NY Times, the Catholic Church and Pedophilia

[David]

The NY Times is at war with the Catholic Church. The Church is pushing back. The big question is did the Pope personally cover up the scandals?

Is celibacy the reason so many Priests are homosexual?

SOURCE

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by David

Is celibacy the reason so many Priests are homosexual?

I've read these people have the desire to be with male children first, they recognize this is a sin and evil, and they choose the priesthood thinking that being in a religious organization and having the vow of celibacy to God will enable them to be able to overcome their desire.

I've recently read that Catholic priests abuse children at about the same rate as people in the general population.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/236096

Mean Men

The Catholic sex-abuse stories emerging every day suggest that Catholics have a much bigger problem with child molestation than other denominations and the general population. Many point to peculiarities of the Catholic Church (its celibacy rules for priests, its insular hierarchy, its exclusion of women) to infer that there's something particularly pernicious about Catholic clerics that predisposes them to these horrific acts. It's no wonder that, back in 2002—when the last Catholic sex-abuse scandal was making headlines—a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children.
The priesthood is being cast as the refuge of pederasts. In fact, priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else.

...

Yet experts say there's simply no data to support the claim at all. No formal comparative study has ever broken down child sexual abuse by denomination, and only the Catholic Church has released detailed data about its own. But based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."

Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations. Insurance companies that cover all denominations, such as Guide One Center for Risk Management, which has more than 40,000 church clients, does not charge Catholic churches higher premiums. "We don't see vast difference in the incidence rate between one denomination and another," says Sarah Buckley, assistant vice president of corporate communications. "It's pretty even across the denominations." It's been that way for decades. While the company saw an uptick in these claims by all types of churches around the time of the 2002 U.S. Catholic sex-abuse scandal, Eric Spacick, Guide One's senior church-risk manager, says "it's been pretty steady since." On average, the company says 80 percent of the sexual misconduct claims they get from all denominations involve sexual abuse of children. As a result, the more children's programs a church has, the more expensive its insurance, officials at Guide One said.

The only hard data that has been made public by any denomination comes from John Jay College's study of Catholic priests, which was authorized and is being paid for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops following the public outcry over the 2002 scandals. Limiting their study to plausible accusations made between 1950 and 1992, John Jay researchers reported that about 4 percent of the 110,000 priests active during those years had been accused of sexual misconduct involving children. Specifically, 4,392 complaints (ranging from "sexual talk" to rape) were made against priests by 10,667 victims. (Reports made after 2002, including those of incidents that occurred years earlier, are released as part of the church's annual audits.)

Experts disagree on the rate of sexual abuse among the general American male population, but Allen says a conservative estimate is one in 10. Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says her review of the numbers indicates it's closer to one in 5. But in either case, the rate of abuse by Catholic priests is not higher than these national estimates. The public also doesn't realize how "profoundly prevalent" child sexual abuse is, adds Smith. Even those numbers may be low; research suggests that only a third of abuse cases are ever reported (making it the most underreported crime). "However you slice it, it's a very common experience," Smith says.

Most child abusers have one thing in common, and it's not piety—it's preexisting relationships with their victims. That includes priests and ministers and rabbis, of course, but also family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, scout leaders, youth-group volunteers, and doctors. According to federal studies, three quarters of abuse occurs at the hands of family members or others in the victim's "circle of trust." "The fundamental premise here is that those who abuse children overwhelmingly seek out situations where they have easy and legitimate access to children," he said. "These kinds of positions offer a kind of cover for these offenders."

Priests may also appear more likely to molest children because cases of abuse come to light in huge waves. One reason is delayed reporting: less than 13 percent of victims abused between 1960 and 1980, for example, lodged a complaint in the same year as the assault. Two thirds filed their complaints after 1992, and half of those were made between 2002 and 2003 alone. "Offenders tend to be manipulative, often persuading children to believe that this is their fault," said Allen. "As a result, the children tend to keep it to themselves. There are countless victims who thought they were the only one." So what looks like high concentrations of abuse may simply reflect long and diffuse patterns of abuse that mirror those among all males.

