Replies to post #95759 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[baymare]

The pedophilia problem is not isolated to the Catholic church.

(the Catholic church has been corrupt/sick on many levels since inception. I am Irish, formerly Catholic, haven't been inside a Catholic Church since 1966. In that year, I was in the confessional booth, confessing "mortal sins" and the priest hearing my confession wanted to know lurid details of my mortal sins. I declined to elaborate. He gave me an exceptionally long penance. While I was kneeling in one of the pews saying my penance, he walked out of the confessional, looked at me, I looked at him. I thought about why was my penance so long. I got up and walked out and haven't been back inside a Catholic church since.)

Pedophilia is widespread among the general population, whether hetero- or homo-. It is practiced/condoned probably in all churches, and particularly so in organizations that center around children, e.g. boy/girl scouts.

Wherever there are kids, there are predators, like flies to sugar.

Go to an "Easter Egg Hunt" in your local area this weekend and watch for the perverts.

And if a person is not part of the current psychopathic mind set of the average Joe, then one becomes a target of them.

Predators, whether in the "ministry" or elsewhere seek out positions of trust and authority to gain access to potential target victims. Predators have charming facades, i.e. are "nice" to gain a victim's trust, and disarm the target victim psychologically, emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually.

[Mariner*]

BBC Newsnight , Pope Led Sex Abuse Cover-Up (THE FUTURE OF GOD SERIES/ Crisis In The Vatican)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZD9Ehm_k1s&feature=related

[arizona1]

Pope Breaks Silence On Abuse

Pope Urges Catholic 'Repentance'

NICOLE WINFIELD | 04/15/10 05:03 PM | AP

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI broke his recent silence on the clerical abuse scandal Thursday, complaining that the church was under attack but saying that "we Christians" must repent for sins and recognize mistakes.

The main U.S. victims group immediately dismissed his comments, saying they are meaningless unless Benedict takes concrete steps to safeguard children from pedophile priests.

Benedict made the remarks during an off-the-cuff homily at a Mass inside the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

"I must say, we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'repent', which seemed too tough. But now under attack from the world, which has been telling us about our sins ... we realize that it's necessary to repent, in other words, recognize what is wrong in our lives," Benedict said.

"Open ourselves to forgiveness ... and let ourselves be transformed. The pain of repentance, which is a purification and transformation, is a grace because it is renewal and the work of divine mercy," he said.

Victims of clerical abuse have long demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse, charging that the Vatican orchestrated a culture of cover-up and secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children unchecked for decades.

Those demands have intensified in recent weeks as the Vatican and Benedict himself have been accused of negligence in handling some cases in Europe and the United States.

"Factual disclosures are not 'attacks' and 'penance' protects no one," said Mark Serrano, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the U.S. group.

"When the Pope can't bring himself to utter the words 'pedophile priest' or 'child sex crimes' or 'cover-ups' or 'complicit bishops,' it's hard to have faith that he is able to honestly and effectively deal with this growing crisis," Serrano said in a statement.

Benedict's comments were his fullest allusion yet to the scandal since he sent a letter to the Irish faithful March 20 concerning what Irish-government inquiries have concluded was decades of abuse and church-mandated cover-up in the country.

In his letter, Benedict chastised Irish bishops for failures in leadership and judgment. But he took no responsibility himself or for the Vatican, which many victims have blamed for being more concerned about protecting the church than children.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi confirmed that Benedict was referring to the scandal with his comments Thursday. Summaries of the pontiff's remarks were reported on the front page of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and on Vatican Radio.

On Monday, the Vatican posted on its Web site what it claimed had been a long-standing church policy telling bishops that they should report abuse crimes to police, where civil laws require it.

But critics have said the guidelines were merely a deceptive attempt by Rome to rewrite history, designed to shield the Vatican from blame by shifting responsibility of dealing with abusive priests onto bishops.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, a canon lawyer who has been the main expert witness for victims in hundreds of lawsuits, called the guidelines a "failed attempt at damage control through revision of history.

He noted that senior Vatican officials, including the current Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, were quoted in 2002 as saying the church shouldn't require bishops to report abusive priests to police because it would violate the trust the two shared.

"In practice, the policy has been to avoid contact with civil authorities and to cover up the crimes and the criminals," Doyle wrote in an article this week. "The newly created canonical tradition of referral to civil authorities is the result of one thing: public outrage, the exposure from the media and the pressure for accountability in civil courts."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/pope-urges-catholic-repen_n_539351.html

[arizona1]

Cardinal Levada Blames Celibacy for Clergy Sex Abuse

Given the numerous times that representatives of the Catholic Church hierarchy have denounced efforts to link compulsory celibacy to the terrible history of clergy sex abuse and cover-up, it was astonishing to hear Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles abuse allegations, do just that on PBS Newshourlast week.

