redleghunter posted:
“I think the challenge involved turning in someone before an outside claim was made. We military types would call that the IG finding a problem before it becomes a problem. The Army does not move bad commanders and senior NCOs to another unit. They relieve them. If they break the law they prosecute them.”
But it wasn’t always that way. Particularly with senior officers, they were often reduced a grade or two and quietly retired. The IG finds a miniscule percentage of “problems before they become problems”.
Refer to the current Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault issues. How many years did that go on, and how many cases were swept under the rug before it hit the headlines? It took the Sergeant Major of the Army getting busted for actions he had taken with recruits years before to bring it out and make it famous, and still it went on (and still does despite everything the military does). Even senior officers in the SHARP program development have recently been busted for it.
Before anyone flames me for equating soldiers and priests, I’m not. I am addressing the idea that an organization should be able to ferret out a crime before it happens.
We all agree that the Church handled it despicably. We should also take the time to look at what the Church has done to fix itself.
That is, unless one is more interested in the fight than a solution.
No I agree. The Catholic church has a lot more mechanisms in place now, to include clearing house in the seminaries of sodomites, to deal with the repeat offenders. No mechanism in the world will prevent one time occurances, but the move around get along which opened the door for repeat offenders is unacceptable. Yes, the military had to learn those hard knocks too especially in those DoD child care facilities where they had, in some cases, a worse record than the civilian side.
What got my Irish ire up with this article was the blase way it communicated and then reinforced by some as “well it was not half bad” attitude. Believe me, I understand defending organizations from false or exaggerated claims as you do. We served in the same organization and we know some of the stuff said about the Army was bogus but deep down there was some truth along with the invective. It is a hard pill to swallow. When you start getting 15-6 and Art 32s to investigate you realize the awful side of the organization you love and respect, and respect it more for having such mechanisms in place.
Thanks for the dialogue.