I just bet he was stressed!

I was saddened to read a report from England that a prison guard, forced by his superiors to spend many hours listening to sex offenders recount their crimes in sickening detail, had been dismissed because those same bosses refused to believe he'd been traumatized by his duties. The Daily Mail reports:

A former prison officer has been awarded a six-figure sum in damages for stress he suffered after listening to sex offenders' accounts of their crimes.

Steven Heaven's 'disturbing' work involved him hearing criminals describe their sex crimes during therapy sessions.

Despite having no experience as a clinician and no qualifications as a therapist, his job required him to listen to the prisoners' descriptions of their crimes, which were often expressed 'in detailed and graphic terms'.

He said the harrowing sessions at Grendon prison in Buckinghamshire caused him so much distress that he signed off work after he was diagnosed.

But the prison refused to believe the 44-year-old ex prison officer's illness was a consequence of his work and suspended his pay.

His case was eventually settled today after a three-year legal battle, with Mr Heaven receiving substantial damages from the Prison Service.

There's more at the link.

I've been in his shoes. Working as a prison chaplain, I had to listen to sex offenders on many occasions. The worst, for me, was having to work with child abusers. As a chaplain, you're supposed to be a minister of God's mercy, living proof that He can forgive anyone, and that mercy is available to even the worst sinners . . . but it's very hard to remind yourself of that, and remain 'pastoral', when every human instinct screams at you to inflict grievous - perhaps mortal - bodily harm upon the man thing in front of you! To hear them describe what they'd done to innocent children was an experience hideous beyond my capacity to describe it. The only thing worse would have been to be one of their child victims . . .

Spare a thought, if you will, for all those professionals - ministers of religion, psychologists, psychiatrists, law enforcement and corrections staff - who must deal with this sort of thing, day in and day out. It takes a very heavy toll on one's psyche. Mr. Heaven (a somewhat ironic name for a man who's been put through hell!) has my profound sympathies.

Peter