Another reason is that the church has historically been bad at punishing (or preventing) molesters, so that many cases might come to light when just one priest is finally exposed. A single predator priest with ongoing access to children might be responsible for an immense raft of abuse cases. (Marie Fortune of the Faith Trust Institute, which focuses on clerical-abuse issues, says Roman Catholics tend "to have many more schools and other programs that involve children." "Plenty of other congregations have these problems, for instance, if they have a youth ministry.") That helps explain the 200 children who were abused at a school for the deaf. It didn't happen because the school was full of rapists; it happened because one man was never stopped. Overall, the John Jay study found that 149 priests were responsible for more than 25,000 cases of abuse over the 52-year period studied.

Allen suggests a final reason we hear so much more about Catholic abuse than transgressions in other religions: its sheer size. It's the second largest single denomination in the world (behind Islam) and the biggest in the United States. (Fifty-one percent of all American adults are Protestant, but they belong to hundreds of different denominations.) "When you consider the per capita data," says Allen, "I don't think they have a larger incidence than other faiths."

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by NightMgr

I've recently read that Catholic priests abuse children at about the same rate as people in the general population.

You mean the general homosexual population?

[David]

NY Times keeps up the drumbeat. This is the third column written on this topic by Maureen Dowd.

SOURCE

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by jtdc

You mean the general homosexual population?

You can refer to the article to get that information.

The first person I ever met who was abused by a priest had been sodomized by her priest when she was 7.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by NightMgr

The first person I ever met who was abused by a priest had been sodomized by her priest when she was 7.

You were talking numbers, not orientation. From what I have seen homosexuals have far more partners per capita than heterosexuals, whether adult or child.

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by jtdc

You were talking numbers, not orientation. From what I have seen homosexuals have far more partners per capita than heterosexuals, whether adult or child.

I guess you have more experience with homosexuals than I do.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by NightMgr

I guess you have more experience with homosexuals than I do.

I think being on the outside I can see things a Little more objectively.

[David]

Pope's No. 2: Pedophilia linked to homosexuality
By BRAD HAYNES, Associated Press Writer Brad Haynes, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 12, 6:46 pm ET

SANTIAGO, Chile – The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."

His comments drew angry reactions from Chile's gay rights advocates.

"Neither Bertone nor the Vatican has the moral authority to give lessons on sexuality," said Rolando Jimenez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation in Chile.

Jimenez also said no reputable study exists to support the cardinal's claims.

"This is a perverse strategy by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility by making a spurious and disgusting connection," he said.

At least one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant.

At the time, the archbishop of the capital, Santiago, received multiple complaints about Father Jose Andres Aguirre from families concerned for their daughters. But the priest — known to his parishioners as Father Tato — continued serving at a number of Catholic girls schools in the city.

Later the church sent Aguirre out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison for abusing 10 teenage girls.

One of the girls, identified as Paula, said that she and the priest started to have sex when she was 16 and that it lasted until she was 20.

She told the Chilean newspaper La Nacion: "I thought it wasn't that bad to have sex with him because when I told priests about it at confession they just told me to pray and that was it. They knew, and some of them guessed that it was Father Tato. But everyone looked the other way. No one corrected or helped me."

She said one of the priests she confessed to about her sex with Aguirre was Bishop Francisco Jose Cox, who himself was facing allegations of pedophilia.

Cox had been bishop in La Serena, in northern Chile, for seven years when he was removed in 1997 amid rumors that he was a pedophile. He was first transferred to Santiago, then Rome, then Colombia, and finally Germany. The Schoenstatt movement, a worldwide lay community within the Catholic Church, paid for the moves and his treatment.

In 2002, Santiago Archbishop Francisco Javier Erraruriz said Cox had agreed to be removed for "inappropriate conduct."

The archbishop acknowledged Cox had shown "affection that was a bit exuberant," especially toward children, but said, "I'm not aware of any formal allegation backed by evidence."

Erraruriz said Cox volunteered to be confined to a Schoenstatt convent in Colombia to continue "praying to God for his pardon for the errors he has made."

Last week, the archbishop admitted the Chilean church was investigating cases of priest pedophilia after playing the issue down for years.

