Ronald Conway - the Hands-On Psychologist Who " Screened" the Catholic Church's Priests

By Broken Rites
The Broken Rites
January 10, 2014

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/136

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.

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, 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 psychodelic 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 uu administered LSD to them at 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 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 Newhaveun 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."
    
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."

1. "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 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."