revelations in a
Catholic magazine called The Remnant, based in Minnesota. Attempts
to get journalistic and diocesan action within Australia have been thus
far totally in vain. Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 4
R. J. Stove,
2. THE BROKEN RITES FILE ON CONWAY
The following remarks are taken, verbatim, from the Broken Rites report on
Conway's doings. They supply a good deal of biographical information, as
well as other details well attested in print but not otherwise all that easy to
track down online.
++++++++++++++++
Ronald Conway the hands-on psychologist who
helped the Catholic Church's trainee priests
Broken Rites Australia helps victims of church-related sexual abuse to obtain justice.
By a Broken Rites researcher
For thirty years a prominent Australian Catholic psychologist, Ronald Conway, had a part-time role
in assessing and helping trainee priests in the Melbourne seminary. Conway also worked as a
consulting psychologist in psychiatric hospitals and in private practice, and some of his male
patients say that Conway touched them sexually when they consulted him for professional help.
These former patients say that, during "therapy", they were masturbated by Conway, who
encouraged the patients to touch him sexually in the same way as he touched them.
These disclosures throw new light upon the church's problem of clergy sexual abuse, as Conway was
regarded highly by Australian Catholic leaders.
The seminary was preparing the trainees for their future life of so-called celibacy. In articles that he
wrote for newspapers, Conway pointed out that being "celibate" merely means not being married.
Furthermore, he pointed out, "clerical concubinage and clerical homosexuality have been
commonplace in church history".
Conway himself never married. So, by his own definition, he too was "celibate", even when he was
sexually touching one of his private patients.
We will return to Conway's hands-on therapy later in this article.
Praised by archbishops
Conway died on 16 March 2009, aged in his early eighties. On 26 March 2009, he was
commemorated by a requiem mass in Melbourne's cathedral.Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 5
R. J. Stove,
Cardinal George Pell, of Sydney, sent condolences. Before becoming an auxiliary bishop
in Melbourne in 1987, Pell had been the head of the Melbourne seminary and he is said
to have liked Conway's work in assessing trainee priests.
At the requiem mass, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart gave a homily praising
Conway. Hart acknowledged that Conway had been an adviser to the Melbourne
archdiocese on priestly vocations. He paid tribute to Conway's "immense contribution
to the evaluation of seminarians, the ongoing assistance given to clerical and religious
[people], helping people to discern their vocation."
Hart added: "We shall never know how much following up he did with these people
in some cases, over many years."
A bachelor advising on marriage
Archbishop Hart said that Conway also helped the Melbourne archdiocesan Marriage
Tribunal where Catholic couples must reveal their marital (including sexual)
problems when asking the church for an annulment of an unsuccessful marriage.
Hart said that the Melbourne archdiocesan records "contain many psychological
evaluations, especially in our Marriage Tribunal", written by Conway.
In an article in the Weekend Australian on 21 March 2009, federal politician Tony Abbott
(who himself was originally a trainee priest in a Catholic seminary in New South Wales)
wrote about Conway: "He never contemplated joining the priesthood (as might have
been expected of a bright young man of his temperament in that era) and never seems
seriously to have considered marriage. He seems largely to have come to terms with any
demons of his own and, in any event, chose not to make a spectacle of himself."
To what "demons" was Abbott referring? And what did he mean about Conway not
"making a spectacle of himself?
Conway's career
Ronald Victor Conway (born in either 1926 or 1927) came from humble beginnings.
Educated at Catholic parish schools in Melbourne, he left school early but later returned
to studies, eventually working as a secondary teacher. From 1955 to 1961 he taught
English and history at De La Salle College in Malvern, in Melbourne's inner south-east.
In 1988, aged in his early sixties, Conway published an autobiographical book, Conway's
Way, in which he tells some things (but not everything) about his rise to prominence as a
psychotherapist.