"There is something to these pedophilia abuses — just a few, thank God," Errazuriz said in an interview on state television.

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by David

SANTIAGO, Chile – The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Certainly nothing the Church has done.

I thought it was just rumors. Or, the Jews. It's sometimes hard to keep up with who they say is responsible.

http://www.salon.com/news/antisemiti..._jews_open2010

We're living in the Age of Globalization, and it seems that chutzpah, like latkes, isn't just for Jews any longer. Last week, retired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the "eternal enemies of Catholicism, namely the freemasons and the Jews, whose mutual entanglements are not always easy to see through… I think that it is primarily a Zionist attack, in view of its power and refinement. They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God-killers."

You might think that the 81-year-old Babini had already said more than enough for one day, but once some people "pop," they just can't stop. "The Holocaust was a shame for all of humanity," the good bishop told the world, "but now we have to look at it without rhetoric and with open eyes. Don't believe that Hitler was merely crazy. The truth is that the Nazis' criminal fury was provoked by the Jews' economic embezzlement, by which they choked the German economy." He concluded that the Jews' "guilt is graver than what Christ predicted would happen to them, saying 'do not cry for me, but for your own children.'"

Bishop Babini made the comments on Friday, but the story has only started hitting the fan (a.k.a. the global press) today. The American Jewish Committee already lodged a protest against the bishop's statements over the weekend. Rabbi David Rosen said: "The high level of mutual trust and solidarity that binds our two communities today demands that there be zero-tolerance for such defamatory statements by religious representatives." Babini himself now denies ever having made them. (The bishop seems to relish controversy, by the way. In January he hit the headlines when he opined that the Church should refuse communion to gay people.)

But, here's the complete list, so far.

http://gawker.com/5508277/stuff-cath...r/full+(Gawker)

The Devil: He's to blame, according to 85-year-old exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, for both the abuse and the subsequent scandal. Beelzebub "used" those poor clergymen as child-abusing puppets, to smear the church, he told the Catholic News Agency. And as if that wasn't enough, Satan then sicked the media onto the Pope himself. Why? "Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II." Fiendish.

The Gays: Bill Donohoe, of the Catholic League, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times in which he excoriated that paper for completely missing the point of the scandal. "The Times, " he said, "continues to editorialize about the "pedophilia crisis," when all along it's been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay."

The Sexual Revolution: In this column the Times' Ross Douthat blames a variety of factors for the abuse, and subsequent cover-up. But we must not forget that "the permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the '70s deserves a share of the blame." Of course.

The Media: The Pope himself took the lead on this one. He said, in a service on Palm Sunday, that he would not "be intimidated by ... petty gossip," like the impeccably reported, multiple-sourced, rigorously fact-checked pieces of journalism with supporting documents that condemn him to complicity with child abuse. In an almost unprecedented attack, the Vatican then singled out the New York Times for being unfair, and called the wider coverage deceitful.

Persecution: Sometimes the facts just cannot be bettered. Here is the lede from a Times story today: "A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church - which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI's oversight role in two cases - to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican's counterattack."

[Hawkscall]

God, all the discussion. It has nothing to do with being hetero or homo, it has to do with being a pedophile. The priests should be charged, arrested, and if found guilty, thrown out of the church and put in jail.

C

[NightMgr]

What? You mean blame INDIVIDUALS for their action?

But, then how would we keep score?

I mean, when someone does something wrong like fly a plane into a building or something, it's important to put them in their appropriate group. Are they a foreigner? Are they from the Middle East? Are they Christian, Muslim, or something else? This helps us to know whether to say they deserve to die, or if the media is spinning the story and they're really innocent dupes being framed by Obama or the current occupant of the Oval Office, or in this case, some combination of all plus Satan himself, Jews, and sexual orientation. Depending on distance from ideological center, including both Obama and Satan as scapegoats may be redundant.

Then, of course, we need to examine their personal writings and political affiliation to know if they're liberal or conservative. That way we can keep score and blame group membership for their sins.

C'mon, Hawkscall. Get in the game.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by Hawkscall

God, all the discussion. It has nothing to do with being hetero or homo, it has to do with being a pedophile. The priests should be charged, arrested, and if found guilty, thrown out of the church and put in jail.

C

The problem seems to be the church hierarchy thinking that their profession puts them above the law and scrutiny. They should be coming down hardest on molesting priests as those are harming children whom they claim to be the most innocent, and they are misrepresenting themselves to the world and the church. But instead they rush to protect the sinners.

[Hawkscall]

Agree. They shouldn't be protecting them. Yes, innocent until proven guilty, but if charges look strong enough and arrest is imminent, they need to do what is right. And if found guilty, they should be kicked out. Go to jail.

C

[annett]

I had hoped that Pope Benedict would have resolved the issue of sexual abuse in the church but it appears that it is not to be. He did go on an apology tour last year, but that is not the resolution to the problem. The priests that had been accused or who knew about what was going on, like Cardinal Mahoney, should have been disciplined or removed. Too many lives of children and young men have been destroyed in the name to protect pedophilia. Perhaps Father Gabriele Amorth is correct in that Satan has infiltrated the Vatican as he despises anything that is holy or held in reverence to God and Jesus. I attended mass recently and the Jesuit priest's homily was about how Pope Benedict was held in contempt by the media. He actually stated that this matter had been cleared up and that the church was in the process of healing. The media keeps drumming it up according to him. I nearly walked out I was so incensed. How can paying out money to sexual abuse victims be considered healing? How can doing absolutely nothing other than shuffling accused priests around be considered a resolution? There is so much that goes on in the Vatican that we will never know as it has its own political machinery and laws. To me, the church on earth lies in ruin and that it is the Vatican that has done the abominable deed. When I was growing up, I had always thought that priests were closer to God because they were the conveyors of God's words. Where I have attended church in the past and present,at least to me, has not been true for a very long time. The stain has seeped so deep that it is touched all in the priesthood. Both sanctity and innocence have been defiled.

[NightMgr]

New scapegoat: Porn.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63F5KV20100416

A prominent Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico blamed eroticism on television and Internet pornography for child abuse by priests, in the latest incendiary comments on sex scandals in the church.

"With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it's not easy to stay celibate or to respect children," Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said during an annual meeting of Mexican bishops near Mexico City on Thursday.

"If on television and on the Internet and in so many media outlets there is pornography, it is very difficult to stay pure and chaste," said Arizmendi, an influential bishop from the colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas in southern Mexico.

"Obviously when there is generalized sexual freedom it's more likely there could be cases of pedophilia," he added.

The bishop was in charge of the formation of priests for two decades in Mexico but said that loose morals in society had made it difficult to keep seminarians committed to the faith.

The timing of his comments comes as Pope Benedict turned 83 on Friday and the Catholic hierarchy has been rattled by revelations of sexual abuse scandals in parishes around the world.

It also follows several controversial comments made by Catholic clergy, including on Monday when the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said priest pedophilia was linked to homosexuality not celibacy.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia," he told a news conference in Santiago, Chile.

Mexico is home to the world's second-largest Roman Catholic population after Brazil and the country has been rocked by its own share of allegations against Catholic leaders.

Last year, the pope ordered an inquiry into the powerful Legionaries of Christ order whose Mexican founder, Marcial Maciel, was discovered to be a sexual molester of young boys. Maciel, who died in 2008, also was known to have fathered at least one child.

The Vatican was hit by another embarrassing revelation this week when a website posted a letter by a senior cardinal heartily congratulating a French bishop in 2001 for not denouncing a self-confessed abusive priest to the police.

WORLDMEXICO

[NightMgr]

Time to get a lawyer.

http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle...59174697248541

April 18, 2010 02:20 AM EDT (Updated: April 18, 2010 03:04 AM EDT)
views: 363
The Pope and the Vatican have hired Berkeley CA attorney Jeffery Lena as a spokesperson, messenger, and lawyer for the Holy See. 51 year old Lena, a practicing Catholic is defending the Vatican in the US for its ongoing sexual abuse lawsuits. Lena is a former history professor who has now had to move his law practice to an undisclosed location due to threats. These threats have come from the controversial cases over a span of 10 years.

