| Town of Amherst is Worse than Cardinal Law in Supporting Child Molestors Most of Liberal Establishment Still in Denial February 14, 2002 The town of Amherst is demonstrating that most of the liberal establishment in Massachusetts is still in denial about men who molest young boys. Those powerful people are much more liable for molestations than Cardinal Law because everyone’s now keenly aware of the devastation it causes to boys. It wasn’t so clear ten years ago when the Cardinal made his mistakes.
After all, are we to believe this type of predator exists only in the Catholic church? It obviously exists anywhere the pedophile can find young children. As the American Psychiatric Association says, “Some [pedophiles] develop complicated techniques for gaining access to children. They may select a job, hobby or volunteer work that brings them into contact with children.” It is very plain that it is not only in the church where we will discover the pedophile. The only question is why do the Globe, WGBH, the majority of the citizens in Amherst and many other of our institutions continue to make the same mistakes as Cardinal Law did ten years ago?
Amherst Is Ten Years Behind The problems in Amherst epitomize the head-in-the-sand attitude of our establishment. They are acting just like Cardinal Law did ten years ago. Even after the principal of the Amherst regional high school molested a student and it became public knowledge, the chair of Amherst’s school committee, Dr. Barbara Love, refused to cast a single stone. “As a black woman, I am leery of jumping to conclusions and condemning and convicting an individual on the basis of circumstantial evidence," she said. “Witchhunt" became the battle cry from the majority of the citizens who rallied around the principal. It’s obvious that the people in Amherst and the rest of the liberal establishment have fallen far behind in their knowledge about this subject. Most people in Massachusetts understood what happened at the Fistgate scandal in 2000. But neither the Globe nor the people in Amherst do. They all defended Fistgate and they still do. Talkshow host Jeanine Graf dared to talk about it and lost her job at 96.9FM as a result. And none of the establishment appears concerned about what’s still occurring in Amherst where the affair was covered-up by the Superintendent and the school committee until a group of parents forced the issue at a Jan. 15 meeting of the committee. The Superintendent knew all about the incident and had previously acknowledged it in a letter to the boy’s mother. When the matter was raised at the meeting, his only reaction was to question how his letter had become public. A friend of the mother replied to him that the mother had requested that the letter be made public. “The mother felt that the interest of the children was not the first and foremost concern in this community or by this school committee,” the friend informed the committee. She said that the mother had notified both the Superintendent and the Chairwoman of the school committee of the matter. But they did not seem concerned by it. A math teacher spoke about the risks teachers take when they try and reach out to students. But some parents wondered whether the teacher was able to distinguish between “reaching out to students” and looking at their nipples. Some of the residents changed their minds when a 100-page report surfaced, produced by investigators in Santa Cruz, California where Myers had worked in the schools. It included the principal's confession to being attracted to 14- to 16-year-old-males, and his admission to having had sexual relations with boys. According to the same report, the foster mother of a four-year-old Romanian boy that Myers was hoping to adopt kept a journal. It was reported what this woman had written about her foster child’s time with Myers. She said the pair “watched 'silly movies' in bed of naked boys,” and they engaged in “sexually suggestive' play, like the ‘bouncing game.’” Mass. Is Typical of Extreme Liberal Attitude The Mass. establishment is typical of extremist, influential liberals across the country, headed by the powerful New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe. When the psychologists and psychiatrists of America surfaced in their campaign to normalize pedophilia in 1999, Massachusetts News was one of the first to alert the public. As a result of the publicity, there was a unanimous condemnation of the psychologists by Congress by a 355-0 vote which resulted in an apology from the psychologists. (Barney Frank did not vote.) However, here in Massachusetts a story by MassNews resulted in severe hostility from the liberal establishment and a rally against us in Newton. All of the city’s officialdom, the Mayor, Superintendent of Schools, state Senator, a member of the state’s Discrimination Commission and many others joined with homosexual activists and teachers to denounce MassNews. This was what caused us to begin a print edition in addition to our website. It was apparent that the media would never allow us to tell the truth unless we did it ourselves. What we had reported was that the American Psychological Association had published a study indicating that pedophilia can have a positive influence on a child. It said we must eliminate the use of “judgmental terms” such as “child abuse,” “molestation,” and “victims.” We should use neutral, value-free terms like “adult-child sex.” We should not talk about “the severity of the abuse,” but instead refer to “the level of sexual intimacy.” The APA attempted to distance itself from the article by saying that the publication of such a study does not imply an endorsement. “We are a scientific organization, and we publish a lot of scientific literature and we try to create a lot of dialogue,” said a spokeswoman. She said that any attempt to build a bridge “between this study and any so-called attempt to normalize pedophilia is ridiculous. The APA is on the record time and time again to protect children and to protect the integrity of families. It is clear to us that child sexual abuse is harmful.” However, the article, which was printed in the Psychological Bulletin, was clear. It stated that the “negative potential” of sexual abuse has “been overstated.” Forty-two percent of the male college students viewed their sexual involvement as positive when looking back on it. Between 24-37% of the men saw it as a positive influence on their current sex lives. But it was not stated whether