He had a Bachelor of Arts degree which included studies in psychology. In the 1950s, Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 6
R. J. Stove,
psychology graduates were not as numerous as in later decades. In 1960 (according to
Conway's autobiography), Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Eric Seal (a fellow Catholic)
needed a psychologist to help provide counselling to patients. Seal invited Ron Conway
to share Seal's consulting rooms in Collins Street in central Melbourne. From about 1960,
with help from Seal, Conway also developed a role for himself as an honorary
consulting psychologist at a large Catholic hospital in Melbourne, St Vincent's. In 1964,
Seal became the head of St Vincent's psychiatric department, giving Conway a further
boost in a psychotherapy career. Seal and Conway also saw patients at the Catholic
Church's Sacred Heart Hospital, Moreland, in Melbourne's north.
Conway developed contacts with the Melbourne Catholic archdiocesan welfare agency.
Through such avenues, various clients were referred to Conway for private counselling,
which provided Conway with an income.
In the 1970s, Conway lived in a house in Torrington Street, Canterbury (in Melbourne's
east), and many therapy clients visited him there for private counselling. In the early
1980s, he moved to a house in Swinburne Avenue, Hawthorn (also in Melbourne's east),
and he continued seeing clients there.
A number of his male clients say that Conway befriended them during therapy. He
continued associating with them socially, in some cases for many years after the original
consultations. Occasionally, Conway would arrange for a former male therapy client to
move into Conway's house as a live-in friend.
Conway and the drug LSD
Beginning in 1963 (according to Conway's autobiography, page 98), he was involved in
experimenting with psychedelic drugs on patients. He says these drugs eventually
included LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide, which has sometimes also been known as
"acid") and "the milder psilocybin (derived from the magic mushroom)". He says that
such drugs were "stocked in the special restricted cupboards of the hospital pharmacy".
Conway writes: "[At St Vincent's psychiatric department] we helped many a patient
with LSD when all other resources, counselling, medication, psychotherapy, ECT
[electro-convulsive therapy] and even thoughts of psychosurgery, had been abandoned.
From my own work I concluded that no more appropriate substance for the treatment
of obsessive-compulsive neuroses existed than LSD in resourceful hands.
"Its virtual abandonment due to hippy excesses and irresponsible and ignorant
reporting remains one of the great tragedies of modern psychiatry [pages 98-99]."
Newhaven private hospital
Conway's autobiography says that he began his LSD experiments at St Vincent's
Hospital. And former patients say that Conway also administered LSD to them at Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 7
R. J. Stove,
the Newhaven psychiatric hospital which was situated at 86 Normanby Road, Kew, in
Melbourne's inner east.
In the late 1960s and during the 1970s, Newhaven hospital was owned and managed by
Marion Villimek, a member of a "New Age" sect called the Santiniketan Park
Association, also known as "The Family". A leader of the sect, Anne Hamilton-Byrne,
was also an administrator at the Newhaven. Conway, Eric Seal and other therapists
hired consulting rooms there on a sessional basis, and were not involved with the sect.
Newhaven ceased being a hospital in 1992.
Celibacy and abuse
Ronald Conway became one of Australia's most prominent Catholic intellectuals,
writing books and newspaper articles about Australian society. He also appeared in
radio and television discussion programs as a psychologist and social commentator.
When the church's sexual scandals became news in Australia in the 1990s, Conway
sometimes commented on the issues of celibacy and sexual abuse.
Judging from articles he wrote in the 1990s, Conway evidently believed that the
incidence of actual abuse that is, church personnel committing a breach of
professional ethics in their pastoral relationship with children or vulnerable adults
was not as serious as many other people thought.
In July 1996, Christian Brother Robert Charles Best was convicted of indecent assault
(for repeatedly putting his hand inside the pants of an eleven-year-old boy in a
classroom in a Catholic primary school in Ballarat, Victoria). In an article in the
Melbourne Age (25 August 2001), Conway claimed that Brother Robert Best "was seen
by some students as more a nuisance and embarrassment than a threat".
Conway evidently thought that Brother Best's criminal offence and ethical breach were
no big deal.
Conway took a similar elastic view towards the professional ethics of a psychologist by
developing intimate (and sexual) relationships with some of his male patients.
The story of "Bill"
Conway's autobiography says that one of his leisure pastimes was an involvement in
amateur theatre production, during which he met a "sterling young man whom I will
merely name as Bill."
