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BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS

ISRAEL AT FORTY 1948 – 1988

October 17, 2023
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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I am currently re-reading this book published in 1987. It documents the establishment of ‘Israel’ and its progress over a 40 year period from 1948 to 1988. The mix of religions has certainly helped create and stir up much of the hatred and fighting between believers of all forms of Christianity, the Palestinians and Israelis, and in latter years Pentecostalism has reared its ugly head. Which god do you believe in; Jesus, Jehovah, or Allah? Did the Israelis/Hebrews really play a part in the plot to kill Jesus?? Bribes are rife with each religion competing for power and money. I for one am very pleased that I am an atheist!! For more insight and the facts as to why this area of the Middle East is collapsing into its own kind of hell, please read this book if you can find a copy. Libraries should have it.

EMOTIONAL FEMALE by Yumiko Kudota

January 11, 2022
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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Emotional Female

EMOTIONAL FEMALE by Yumiko Kadota

“A young doctor’s account of what it was like to train in the Australian public hospital system, and how it made her walk away from her dream of becoming a surgeon.”

“A Brilliant young surgeon’s journey through ambition and dedication to exploitation and burnout.”

Yumiko Kadota was a brilliant and hard-working student throughout her school years, always achieving  top exam marks. She continued her scholarly dedication when she was accepted into Medical School with a passionate goal to become a plastic surgeon (Plastics).

Yumiko’s family moved from their home in Japan to Singapore, then on to London, and finally to Australia, as her father’s employment advancements required.  Yumiko came to love Australia, so that even when her parents and sisters eventually returned to live in Japan following  her father’s retirement, Yumiko continued working hard and learning new  surgical skills whenever  she was given the opportunity. Nevertheless,   her dream of getting on to the relevant  Programme eluded her, even though she was proving herself to be an outstanding young surgeon.  Was it racism, sexism, or the constant bullying tactics standing in her way? Was it more to do with who you knew rather than what you knew?

She was expected to work punishingly long hours as well as to study. Not all senior surgeons would give her the opportunity to take part in operations or to perform those within her scope as junior surgeon.  She needed more practice to enable her to get on to the Programme. Why was she constantly thwarted in her ambitions?                                                  

However, after some very tough assignments, both emotional and exhausting, Yumiko did achieve  two of her dream goals and moved onto Plastic Surgery for her surgical resident year and then as plastic surgery registrar in Melbourne.

“I realised too as I left her room, that she was friends with everyone at the hospital…It seemed unlikely that she would stick up for me to the plastic surgeons, her fellow consultants at the hospital. Maybe she was used to this kind of behaviour from them. So what was going on here? Was it me at fault, or these major players at the hospital? I knew I couldn’t complete my Plastics term successfully without their support, their teaching, at the very least without them giving me some of their time. Did that mean that I just had to put up with all the degrading treatment I’d seen…” and that which Yumiko had had to endure herself?                                                                                                                                                       

 

In spite of all these hurdles, and the sacrifices, Yumiko makes it through to her new term as plastic surgery registrar. She was well on her way to becoming a Plastic Surgeon and she continued to strive to fulfil her dream of getting on to the Programme to become a fully qualified and registered plastic surgeon. However, despite all of these successes, twice she missed out getting onto the Programme and it appeared to have nothing to do with her exam results or her surgical experience.   

Tragically, Yumiko has a complete physical and mental breakdown largely due to burnout; her total exhaustion and lack of sleep from working at times, end to end 24 hour shifts with no down time, or even time to eat properly. At times Yumiko became tearful during these extremely difficult and stressful  times, and once was told by an Emergency Registrar to “…Calm down, you’re being an emotional female.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The author discusses at length the sexual harassment, racism, sexism, and malicious manipulation from senior doctors and surgeons, which will shock readers. She also gives examples of situations involving bullying, and the rorting of public hospital  taxpayer funding carried out by surgeons and senior registrars.                      

 I must say that as a reader of Dr Yumiko’s journey I felt the power imbalances and the misogyny she writes about, to be similar to those experienced by women in the  Australian political scene. As the author comments at the end of her book, why doesn’t the Royal College of Surgeons address the lack of institutional leadership shown by her bosses, fellows of RACS, that had led to her poor treatment, and more importantly, which had in turn lost the services of a brilliant young plastic surgeon to the public hospital system.

-Anne Frandi-Coory, 11 January, 2022

‘SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO’ by Jess Hill

June 7, 2021
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men. – Judith Lewis Herman 

All of the references to violent domestic abuse by men in See What You Made Me Do are qualified by this very important statement.

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“When it comes to family conflict and domestic hostility in heterosexual relationships, women are just as capable of being physically and psychologically abusive…to their male partners. But when it comes to coercive control – the most dangerous form of domestic abuse, suffered by 60 to 80 per cent of women who seek help – women make up an extremely small minority of perpetrators. Domestic abuse is gendered. In its most dangerous forms, it is a crime perpetrated by men against  women. “

The gender gap in domestic homicide is crucial, and this is discussed at length in the book, by Jess Hill and others.

Shame and humiliation experienced by young boys, extensive research finds, can predispose them to extreme violence in adulthood.  When abusive men are confronted with these deep-seated feelings, women and children can suffer horrific abuse, and sometimes death, at the hands of those men who refuse to deal with the true source their own pain and frustration. In this well researched book, Jess Hill delves into theories and extensive research investigating why domestic abuse is so prevalent  and escalating in Australia and other countries around the world.  

Studies of domestic abuse perpetrators “do show a higher than average incidence of personality disorder, especially so-called ‘antisocial’ disorders such as sociopathy, psychopathy and borderline personality. “ However, in one major study, the vast majority of abusers were no more disordered than ‘regular people’.

