In defense of the Catholic child abuse

[Christa]

Can you believe this guy?

:grr:

Many Catholic priests and religious have abused children in their care. But is the church's record worse than the world's?

/snip

So why the concentration on Catholic priests and brothers? Perhaps I am unduly cynical, but I believe that all institutions attempt to cover up institutional wrongdoing although the Roman Catholic church has had a higher opinion of itself than most, and thus a greater tendency to lie about these things. Because it is an extremely authoritarian institution at least within the hierarchy, it is also one where there were few checks and balances on the misbehaviour of the powerful. The scandal has been loudest and most damaging in Ireland, because it came along just at the moment when the church was losing its power over society at large, and where it was no longer able to cover up what had happened, but still willing to try. Much the same is true in the diocese of Boston which was bankrupted by the scandal.

It doesn't seem to be true, though, that this was a problem spread by Irish priests around the world, as some traditionalists have argued. Certainly, the geographical spread across the US was fairly even, and not concentrated in areas of high Irish settlement and tradition. But in Ireland the state was happy to hand over the problem of unwanted children to the church.

Certainly the safeguards against paedophilia in the priesthood are now among the tightest in the world. That won't stop a steady trickle of scandals; but I think that objectively your child is less likely to be abused by a Catholic or Anglican priest in the west today than by the members of almost any other profession.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/mar/11/catholic-abuse-priests

[Warpy]

1. MAAAAA! HE DID IT TOO!

That "two wrongs make a right" defense didn't work for us and most of us dropped it by the time we were five years old.

That's what's so disgusting about the screed.

[struggle4progress]

2. Here are some statistics. Somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of

Americans are Catholic. The John Jay report indicated something like 11 000 abuse allegations against US priests over a fifty year period. Meanwhile, somewhere between 75 and 80 thousand US kids are sexually abused every year. If Catholic kids suffer sexual abuse at the same rate as other kids, one expects between 15 and 20 thousand sexual abuse cases annually in that demographic group. If one is really concerned about child abuse, the cases involving priests are a tiny fraction of the problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_the_United_States
http://ssw.unc.edu/fcrp/fp/fp_v10n2/stats.htm

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. The problem is that the Catholic heirarchy helped the rapists cover up their crimes

The majority of child rapes are indeed done by family members or close associates of them. But the Catholic church is the only organisation to have helped child rape on any scale by telling the victims to tell no-one, telling the rapists they are forgiven, sending them somewhere else to rape again, and never informing the police.

[struggle4progress]

5. Oregon lawsuit claims Boy Scouts sex abuse coverup

Associated Press
March 19, 2010 | 10:38 a.m.
PORTLAND, Oregon - The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years ... The lawyer for a man who was molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began Wednesday. The lawyer says the files show how the Boy Scouts have covered up abuse for decades ... At the start of the Oregon trial, attorney Kelly Clark .. held up file folder after file folder he said contained reports of abuse from around the country, telling the jury the efforts to keep them secret may have actually set back efforts to prevent child abuse nationally. "The Boy Scouts of America ignored clear warning signs that Boy Scouts were being abused," Clark said ... http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0320-boy-scouts-sex-abuse-20100320,0,5672708.story

I'm unsure of the basis for your claim "the Catholic church is the only organisation &c&c." Without justifying coverups, it's easy enough to learn that coverups are rather common:

Friday, March 19, 2010
Last Update: 1:55 PM PT
Principal Can Be Sued for Alleged Abuse Cover-Up
By AVERY FELLOW
ShareThis
(CN) - An elementary school principal must stand trial for allegedly telling parents that a band teacher who later admitted to molesting students had only been touching the girls to help them keep time in music class, the 7th Circuit ruled ... Judge Joel Flaum of the Chicago-based court said Grindle's "deliberate indifference" to the evidence of abuse makes her potentially liable for constitutional violations ... "Grindle also told the parents that <the band teacher> had innocently touched their daughter on her shoulder and legs to help her keep time with the music" ... In 2005, one of the girls who wrote the letter told her mother that Sperlik used to bind her with duct tape in class. Her mother called police, who launched an investigation. Other victims came forward, claiming Sperlik bound them with duct tape, presenting it as a "game," and rubbed their thighs or touched their breasts ... http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/03/19/25729.htm

Elite college 'covered up' sexual abuse
Ken McGregor
From: The Advertiser
March 10, 2010 12:01am
ELITE private school Prince Alfred College called a student assembly to instigate a "cover-up" of "widespread sexual abuse" within its boarding house in the 1960s, court documents claim ... The man - who cannot be identified - is suing the college in the Supreme Court for unspecified damages ... The documents claim the college "permitted Bain to remain as a house master when it ought to have known he was perpetrating widespread acts of sexual abuse against numerous boys in the boarding house". The document says the college then failed to support the victim after he reported the misconduct of Bain to school authorities when they "ought to have known that he had an (earlier) conviction for gross indecency in 1954" ... http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/elite-college-covered-up-sexual-abuse/story-e6frea83-1225838883958

[Toasterlad]

12. Unlike Members of Other Organizations, Catholic Priests Don't Go To Jail For Raping Children.

Their crimes are dealt with within the hierarchy of the church. The church does nothing to punish these priests. That is appalling, unconscionable, and irredeemably evil.

The catholic church is a corrupt, anachronistic, and vile organization that is somehow exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us. To most rational people, that is wrong.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

9. I think the salient point is not that nobody else covers it up,

but that others go to jail for doing it. Yes, those organisations that frustrate the police rather than assist are particularly vile, but the RCC is not alone in its ignominy. It's just a shame they claim some kind of moral leadership for the world.

[skepticscott]

10. Not only did the RCC

Help to cover up existing crimes, but they helped to facilitate the commission of even more child rapes by sending known pedophiles to new posts and telling no one about their history.

[TexasProgresive]

3. Not to diminish this horrible situation but I think that

the Catholic church is seen as a monolith. There is a huge amount of child sex abuse in schools both public and private. These schools often deal with it the same way the church did. They don't want a scandal and so they offer the abuser a "letter of recommendation" if they resign and leave quietly. The abuser leaves to abuse elsewhere. The schools and districts are not a gigantic institution like the Catholic church and even when reported it just blends into the background.

I think that bishops, archbishops, popes and school administrators who did not report abusers to the authorities and knowingly protected abusers are guilty of serial sexual abuse of children even if they did not commit the act. To jail with them.

[DeSwiss]

6. K&R

In his article, the reporter spouts statistics at this problem, as if that were even relevant to the issue.

- But since religion itself is irrelevant, the only statistic that's logical is 0%......

[laconicsax]

7. LOOK OVER THERE!

Pay no attention to the man raping a child behind the curtain.

[JerseygirlCT]

8. I don't know about you, but my mom never bought the "but they did it, too!"

excuse.

One child so abused is too many. We all know children have been abused by people not in the RCC clergy. That doesn't in any way lessen the culpability and, yes, guilt, of the RC hierarchy.

[charlie]

11. Great ad copy, Andrew...