these men had become homosexuals. The authors of the study believed that pedophilia is not a moral problem: “Classifying a behavior as abuse simply because it is generally viewed as immoral or defined as illegal is problematic.” A month after its apology, the American Psychological Association printed another disturbing article which said that fathers are not “essential” for children. Fathers may even be detrimental, it said, because of the male tendency to consume “resources in terms of gambling, purchasing alcohol, cigarettes, or other nonessential commodities,” which “increase women's workload and stress.” Political Agenda for Socialism The authors admitted they had a strong political agenda saying, “We acknowledge that our reading of the scientific literature supports our political agenda.” They said their “agenda” is to create a socialist state such as exists in Sweden. They also said that their motivation was the “backlash” against “the gay rights and feminist movements.” They believe that any attempt to reintroduce the father into the American culture through the use of marriage is, “an attempt to reassert the cultural hegemony traditional values, such as heterocentrism, Judeo-Christian marriage, and male power and privilege.” The arguments in the article are not new to feminists. Their goal has always been to advocate socialism, with everyone, women as well as men, going to work and the children being taken care of by the state. When the Boy Scout case came before the Supreme Court, the APA filed a brief against the Scouts. Meanwhile, the psychiatrists of the country had already sent a signal that they too will support the “normalization” of sex with children. Their association, the American Psychiatric Association, very quietly changed its diagnostic manual a few years back so that a person no longer has a “disorder” simply because he “molests” children. To be diagnosed as “disordered,” the psychiatrists will look to the psyche of the adult. If the adult does not feel anxious about the relationship with the child or if he is not impaired in his work or social relationships, then he has no “disorder.” Because of an outcry, the psychiatrists attempted to backtrack and to confuse journalists. They prepared a “Fact Sheet” for journalists which presented an entirely different picture from the official manual. It told journalists that any adult who has sex with children is “by definition” considered to be a pedophile. But that is not how their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defined pedophilia at §302.2 where it states that pedophilia is a “mental disorder” only if it causes “clinically significant distress or impairment” to the pedophile. Later in the year, a 37-year-old gym teacher, who had children over to his home for sleepovers, was sentenced to 88-years for molesting at least five boys. The man’s defense attorney protested against the sentence, citing the APA-published study. However, the Family Research Council worked with the APA to make sure the defense attorney knew that the APA was willing to file a friend-of-the-court brief against the study which it had published. Although it took a lot of work from a lot of people to make the APA change its mind on this subject, it appeared as though it was worth the effort. We Told You So, Boston: The Homosexual Network Twenty Years Later It now turns out that a book published in 1982 had warned us that this was all going to happen. “We told you so,” says Connie Marshner, who works at the Free Congress Foundation, which publicized their concern in 1982. The book was The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy, by Enrique Rueda, a Catholic priest then in the diocese of Rochester. “If you had read that book you would not have been surprised by the revelations that have been coming out of Boston in the recent trial of Fr. Geoghan,” says Marshner. According to her, the priest’s book not only analyzed the ideology of homosexuality, but it documented the spread of that ideology through religious organizations, including the Catholic Church, and traced the funding of it. The following section is what Marshner says today.
No Question A Generation Ago There was no question that the Catholics had the right message a generation ago, says Marshner. It was that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” but that those with homosexual tendencies should be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Then came the sexual revolution and the normalizing of homosexuality by the American Psychiatric Association in 1972. After that, the whole culture changed. Should we blame only the Catholic church for this? They were caught up in the times. But what is more important is whether or not we have learned anything. The town of Amherst and the Globe are following the same route today that the Cardinal took ten years ago. They see a friend who appears kindly and friendly and they find it hard to believe he would molest anyone. Their desire to protect their friend is understandable, but how can they be doing so when they now realize the misery and unhappiness that their friend will cause? If anyone still believes that a molester always looks like a monster, they had better rethink their position. Most of them are just like Fr. Geoghan and Principal Myers, nice, friendly guys who want to help. Two quotes from the Globe articles make this abundantly clear. In one, two experts critical of Law were quoted, one of whom said, “It was highly known by [the 1980s] that sex offenders were highly likely to repeat their behavior.” That is true, but if Cardinal Law is being pilloried because of his actions in the 1980s, what does that say about the conduct of Amherst and the Globe in 2002? Or how about this quote? “Medical evaluations of Geoghan, which repeatedly cleared him to return to parish work after incidents of sexual misconduct in the 1970s and ’80s, changed dramatically in the mid-1990s.” Isn’t this 2002? How about people like Principal Myers? Why aren’t we judging him by the new standards the Globe has articulated? ________________________________________________________________________________
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WGBH has refused to apologize for a “love story” it aired about a 29-year-old man, the age of a young priest like Fr. Geoghan. They included graphic details of the forceful, sexual encounter. Despite the urging of listeners, it has refused to apologize or explain its actions to viewers.