True Love
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the mid 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
Beverley and I had not been in the cold and draughty wooden manse at Ararat for very long before a knock came at the front door one day and I ushered in to my sparsely furnished study Mrs. Irena Walsh. Irena had attended church the previous Sunday and listened carefully to what I had to say. She came to me about her daughter, Kathy, sixteen years of age, and asked if I could do something to break through the girl’s moody attitude. Irena and her husband, Clarrie, lived with their eight children in a small, deplorable wooden cottage on the outskirts of town. Clarrie was a kitchen hand up in J Ward.
J Ward was very important to the economy of Ararat. It housed the 48 worst psychiatrically insane murderers in Victoria. Most of these people had committed foul murders, often multiple murders after previous convictions, while in a state of unsound mind, and were detained “at the Governor’s pleasure”. A number of them had marked on their papers “never to be released”.
I was to become chaplain of J Ward and visit the men in their solitary wards. J Ward itself was a relic of Victoriana. A hundred years of age, built of immense blocks of blue granite, with eighteen feet high walls surmounted by rolls of barbed wire. Every gate and window was barred with one and half inch thick steel bars. With the most incredible security system imaginable, J Ward stood on top of a hill just outside Ararat.
It gave employment to about 200 locals who were responsible for the feeding, housing and guarding of the 48 psychiatrically insane prisoners. There was no programme of rehabilitation and very few people ever came out of J Ward unless they did so under the direct authority and supervision of the General Superintendent of the Aradale Mental Hospital where some 900 psychiatrically disturbed people were contained in minimum security on the other side of town.
Clarrie Walsh worked as a kitchen hand in the gaol. Clarrie’s other great interest in life was buying rabbits from the rabbiters in the area and the young fellows who would go out and trap rabbits for pocket money on a weekend. He had a large refrigerator in the backyard of their house where hundreds of rabbit carcasses could be stored until picked up by a refrigerated truck.
Clarrie and Irena Walsh lived in poverty because of Clarrie’s drinking. Irena was a faithful wife and mother who had put up with as much as would be expected of any woman. A number of her children had drinking problems and several had gone off the rails.
She poured out the story of one member of her family after the other and then came to the sixteen year old Kathy. Kathy stayed lying on her bed most of the day. She was a constant truant from school, was impossible to discipline and was extremely aggravated and moody. Irena asked me if I might come and talk with her to see if I could find out what was making her so moody.
I called a day or so later and Irena took me into Kathy’s room. Her mother sat down on one of the beds opposite while I started to talk to Kathy. I knew it would be impossible to talk to her with Mother sitting nearby so I asked Irena to leave the room and she left me talking with Kathy by herself.
Kathy was not going to talk to anybody who was a friend of her mother, particularly someone who was coming to put her right. For a long time I sat and said nothing and my silence seemed to arouse her curiosity. I knew it was useless talking about any of the things that one would normally want to raise with a sixteen year old girl. She was a very well developed girl, in reality a woman but still with the mind of a teenager.
I wondered what subject might attract her interest. In one of those moments that can only later be assessed as being a matter of divine guidance, I decided to start talking to her about the place where her father worked. I said very simply, “I have just found out that your Dad works in the kitchen at J Ward. You know I have only seen that prison this week for the first time. It is probably the most depressing building in Ararat.”
I did not ask her for any comment nor did I ask her any question. But it was as if I had set off a trigger in her mind and she started speaking straight away. “It is the most depressing place in Ararat. It is a horrible place! They should not allow it! The men in there live like animals. They are all caged and penned up and none of them is ever allowed to leave. And some of them don’t deserve to be there.” A whole torrent of statements came out on what was obviously to her a very emotional issue. I suddenly realized I had the passport into this girl’s mind and understanding.
I agreed with her and told her that only a day earlier I had called upon the Psychiatric Superintendent and the Prison Governor and presented my credentials and they had approved me becoming chaplain to “J Ward”.
“Does that mean you can get in at any time?” I replied that I had regular hours of visiting but that I also had a pass and I had been given a huge key about ten inches long. While it did not operate any of the external doors of the prison, allowed me to go from cell to cell without having to call for warders to lock me in or out of each cell. I had that key in my possession at home.
She looked at me with eyes wide open. “Have you visited everybody there?” I told her that as yet I had visited nobody in my role as a chaplain except the prison governor and he had introduced me to a number of senior members of staff and I had looked around the prison and that I would make my first visits the following week.
In one of the most amazing changes of mood I have ever experienced, she swung her legs off her bed and fell down at my knees as I sat on the side of the bed opposite. She put her hands together in the attitude of prayer and looked up into my face. “Please, please, you must help me. There is a man in J Ward who does not deserve to be there. I have been trying to help him and no one will listen to me.”
