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Banishing a demon

His healing hands were meant to give comfort. Instead, they brought terror...


Published by: Jean Jollands
Published on: 28 March 2013

Sitting in my bedroom, I stared blankly at the TV screen, feeling numb. I was 15 years old and should have been busy with homework or chattering to my mates on the phone. But I'd been bullied at school from the age of 11, fallen into depression and dropped out. Counselling hadn't helped, so all I could do was struggle on.
Just then, my mum Patricia, 57, called me from downstairs. ‘Mike is here,' she said. ‘He wants to say hello.' Mike Ireland, then 57, was a psychic and healer who did readings for Mum. She'd first contacted him four years earlier when she was worried about the hip replacement she needed due to severe arthritis. The op had gone smoothly, but now he was helping her deal with her grief over the loss of her brother Kenneth the year before.
When I came downstairs, Mike was perched on the sofa. With his long, greying ponytail and potbelly, he gave me the creeps.
‘Your mum tells me you're having a few problems and that you can't sleep,' he said. ‘I can give you some healing if you like.'
‘I suppose so,' I mumbled.
So, a few a weeks later, I went to Mike's flat in Stockport for a session. He showed me to his healing room, cluttered with candles and books about spiritualism. I lay down on a reclining seat. ‘I need you to be totally relaxed,' he explained. He began laying his hands on my head, then shoulders.
‘You've got a lot of demons around you,' he frowned. ‘And your chakras, the main energy centres, are terribly blocked.'
But as his hands brushed my shoulders, I suddenly felt uneasy. Now they were heading lower, towards my breasts.
‘I need to reach your energy centres,' he murmured, slipping his hand under my top and inside my bra. What the...? I thought, too stunned to say anything.
Now, he was forcing his hand under the waistband of my underwear. ‘What are you doing?' I finally blurted out.
‘Erm, that's the end of the session,' he said, abruptly removing his hands.
I knew what he'd done was wrong. But I felt too intimidated to protest. To me, he seemed an important man and I was just a powerless and scared 15-year-old girl. My depression meant I often struggled just to get through the day. Standing up to someone like Mike was impossible.
‘How did you get on?' Mum smiled the next day. Seeing the expectation on her face, I knew she was hoping Mike could lift me out of my depression. I couldn't bear to tell her the truth. ‘Oh, fine,' I lied.
Mum was facing a second hip replacement and she was in constant pain. Imagining her devastation if I told her about Mike, I kept quiet.
So when he suggested to Mum that I have another healing session, I agreed. Maybe I'd got it wrong. Maybe he wouldn't do it again.
When I got to the flat, I was relieved to see five other women there for a group session.
He can't touch me with other people around, I reassured myself.
But as I went to join them, Mike shook his head.
‘Grace needs special healing,' he announced gravely to the group. He led me into the room and began to speak. I felt drowsiness overcome me. ‘Let's clear those chakras,' Mike's voice echoed as I drifted off into a trance-like state.
When I woke up, my knickers and trousers were pulled down and I was in terrible pain. Mike was up against me on the chair.
I couldn't bear to be there a second longer. Running out of the flat, I called a taxi to take me to A&E. There, I was examined by nurses. ‘Have you been abused, Grace?' one of them asked gently.
Scared, I said nothing. A psychiatrist came to see me and asked the same question.
‘Nothing happened,' I murmured, shaking my head.
From then on, I hid in my room when Mike visited. ‘Stop ignoring me,' he hissed, cornering me on the stairs one day. ‘If you tell your mum anything, she'll be so stressed that she won't have her surgery and she'll end up in a wheelchair.' He knew just how to guarantee my silence. Over those next months, I agreed to more healing sessions. Mike repeatedly sexually abused me and made me touch him. I wasn't even safe at home. One time, when Mum was downstairs, he came into my bedroom, lifted up the duvet and abused me, knowing I wouldn't dare scream out.
So I took out my anger and pain on the only person I could - myself. I ran a bath, slipped
into the soapy water and dug a razor blade into my forearms, slicing away.
Suddenly, Mum popped her head round the door. Seeing the blood pumping from my arms, she started screaming and pulled me out of the bath. ‘Oh, god! Grace, why?' she begged.
But even as doctors stitched up my arms at hospital and I was referred to a psychiatrist,
I stayed silent. Mum assumed it was down to my depression.
‘What's made you do this?' Mike asked innocently in front of Mum, days later.
I wanted to scream. But self-harming was all I knew now. And, weeks later, I decided to
end the pain for good.
After getting my hands on some of Mum's painkillers, I went to a local park, and washed them down with vodka and whiskey. Two local girls found me slumped under a tree and phoned an ambulance.
I'd survived, but back home from hospital, I was at breaking point. The abuse had been going on for eight months and I just couldn't keep Mike's sick little secret any longer.
So I made a rare visit to a friend and it finally came tumbling out.
‘I've been abused by a friend of my mum's,' I wept. ‘Oh my god,' she said. ‘Grace, you can't let him get away with it.'
My friend told an adult who contacted the police. I went to the station to give a statement. Then they phoned Mum. She arrived looking terrified and my heart was thumping as she took a seat next to me. ‘Grace, you must tell your mum who has abused you,' an officer encouraged me gently.
Turning to Mum, my whole body was trembling. ‘It was Mike,' I whispered. Watching the horror spread across her face, I felt sick.
‘Mike?' she gasped. ‘But he's my friend?'
Thankfully, though, Mum believed me. ‘I'm so sorry,' she sobbed. ‘I had no idea.'
Despite what I'd gone through, I felt sorry for her. She'd believed Mike was helping our family, but he was destroying it.
Police arrested him and other women came forward to say he'd abused them, too. Mary, a medium I'd met at Mike's, phoned me to say she'd been one of his victims. ‘I'm older than you and should have known better,' she sobbed. ‘If I'd spoken out earlier, maybe you'd have been spared this.'
Months later, at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, Michael Ireland, now 60, pleaded guilty to 25 sexual offences, including sexual activity with a child, sexual assault and assault by penetration. He'd abused six women and two children between 1985 and 2010. Thinking of all the lives he'd ruined, I felt sick. But I was determined to be in court to see him sentenced.
On the day, Mum was by my side as he was led into court.
I gasped when I saw him. He looked so much thinner and older - a broken man. Yet, still a shiver of fear ran through me. Five other victims were there and I prayed for justice for all of us.
The court heard that Mike had told one woman her sexual parts were dead and he could activate them again.
He'd made another woman touch him intimately to get his energy flowing again.
I was horrified to hear he'd been convicted of assaulting a girl under 14 when he was a teenager.
It was an overwhelming relief when Judge Mushtaq Khokhar jailed him for 16 years with three years extended license. He'll be on the sex offenders register for life.
Judge Khokhar explained how many of his victims had lost their confidence and blamed themselves for being ‘gullible and naïve'. ‘He was a revered reiki master, spiritual healer and clairvoyant who people went to for comfort, help or support,' detective constable Rebecca Haley said. ‘When they were at their most trusting and vulnerable, he totally abused his position and the faith placed in him for his own sexual gratification.'
Outside court, two of his victims ran up to hug me. ‘Thank you,' Mary sobbed.
I've vowed to stay in touch with some of the others, so we won't feel alone.
Today, I have a boyfriend who's been my rock. I'm trying to stop self-harming and I'd love to do voluntary work to help other abused children when I'm stronger.
Mike was a destroyer, not a healer. But I'm determined not to let him ruin my future.