Another study found that  “when abusive men emerge out of violent childhoods…the man is addicted to brutality to keep his shaky self-concept intact…The only times he feels powerful and whole,  is when he is engaged in violence.” A psychoanalyst goes further: “The passion to have absolute and unrestricted control over a living being…is the transformation of impotence into omnipotence.”

Patriarchy …after decades of research and work with victims, it was found that men who subscribe to rigid gender stereotypes are more likely to abuse their partners. ”Study after study finds that men are more prone to abusing if they’ve been: a) socialised into rigid gender roles, b) believe that men are naturally superior, or c) feel their masculinity or superiority has been threatened, particularly if women have not complied with their gender-role expectations. ”

Karen Willis, “a legend of the gender abuse sector” states that those who use violence in their relationships are into power and control … they want to “hurt, humiliate and dominate.”  Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Why this need for control and sense of entitlement?  According to Willis … “Good old fashioned  patriarchy.” …the system of patriarchy gives some men, what they perceive as permission, to use power and control and be dominant…”women and children within their families should be subjugated to them.”

Pornography…

Violent pornography is freely available on the internet  and can be accessed by children. Why isn’t it banned?  The past twenty years has seen hardcore porn go mainstream. It is extremely violent, and degrading to women.  There are alarming and harmful effects manifesting in men and boys who watch it and data from rape and sexual assault  centres…”show  that in the past five years the severity of sexual violence they are dealing with has increased exponentially.”

The chapters on police culture  and  Family Court failings  are harrowing reading. So many women and children have died because police did not do their job, even when a woman was in extreme danger, in fear of her and her children’s lives and had phoned police many times.   Too many violent and dangerous men are given the benefit of the doubt, and are granted custody by Family Courts.

There are statements emerging from those children, now adults,  who were forced to live with their violent  and sexually abusive fathers  because Family Court judges chose to believe the violent perpetrator over the testimonies of their children and the testimonies of abused female partners, who were the children’s protectors.  Family Courts put too much credence on only one  psychiatrist’s report; who often tends to believe the violent perpetrator rather than the obviously terrified children who do not want to live with their fathers,  A too common  accusation aimed at  mothers is that they are ‘guilty ‘ of ‘alienating’ their children against their fathers.

Tech savvy violent men have found new ways to hound and terrify their ex-partners and children. “Tech-facilitated abuse has become so ubiquitous that refuges and domestic violence services are teaming up with specialist risk and safety assessors trained to detect concealed devices and apps, which can even be concealed in a child’s favourite  toy…Most commonly though, a perpetrator tracks his partner though her phone. For $45 per month, you can see everything on someone’s phone, including stuff that’s been deleted.”

This is a must read for all those women fleeing domestic abuse, and for those who wish to help them. There is also a chapter on the last page of the book on which the author has listed help lines in all states and territories, including Immigrant Women’s Health Service and translation services. These numbers include  help with urgent accommodation and transport.

There is also an excellent chapter on successful Women’s Police Stations in other countries and we can only hope that Australian Police and the government see the benefits in these specialized police systems in the battle against the alarming rates of domestic abuse and subsequent deaths of women and children.

Aboriginal Women and Girls.

One chapter concentrates on the domestic abuse and other violent abuse of Aboriginal women and girls. The abuse of Aboriginal women and girls, by their partners, other family members, and white men, is particularly horrific. And once again, police culture, and the police response, to cries of help from these women and girls and their families, is woeful and it has to be said, racist! I can find no other plausible explanation as to why police minimise  the terrible plight of Aboriginal women and children, especially if the perpetrator is a white man.

“The culture that arrived with the tall ships in Sydney Cove was not only deeply patriarchal, but sexist…it was a type of violence introduced to Australia like an invasive species,” writes Robert Hughes. “The brutalization of women in the colony had gone on so long, that it was virtually a social reflex by the end of the 1830s.”

In some ways, nothing has changed in the 21st century Australia.  

In my personal experience, patriarchal religions have institutionalised  the power imbalances between men and women, which in turn helped socialise gender role expectations, all of which perpetuate domestic, and other forms of violence, against women. The ubiquitous spectre of the ‘fallen woman’ with all of its societal connotations,  has also aided and abetted some men’s deeply rooted subjugation of women.    

The author discusses several options for lowering the alarming and ever-increasing rates of domestic abuse and homicides in Australia, while advocating for cultural change in wider society.

This is a remarkable book by Jess Hill, and testifies to her extensive investigative research into the deeply rooted causes of domestic abuse.  The personal stories she has uncovered and writes about are truly heart-rending, and I as a reader, now realise just how little I know about  the suffering that domestic abuse is causing to women and children, not just in Australia, but around the world.

Thank you, Jess Hill, for writing this very important work. 

-Anne Frandi-Coory. 7 June 2021

THE PRINCE – Faith, Abuse and George Pell. by David Marr

March 2, 2021
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS, Catholicism & Paedophilia
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The Prince   by David Marr, reveals a cleric at ease with power and aggression in asserting the conservative prerogatives of the Vatican. He charts Pell’s response – as a man, a priest, an archbishop and a prince of the church – to the scandal that has engulfed the Catholic world: the sexual abuse of children.

The author initially explores the life of George Pell, from his childhood and family life, his time as a seminarian, through to his rise as the most senior cleric of the Catholic Church in Australia.  Pell achieves his ultimate ambition to become a Cardinal and is eventually promoted by Pope Francis to glorified accountant for the Vatican.  Pell’s obvious skill at accounting has saved the Church in Australia many millions of dollars in compensation to victims of clerical abuse via Pell’s establishment of the Melbourne Response in which victims were dissuaded from reporting to police and awarded paltry sums in compensation. This extremely effective solution would not have escaped the attention of the Pontiff which had the added benefit, for a limited time, of silencing growing numbers of victims.