I helped her get back to sitting on the side of the bed and asked her to tell me who it was. The story came out with details tumbling over each other.
Her father had come home one night talking about a man who helped him in the kitchen by the name of Reginald Simpson O’Shea. Reginald Simpson O’Shea was a notorious criminal. He had been in prison for fourteen years, almost all of that time in J Ward. I remembered his name. There was something about it that rang a bell far back in the recesses of my memory. I was not sure but I had the idea he was a multiple rapist who had killed one or more of his young girl victims.
Kathy Walsh had heard her father talking about him as one of the helpers in J Ward’s kitchens. Her father had said he was a different bloke and in spite of all of the publicity he had had over the years he was just a normal man with average interests and intelligence. He was the most trustworthy one amongst those who worked in the kitchen and in fact he was the only one whom he really considered sane.
Kathy listened with great interest. The events that surrounded his life were so far removed in history that she knew nothing about him.
Something, however, helped her feel sympathy for him. She too felt a prisoner, trapped in her own home. She looked at me and said “Mr. Moyes I know more about Reginald Simpson O’Shea than either of my parents. But I can’t tell you now. Can I come round to your house and see you. And whatever I tell you, you must promise never to tell my mother and father.” I looked at her and said “Kathy, I would like you to come and talk with me but I never make promises like that. All that I can say is that I will treat your words to me with the utmost of seriousness and confidentiality. If you would like to come, come and see me tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. when I get back from High School.”
The following morning Kathy was waiting for me. She undid her blouse and took out a pile of letters and I realized that all of them had been written by Reginald Simpson O’Shea. She had written to him at the prison after hearing her father talk about him and a constant correspondence had flowed between the two with the letters being addressed to her care of the Ararat Post Office. Her parents were not aware that she had been conducting this daily correspondence with a man who was old enough to be her father. She started to pour out her story of how she came to know him. I realized that this sixteen year old girl was deeply in love with this multiple rapist and murderer. I read some of his letters. They were full of romance, affection and earnest pleas for help from her. The letters were unbelievably gushy, teenage sentimentality, the kind of love writing that you would expect to read in a “True Confessions” magazine that used to be purchased in those days at interval in the picture theatres of the land.
Kathy then showed me some other letters that she had, much more serious looking letters on official letterheads. I realized that she was running a campaign to have him released on pardon. She had organised a petition and it had been signed by a large number of people most of whom were living outside of Ararat. The petition indicated that Reginald Simpson O’Shea was of reformed character, was a model prisoner, had been faithful in his duties as a kitchen hand and had all the character evidences of a complete change of heart.
She showed me some letters that she had written to all of the local politicians, councillors, the gaol governor and other dignitaries. She also had a letter written by one of the local school teachers in the community who worked part time at the gaol and this indicated that Reginald Simpson O’Shea was a man of calibre who had proved to be thoroughly trustworthy and reliable within the gaol.
Kathy then implored me to sign the petition and to also add my support for his being pardoned or at least having a fresh trial.
I looked at the letters for some time before replying. I realized that what I was going to say next would either depress her or make her extremely angry. I tried to express it the best way I knew how. I looked at her and held one hand “Kathy I cannot sign that petition and I cannot write a letter supporting what you are doing for Mr. O’Shea.”
“You know I have been a parole and probation officer for many years. I have gone in and out of gaols helping men on parole and acting as a chaplain to prisoners. All of the years I have been doing this, Kathy, I have found that almost every prisoner reforms while he is in gaol, nearly all of them are willing to show signs of changed character and many of them will profess Christian conversion. Most of the prisoners I have come to know well have tried to use me to get cases re opened. I have also been in court for many cases and while I know that there are cases of injustice in our community, I am overwhelmed by the sense of justice and fair play that is given in these serious cases.” “Kathy, you have to be careful that you are not being used. Mr. O’Shea has found in you a very willing and lovely person who is prepared to help him and I know that he will say anything to you if it will help his case.”
Kathy looked at me with the fiercest anger imaginable. It was almost as if I had slapped her face time after time. Each sentence had wounded her deeply. She stood up. I thought she was going to scream at me but in a very quiet but hard voice of steel she said to me “You are just like the rest of them. You will never give a man a chance. You don’t have any heart. You do not understand. You are a pig like those other pigs and I hate you and I always will hate you! No one understands him. I am the only person who understands him and I know that he is a good man and he needs a second chance. His wife never understood him. She never helped him and neither did his parents. His teachers never gave him a fair go and neither did the police who always hounded him. Everybody is against him! Everybody! And you included. You are a pig!” With that she slammed the door on my study as she walked out and then slammed the front door stuffing her letters down inside her blouse.