Responding to a visiting Margaret Warner's questions about the clergy sex abuse scandal, Levada at one point said: "I think the causes we will see go back to changes in society that the church and priests were not prepared for, particularly changes involving how to be a celibate person in a time of the sexual revolution."

That is a stunning and extremely noteworthy admission, for several reasons. If we take Levada at his word and go the next step, it meant that as a result of the sexual revolution, there were Catholic priests who became involved in all kinds of sexual acting out, from pedophilia (though that is a psychiatric condition with its own etiology) to sex with minors to the sexual exploitation of young -- and not so young -- vulnerable adults.

In fact, a perfect example of this acting out in at least two regards is Marcial Maciel Degollado, the disgraced leader of the Legionaries of Christ -- the powerful religious order of which the Vatican just took control. He not only abused seminarians, some of whom were likely minors at the time, but also apparently sexually exploited women, fathering "several" children.

That acting out was a major problem in itself, inflicting horrendous suffering on the victims of those sexual exploits -- girls and boys, men and women. But the real way that celibacy caused this crisis is that it led the hierarchy to go to outrageous lengths to hide the truth: its failure to maintain a pristine celibate priesthood.

Indeed, a celibate Catholic priesthood has long been a myth rather than a reality. In his research, psychotherapist and former Catholic monk Richard Sipe found that an estimated half of all priests were involved in some kind of sexual activity at any one time. Of those, 15 percent were involved with men, 30 percent with women, and six percent with minors.

The National Lay Review Board established by the U.S. bishops made a similar observation, though it did not differentiate by gender. They reported having heard from "numerous witnesses" that there were "more incidents of sexual relationships between a priest and a consenting adult woman or man than between a priest and a minor." They characterized the women and men involved as "often vulnerable" and the priest's behavior as "gravely immoral."

According to a 2002 Los Angeles Times poll, only a third of priests surveyed in the U.S. and Puerto Rico said that celibacy was not a problem for them.

Sipe charges that despite the level of sexual activity that has existed among Catholic priests, the Church has blatantly and belligerently refused to deal seriously with breaches in celibacy.

"The inherent duplicity between the stated norm, belief and practice thrives on the denial of sexual reality," Sipe has said of the Church and celibacy. "This communal dishonesty sets the stage for sexual corruption and abuse."

In other words, by forbidding priests who choose to be sexual in mature ways that include commitment, responsibility and respect, and by protecting them from the costs of their sexual exploits, the church has effectively condoned a clerical sexual free-for-all. That heterosexual and homosexual behavior may thrive in the Catholic priesthood does not reflect anything inherent about homosexuality or heterosexuality but is rather an indictment of the hypocrisy and duplicity of an elite, closed, all-male system, that condones, indeed, demands, lying about the reality of one's sexual life at all costs.

So Levada is right. The challenge of compulsory celibacy in a sexually charged world has been a major contributor to the Church's clergy sex abuse scandal. Compulsory celibacy cloaked in a mantel of sexual superiority is very dangerous.

No compulsory celibacy means no hypocrisy, less duplicity, and, hopefully, safer congregants and safer kids.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-bonavoglia/cardinal-levada-blames-ce_b_560145.html

[fuagf]

Archbishop's handling of abuse claims challenged
By Stephen Crittenden and Suzanne Smith
Updated 4 hours 39 minutes ago


Archbishop Philip Wilson is widely tipped
as a possible successor to Cardinal
George Pell. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Many links and videos, inside.

The Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, is coming under increasing pressure to explain what he knew about clerical sexual abuse when he was an office-holder in the NSW diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Archbishop Wilson has just been re-elected as chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, and is widely tipped as a possible successor to the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, if Cardinal Pell leaves Sydney to take up a senior post in the Vatican.

The Maitland-Newcastle diocese has become notorious as perhaps the epicentre of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia. Four serious paedophile priests have been jailed since 1997. Father Vincent Ryan's crimes led to a $6 million compensation payout to victims - a record for the Catholic Church in Australia so far. Father John Denham is due to be sentenced later this month, and the compensation settlement with his victims is expected to be even larger. Yet another priest, Father David O'Hearn, is due to stand trial in the next two weeks.

