Chad Varah was the founder of the Samaritans, a charity that espoused listening therapy for the suicidal and despairing.

When founded in 1953, suicide was still viewed as a symptom of mental illness and moral depravity, Varah preffered to view it as a symptom of circumstance, whose genesis in individuals could vary for enormous reasons.

He was motivated to found this charity when as a newly ordained priest in the Anglican church he conducted a funeral for a 13 year old girl who had committed suicide upon experiencing her first menstrual cycle. Uninformed about adolescence and sexual development she had assumed it to be a symptom of a sexually transmitted disease and in despair and shame, took her own life. He vowed from that moment to help all people in despair and to offer therapeutic advice on sexual matters without judgement or condemnation.

Consequently upon founding the movement, named by the media after the ‘Good Samaritan’ of Christian scriptures he established certain fixed rules.

  • The Charity was to be secular.
  • It’s therapy was to be listening based.
  • It’s members were to be taken from all branches of society.
  • They should be neither “prudish” nor “preachy” as the problems they would encounter would be of an extremely personal nature, and the aim of the therapy was to listen to the person in need, and not to lecture them.

Chad Varah, mirroring Augustine of Hippo centuries before, freely admitted in his biographies to sexual experimentation before his marriage and his ordination in the church. This he saw as giving him an insight into the angsts and emotions encountered by those who suffered turmoil in an age where sex and sexuality was never openly discussed. He was an advocate of open and thorough sex education. And in later life whilst continuing to minister as a priest he also sat on the board of reference for the Adult magazine ‘Forum’.

He died aged 95 on the 7th November 2007, if not a “saint” as classically defined then perhaps a “model” and “Iconic” figure of the postmodern-paradigm.