A couple of days later I saw Mrs. Walsh in the street and I called over to her to indicate that I failed in trying to get through to Kathy and be of help to her. Mrs. Walsh said, “Don’t you feel bad about it, Pastor. No one understands her or can get through to her. I don’t know what is eating her.”
I said to her, “Mrs. Walsh, your daughter is a very impressionable and emotional young woman I think she is having an affair with a man by correspondence, with a man she has never met, and his professions of love for her have really swayed all of her judgment. I think you and your husband had better try to talk to her about her love life and about letters that she has been writing and receiving.”
Irena Walsh looked at me disbelievingly. “But she never gets any letters. She never goes out of her room hardly except to go up the street once a day.” I decided that I would tell her that it was while she was up the street that Kathy mailed her letters and received her letters from the post office. I did not tell her the identity of the man to whom she was writing. That was a judgment I made which was to prove to be a wrong judgment.
Over the next few months I had constant contact with Irena Walsh and asked about Kathy from time to time but there was no change in the situation. In the meantime a whole lot of other people and activities came into my life. Then one day a news bulletin was broadcast over 3CS Colac, our local radio station, and word spread like wildfire throughout the whole community. “Lock up your house. Stay indoors. There has been a break out from J Ward by a psychopathic murderer.”
Within an hour everybody in the community knew what to do. This situation occurred only rarely but it was as if the community lived the rest of its time expecting such a break out. Every car was carefully locked. Rotors were taken out of distributors. Garages were locked. Out houses and sheds had chains and padlocks put around them. Lights were left on in all public buildings, shops and houses. All windows were shut and locked. All doors were bolted. Every farm and almost every house those days had one or two guns, shot guns or .22s which were used by the men of the house for shooting rabbits or foxes. As soon as the news was released about the escape, guns were broken down into pieces and hidden away under mattresses and in holes around the home. We left the radios on and I decided that night that I would not go out visiting. I stayed at home with my wife and worked in the study.
The following morning the radio broadcast a terrible report. Reginald Simpson O’Shea had escaped from J Ward, had stolen a utility from outside a house in Anzac Avenue and had abducted a sixteen year old girl, Kathy Walsh.
For two days the town was agog with news of the escape and abduction. And then Kathy was discovered out at the Red Kangaroo, a run down seedy hotel out past Moyston way on the way to the Grampians. She had spent a day and a half in a room being constantly raped and terrorised by Reginald Simpson O’Shea, who had then left and headed off towards the South Australian border.
For a few days it was impossible to get near to the family. The press, the radio and television cameras were there getting the girl’s story. I called upon the family and gave them some spiritual comfort and encouragement. It was more than a week later before I was able to call and talk to Kathy. I expected her to be in the worst possible physical condition and covered with guilt and remorse. As soon as I walked into the dining room where she was seated with her mother she said, “Get out of here. You are just like the rest of them. You never believed in him or gave him a fair go either.” And burst into tears. I quietly sat at the other end of the room saying nothing. She looked at me and continued “He is a good man, a really good man. Deep down inside he is a finer man than you will ever be and he really loves me and he is coming back some time. As soon as he gets settled down and clears his name he is coming back and we are going to get married.” And in her eyes was look of belief and true love and expectation of something magnificent in the future.
Irena Walsh kept talking on as a very disturbed and heartbroken mother would naturally do on such an occasion. But one of the things she said brought an instant response from her daughter. Irena said “Well it is just as well he did not leave you pregnant.” With that Kathy immediately became quiet as she had done in that study with me, and anger and hate were in her eyes. Looking at her mother her voice dropped to a quiet, threatening hard note “That is the most wonderful thing he could have done to me. I only wish I were carrying his baby.”
Over the next two years I came to know Kathy only a little bit better. She had been faithful to the declaration that she would spend the rest of her life devoted to clearing his name and waiting for that day when he would drive out of the sunset to take her off to be married. She lived with the thought that no matter where he was he would honourably seek to clear his name and then come back to find her.
I wish this story had a happy ending. But life isn’t written like a fairy tale. Reginald Simpson O’Shea had manipulated and used a sixteen year old girl. I guess she still believes in him. It was some years later that I saw in a small report in another part of Victoria where I was then ministering, a brief report of the conviction of a multiple rapist and murderer, Reginald Simpson O’Shea, in another State for another crime. The leopard had not changed his spots and I would be quite sure that Kathy would be still believing in him.
As I left the Walsh home after that first meeting with Kathy and her mother I was pondering what it was that she was going to tell me which was so important and wondering if such a young and immature girl could ever love so passionately and irrationally. That I was to discover.
So I headed back to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES