Church, deaf students square off on Italian TV

[CountAllVotes]

Source: Associated Press

ROME – Three deaf men who say they were repeatedly sodomized and abused by priests as children confronted the church diocese Friday about why it hadn't punished their abusers, saying they want justice.

The three men, first interviewed last year by The Associated Press, appeared on a prime-time talk show on Italy's state-run RAI television, squaring off with the spokesman of the Verona diocese amid a swirling global sex abuse scandal that has inched closer to Pope Benedict XVI.

The former students haven't gone to the police because the 10-year statute of limitations expired. They have asked the priests in question to waive the statute of limitations so a case can be opened, but to date none of them have.

Their stories have found new relevance after revelations that the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — then led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now pope — told Wisconsin bishops in 1998 to shut down a church trial for an elderly priest who allegedly molested 200 deaf boys.

The Wisconsin and Italy cases are eerily similar in that they both involve the purported abuse of deaf children, particularly vulnerable victims to abuse since the admonition "never tell" is easily enforced as many have speech impairments.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100326/ap_on_re_eu/eu_church_abuse_italy_deaf_students

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Eerily similar, yeah that is one word for this! Time to resign Ratzinger! You are a shame to the Catholic Church, Shame Shame Shame!!!

[Hello_Kitty]

1. "church trial"?? WTF???

Child rapists need to go before CRIMINAL trials, you rat bastards!

[CountAllVotes]

2. no doubt

who will win this case with the Vatican behind it! :mad:

:kick:

[Dappleganger]

3. Catholic Church: "Get over it already!" nt

[ZombieHorde]

4. Recommended. The RCC is not a very good group of people.

The RCC spends a lot of money protecting known child molesters, repressing the rights of gay people, and distributing anti-condom propaganda.

The RCC's stance on women being inferior to men is deplorable, albeit free.

[CountAllVotes]

5. this whole thing is beyond disgusting

to think they have been abusing disabled children to me is the icing on the cake!

Nothing like taking advantage of someone that cannot speak nor hear!

It is time to dump this Catholic Church and the Vatican altogether.

:dem:

[donco6]

6. "We must do something about this!"

"These boys must be silenced!" -Vatican

[DeSwiss]

7. I was hoping for more.....

...but RatzinHitler's resignation would be a good start. However, there's still the matter of some pedophile priests, and justice that needs to be settled as well.

- Hopefully concluding with The Church's financial as well as moral bankruptcy, since they've already achieved the latter.....

K&R

[Jefferson23]

8. How many more children will have their innocence destroyed to these bastards before

the members of the churches do something....no boycott, no nothing? I'm sorry, but I just don't get it.

"It's a problem of justice," said Laiti, who has said he was sodomized repeatedly at the boarding school from the age of seven. Earlier in the day, in an interview with Associated Press Television News, Laiti said he wanted his abusers kicked out of the church.

"We want justice for everything we went through, the suffering for all of our life," said Gianni Bisoli, 61, another former student who says he was sodomized by and forced to perform oral sex on a dozen priests at the institute."


Someone might want to suggest to these men to bring portraits of themselves when they were young, let the world remember, this happened
to very young innocent children with a disability for crying out loud!