Posted on 08/16/2018 9:46:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This week a grand jury reported on documents from six Catholic Church dioceses in Pennsylvania that revealed 300 “predator priests” have been accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children.
The grand jury report states: “We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands. Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent… But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all.”
This report has sent shock waves through the world, akin to the 2002 Boston Globe report on a priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys who was shielded by the Catholic Church.
The grand jury rightly stated: “There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale.”
The Catholic Church is not alone. Many churches and religious institutions have been accused of perpetuating sexual abuse, to various degrees.
In Evangelical Christian church circles, amidst the #MeToo movement, high-profile leaders have been accused of sexual assault. Leaders like Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced to retire after it was reported that he told a rape victim to forgive her attacker instead of calling the police.
Further, in 2017 an assistant pastor at Agape Bible Church in Thornton, Colo., got 13 years in prison for sexually assaulting a young girl repeatedly for 2 years. The police discovered that church leaders and the girl’s father decided to not contact the police and to simply handle the matter “internally.”
In the Mormon church, there have also been scandals, such as the recent case of Joseph L. Bishop, a retired president of the Provo Missionary Training Center, who admitted to molesting at least one female missionary. News reports state that the victim reported the incident to her local bishop, but that the local bishop ignored it because he “wasn’t going to risk sullying the reputation of someone based on that kind of a report.”
In 2017, six Mormon families tried to sue the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for allegedly covering up child sexual abuse by a church member of children as young as 4 and 6 years old. And another suit against the Mormon church claims “Native American children were sexually abused while enrolled in the church’s Indian Student Placement Program.”
There have been accusations of sexual abuse amongst Orthodox Jewish Rabbis, international Buddhist leaders, Muslim pilgrimages, and more.
The list could go on and on.
The hierarchical structures, theology, and policies vary wildly between these different institutions, and so likely will their collective responses and solutions. Each institution will handle allegations of abuse differently – but there can be no doubt that heightened media attention surrounding these issues is socially beneficial for putting churches of all faiths in the hot seat to update and enforce vigorous measures for effective, correct justice in light of abuse.
Many people are asking: why does sexual abuse happen in churches? The heartbreaking reality is wherever there are people – especially when some have greater power or authority than others or where an institution desires self-preservation – there is the possibility of sexual abuse. Sometimes the power differential is in the boardroom at work. Sometimes the institution seeking self-preservation is a Hollywood production company.
And sometimes, the scene of sexual abuse is the church.
If you are a member of a faith community, inquire with your church about the policies and procedures for reporting sexual harassment or abuse. Clarify if leaders are ever left alone with children, at what point after receiving a report the church would call the police, and talk to both fellow members and leadership about ways these policies and more could be improved. Consider asking them to adopt Keeping Children Safe’s international child protection standard, which has been adopted in more than 4,000 organizations worldwide. Ask the church to post this information publicly as well.
Let’s strive for churches to become places of reform, healing, and justice.
-- Haley Halverson (@HaleyCHalverson) is Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
This is also seemingly strange because something like 95% of the accusations against the Catholic Church involve older male employees (including priests) and young boys. Our area (Greensburg Diocese) was unique in that the grand jury indictment involved a priest and a teenage girl in one incident.
This tells you that predators who are taking advantage of the shortage of priests in the Catholic Church are almost all of a single bent, when you consider the general population is 95% to 98% heterosexual.
I am Catholic.
My Church’s response to these incidents was to force me, an usher volunteering 2 hours each week, to go get a background check.
Let's see, except for relatively few Eastern Roman Catholic priests (RCs):
- Pope, Bishops and the general rank of RC priests are required to be single.
- Priests generally live with other priests.
- Many priests have access to and mentor young men.
If ever there was a good environment for homosexuals to live and operate, the RC priesthood, from the top down, seems to be it.
“There’s no way they could have reached the positions of power they are in now if no one knew anything.”
They certainly couldn’t have reached positions of power if those outside the Lavender Mafia had known them for what they are.
In addition you say that as though somebody knowing something should have blown the lid off it. That is unjust to the victims.
Maybe what “somebody knows” is only that one priest molested one time. Sure, there was a conspiracy of silence, among those who were attacking the Church. There was no communication among victims, much less among victims in different areas.
The Lavender Mafia used all the means at their disposal to resist exposure.
It wasn’t until the forces of evil decided to cash in their chips on the decades-long attack, not until they decided that there was more damage to be done by exposing the homo clergy than by allowing them to continue, that this came out.
N.B., this whole thing was exposed not by the faithful but by the forces of evil—the evilstream misleadia.
“At some point you have to acknowledge that not only have they been allowed to be part of the church”
Not knowingly. Only through lies, extortion, threats, and every other evil means have they been able remain in the clergy and rise. They were not “allowed” to be part of the Church; they deceived their way into the ranks of the clergy.
“they are now running it.”
The success of the KGB in infiltrating the Church doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The Church has existence over and above the men who hold office. There have been bad clergy and bad popes before. They are dead. The Church lives.
I pray for all the faithful Catholics who must persevere through this bergoglian nightmare.
Not all of the perps were homosexual.
And throw their enablers in adjoining cells.
In the case of the Catholic Church it is because they allowed sodomites to become priests under the theory that that people who define themselves, indeed center their entire identity, by who makes their genitals twitch are no more likely to trespass then those who are normal.
The problem is that this is false.
They then compounded their error by discarding their old ways of dealing with sodomite priests who broke their vows in favor of "therapy" after which they were sent forth to "sin no more".
Doesn't work.
This has led them into their present dilemma.
Don’t know, but that’s why I do not go to that place and never will again.
Church is full to the brim with evil people from front to back.
Pass.
Multiply this by 49 other states and you’ll have an idea of the scope of the issue and the real truth about the catholic church.
The overwhelmingly vast majority of the perps have always been adult males buggering boys and young men. They were and are homosexual. Don’t fall for Big Media’s lies.
“In the case of the Catholic Church it is because they allowed sodomites to become priests”
Never. The sodomites infiltrated, lied their way in.
“Pass.”
Jesus wept, and Satan rejoiced.
“Not all of the perps were homosexual.”
Almost.
That's partly true. Once the sodomites became bishops, the sodomite bishops went out actively recruiting other sodomites. The comparison of the sodomites to the mafia is apt. With apologies to the mafia ...
“Once the sodomites became bishops, the sodomite bishops went out actively recruiting other sodomites.”
Yes, true, but even so they had to lie to the public.
Agree. The execrable McCarrick, Donna Wuerl, and others put on quite a pretense of being something other than perverts.
Not to mention Mahoney and Driscoll.
Hubbard. Weakland. Bernardin. Law. O’Malley. Etc.
Now there’s something we should confront Russia with.
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