Lena’s first and foremost case is to defend Pope Benedict and the Vatican against allegations that He and the church have known about the abuse, molestation and rape that have been reported to have happened over decades and that they have ignored them. The Vatican intensely denies this. Lena points out that dioceses are independent of the Holy See, and suggests that each individual bishop is in charge of his own office; and it is that bishop who controls what happens or what does not happen in his diocese.

I’m am not sure if I can accept the Vatican point of view on individual diocese not giving information to the Vatican or even asking for advice for the problems they have had. It is clear to me that the tactic of “the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing” is not a very good defense. I am also not certain that the proverbial "See no Evil, speak no Evil, hear no Evil" is good practice for the catholic church to preach.

[NightMgr]

If homosexuality is the cause of the abuse of boys, then is heterosexuality to blame for the abuse of the young girls?

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/...sed-girls?bn=1

Father Charlie told the girl with the cascading brown curls and frilly frocks that she was pretty. Special. One of his favourites.

In the small Ontario town of Pain Court, a French-Canadian community near Chatham, Father Charlie’s attention was prized by devout Roman Catholic families like Cecilia McLauchlin’s. His interest in their daughter meant the popular priest, once described as “next to God,” publicly approved of how she was being raised.

So when a gynecologist examined the girl for recurring vaginal infections, it didn’t occur to anyone that Father Charlie was the cause of her physical pain.

Cecilia McLauchlin was only 5 years old.

Now 32, the Chatham woman is the youngest known victim of Father Charles Sylvestre, the smooth-talking priest who groomed his young prey with candies, trinkets and praise. He was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting 47 girls over four decades in southwestern Ontario — despite abuse complaints from victims to police, school and church officials during that time.

McLauchlin came forward after his conviction, as did 30 more women in a movement some expect foreshadows the church’s next crisis: a groundswell of female victims seeking justice.

From Mount Cashel to Ireland, most sex abuse scandals have involved boys as altar servers, at boarding schools or in orphanages. The most recent trouble also surrounds boys, with allegations Pope Benedict — who celebrates his fifth anniversary this week as head of all Catholics — knew about an American priest molesting 200 deaf boys in Milwaukee but failed to act.

An American study commissioned eight years ago and paid for by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops found that boys were overwhelmingly the likeliest target of predator priests. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice study, based on voluntary disclosure from church authorities (some refused to comply), determined boys accounted for 81 per cent of sex assaults. Most abuse for all victims occurred between 1960 and the 1980s.

But London-based lawyer Robert Talach, who represented McLauchlin and other Sylvestre victims, expects that male-female ratio to change within five to 10 years to reflect a trend that began in the 1970s when the church welcomed female altar servers. Researchers say disclosure of abuse is typically delayed for about 30 years, which means women assaulted as children are just starting to come to terms with what happened.

“In some of our Sylvestre cases, which are (from) the ‘70s, many of the women were victimized under the pretenses of ‘I’m training you to be one of these new, upcoming female altar servers,’" said Talach, who has represented more than 100 victims of clergy abuse, most of them male.

“We’ve seen priests using that to look innovative to their parishioners, but in reality it was to allow them access to women if their predilection was female.”

Father Donald Holmes, a modern cleric who rode a motorcycle, sported a beard, played hockey and preferred street clothes to his Roman collar, also preyed on girls as they began taking bigger roles in the church. He was convicted in 2002 of sexually abusing 12 girls around the Sudbury area between 1972 and 1984.

In general, girls in Canada are four times more likely than boys to be victims of sexual offences, according to police figures reported to Stats Canada.

Females are more likely to be attractive to clergy because the majority of priests are heterosexual — but some are psychologically and sexually immature, says former priest-turned-lawyer Patrick Wall.

“If they’re going to explore sexually, they’re going to explore with a little girl,” said Wall, a California-based expert on Catholic clergy abuse who now works with victims.

Wall’s perspective on the degree of female abuse is unique. He was a Benedictine monk for 12 years, working as a “fixer” dispatched to tidy up messy sexual problems of priests and laymen at troubled parishes and schools. He said when a girl required surgery after rape, the code was that she needed a “hernia” operation.

