A Monument For Robert James Barron

A Monument For Robert James Barron Fr Brosnan later admitted observing how the physical and psychological brutality of Pentridge’s H-Division had turned bike thieves into murderers. Fr Peter Norden, SJ , 13 April 2003. He complained that the tucker wasn't fit for pigs, and privileges lost for the slightest breach... And for these, they cuffed him down at curfew, dragged him screaming to the Peter* and beat him bruised and sodden, like an over-ripened peach. Just another drunken Koorie, doin' a très + for a Saturday stouch, before fate stepped in and sentenced him to take a stand for justice, before justice grew him up and spat him out. There'll be no monuments for Bobby, no accolades apart from this, to recall those times I'd listened from my cell, night after night, to his tormentors beating as he bravely dressed them down. For him, there was eventual release, but not from that inner-desecration, that blistered by degrees, till eventually it consumed him, flourishing in that place where his soul used to be: reflected through the tautness of eyes that refused to shed tears, by the hate tattooed across fingers, poised in a clenched fist, and the downturn of a bitter curl, beating after beating had carved into the corner of a lip, that one stormy night fixed a shotgun on two old Salvos and callously emptied the clip. * Prisoner slang term for H Division + Prisoner slang for a three months sentence. Eugene Donnini