Clerical Child Sexual Abuse

by Rational Ecologist. Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:09

I am quite confused and not a little unsettled by what the author is saying. Child Sexual Abuse is not about sex, rather it is about control and domination. And let's not conflate things here. The mental health services are Victorian and totally pharma controlled.
I personally would obliterate the Vatican, as would most Christians I know.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:51

'...was considered able to distinguish between right and wrong...Its only when we became adult that we forgot how and needed the assistance of guidlines handed down from above.'

Considered by whom?

I'm a father(as opposed to your 'celibate' Fathers')and knew before I had kids myself that it had taken me into my mid-twenties to work out an integrated ethical system and recover from the distorted, sexually-fixated morality of the Roman cult(the same cult that overtly boasts that if it gets its grip on the mind of a child up to 7, it has secured it for the necessary duration).

Your unintegrated ramblings, Sean, prove once again that you are in no position to pontificate on matters of mental health. In fact it bothers me that you seem impervious to attempts to point out the contradictions in your firmly held beliefs, not matter how politely you are asked to review your statements.

Might I suggest you change the name of your dubious organisation to impervio.

Not unlike the Vatican, and its heirarchy, obdurate and stubborn in your conviction of your own vertiginous righteousness.For which enough children have suffered, and continue to do so, for you to be prosecuted for even attempting to defend the institution responsible for their abuse and the ongoing protection of the perverts involved.

I sometimes wish I could believe in your fabricated god of justice, it would be a consolation to think there might be some afterlife where each and every defender of this sick institution would be ressurected at the recieving end of the horrors it perpetrated, and continues to defend through the likes of its tame apologists such as your self.

by Sean Crudden Tue Jul 19, 2011 23:45

Look lads, it's late at night and I had a busy day. But just a few holding comments. Yes, I am trying to conflate things. Why limit concern to one particular form of abuse? Which forms of prevalent abuse are the most insidious and far-reaching? My correspondents are old enough to know that there are many kinds of diabolical abuse and it it often worse if it is institutionalised as psychiatry is or many of our so-called educational practices.

I am not an apologist for anyone and I doubt if anyone would choose me as a person to write in their defence or on their behalf. Opus, you twist my brain. Sometimes I think I know what you mean and more times your drift eludes me. Generally I get the idea that you have some kind of beef with the way I think and you have no compunction in being at least slightly abusive. All I can say in general is that popular witch hunts arouse my suspicions and at the time I used to read two cowboy books a day I learned to reject mob rule and lynch law..

by Pat Pewkneeler Wed Jul 20, 2011 04:13

I have visited Sean's website and see that its pictorial and verbal content reflect a traditional Irish catholic life. The mainstream catholic life of the twentieth century worked for a lot of people in Ireland and later when they emigrated; but the Ryan and other reports reveal that it worked brutally inhumanly against others, and the true facts took a long time to surface.

I note Sean's openness in covering a way of life that has worked for him and his community friends and associates. Historians, and journalists, tend to pass by the ordinary and home in on the extraordinary, especially horror stories and other scandalous distortions.

Victims of distortions and coverups are insisting on their belated share of the microphone and the historian's analytic attention - and on practical action by current politicians and lawyers. The deceased ordinary generations won't be making special pleading. Irish people have had varied experiences of living, with the harshest experiences currently considered to be most newsworthy.

by Rational Ecologist. Wed Jul 20, 2011 10:57

Hi Sean. I really don't see how you can describe the desire to defend young people's right to justice and the prosecution of people who collude with abusers as a "witch hunt". Of course there are many other forms of abuse as you rightly point out, however, in the specific case of clerical sex abuse, justice has not been done to the survivors. This is no way detracts from the other forms of abuse you refer to. I abhor psychiatry and I agree it is a form of abuse and I would support any campaign that seeks to hold it answerable to its, by and large, shameful record.
The thing here is that shameful cover up and facilitation of the abuse of children, by the hierarchy.

by Ever feel you've been had? Wed Jul 20, 2011 11:59

People here keep attacking the Church.

What if the Church is but a convenient scapegoat?

Not an innocent scapegoat mind, but a convenient guilty scapegoat?

The Church could have carried out no cover-up without the collusion of civil society.

So far there has yet to be so much as one report that looks properly at the role of those in civil society who facilitated (or maybe helped instigate?) the cover-up.

The Murphy & Ryan Reports were supposed to be quite comprehensive. The only people in civil society who had fingers pointed at them were long dead.

This is simply not plausible, given that the abuse detailed continued until relatively quite recently.

