Judith,
The press has done a horrible job of reporting on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It stands to reason this carries over into reports on sexual abuse in other churches. My skeptism is a honest one based on the time frame when the alleged abuse took place.
The 1990’s were not an era of ignoring sexual abuse or of thinking therapy for the abusers would stop the behavior. It was not a time when police feared the power of the churches to raise a stink about investigations. Or when ministers (Catholic or Protestant) had so much influence with local politicians that they could derail an investigation by saying it would be handled in house.
This was investigated by the police yet they did not issue a warrant. The article does not say why the warrant was not issued but again I think that if credible evidence had been found an warrant would have been issued. And yes the article says police want to talk to Mason but that can mean any number of things and is not necessarily a red guilt flag. The article also says that they have a tape of a boy speaking to Mason about sex. Well in that case they better arrest all Planned Parenthood officials cause there website aimed at teens and preteens does just that.
And I would love it if that happened. But my point is that the statement is so vague. Does it mean he was soliciting the boys for sex or was he answering questions about sex? The former is criminal behavior and the latter may be inappropriate but in a world where the chattering classes insist on sex education how do we call that criminal?
I want to say that I also believe some of the accusations against priests do not pass the smell test. Anytime you have the potential for a lot of money you are gonna have fraudalent claims. Yes these are in the minority but we stilll need to examine accusations with a clear eye and not make assumptions of guilt or innocent right off the bat.
And between the time of the alleged abuse and the suits had the SOL run out? In many cases of victims in the Catholic scandals such time had run out and a civil suit was the only way for the victims to seek recompense.
And again how the world viewed allegation of sexual abuse and how they dealt with sexual abusers is vastly different in 1990’s than in the 1960’s and that does play a part in my skepticism.
The children were disabiled. While there was evidence, they may not have been, and may still be unable to, testify.
I don’t care how fair you were or weren’t to Catholics. This is about Presbyterians letting a deviant child abuser get away with killing these children’s souls. Why?