Posted on 04/14/2007 1:03:42 PM PDT by Quick or Dead
April 13, 2007 Sanctuaries are designed to make us feel safe. They provide us peace and a place to pray. Bells call the good to worship and warn the evil to stay away.
This is the kind of American church that a young Christa Brown was drawn to. As a teenager in the 1960s, Brown learned to love music and her God. She grew up in the church, sang in the choir and played the piano.
But as Brown would find out, churches don't always protect the innocent. Sometimes these sanctuaries shield the guilty and even lure predators to a place where young people gather.
The Catholic Church has been widely criticized for how it handled instances of priests sexually abusing young people. And a six-month investigation by "20/20" found Protestant ministers, supposed men of God from every denomination, sexually abusing the children who trusted them. The investigation uncovered "preacher predators" in every corner of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Black Collar Crime.
I hope you’re breathing steadily while you wait ...
It happens MORE now in Mexico too....these days.
First thing I thought of when I read the post......
To some extent, the Catholic Church has experienced the same process as the US Postal Service. While the number of USPS employees who’ve gone on sudden sprees of violence had led to the term “go postal” entering the language to describe such incidents, this is mainly due to the USPS being a very large employer. On a per employee basis, lots of other employers no doubt have a track record just as bad or worse.
However, the Catholic Church is not just large, but very hierarchically organized. In other words, it does have a structure that makes it relatively easy to police this sort of thing — an advantage that most denominations lack (as the article notes of the Southern Baptist Convention: “the organization is structured in a way that makes it difficult to police these preacher predators”, due the independence of individual congregations). I think that’s the reason that the Catholic Church has rightly been subjected to much more intense criticism and legal action than other denominations. It had the means to do a much better job of rooting out and removing predators, and not only failed to do so, but in a number of well-publicized cases, the hierarchy actively enabled predators to be transferred to a new location, and foisted on a new batch of unsuspecting parishioners.
"...but in a LARGE number of well-publicized cases, the hierarchy actively enabled predators to be transferred to a new location, and foisted on a new batch of unsuspecting parishioners."
There, that's better!
I’m still waiting for the expose on pervert journalists, media people who do drugs, criminal acts of investigative reporters and pedophile antics of the (il)literati.
I just don’t understand why those that protected these ministers or priests are not being prosecuted. It’s my understanding that there is a duty to report for ministers, as well. Those that hide abuse should prosecuted right along with the offender.
In the case of at least one high level Catholic (can’t recall which one, maybe Law?) there is an outstanding indictment, and sometime last year there was a question as to whether he could visit the US for some meeting he was scheduled to participate in, without getting arrested. Don’t recall for sure how it got resolved — I think he was given assurance that he wouldn’t be indicted, since he was going to be here as a rep of the Vatican, and thus have diplomatic status.
Re the duty to report, that is a state law issue, which varies from state to state. IIRC, many of these laws are fairly recent vintage (in many cases prompted by Catholic or other clergy cover-up incidents), and thus do not retroactively apply to failures to report that occurred prior to the laws’ passage. The case I mentioned above, IIRC, was a federal indictment, because it had involved arranging for the transfer of the predators across state lines, and other offenses involving more than one state.
Ah, I didn’t think about the duty to report differing by state.
PP, pedophile protestants, there was a time when a huge amount of freepers, predator freepers, who would search the net and FR and spend every free moment of their time to bash Catholics without knowing that abuse exists in all religious faiths, occupations, ethnic groups and economic levels.
news reports of ministers sexually abusing children:
Catholic bashing and pedophile priests
Lutheran minister asked to quit sexuality task force
Sex scandals also affect Protestant clergy
U.S. Protestants also facing sex abuse scandals
Expert: Frequency of abuse by Protestant clergy may equal that of Catholic priests
Accusations filed against NY ministers
Sex scandals also affect Protestant clergy
Catholic clergy singled out, historian says Sex abuse spans spectrum of churches
Pastor Charged With Sexual Contact With Parishioner
What a hateful piece of work you are.
Hatefilled would be a better word.
The fact is, positions that come with authority --- teaching, religious, political -- usually attract people who want to misuse that power for their own perverted gratification.
He’s hate filled for posting it to me for no reason.
I’d assume he’s posting to you because he’s seen you posting on such threads before.
You assume I’m a Catholic basher. You ass u me wrong.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Perhaps you ought to tone down the defensiveness, my FRiend.
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