Now a victim of convicted paedophile Father James Fletcher, who died in jail in 2006, says Archbishop Philip Wilson was a priest living in the bishop's house in Maitland when Fletcher was also living there in the late 1970s, and that Philip Wilson should have been aware that he was being sexually abused in Fletcher's upstairs bedroom.

Peter Gogarty says Philip Wilson regularly saw him in Fletcher's company as he was being taken upstairs to Fletcher's bedroom, and after he came back downstairs. At one point, when Bishop Leo Clarke became suspicious, Gogarty was banned from being in the bishop's house, but Fletcher continued to sneak him in the back door. Peter Gogarty says Philip Wilson should have intervened.

"Jim started sneaking me in the back door in the kitchen in the back of the house, straight past the common room where I would regularly pass Philip Wilson and then up the stairs to his bedroom," he said.

Conveniently for Jim Fletcher, Peter Gogarty was attending a school right next door to the bishop's house. He says the abuse would occur at lunch time and many afternoons after school. He says he has spoken to Archbishop Wilson over the phone in recent years about what the archbishop thought was going on.

"I asked now Archbishop Wilson what he thought was happening at the time. Did he know that Bishop Clarke had banned me from the house? His response was, no, he didn't know anything about that, and that as far as he was concerned Jim was a good bloke and he didn't think Jim was up to anything untoward," he said.

Peter Gogarty says he can't accept this explanation from Archbishop Wilson.

"I think, how could a man living in a house with another man not even be remotely curious as to why his house-mate was taking at least one boy up to his bedroom, and there may have been others."

Two weeks ago, Peter Gogarty lodged an official complaint with the NSW Police.

Today Archbishop Wilson responded to a series of questions put to him by the ABC. He has denied any knowledge that Jim Fletcher was sexually abusing Peter Gogarty in the bishop's house.

In 1978, Philip Wilson was made director of Religious Education for the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and taught at St Pius X High School, Adamstown, in Newcastle. St Pius X was the scene of horrific sexual assaults on young boys by another teacher at the school, Father John Denham. Denham is due to be sentenced this month over 135 offences on 39 victims. It is expected that the compensation settlement for Denham's victims will be even higher than that paid out to victims of Father Vincent Ryan, and that it could potentially bankrupt the diocese.

A former student of St Pius X High School from 1975 to 1979, Stephen Kilkeary was taught religion by Archbishop Wilson in 1978 when he was in Year 10. He says the atmosphere at St Pius X was violent, and that boys were frequently sexually assaulted. He says he finds it impossible to believe that Philip Wilson did not know about what was going on:

"My view would be that it would be impossible for anybody not to know, it was so rampant, so endemic. Everybody talked about it, not just at the school, even in the local community it was widely known that boys were being sexually abused at the school," said Mr Kilkeary.

Responding to questions put to him by the ABC, Archbishop Wilson has denied that he had any knowledge that Denham was assaulting boys at St Pius X while he was teaching there.

McAlinden allegations

Two weeks ago, a former principal of St Joseph's Primary School, Merriwa, west of Newcastle, accused Archbishop Wilson of being involved in covering-up the sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl by Father Denis McAlinden in 1985. At the time, Philip Wilson was secretary to then bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, Leo Clarke, and he was sent to the school to talk to parents. Former principal Mike Stanwell says Philip Wilson assured him that McAlinden would be sent away to get help. Instead McAlinden was transferred to another parish where he came into contact with other children, and later he was transferred to a remote parish in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Over the next decade he sexually assaulted five more girls under the age of 10.

In 1995 Philip Wilson took a statement from one of these girls who recently lodged an official complaint with the NSW Police. The ABC has obtained a copy of her letter to police, which states:

"I have advice from a Senior Counsel that based on the documents which are now in the possession of the NSW Police, there are sufficient grounds to warrant an investigation by the Police.

"The purpose of this letter is to formally complain about the conduct of the people noted above, and to request on behalf of all the victims of Father Denis McAlinden that you undertake an urgent inquiry into their conduct."

NSW Police are now investigating documents which show that only days after Philip Wilson took the girl's statement in October 1995, Bishop Leo Clarke launched a secret "defrocking" process, promising Denis McAlinden in a letter that his "good name" would be protected. That letter concludes: "A speedy resolution of this whole matter will be in your own good interests as I have it on very good authority that some people are threatening seriously to take this whole matter to the police."

Bishop Leo Clarke died in 2006, the year before NSW Police established Strikeforce Georgiana to investigate sexual abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese. Bishop Clarke was never interviewed about the full extent of abuse in the diocese.