Pell allowed the payouts of meagre sums to victims while spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the establishment of a Catholic university, other buildings and renovations. Pell’s treatment of the families of victims and of victims themselves is heart rending. In one case, the parent of a young victim was so distraught, they cried and berated Pell for allowing the abuse to happen and his response was : “Have you said your hail Marys?” However, by then the tide was turning.

The last few years have been very difficult for Pell, not least because of his realisation that the Catholic Church can no longer escape secular scrutiny no matter how much he has tried to shield the church and its wealth from the scandal of the sexual abuse of children. This book paints a portrait of a man with an inflated ego and an over-riding ambition for absolute ecclesiastical power over Catholics in Australia. A portrait of hypocrisy which allowed a man to sexually abuse children  while making him blind to the suffering of children and their families.

Pell was convinced that most of the world’s problems could be solved by ensuring that Catholics adhered to the rule of Canon Law of which he was an expert. In his mind, Catholics were becoming too lax in their views regarding marriage, the sins of homosexuality, abortion and contraception. He obviously did not consider clerical paedophilia a sin.

With the revelations worldwide of Catholic clergy paedophilia and homosexual relationships among Catholic clergy, celibacy has to be one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated by the Catholic Church.  “Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people” stated Pell, which was ridiculed around the world and I believe, turned even more Catholics away from their church, especially women.

David Marr explores the possibility that Pell’s lust for power sublimates his instinctual sexual desires. He loves the pomp and ceremony of High Mass, the luxurious gowns and head gear. More compensation for celibacy and the suppression of sexual desire?  Marr writes: “Everything about this man suggests the struggle against sex has come at a terrible price. I wonder how much the strange ordinariness of George Pell began sixty years ago when a robust Ballarat school boy decided as an act of heroic piety, to try to kill sex in himself?  How much empathy was crushed along the way? How ignorant has it left him of the human heart? The gamble priests take struggling with sex is that they may live their whole lives without learning what it is to be an adult in the real world, the world outside the (Catholic Church).”

There can be no doubt that Pell’s claims of being unaware that hundreds of children suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his Catholic clergy, especially in Ballarat in Victoria, were untrue. His professed ignorance of the moving of paedophile priests and brothers around parishes following complaints by parents and teachers was laid bare by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse.

In Australia, politicians and the Police force were breaking away from the power of the Catholic Church, and there is no doubt that Pell’s stature within Australia took a terminal hit. Pell’s appearance during the Royal Commission tarnished his inflated reputation in Australia and prompted more of Pell’s victims to come forward. This time police were prepared to listen and to take action.

Pell hid terrible secrets of his own. The nation’s most powerful Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, was eventually jailed  for child sexual assault. which was uncovered and judged in a “trial that convulsed the nation.” Then there are the allegations by several boys that Pell had sexually abused them, and too many of the boys had such similar stories to tell, it is difficult to believe that Pell is as innocent as he claims he is.

In recent years, thousands of cases of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, particularly in Ireland and the USA were being exposed by main stream media; three harrowing inquiries held in Ireland,  the explosive documentary, Spotlight and  “the first, best exposé of how the Catholic Church covered for paedophile priests” published by the Boston Globe in early 2002.

This 3rd edition of The Prince encompasses some relevant testimonies from the Royal Commission,  which dramatically altered the once high status of George Pell and his Catholic Church in Australia.  Marr comments on the brutal and effective questioning of Cardinal Pell by Commissioner McClellan on the bench and Gail Furness QC on the floor at the Royal Commission. This left the cardinal floundering for answers at times.  In one such round of questioning, he made the now infamous statement in answer as to whether he knew of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and the consequential shifting of paedophile priests between parishes, particularly in the case Gerald Ridsdale, Pell replied: “It’s a sad story, but it wasn’t of much interest to me.”

WITNESS; An Investigation Into The Brutal Cost Of Seeking Justice

February 5, 2021
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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WITNESS; An Investigation Into the Brutal Cost of Seeking Justice

by Louise Milligan.

Louise Milligan is an investigative journalist  with ABC  Four Corners and is the bestselling author of CARDINAL; The Rise and Fall Of George Pell  which won the Walkley Book Award and broke massive international news preceding the court case and successive appeals involving Cardinal George Pell.

In February 2021, WITNESS was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards People’s Choice Prize.

In August 2021, WITNESS won the Davitt Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime Book.

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At times, I found WITNESS  very difficult to read. The treatment of victims of sexual abuse in the court room is brutal and intimidating; the seemingly endless humiliation of children in the witness box,  who have come forward to report that they have been sexually abused, is all at once, shocking and heart-breaking.

This book is first and foremost an analysis and critique of the failures of the criminal justice system in sexual assault trials. A masterful and deeply troubling exposé, WITNESS  is the culmination of almost five years’ investigative work for Louise Milligan. Charting the experiences of those who have the courage to come forward and face their abusers in high-profile child abuse and sexual assault cases, Milligan was profoundly disturbed by what she ultimately discovered.

Throughout the book there is a justified sense of outrage at those who choose to treat complainants and witnesses with a hostility causing its own trauma; a special kind of systemic abuse.

Milligan has two decades of experience as an investigative journalist, including her specialist work as a media court reporter and her sustained coverage of the trials of George Pell. Her analysis of the Criminal Justice System in Australia  instructively affirms how the system is outdated and fails to meet the needs of complainants.  She records in-depth interviews with prosecutors, defence counsel, solicitors, judges and academics. It is a gripping revelation of rarely-heard experts’ public opinions about the realities and flaws of criminal judicial procedure.