Conway says (page 99): "He [Bill] undertook, with the aid of LSD, a series of
investigative treatments in a private hospital under psychiatric supervision, with myself
as assisting therapist. The treatments were remarkably successful and Bill's gratitude Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 8
R. J. Stove,
knew no bounds."
Conway evidently developed an ongoing friendship with "Bill". It is not clear how long
Bill's LSD treatment continued. After some time, Bill died but Conway says the death
was caused by lymphatic leukaemia, not LSD.
Bill's death caused Conway to "suffer a reactive bout of depression."
In the next paragraph, Conway goes on: "The phenomenon known to practitioners as
transference a kind of ambivalent, dependent (and fortunately temporary) 'falling in
love' with the mentor is quite commonplace. The resourceful psychologist does not
wholly discourage it, but uses the growing attachment as a bridge between the neurotic
personality and more normal relationships. The transference can be of an overtly or
latent homosexual kind as well as the more conventional heterosexual infatuation" (pp.
99-100).
The hands-on therapist
Broken Rites has been contacted by several males who received psychological
counselling from Conway in the 1960s and 1970s. Conway developed intimate (and
sexual) relationships with these patients.
1. "James" told Broken Rites on 17 February 1995 that when he was aged 15 to 16 in
the 1960s he was having behavioural troubles, so his mother sent him to see
Catholic psychiatrist Dr Eric Seal, who in turn referred him to Ronald Conway.
James had counselling sessions for several years at Conway's home, which was
then situated in Torrington Street, Canterbury. Conway also took James to
the Newhaven private hospital where he was placed under LSD as part of
Conway's therapy. James says that, on two occasions, Conway masturbated him
once at Newhaven Hospital while James was under LSD and once at
Conway's home. During these two sessions, Conway also allegedly exposed his
own genitals to James.
2. "Pierre" told Broken Rites: "In my twenties I was having difficulty in forming
relationships, so I sought help from Ron Conway. He treated me for several years
at his house and at the Newhaven Hospital and the Sacred Heart Hospital,
including with LSD. During several of these therapy sessions, he got me to
engage in mutual masturbation with him. Eventually I realised this was not
appropriate and I declined to engage in this, although I continued to associate
with him as a friend. I know that Conway sexualised the relationship he had with
many of his other patients. He justified that behaviour as being part of the
therapy. I know of at least four other men who approached Conway for
assistance and with whom he ended up having a sexual relationship."Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 9
R. J. Stove,
3. "Roger" told Broken Rites: "When I was twenty, I needed a counsellor. I heard
about Conway and started having therapy sessions at his home. He said that I
seemed tense, so he started touching me. At first, it was just holding hands but
later it became more intimate that is, sexual touching. In the late 1970s,
Conway arranged through Dr Eric Seal for me to have a number of sessions at
the Newhaven hospital, where I was given LSD to facilitate Conway's therapy.
This therapy included Conway touching my body in a sexual manner. He also
displayed his own genitals to me. Later I put a stop to this sexual relationship but
we kept up the friendship."
Another ex-patient
"Damien" (a patient of Conway in the 1960s), wrote to Broken Rites on 11 May 2010 and
authorised us to publish his commments:
"Being alone in country Victoria, aged in my mid-twenties, not accepting of my
sexuality and being in the decade of the 1960s, it was not a happy place to be. The
local Catholic priest recommended that I see Dr Eric Seal which I did.
"I had the impression from Dr Seal that I was not an interesting enough case for him. He
suggested that I saw either Ronald Conway or a certain other psychologist; I chose Conway.
"After several sessions with Conway, it was suggested that I undergo LSD therapy in
Newhaven Private Hospital as an overnight patient. It was explained to me that this therapy
was a way to fast-track psychoanalysis and would be very helpful in accepting my sexuality.
Conway, as a psychologist, had no qualifications to administer drugs. I did not understand
this at the time.
"During the last session I came to believe that I had been in the presence of God who
authorized me to lead the sexual life which had been chosen for me.
"Conway then suggested that I continue to see him without the use of LSD.I explained to him
that my finances were stretched and that it was not possible. He said that it was important
that I continue to see him and that if I were willing he would see me at his home in
Torrington Street, Canterbury, gratis.