Mary, 43, from Crewe, Cheshire, also suffered at the hands of the sick psychic.

When I first met Mike at a spiritualist church, he offered me some healing sessions, saying they could help improve my skills as a medium. My hubby Richard, 47, was a painter and decorator, and he agreed to do some work for Mike in return.
‘My techniques are controversial though,' Mike warned when I arrived with Richard for my first session. At first, I was one of a group of five or six other women, including a young girl called Grace. But one day, Mike ushered me aside. He knew I'd been abused as a child and said it was casting a shadow over me.
‘Mary, you've got demons and spiders all over you,' he said. ‘You need special one-to-one healing.'
As I sat in his healing room, he started rubbing my breasts, stomach and legs and rested his hands on my pubic bone.
‘It's a special healing, only for people I trust,' he told me.
This is wrong, my instincts screamed. But surely Mike wouldn't do anything to hurt me?
‘He did say his techniques were controversial,' Richard said when I told him afterwards.
At my next session though, he touched me down below again. I had never been so confused. A part of me knew it wasn't right. But would Mike really abuse me with Richard painting in the next room? I assumed I was the one losing the plot.
One time, I did a tarot card reading during a session at Mike's and saw the image of him behind prison bars.
‘It means we're attached spiritually,' Mike sniffed.
‘I can see a police van too.' I added.
‘I think you need a bit more practice,' he snapped, his face turning pale.
Finally, after a year, I stopped going to his sessions. Weeks later, I found out that Grace had reported Mike to the police. It gave me the courage to make a statement myself.
I was elated when Mike was jailed, but my life is still in turmoil. I've been signed off from my care assistant's job and still suffer flashbacks.
I'm working with a spiritualist organisation to introduce criminal checks for mediums working with vulnerable people. I just pray something good can come out of this terrible time.

• Mary and Richard's names have been changed


 


Grace Bailey, 18, Harpurhey, Manchester