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Posted on 04/18/2010 9:49:35 PM PDT by Judith Anne
I seriously wonder about some FReepers, sometimes. Any other person accused of a crime would be defended by every FReeper as being innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. I've seen whole threads written by men who have been accused of child abuse by ex-wives out to deny them their visitation rights or to wrest more money out of them. These men are rightly indignant, and furious about the unjust accusations that cannot be proven but are never withdrawn.
Yet where are those FReepers when a PRIEST is accused? Where is the presumption of innocence? Suddenly, every accusation becomes a verdict, and not only the accused but his entire organization and all its adherents are held responsible.
I can only wonder what some of these so-called conservatives (who so faithfully defend the Constitution) would do, if THEY were the ones accused! It is a nightmare for any man -- all of you know how even the accusation stains the man forever, even if it is proven false!
Not only that, many here assert that the problems of 30, 40 and even 50 years ago must be tried in the media TODAY!
Remember the Duke rape case? There are more similarities than differences here. The priests are accused, nifonged, and instead of being defended, they are vilified!
What other man of you could stand under the weight of such an accusation trumpeted by the press, and come out whole? None! And such accusations made, LONG after the statute of limitations has passed, sometimes even after the accused is dead and buried for YEARS -- are YOU one of those who automatically, reflexively, spitefully, and gleefully act as judge, jury, and executioner?
Women! What if it were YOUR HUSBAND, YOUR BROTHER, YOUR FATHER, YOUR UNCLE, YOUR SON who was accused? Wouldn't you want the best defense possible? Wouldn't YOU believe in their innocence? Wouldn't YOU help protect your loved ones as much as possible? And yet, YOU JUDGE THE CHURCH FOR DOING WHAT YOU WOULD DO?
Shame! Vast shame! On all who have sinned against the innocent!
Do you understand the meaning of your quote? If so, please share with all of us.
I don't play that game, Judith. If you want examples of pederast priests, read the hundreds of threads on FR which address exactly that.
New allegations? in 2002? That’s when the scandal broke in the US. Got anything recent? After all, presbyterians complained when I made a post about ministerial child sexual abuse from 2002. Loudly.
Now, got the name of any Catholic priest who raped a 13 yo?
Over two billion dollars worth of pederast priests in the U.S. alone.
The likes of which we've seen posted here tonight.
Changing the subject? Still can't name ONE PRIEST who was convicted of raping a 13 yo? Don't know how many (if any) priests are in that prison near you, for pederasty? Can't give any information?
It's a game when you make an allegation and then can't support it. If you are not playing a game, back it up.
All the NAMBLA-esque posts that fill this thread say otherwise.
Frankly, I know nothing about NAMBLA. Any presbyterian who does is welcome to tell me where I agree with them, or to post the name of ANY priest who ever was convicted of raping a 13 yo.
If you cannot support accusations against priests, and if you cannot tell me where I have made a NAMBLA-esque statement, don’t expect me to come up with an answer. Because I don’t have a clue what is in your mind.
I do wonder if possibly your posts are meant to nifong me. Connecting my posts with something totally perverted, when they are nothing but the truth, SEEMS like an attempt to indict me on trumped up charges.
Not very Christian.
Thanks. I guess other people were waiting for you to carry their water.
BTW, what happened to Geoghan? Got anyone else?
As someone who's worked with abused kids (and abusers), I can tell you the subject just causes some people's brains to short-circuit. It's heinous in a way even murder isn't, mostly because of the motive (we don't condone murder, but we get what it is--someone is evil, or was pushed to strike back, or is nuts or greedy or whatever). It's not about agreeing with that, it's understanding it.
Molestation is something else. It seems like something a human didn't do, but an alien being.
To listen to the media, one would think priests do nothing but molest children. Even those here who pride ourselves on "not drinking the media Kool-Aid" have indeed been influenced by them; our intense denial only proves how insidious such influence is.
Add to this the undeniable facts that the church has a history of moving priests around when such situations occur.
I hate to use this cliche again but these factors really do combine to produce a perfect storm for the creation of a fall-back position of assuming guilt.