The cover-ups could not possibly have occurred without the collusion of Gardai, Lawyers, judges & POLITICIANS etc. In other words - without the connivance of civilians in positions of power.

Yet almost none have been mentioned in the various reports. The few that have are for the main part, as I said, long dead. It is not plausible though to maintain that whatever networks were employed to assist (or even instigate) the cover-up in civil society are now somehow defunct.

The Murphy report at one point discussed the case of at least 3 priests from different geographic locations who abused the same group of children. None of these children were living in institutions.

this obviously constituted 'an organised ring' - yet the Murphy report refused to describe it as such.

And it gets worse.

Immediately after describing the activities of what was undoubtedly "an organised ring" of child abuser, the Murphy Report went on to say that "There is however no evidence of organised rings of child abusers".

Again, this is a quite preposterous claim given that the Murphy Report had just described the activities of one such ring.

This claim that "There is however no evidence of organised rings of child abusers" was repeated in every newspaper which chose to discuss this aspect of the Murphy Report.

Every single one.

Yet the claim makes no sense.

Yet not ONE journalist or newspaper in Ireland questioned the claim. Not one.

If that's not a cover-up, then what is?

Below is a picture of the front-page article of the Kilkenny People printed in 1997. Despite the story claiming that names of "A Bishop, a high-ranking Garda, a Minister and a number of 'high-profile' personalities" would be circulated on the internet, as far as I know no follow-up story was ever printed.

With the exception of 'a bishop' all others are obviously secular - i.e. NOT members of the clergy.

As far as I know, no high-ranking Garda, no Minister (or Ex-Minister) and few if any 'high-profile' personalities have every been prosecuted in relation to child abuse.

So there is an obvious cover-up concerning the identities of these people. A cover-up which the Irish Media is involved in. A cover-up which is still going on.

the Irish media seem these days to be quite hysterical when it comes to publishing details of child abuse when the perpetrators are Clergy or ordinary members of civil society. Yet there is silence on the issue of Gardai, Politicians and 'high-profile' personalities.

In the UK there have been many child abuse scandals centered around Childrens Homes - Bryn Eystyn and Jersey to name but two.

In every one of those scandals abused children have named members of the Judiciary, Lawyers, Politicians as being responsible for their abuse. Few if any members of the Judiciary, Lawyers, Politicians have every been prosecuted as a result of such abuse.

So either the children involved are lying or there is a massive cover-up in the UK.

All of this occurred without any involvement of the Catholic church.

Given that Irish Society so closely resembles British Society in terms of structure, legal system etc etc. it is not a great leap-of-logic to presume that something similar has occurred here.

Ever feel you've been had?

by ever feel you've been had? Wed Jul 20, 2011 13:01

DALKEY RAPE ALLEGATIONS MADE AGAINST TWO GARDAI
Irish Times, 11 July 2005
by Marie O'Halloran

Detectives are examining new rape allegations, against a Garda and a retired Garda, made by the wonam at the centre of the Dalkey abuse case.
The two gardai are to be interviewed, following claims that the woman was raped in the 1970's by them, [when she was less than 11 years old.]

The allegations are understood to have been made in the past two weeks, and are being treated by the gardai "with sceptism", according to one Garda source, in part because of the delay in making the claim.

by Sean Crudden Wed Jul 20, 2011 20:28

Yes indeed. There is an element of piling on the agony here. The church is almost defenceless in the context of present accusations/difficulty/abuse and it is an easy target for the bully boys and opinion makers. It's a bit like hitting someone when they are down, to use boxing parlance. Really I am not in a position to comment on the historical detail of what happened and who covered up what. I have read none of the reports. But I agree the spotlight should be on the police, the HSE, the newspapers, the radio, the television. These are the people who are professionally responsible for implementing the law in connection with child abuse and the others are the people who should alert the public to wrongdoing and investigate anti-social behaviour. The media never tell us anything about financial malpractice, sexual abuse, psychiatry in any real sense; in time. They generally raise the hue and cry when all the abuse and scandal has already taken place and they usually find some convenient and defenceless scapgoat to blame.

by W. Finnerty Thu Jul 21, 2011 09:10

I would agree that the Catholic Church is by no means the only organisation responsible for the physical and psychological abuse of children, and of adults: as evidenced by the contents of the e-mail I sent to the Taoiseach's office last Friday.

A copy of the e-mail in question can be viewed by clicking on the following link:
http://www.humanrightsireland.com/OfficeOfTheTaoiseach/15July2011/Email.htm