In a bizarre twinning, he counselled accused priests and heard confessions from traumatized victims. He also worked on cases where priests impregnated girls then procured abortions for them.

“That is so prevalent, it happens all the time,” he said of the abortion runs, which in part accounts for his belief that teenaged girls are the silent majority of priest-related sexual abuse.

By age 33, Wall deduced most, if not all, of the 195 parishes and hundreds of religious orders in the U.S. employed “fixers” like him to wipe down crime scenes that involved children. He quit religious life in disgust and scoffs at the Vatican’s pledge to better protect boys and girls from its surpliced predators.

“This is the biggest company in the world, they are not going to shift and move,” Wall said. “They’re going to keep building the Ford Pinto, they’re going to take their lumps (from public opinion) and move on.”

“It doesn’t matter what the law is, whether it’s the Canadian police or the U.S. police. They’re not going to tell anybody (about criminal behaviour),” he added.

Santa Clara University psychology professor Thomas Plante has treated and evaluated about 60 clergy sex offenders, including Catholic priests. He said most exhibited a variety of psychiatric troubles, such as personality and impulse control disorders, even brain damage as comorbidity factors complicating their sexual behaviours.

Plante said differing degrees of disorders means “these guys aren’t all alike” and range from ruthless serial offenders like Sylvestre to those who commit one act.

If mentally unhealthy priests are attacking children, it doesn’t prevent the church from using its formidable financial and legal resources to defend their accused, said Wall.

The former priest said the church is particularly vicious with women, deploying its “whore defence” to paint schoolgirls as harlots and intimidate them from pursuing criminal and civil complaints.

McLauchlin, now working and married, said victims “need to outlast” the church as she did during a three-year civil case against the London archdiocese. It was settled last September for an undisclosed amount.

During her case, the diocese demanded McLauchlin submit to a psychological assessment in Toronto. She said she was “interrogated” for 10 hours by a clinician and made to relive Sylvestre’s assaults in graphic detail — even though her mother had kept the “horrific” gynecologist’s report from 27 years ago.

“(The assessment) was very demeaning and at certain times, it was crude and it didn’t need to be,” said McLauchlin, whose abuse began when she was about 4 and ended at 6 when her unsuspecting family moved to Chatham.

“Ultimately, I stood my ground,” she said. “It’s a game of survivor (and church officials) just want to wear you down.”

McLauchlin kept Sylvestre’s abuse a secret from her family until the priest was arrested. By the time she approached Crown prosecutors, a deal had been struck with Sylvestre — then 84 years old, feeble and brain-addled with dementia — to plead guilty to all counts.

The priest who duped her parents with friendship to gain their trust — and access to their daughter — died three months into his three-year sentence in 2007. Though McLauchlin feels resolving her court case has given her a fresh start in life, she is haunted by why, despite 1962 police reports from girls he abused, the church shielded Sylvestre.

“I wish every single day of my life they had done something,” said McLauchlin of high-ranking officials in the London diocese, including archbishops who reigned during Sylvestre’s tenure.

“The last place he was a priest was Pain Court (and) this would never have happened to me.”

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by NightMgr

If homosexuality is the cause of the abuse of boys, then is heterosexuality to blame for the abuse of the young girls?

I feel it is the repression primarily. That would be true of both homosexuality and heterosexuality. But the opposite is like the comparison of totalitarianism to anarchy. The answer is moderation.

Religion tends to be one extreme and homosexuality seems to be the other extreme. You focus on the minority of priests who have molested. That is like saying all homosexuals molest. Both are distortions. But the problem will remain a problem until each group condemns the offenders in their group instead of protecting them in the ideal that that protects the image of the whole. There are homosexuals who are monogamous. But that is not the image portrayed by gay pride parades.

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by jtdc

You focus on the minority of priests who have molested. That is like saying all homosexuals molest.

No, I do not focus on the priest who have molested. I also focus on the priests who covered up the molestation by other priests. It seems it's more important to protect the church than the children and this cover up seems to go to the highest level of the church.

Further, the church's attempt to blame Jews, the media, and homosexuals for the behavior of it's members is also abominable and a reflection on the whole of the church and any members who decide to remain faithful to it despite what it as an organization has attempted.