Why is the cost of seeking justice so monstrously high? Milligan asks.

Her visceral description of the attempted destruction of her own character and credibility in cross-examination by Robert Richter QC relating to her investigative journalism surrounding the case of George Pell, testifies to the brutality of many witnesses’ encounters with the criminal trial process. As Milligan states in the book, she had the ABC legal team supporting her in court and yet she found the experience traumatic. She kept thinking what a deeply traumatic experience it must be for children and young women who have no legal support whatsoever in court.

In her case, virtually every question was asked, she writes, in a belittling or insulting way. By the end of the day, she “had never felt more alone”, despite all her experience, preparation, and team of lawyers. What hope do complainants have, she asks, who lack these resources, and who were already traumatised?

Milligan’s account of her own cross-examination during the Pell committal hearing by Robert Richter QC is exhaustive and compelling. Reflecting on the experience, she repeatedly references the Evidence Act S41 which imposes a duty on the court to disallow improper questions and improper questioning, including questions that are intimidating or humiliating, or are asked in an insulting way.

The author makes it clear that she felt insufficiently protected by this section of the Act, and by other laws giving the court control over how witnesses should be questioned.

“The system is broken. For sex crimes, rates of complaints, prosecutions, and convictions are persistently low. Sexual assault trials require more fundamental changes. Protections against humiliating treatment of witnesses need to be properly enforced by judges and prosecutors. As one QC admits to Milligan, reforms about judicial directions and improper questioning “don’t mean anything if the prosecutor doesn’t intervene and the judge or magistrate isn’t in control of the courtroom.”

Milligan also suggests that complainants would benefit from an expert advisor to assist them in navigating the system, and to protect against unduly “intimidatory tactics”. She argues that sexual abuse victims who are required to give evidence against the accused, should have the right to legal advocates in court. She discusses this issue with several barristers and judges as an integral part of her research and the way forward.

So many of the formal protections that witnesses deserve already exist: judicial intervention powers; legislative protections against demeaning and misleading questioning; complaints mechanisms. She delves into the “emotional architecture” of Australia’s criminal courts, in particular, the trial culture of élite defence barristers, which one source memorably describes as “a very lucrative psycho-politics of humiliation”.

“[Witnesses/Victims] come before the court, to be cross-examined, potentially by a fierce advocate, with years of experience, completely alone.  To have to relive their disgusting trauma and to have it doubted again, with no one to make sure that their human rights are not being abrogated, that the Evidence Act is not being breached, that the barrister isn’t acting in a way that breaks the rules he or she is bound by. “

“Yes, there is a judge and a prosecutor, but so often, for a multitude of reasons, they do not do it as well as they might.”

Dr Mary Iliades, a criminologist from Melbourne’s Deakin University writes in a 2019 paper on the subject: “The reluctance to recognise victims as anything other than a prosecution witness, stems from a concern that victims will invite potentially subjective and thus prejudicial submissions on matters of state concern which could compromise the objective and public nature of the criminal justice system and hinder an accused  person’s due process rights to a fair and impartial trial.”

“Essentially, this means that the law is concerned that elevating the role of the complainant witnesses – victims – will give an unfair advantage to the Crown in proving the prosecution case beyond reasonable doubt and that people accused of, say, child rape, won’t get justice. But the flow-on consequences of these concerns are not good for victims.”  Testament to which this impressive investigation by Milligan lays bare.

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This is a book that had to be written. Thank you, Louise Milligan, for taking on this monumental task.

-Anne Frandi-Coory.  5 February, 2021

‘Father Bob – The Larrikin Priest’ by Sue Williams

December 15, 2020
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS, CATHOLIC CHURCH & Its Institutions
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Since reading Sue Williams’ biography, Father Bob – The Larrikin Priest, I have taken the time to read a few reviews.

I began to wonder if the people who wrote those reviews of Williams’ book, had read the same book I had just read!  To me, this is about the life of a sincere and hardworking Good Samaritan who may have been a larrikin, but that moniker alludes to the very least of what drives this priest. Maybe ‘The Rebel Priest’ would have been more appropriate? From the very beginning it appeared that the Catholic Church was not a fan of Father Bob Maguire. The driving force behind Father Bob’s work with his many charities was the welfare of the hundreds of street kids in and around Melbourne during Father Bob’s tenure as parish priest of South Melbourne’s St Peter’s and St Paul’s Catholic Church.

Throughout the book, associates and others who worked with Father Bob over decades describe him as having a razor sharp wit and an irrepressible sense of humour.  These attributes surfaced frequently during his sermons from the pulpit, at weddings, funerals and baptisms …still his Sunday services were always well attended.  There were also many people who disliked the priest and some of his methods, but most could see that he genuinely cared and worked tirelessly raising money for his various charities and fighting for the safety and wellbeing of homeless children.

Bob Maguire’s own childhood was troubled ; his father was an alcoholic who spent most of any wages he earned on alcohol. The young  Bobby  often saw  his mother being beaten by his father, and there was very little food to feed herself and her children. On several occasions the  family were evicted from their rental accommodation because they couldn’t afford to pay the rent. There were many immigrant families in Melbourne at the time and most were struggling to survive.

There is so much life lived by this humble priest, readers will have to read his biography to gain an insight into this incredible man and what he has achieved in his lifetime. He did have a wicked sense of humour, but I can see how it may have helped to ameliorate the heartbreak he witnessed every day; children on the streets selling their bodies to paedophiles so they could buy food and drugs. Most had run away from home to escape violence, sexual abuse and extreme poverty. Death by suicide was not uncommon.  As children often said to him, “You helped us and didn’t want anything in return.”  He has worked in Melbourne since the 1960s and is still working with the poor and homeless in 2020.