"What a shock I got when one night he made advances to me and we ended up on the floor
of his sitting room. The room was decorated as if it were the inside of an Egyptian tomb. He
said this should not have happened but that, as it had, we should do it properly in his
bedroom. It was a Spartan room with the bed covers on a single bed already turned down
and electric bar heaters turned on resting on tables either side.
"I was truly shocked as I had no idea of his sexual proclivities. We masturbated each other.
He knew I was disappointed and confused by his actions and I said I did not wish to see him
again. He then began writing to me. I never responded. I kept his letters for a number of
years but destroyed them after our next encounter. We bumped into each other in Collins Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 10
R. J. Stove,
Street, Melbourne.
"We had dinner and he invited me home to see his house in Swinburne Avenue, Hawthorn,
and it was suggested that I come and live with him. I did not accept the offer and, as far as I
was concerned, I wanted no further contact.
"In the early 1990s, when I was 48 years of age, I was a patient in the Freemason's Hospital
and woke up one afternoon to find Ron Conway sitting on my bed holding my hand. He had
heard from someone that I was in hospital. I made it clear that I was not happy with his
presence .He explained to me that he had been following my life through a work colleague of
mine, another psychologist.
"Ron Conway never appeared again."
Screening trainee priests
Conway was not "religious" in the common sense and was not a "churchgoer". In
politics, he was right-wing and was opposed to political "progressives". He was well
known among the followers of the Catholic political commentator B.A. Santamaria.
These Catholic connections helped him to develop his career as a psychotherapist.
From about 1969, he developed a part-time role at Melbourne's Corpus Christi
College seminary, which trained priests for all dioceses in Victoria and Tasmania. He
says he "screened" or "helped" men who had applied to train for the priesthood. The
church authorities also asked Conway to "help" other Catholic priests or religious
brothers who were having problems, especially sexual problems.
After several Catholic priests and religious brothers had been jailed for sexual crimes,
Conway wrote, in an article in the Melbourne Age on 1 August 1996: "Until about 1970
there was no effective psychological screening for candidates wanting to study for the
priesthood or teaching brotherhood. Today that is not the case."
He referred to his own role in the "screening" process in an interview published in
the Age on 6 April 2002, after the media had been revealing more sexual offences
committed by Catholic clergy.
In his autobiography, Conway has told how he came be to be involved in this seminary
work.
He wrote:
"Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s Eric Seal played a growing role as a
consultant to the Catholic Church in matters of psychological or psychiatric importance.
And so began, by association, my own growing involvement with the assessment or
assistance of Catholic clergy, postulants and members of religious congregations who Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 11
R. J. Stove,
happened to be in difficulty. Later I moved towards the role of consultant psychologist
for religious vocations, assessing applicants for the priesthood and the religious life.
Since 1969 I have been an adviser to the Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese and the
Victorian Province in the matter of screening entrants to Corpus Christi seminary" (page
110).
Conway and the strange case of Father Paul David Ryan
It is unclear how the seminary's "screening" worked and to what extent Conway was
involved in it. Broken Rites has investigated the case of one Melbourne trainee
priest, Paul David Ryan and Ronald Conway certainly became involved in this case.
Ryan was originally a trainee priest at the Adelaide Catholic seminary but was expelled
half-way through third year. Despite this, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, of the Ballarat
Diocese in Victoria, accepted Ryan as a candidate for the priesthood in that diocese. In
1972 Mulkearns sponsored Ryan for admission to the Melbourne seminary. Despite his
poor references, Ryan was admitted and he stayed at the seminary for five years.
It is unclear why a reject from the Adelaide seminary was accepted into the Melbourne
seminary. It is not known whether Ryan was one of the applicants who were screened
by Conway at entry but Conway certainly became involved in issues surrounding Ryan
in 1976, as explained below.
