Sorcerer by David Menon Page A

those employment records, didn’t you notice that staff turnover at Pembroke was very low? People tended to stay for a long time’
    ‘Yes, actually, we did’ Rebecca confirmed.
    ‘And that was because of Griffin’s blackmail. When I was recruited, before I actually started work, Mary Griffin visited me. You see, they looked very carefully into the background of anyone they employed to make sure they had something on them that they could use. Mary Griffin was the one who came and told me that they’d found out about my past and what she’d do if I talked or decided to leave’.
    ‘What was that past?’
    ‘You can probably tell from my accent that I’m not from Manchester. I’m from Bristol. I moved up here to get away from my first marriage. The trouble is I never got divorced’.
    ‘So you’re a bigamist?’
    ‘Yes and Mary Griffin said she’d use that against me. I don’t know how she found out but she did. One of the other lads was from Glasgow. He’d moved away because he owed money to all the wrong people in Glasgow’s gangland. Mary Griffin said she’d tell them where to find him if he talked. Another lad had done a bit of credit card fraud and another one was hiding from a wife who’d accused him of domestic violence. Another one had run off with his brother’s wife and the family were after him. We all had things we were hiding and they used us. Mary Griffin said we could sleep easy only if we did as we were told, kept our mouths shut and didn’t think about leaving until they said we could go’.
    ‘Why do you think they did that?’
    ‘They wanted, and this is going to sound pretty stupid in the circumstances, people they could trust and rely on not to rock their boat. They didn’t want to have to find others to blackmail. They wanted to get on with their evil deeds and not waste any time breaking new people in. Then when the home closed down and the Griffins moved to Spain we all just went our separate ways. None of us wanted to risk talking. They could still damage us’.
    ‘So what did they do that they wanted to keep so secret?’
    ‘In the dungeon … well the Griffins restrained them, tied them up, gagged them. Then George Griffin had sex with them. Mary Griffin filmed it all and they sold the films to a distributor in Amsterdam. They went all over the world from there and made the Griffins an absolute packet’.
    ‘So you did know what was happening?’
    ‘Like I told you we turned a blind eye’.
    ‘And you and all the others who worked there were happy for those boys to suffer the way they did just so that your dirty little secrets weren’t exposed?’
    ‘Oh you can judge me all you like but what choice did we have? I honestly don’t know how some of the boys survived it. They were raped over and over again and some of them were only eleven or twelve. Their faces when they were being led down to the dungeon … I’ll never forget the looks. And then when they were done with … well that was even worse’.
    ‘Were you the ones who took them down to the dungeon?’ Jeff wanted to know.
    ‘Yes’ Tony confirmed. ‘Look, we the staff were guilty of the physical abuse and of taking them down to the dungeon. But we weren’t the paedophiles’.
    ‘I’m sure that distinction is what helps you sleep at night’ said Rebecca.
    ‘We’d done other stuff but we weren’t like Griffin and his wife. That’s why it got to all of us in the end’.
    ‘But not enough to risk revealing your own pasts in order to save those young boys from what they were being forced to do?’ said Jeff.
    Tony Chambers simply looked away and then said ‘I expect you think we were all cowards?’
    ‘You were complicit in the sexual abuse of young boys who should’ve been able to look to you for protection’ said Jeff with all the contempt he could muster. ‘You went beyond being just cowards’. 
    ‘And you’ll need to give us the details of that first wife you forgot to get divorced from’