Father Bob was constantly on the move working with high profile celebrities, business and sports men and women,  to raise funds for his Father Bob Maguire Foundation and his other charities, and humour was a large part of his repertoire, some being of the view that he would have been a great stand-up comic.   He also used shock tactics, such as jokes about his Catholic religion, to get his audiences’ attention, and then motivated, to part with their money. As he often remarked, he was used to begging for money and food. His jokes did not endear him to the Catholic hierarchy in Australia. Here is a description in the book of one of his irreverent comedic appearances:

“He dressed up as a nun and introduced himself as Sister Roberta… telling his audience that people were sometimes more willing to donate to causes introduced by women, because people assumed they’d be speaking from the heart rather than by men who spoke from the head. Other churches have women priests, but this is an opportunity to have a male nun. This goes to show how far I have to go to raise awareness and money for the Father Bob Maguire Foundation …I’m seventy-four, fat and bald but my face is my fortune, which is why I’m broke!”

When he was finally given his own permanent parish in South Melbourne, Father Bob decided very early on that he wanted to go out into the community and help homeless children because they certainly wouldn’t be coming into his church for help. However, his unorthodox methods were not approved of by Archbishop Denis Hart or George Pell, and eventually they would evict him from his parish presbytery in the grounds of St Peter’s and Paul’s Parish Church in his mid seventies. They threw him onto the streets of Melbourne to join the very homeless people he had worked so hard for, and was still helping.  Their excuse was that he was at retirement age for all priests, but this proved to be untrue, as many priests are permitted to work beyond the age of 75 years if they were able to. There is a dire shortage of Catholic priests across the world.  George Pell the ‘arch conservative’ opined that Catholicism in Australia had become “too lax” and he had been working to keep the Catholic Church in Australia  in the depths of conservatism whereas Father Bob was a great supporter of Vatican ll and his parish grew exponentially in response when he made changes to the celebration of the Mass, such as facing the congregation, and other modernisations.  Denis Hart and George Pell had Father Bob in their sights … they wanted him gone from the South Melbourne parish, the only secure home he had ever known. The conservative view was that prayer and blessings  were more beneficial to the Church and its coffers than raising money to help the homeless and the poor.

He was evicted with very little notice on 1 February, 2012, although he had known for some time that he was in the sights of ‘enemies’  who sought to destroy his lifetime’s work. His list of detractors and ‘haters’ was headed by Tony Abbott, Derryn Hinch, Denis Hart and George Pell. In a disgusting breach of trust, Derryn Hinch had earlier invited Father Bob onto his radio show and immediately attacked him, accusing him of stealing money from his trust funds for the poor and homeless. The priest had believed that Hinch would help him to raise funds for his Foundation and was devastated at the accusations; he barely knew what to say or how to respond.

Readers will be appalled like I was at the treatment Father Bob received by an extremely wealthy Church whose hierarchy was not pleased that Father Bob was working on the streets of Melbourne and raising huge amounts of money for the homeless and mentally ill instead of the Catholic Church!  In the end the years of Hinch’s “money laundering’ and “embezzlement”  attacks on Father Bob and his charities were proven to be groundless. Those who worked with Father Bob knew the accusations were vexatious. Even so, Derryn Hinch told his radio listeners that “Bob Maguire made a pact with the devil.” Most readers will know by now that Derryn Hinch will do anything to attract attention to himself; over the years he has proved to be a shallow man with absolutely no integrity whatsoever!

The ‘Night of the Long Knives’ as Father Bob and his supporters called it, was the culmination of a concerted effort to get rid of Father Bob, despite the outrage of his supporters, associates, benefactors,  and his South Melbourne parishioners. Archbishop Denis Hart  “… in a highly unusual move, completely without precedent,  issued a damning statement about Father Bob direct to the press. The first the priest knew about it was when he started receiving calls from journalists to gauge his reaction.” Is it any wonder the Catholic Church today is drowning in global scandals from money laundering, bank fraud, embezzlement and of course, the sexual abuse of thousands of children worldwide?

I think the corruption and sheer hypocrisy of Catholicism was made crystal clear by this: Over the years, George Pell has been accused by several boys of historical sexual abuse of which there is not enough evidence, apparently, to convict him, but one thing is very clear: The Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse of Children, found it was implausible that George Pell didn’t know that hundreds of children were being sexually abused by Catholic clergy on his watch.  Yet George Pell was recently invited to the Vatican and given the red carpet treatment, while the Church saw fit to evict Father Bob from his beloved parish. The irony is deep and disturbing. Denis Hart refuses to allow his priests to inform police of the sexual abuse of children confessed within the sanctity of the confessional!

After his eviction Father Bob became extremely ill with a life- threatening condition and had to stay in a rehab hospital for months. The illness was brought on by his extreme distress at being ‘sacked’ by his Church. But Father Bob had huge support within his community and outside it.  The Victorian Electoral Trades Union gave him a tiny back room of an office whose rent had been paid for the following three years. There Father Bob had a single bed, a rug on the floor for his beloved dog to sleep on and not much else. Later his supporters and associates, which included men and women he had helped years before when they were homeless, starving  children,   and who were now thriving, helped to set him up with a computer and he now communicates with his parishioners via the internet…he also has many followers on social media.

One of the biggest travesties and injustices in the whole saga of the harassment of Father Bob by the Catholic Church and the Vatican by the way, is that several paedophile priests and brothers in Australia, once they were released from prison,  were set up in accommodation and cared for by the Church, for the rest of their miserable lives. One of those who was never convicted in a court, because the Catholic Church, including George Pell, refused to take legal action against  him,  was Father Kevin O’Donnell  who raped the two daughters of Anthony and Chrissie Foster when they were five years old, including many other children, on the grounds of a Catholic School.  O’Donnell spent his last years well cared for and supported by his church, and the flat he was provided with had daily visits by young boys, and although complaints were made to the Church, again no action was taken.

Read the full post on my blog HERE about the case of Father Kevin O’Donnell: 

Just a note here about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic Clergy, and how much it affected Father Bob. He couldn’t fathom why the Church did not turn over those priests and brothers who sexually abused children. So when a young man came to see him at his presbytery to tell him he and other boys had been sexually abused by a man they called ‘Big George’ aka George Pell, father Bob immediately contacted someone he knew connected with Victoria Police and informed them of the allegation. He befriended and supported the man who later became one of his loyal volunteers. Father Bob believes in hindsight that this made George Pell a dangerous enemy  and set him on his course to undermine Father Bob and his Foundation. However, although George Pell and Denis Hart finally rid themselves of this ‘annoying’  priest, they could not destroy him or his charities; he was loved too much and there were now hundreds of grown men and women who remembered his love and kindness over past decades. He also was a talented  entrepreneur who was able to convert dormant, empty Church properties into sports facilities, a boxing club,  day care centre, produce store, affordable office space and of course cheap housing for the poor and homeless, space for community groups and a children’s playground. The income in turn helped him to finance his charities.

At least the secular sector of Australia has seen fit to bestow many awards upon Father Bob over the years. This is a biography about a truly remarkable, and humble  man who is quick to remind all and sundry, that his  life is guided by the teachings of Jesus,  not of Catholicism.

BOOKS written by Anne Frandi-Coory

September 15, 2020
BOOKS Authored by Anne Frandi-Coory, BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS, CATHOLIC CHURCH & Its Institutions
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Whatever happened To Ishtar? – A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers. 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions cover: pub.2010-2019

   Whatever Happened To Ishtar? A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For generations Of Defeated Mothers. 4th edition pub. 2020 in paperback and Kindle ebook.

Dragons, Deserts and Dreams: Poems, Short Stories & Artworks. 1st edition pub.2017. 2nd edition pub. 2020 in paperback and Kindle ebook.

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For more information about the author of  these books, along with reviews:

Anne Frandi-Coory  works from her home studio in Melbourne as a painter, poet, short story writer and book reviewer. In 2010 she published the bestselling Whatever Happened To Ishtar? A Passionate Quest To Find Answers for Generations Of Defeated Mothers. It is a raw and powerful memoir woven into her Italian and Lebanese family history, over-arched with the detrimental effects  patriarchal Catholic Church dogma  inflicted on generations of women and children…  Continued  HERE: 

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Anne’s story is one of lost generations…

What is most fascinating about ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’ are the ancestral genealogies of the author’s Lebanese father and her Italian mother. This does assist readers to understand what hardships 19th century immigrants to the United Kingdom and New Zealand endured. With no access to birth control, women faced multiple pregnancies or secretly resorted to self-induced abortions.

The personal stories Anne has researched for this book go some way to explain why her parents were compelled to make the life choices they did. This memoir will stay in your memory as it covers universal issues of female sexuality, women’s roles and limited options, mental illness, and societal harsh judgments that have defeated mothers for generations… Continued HERE: 

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All three books by Anne Frandi-Coory are available in paperback and Kindle ebook format here at  AMAZON BOOKS

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 *LEBANESE FAMILY TREE AND PHOTOS PAGE LINK HERE*

*ITALIAN FAMILY TREE AND PHOTOS PAGE LINK HERE*

THAT DEADMAN DANCE by Kim Scott. A Book Review

April 29, 2020
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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For me, it was a serendipitous  moment when I came across That Deadman Dance – a literary masterpiece by Kim Scott.

During this coronavirus lockdown, I was searching through my home library shelves for books I hadn’t yet read. I received this particular book as part of a prize for having one of my poems accepted for publication in a literary magazine.  It turned out to be one of the most beautifully and poetically crafted books I have ever read. The fact that it is set in the early colonization period of Australian history makes it even more relevant on this 250th anniversary year of James Cook’s arrival on the shores of Australia.

Bobby Wabalanginy is the spiritual protagonist throughout this incredible story; oh, there were others like Wanyeran, Dr Cross’ beloved friend.  Those two were like brothers and were even buried in the same grave on a mound…until settlers trampled and desecrated it instead of allowing Time to whiten the bones and Rain to wash them out to sea together. But even when he was a small child, Bobby could ‘see’ things others missed. He wanted so much to believe in the white colonists, even though not all in his extended family, especially its tribal elders, trusted the ‘Horizon People’ …but wasn’t Dr Cross just like one of his tribal elders, wise and just?

Dr Cross was one of the First Contact leaders; he, Bobby and Wunyeran, were united in their desire to share all things, and to learn from each other. After all, wasn’t that the peaceful, traditional way of Bobby’s tribe, and all other Aboriginal tribes throughout their country? Cross was a teacher of his white man’s history and he wanted to learn about Bobby’s people and their history in return. Bobby and Wunyeran grew close to Cross and could sleep in his hut or eat with him, and at times when they disappeared for days, Cross understood, always, even though it made other settlers nervous.

Cross was to write  of his dear friend Wunyeran; ‘He has the most intelligent curiosity…’ However, it was a characteristic they both shared. Cross and his superior agreed that their colonial outpost needed to build strategic relationships with the Indigenous peoples.  ‘We are outnumbered, and this is their home.’ One wonders at this point what might have been.

After the untimely death of Wunyeran, and subsequently the death of his dear friend Dr Cross due to that settler’s ‘cough’, everything began to change; dark days were emerging across the colonies.  Eventually, Aboriginals were again relegated by the colonizers to mere ‘blacks’ and ‘savages’; they could now be shot for climbing over fences the settlers had built to keep in their livestock and to keep the ‘blacks’ out. In the end, kangaroos disappeared, Aboriginal plants, tubers, were destroyed and their land trampled by livestock, their trees cut down for pasture. Even the whales had disappeared from their waterways.

Bobby was a dancer; light of limb, an actor, a storyteller, who could translate his ancestors’ lives and traditions through dance and cultural language.  In the final, humiliating years Bobby had left to him, he was reduced to ‘entertaining’ settlers  on the streets who sometimes ‘paid’ him a few coins if he pleased them. Yes, this is how Bobby’s ideals of mutual sharing and learning had ended…in a dead man’s dance of finality… evoking a time when the Aboriginal Noongar people of Western Australia first encountered the “Horizon People”: those British colonists, European adventurers, and whalers, ghost-like, intent on colonizing a land both harsh and seemingly of limitless future ‘civilized’ development.

“Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Sure, he grew up doing the Deadman Dance – those stiff movements, those jerking limbs – as if he’d learned it from their very own selves; but with him it was a dance of life, a lively dance for people to do together…”

Heartbreakingly, Bobby, deep down inside,  knew the outcome from the start. But Bobby being Bobby, embracing two very different cultures as he had, clung desperately to his belief in mutual understanding, until the smallest, remaining whiff of hope had vanished forever into senseless killing, rape of their spiritual land, and the rape of their women.  “We thought making friends was the best thing,” he says. “We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn’t want to hear ours.”  But the colonizers could  not understand Bobby’s language, or interpret the deep significance of his dance.

“The man, scratching and making marks,” Wunyeran told them, “has hair like flame but keeps it covered. Cross.” It was a difficult word to pronounce. Wunyeran was patient, explaining it… “Yes, Dr Cross they call him. I slept in his shelter,” he said, and accepted the admiration of his fellows. “He is a man who scratches in his book all the time.”

“When Bobby Wabalanginy told the story, perhaps more than his own lifetime later, nearly all his listeners knew of books and the language in them. But not, as we do. You can dive deep into a book and not know just how deep until you return gasping to the surface, and are surprised at yourself, your new and so very sensitive skin.  As if you’re someone else altogether, some new self, trying on the words.”  That Deadman Dance is such a book in my view.

The last foreboding paragraph of the book is abstract in its telling, but we, the intuitive readers, know exactly what it foretells.

That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In poetic prose, it explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.

This is such a moving subject, and Scott’s research is impeccable. He uses settlers’ diary entries and traditional stories passed down through generations of Indigenous elders. However, you will not read about any vivid acts of violence; the words are sheer poetry, even when there is violence. Scott tells us so much with so few words.

Kim Scott has the moral authority to these stories of his country because he is a descendant of the Noongar People who have always lived on the south coast of Western Australia where the early whaling settlements brought in sailors, soldiers and scouting colonists. That Deadman Dance is the winner of the Miles Franklin Prize and many other awards.

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-Anne Frandi-Coory 29 April 2020

‘GHOST RIVER’ by Tony Birch. A book review.

March 17, 2020
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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Tony Birch, the author of Ghost River, is fascinated by stories of society’s fringe dwellers. He grew up in the slums of Fitzroy in Victoria in a one-bedroom terrace house, the son of an Irish Catholic mother and a father whose ancestry includes a strong Aboriginal line that can be traced back to Tasmania. He describes childhood memories of his beloved Yarra river in Melbourne as central to his imaginative thinking and for me this was evident throughout his beautifully written novel Ghost River.  As I turned the pages of the book, I couldn’t help wondering about the two adolescent boys who became soul mates by chance and circumstance, and whether their story is in fact more memoir than fiction. The enduring pathos, grips the reader from the first page to the last, intertwined as it is with the love and respect that grows between the boys and the homeless, alcoholic men who live on the polluted banks of the river, behind the factories of Fitzroy.

The boys,  Ren and Sonny, each with his own separate life dramas and hardships, seem to have an acute understanding of life and the valuable lessons they can learn from each other. They help and comfort the homeless men as much as they are able, despite their youth and maybe because of their own loneliness.

Set in the slums of Collingwood, the boys cherish their escape route to freedom along a secret, tangled trail  to the Yarra in the summers of late 1960s and early 1970s. Birch’s nostalgia for his formative years in the slums and the housing estates of Richmond somehow shines through the bleakness of the environment and the circumstances in which Ren and Sonny live. Theirs is a world in which a disadvantaged boy lives by his wits, constantly on edge while on the run from neighbourhood thugs, a dangerous, crooked policeman, weird next door neighbours, and obligations no young lad should have to fret about.

The friendship between Ren and Sonny sustains them both, with a little help from Ren’s mother, especially when the violence at home becomes intolerable for Sonny.  But the overriding mood throughout the book is one of hope for a better future. The title alludes to the idea that beneath the Yarra lies a ghost river that takes good souls down to its peaceful depths, the ‘resting place’ that the homeless men yearn for at the end of their pitiful lives. However, the men caution the boys that the Yarra rejects the bad souls whose bodies it leaves to float around or wash up on its banks.

As fate would have it, all is eventually threatened by destructive excavations along the river which the boys learn is in preparation for the planned South Eastern Freeway.  The heartbroken boys try desperately to save their homeless friends but time is running out for the men and the Yarra as they know it, and one by one the homeless men succumb to what they believe is inevitable.  The question is, will Ren and Sonny survive the upheaval?

-Anne Frandi-Coory.  17 March 2020

‘Out Of The Forest’ by Gregory P. Smith. A Book Review

February 26, 2020
BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS
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Out Of The Forest

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Most people who follow me on Social Media, and those who read my Blog ‘My Life and Rhymes; A Life in Two  Halves’ would find some common ground reading this engrossing biography ‘Out Of The Forest; The true story of a recluse’ written by Gregory P. Smith, about his childhood filled with violence and sexual abuse. And if that wasn’t soul searing enough, his mother one day out of the blue, piled Gregory and his sisters into the family car on the pretext of going on a road trip to visit an aunt they had never heard of. It eventually became apparent to the children that their mother had ‘dumped’ them like so much household garbage, at some sort of institution which resembled a small castle. She then hastily drove off never to be seen or heard of again for some time.

Once inside the orphanage, governed by the Catholic order of ‘Mercy’ nuns, Gregory is immediately separated from his sisters. The siblings do not see each other again while incarcerated in the orphanage, and Gregory soon realizes that the nuns hate all children, but more especially boys. Gregory is regularly sexually abused and humiliated by teenage girls who as ‘inmates’ have to bath the boys. He experiences, and witnesses, the cruel deprivation and humiliation of boys at the orphanage, particularly those boys who wet their beds.

When Gregory and his sisters are collected from the orphanage by their mother and taken home, they find everything is as it was before, only worse. Their father is even more violent after long sessions drinking at the pub…one of Gregory’s sisters later recalls that often after their father had severely beaten Gregory, usually while he was trying to protect his sisters from their father’s wrath, it left blood on the walls and her brother covered in blood. Teenaged Gregory finally ran away from home to live on the streets.

The next few years are spent living on the streets, stealing money and food, and running from the police. At one stage Gregory was incarcerated in a youth correction facility. As he grew older, his eruptions of violent anger involved him in countless drunken brawls. Occasionally he was able to find employment, at times earning a reasonable amount of money, but his demons wouldn’t let him be; his childhood trauma ran too deep.

While living on the streets, he mostly kept hunger at bay by rummaging through rubbish bins for discarded food. Calling himself ‘William H. Power‘ had enabled Gregory to hide from who he really was (albeit superficially),  and where he came from. There was too much of his past shadowing him in and around Tamworth where he was born so he wanted to put as much distance between that town and his battered mind and body as he could. There was also the matter of his juvenile police record; he didn’t want anyone to alert the police as to his whereabouts.

Homeless Gregory morphs into an anonymous, yet familiar vagabond wandering around  towns and byways; thumbing rides, walking for hundreds of  kilometres along lonely country roads, and skirting isolated homesteads. One day, while Gregory was sitting in one of the   parks he frequented, wearing disheveled clothing and sporting a long, scraggly beard; talking philosophy with a group of Indigenous people and ‘hippy backpacker types’ it seemed that he was creating quite the impression.  A few people believed he was Jesus Christ, returned to earth. “Come and listen to this! Come and listen. You should hear what he’s got to say! Hey, man, it’s Jesus! He’s back!” they shouted. He admits he was drinking port and smoking pot at the time:

“I was much more comfortable being plain old William H. Power than I was being Jesus H. Christ… While I was only a god for one night, there were plenty of other times I found myself around a fire on the beach with a group of people letting my inner guru out. The dope would flow and they’d inevitably start to share their thoughts on the deep stuff. Metaphysics is big in Byron Bay. Time and time again I’d be the centre of attention, the group in my thrall with the added drama of being able to see my mountain [up in the rain forest]  from the Byron Bay beach.“

Surely there is not such a great leap from there in the park, preaching to followers, to being a lecturer at a university?

However, Gregory spends most of the following years, in varying states of oblivion, homeless and later in the rain forest, most of the time spaced out on drugs and grog. There is a future episode which brings Gregory’s homeless and aimless life into sharp focus: he discovers, following a long period of socialization, an official record of his marriage to a woman, of whom he has no recollection, much less the actual marriage and later, the divorce.

The peace and solitude of the rainforest in northern New South Wales keeps calling  Gregory back and he subsequently makes himself a  permanent home there for more than a decade, where he survived mostly on bush tucker. He built a bed made from ferns and established a constant campfire.  He had decided earlier on not to kill any more animals for food after he had killed and eaten a small wallaby he caught in a trap. The guilt got to him; he missed the little creature which he often spied wandering around his camp. From that point on his health began to deteriorate rapidly.

The long process of rehabilitation back into human society had its genesis in an epiphany which the hermit experiences while lying beside his campfire, in a near comatose state, suffering from malnutrition and long-term gastroenteritis. His ancestors visit him, and while sitting around the camp fire, they tell him ancestral stories and then finally cajole him into leaving the forest and getting help. Otherwise, they caution him sternly, he will die.

With a mind cloaked in a dense fog, Gregory has no memory as to how he managed to walk out of the forest and find help; he had lost track of time and found it difficult to concentrate on anything at all. His body was emaciated and poisoned by rotten grog, drugs, and lack of food. His ancestors wouldn’t let him rest and hassled him with ghostly conversation.

After a long battle and considerable help from many people along the arduous road to recovery, Gregory finally achieves success as a scholar eventually gaining  a PhD in Social Sciences.  He is later employed as a university lecturer.  Oh how far this remarkable man has travelled.

The author informs the reader that he chose Social Sciences as the subject of his thesis because he wanted to study how human society actually functioned. It had been a mystery to him up to that time.

-Anne Frandi-Coory.  26 February 2020