In previous media statements, Archbishop Wilson has claimed he referred all complaints of abuse he received about Denis McAlinden to Bishop Clarke. But Peter Gogarty says he doesn't think that is good enough.

"I don't think passing on your responsibility to someone else resolves you of you own responsibility. I just see that as an easy opt out to say, 'It is not my problem'," he said.

Diocese cover-ups

Archbishop Wilson is not the first former vicar general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese to be accused of a cover-up. In 1996 NSW Police wanted to charge Monsignor Patrick Cotter over his concealment of sexual assaults by Father Vincent Ryan in the early 1970s, but the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions ruled that Cotter was too old to stand trial. Cotter died in 2007.

Last year another vicar general, Father Thomas Brennan, was convicted of making a false written statement to protect Father John Denham, and placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond. He is the only person in a position of authority in the Catholic Church in Australia to be convicted for covering-up abuse.

The present bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, Michael Malone, has been warned by police for "tipping off" Father Jim Fletcher that he was under police investigation. The Ombudsman's report into the incident was highly critical of the bishop's role. Bishop Malone has since apologised to victims for his poor handling of the issue.

Peter Gogarty says he believes Archbishop Wilson's response to media queries has been inadequate.

"I would really like him to come clean and apologise for all of this, and I would like him to look people in the eye who have been hurt by all of this and say, 'I am sorry'."

For more on this story, watch a special report tonight May 17 2010 on Lateline, ABC1 at 10:30pm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/17/2901859.htm

In the last 20 years, about five bishops and a number of priests have been convicted of child sexual abuse in Australia

Lateline .. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/ .. is on in Australia now.

[arizona1]

Priest Accused Of Abusing Boy, Turning Home Into 'Erotic Dungeon' Surrenders To Police

First Posted: 05-24-10 04:07 PM | Updated: 05-24-10 04:29 PM

(AP) SAO PAULO - A Polish priest accused of sexually abusing a former altar boy in Rio de Janeiro and turning his parish home into an "erotic dungeon" has surrendered and is now in police custody, a public safety official said Saturday.

State prosecutors have accused Marcin Michael Strachanowski of handcuffing the 16-year-old former altar boy to a bed three years ago in the parish house where the priest lived and threatening to kill the youth if he spoke of the abuse.

Strachanowski arrived at a police station Friday night, said a spokesman for Rio's state public security department. He spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental policy. Images published in Brazilian newspapers showed Strachanowski being driven away in a police car.

The 44-year-old priest was suspended from duties after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro learned that a judge had issued an order Thursday for his arrest.

The archdiocese issued a statement Friday announcing the suspension and expressing regret over the alleged abuse.

Judge Alexandre Abrahao Dias said that investigators found "erotic material sent to the victim via Internet to seduce him" and that the priest also took other youths to the parish house, "which he converted into a kind of erotic dungeon where he submitted them, often with the use of handcuffs, to orgies."

Lawyers representing the priest did not immediately return a telephone message left Friday afternoon seeking comment. The phone number for the lawyers went unanswered on Saturday. The judge said that he was ordering the priest detained in part because he feared Strachanowski might try to flee from Brazil.

Church officials said that Strachanowski also faces a canonical legal process by an ecclesiastical tribunal, but they declined to provide additional information about the priest, such as how long he has been in Brazil or his work history with the Church.

The security department spokesman said the priest submitted a document in Polish as evidence that he is a college graduate, which could allow him to be kept in a lockup with better conditions than most Brazilian jails, which are severely overcrowded and dangerous because they are ruled by hardened gang members. The determination will be made by Brazilian education officials in conjunction with authorities.

Strachanowski's lawyers also have the option of trying to seek his release through the courts next week, the spokesman said.

Sex-abuse scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church have mushroomed around the world recently, and some of the accused priests have surfaced in Brazil, home to more Catholics than any other nation.

Late last month, prosecutors charged the Rev. Jose Afonso with abusing altar boys ranging in age from 12 to 16. Prosecutors said the alleged abuses took place in the city of Franca, in southeastern Sao Paulo state.

Also last month, 83-year-old Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa was detained in northeastern Brazil for alleged abuse of at least three boys after being caught on videotape having sex with a former altar boy who was an adult when the video was filmed. Barbosa is under house arrest while authorities investigate. Two other priests in the same archdiocese are also accused of abuses.

The National Conference of Brazilian Bishops announced this month that it plans to craft a manual with guidelines to help bishops prevent child-abuse cases.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/24/priest-accused-of-abusing_n_587701.html