My question has always been why were the police not involved. What made Bishops and Cardinals think this was a Church matter that could be handled in house? How brain washed must a parent be to allow a priest to do that?
Read the threads posted or rely on the NYSlimes reporting. Your choice!
In (less than whole-hearted) defense of the Church, at the time it was largely viewed as a sin on the part of the priest and was handled accordingly. Not as a sin/crime against the child and society. This viewpoint of child abuse was not limited to the Church at the time. The effect on the child was often not taken seriously.
The parents in these cases, when they even knew about them, were most often asked to keep things quiet to “protect the Church.” Which was of course the absolute worst possible thing they could have done, in the long run, to protect the Church.
PREACHER PREDATORS: INVESTIGATING CHILD SEX ABUSE IN THE PROTESTANT CHURCH
Child sex abuse by Catholic priests has been headline news in recent years, but is the same abuse happening within Protestant churches? In a six-month investigation, ABC News’ ‘20/20’ found preacher predators in every corner of the country, including several affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) — the largest Protestant denomination.
ABC New’s Jim Avila’s reporting finds that the SBC, an organization of 43,000 independent churches and 16.3 million members, has an overall structure that makes it difficult to police preacher predators. One example includes a profile of an SBC pastor who abused kids in Kentucky and then moved on to do the same to eight boys in Missouri, before he was finally sent to prison. In an interview with Avila, the SBC president concedes that there is a problem with tracking predators.
‘20/20’ lists numerous SBC preachers who have been convicted or charged with child sex abuse, including pastors still identified on the SBC’s own website or ordained ministers. Jim interviews a preacher who admits that, in his jobs as Southern Baptist preacher and teacher in East Texas, he molested more than 40 boys. For the first time, Ken Ward speaks publicly about how he manipulated families and churches as he targeted and molested children in his care, and how the church is actually a magnet for predators. ‘I wanted them to love me and that was part of the strategy,’ says Ward. He also gives insight to parents about how to spot a predator.
http://abcnewsstore.go.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DSIProductDisplay?catalogId=11002&storeId=20051&productId=2000921&langId=-1&categoryId=100020
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FYI - this thread is about Protestant Pastor child molestors...
As a rule, when these crime were committed, police didn't arrest, victims didn't/wouldn't testify, prosecutors didn't bring charges --it was an intricate system of evasions everywhere you turned, involving not just the churches, but every "helping" profession: counselors, youth workers, psychologists, judges, school administrators, therapists, public officials.
It was very much the muddled smooth-it-over "compassionate" thinking of the times: don't "re-traumatize" the victims by forcing them to provide courtroom testimony, what they need is counseling; don't "criminalize" the abusers, they need counseling as well; don't create a public spectable that envelops the church (the scouts, the sports program, the deaf school) because it destroys people's confidence in the helping institutions, etc. etc.
Now we can well say we're angry and disgusted with it all, and we know better: but for a long time this was not the way any institution, public or private, religious or secular, operated.
Now the thinking is more along these lines (paraphrase from my retired pastor): "First call the police, then the bishop--- and if nothing happens, the press."
There is plenty of shame, guilt, bad judgment and anger to go around. It's 20-20 hindsight. How we wish ALL the offenders were tried on criminal charges and locked away from the kids forever.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say that.