Broken Rites possesses copies of church documents, including correspondence between
the rector of the Melbourne seminary (Fr Kevin Mogg) and a Father John Harvey in
Maryland, U.S.A. (who specialized in helping priests with sexual problems). During his
Melbourne seminary training (according to the church documents), Ryan "had been
regularly involved in overt sexual behaviour" with about six other trainee priests. The
acts (the seminary letter stated) included mutual masturbation and also some "more
serious acts".
The church authorities went ahead with Ryan's ordination, which took place in Ballarat
in May 1976, and he was due to be given an on-going appointment to a parish in the
Ballarat diocese for early 1977.
But the news of his ordination alarmed a Ballarat mother, who complained to the
diocesan authorities that Ryan sexually abused her teenage son (with disastrous
consequences for the son) while Ryan was doing work-experience in a Ballarat parish
during in the final year of his course. The church authorities still intended to keep Ryan
as a priest but they realised that this mother would go public if she saw Ryan being
appointed to any Ballarat parish and this would damage the respectable image of the
Catholic Church.
The church authorities went into damage control. In late 1976 (according to the church Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 12
R. J. Stove,
documents) the seminary asked Ronald Conway to interview Ryan. Conway then wrote
a report on Ryan and referred him to Catholic psychiatrist Dr Eric Seal. On 18
November 1976, Dr Seal wrote to the rector of the Melbourne seminary (Fr Kevin
Mogg), saying that he [Seal] had received a comprehensive report about Ryan
from Ronald Conway. Following the reports by Conway and Seal and after further
discussions, the Ballarat diocese "solved" the problem of the angry Ballarat mother
the diocese arranged for Ryan to be given a trip to the United States in 1977.
Church documents (in the possession of Broken Rites) state that Ryan was allowed to
work in parishes in the U.S., where he committed sexual crimes against a number of
American schoolboys. And, after returning to Australia, Ryan was also allowed to work
in parishes in western Victoria, where he again committed sexual crimes (consisting of
repeated indecent touching) against more boys, one of whom later committed suicide.
Paul David Ryan was jailed in Australia in 2006 for his sexual crimes.
It is not known what Ronald Conway thought about the abusive behaviour of Father
Paul David Ryan and similar church-offenders. Did he think (as he said in the case of
Christian Brother Robert Best who was convicted in 1996) that Ryan's kind of criminal
offences and ethical breaches were "more a nuisance and embarrassment than a threat"?
FOOTNOTE
For the full story of Father Paul David Ryan, who was interviewed by Ronald Conway
at the Melbourne seminary, see our article entitled "Church kept an abusive priest
and one victim committed suicide".Stove submission to Victorian parliamentary enquiry Page 13
R. J. Stove,
4. THE REMNANT FILE (MINNESOTA) ON CONWAY
Despairing of getting any action from the Australian Catholic hierarchy on
the topic of Conway's misdeeds even when Conway was dead and, thus,
no longer protected by our ludicrous defamation laws I wrote a series of
articles for a Catholic magazine called The Remnant based in St Paul,
Minnesota. Here are links to the articles in question. The first two
concentrate on Conway; the third refers to him only in passing.
Copies of this material have gone to numerous persons in the public eye,
most notably His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, Catholic Archbishop of
Sydney, as well as to the Brisbane-based Weekend Australian journalist Tess
Livingstone. In neither Cardinal Pell's nor Miss Livingstone's case was
serious action taken.
4.1 "But What About the Lay Abusers?" The Remnant, 31 August 2010
http://rjstove.net/wp-content/uploads/20...Conway.pdf
4.2 "Evil, Be Thou My Good: Homosexuality, Therapy, and the Church"
The Remnant, 31 March 2011
http://www.rjstove.net/articles/Conway_Evil.pdf
4.3 "No Enemies on the Homintern Left" The Remnant, 5 November 2011.
(This article is mainly about Archbishop John Hepworth, but it refers to the
whole Conway business briefly.)
http://www.rjstove.net/articles/Hepworth.pdf
I can only hope that the Victorian parliamentary enquiry will succeed in
putting an end to the cycle of denial which has been so obviously exhibited
by the Catholic Church's hierarchs, not to mention those mass-media
journalists who have been apprised of the situation and who have done
nothing about it.
R. J. Stove,
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/...Robert.pdf
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