One has to take a deep breath, stop being emotional, and look at each individual case as one would with ANY individual charged with a crime. But most people don't--the treat priests not as fellow citizens but as members of an elite club, apart from the rest of us. Fair or not, but when I say "politician" or "country singer" or "movie star" or "Nobel prize-winning physicist," you have a set of assumptions about that person to begin with, which are then adjusted when I then say the individual's name. But even then, you've still got assumptions about those individuals--they're not blank slates, and that's because they belong to a group, and we all have our own judgment about groups.
If one doesn't despise priests, the accusation itself is shocking, and there have been so many accusations publicized that one might just think "Another one." The reaction would be far different if the report was about a regular blue collar worker.
But priests are not regular folks. The fact is, priests belong to a group which has had a great deal of publicity about the handling of such cases in the past. When you hear about plumbers who've molested, do you also hear that the plumbers union has moved such accused around to avoid trouble? When you hear of an ex-husband so accused, you know he's just a guy, not someone who might have done this before and been allowed to move away.
I agree that we have to be aware of the opportunities the leftists are taking to attack the church. At the same time, the faithful like yourself have to admit, the church left themselves wide open for this kind of thing. Your anger is justified, but you should spare some of it for the church.
Never mind, I found a link for what happened to Geoghan:
On August 23, 2003, while in protective custody at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his cell by Joseph Druce, a self-described white supremacist and inmate serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole for killing a man who allegedly made a sexual pass after picking Druce up hitchhiking. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be “ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma.” There have been questions raised about the wisdom and propriety of placing these two men in the same unit, since prison officials had been warned by another inmate that Druce had something planned. [3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Geoghan
Prosecutor Debra L. Blasius said the state will argue that James R. Blume receive a 10-year prison term when he is sentenced March 26. Blume, 64, was charged with two counts of sexual assault against a child. He decided to enter guilty pleas Friday rather than take the case to trial and was found guilty by Waukesha County Reserve Judge Patrick L. Snyder. Blume was charged in July with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in the winter of 1979 at the Sleepy Hollow Motel in Elm Grove. The second sexual assault charge was added after another man came forward in October after hearing that Blume had been accused of molesting the 13-year-old boy. The man, now 41, told Elm Grove Police that Blume had sexually assaulted him between April 1982 and January 1984, starting when he was a 14-year-old boy. Blume can be prosecuted for the offenses three decades later because he didn't remain in Wisconsin long enough for the six-year statute of limitations then in place to expire. Both victims told police they were sexually assaulted a number of times by Blume. "WAUKESHA, Wis. — A former member of the Brothers of the Holy Cross religious order who later became a Catholic priest pleaded guilty Friday and was convicted of sexually assaulting two boys in the Elm Grove area, one in the late 1970s and the other in the early 1980s.
Now we await the cacophony of protest that this article is four years old or the rapes took place years ago.
But most of us are now hip to the way Rome operates, what with Crimen Sollicitationis and Ratzinger's letter in 2001 all threatening excommunication to any victim who tells anyone but church authorities about the sexual assault he suffered.
And don't forget Ratzinger's rule that says the church has jurisdiction and the oath of secrecy must be maintained for 10 years past the victim's 18th birthday.
In this case, the victims would have been 28 before they could come forward with their accusations.
How many young men don't make it to their 28th birthday because of the sins committed on them by pederast priests who are protected by Rome while the victims languish in pain and suffer further humiliation at the hands of RC apologists who refuse to believe them and ridicule them as opportunists?
Rome knows no shame. If Ratzinger cried at all (which I doubt) they would have been tears for himself and what lies ahead for all those who destroy children and then lie about it.
Your anger is justified, but you should spare some of it for the church.
Trust me, I do, for any genuine perpetrators. But the title of this thread is "Nifonging the Catholic Church" and frankly I'm sick of priestly pedophilia, no matter how seldom it occurred (Ann Coulter says the percent of guilty priests is 0.12%) coming up on every single anti-Catholic bigoted thread on the Religion Forum
From the same old suspects, too.
More victimology.
Don't make this thread about you, Judith.
Geoghan, after fifteen or so years of being moved around and molesting was defrocked and jailed though i don't know if that was the order.
Porter was another wholesale molesting priest. There is no shortage of information on line available.
If you want more.........
While I have strong feelings about how the church handled this situation, I've been in the presence of people (look where I'm from) who seem gleeful when talking about it. The victims, victimized in absentia.
That is an old tactic around here. Demand MORE evidence. And after receiving that evidence, demand still MORE.
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