Here, while you're waiting, have some popecorn.....
Posted on 02/11/2012 10:13:46 AM PST by RnMomof7
Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese for molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.
Ray Boucher has mapped sixty locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.
“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”
Since none of the priests has actually been convicted of sex abuse, none can be identified under Megan’s Law, or their whereabouts revealed in related public databases.
“What the issue is here, is how you weigh the right of the people,” said Boucher, who is also one of the attorneys representing students in the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal. “In particular the right of children to be protected from molestation versus the right of privacy."
Among Boucher’s many clients in the church action are Manuel Vega and Dan Smith.
Vega is a former police officer from Oxnard who took special interest in sex crimes investigations because, he says, he was sexually abused as a teenager by his parish priest.
“He forced me to masturbate while he took pictures of me,” said Vega, who believes that the public is often too squeamish to recognize what child molestation actually entails – and thus not properly outraged by it.
“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” he said. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”
Dan Smith, another alleged abuse victim, is reeling from the recent collapse of his marriage which he blames in part on the psychological effects of the molestation he says he suffered as a child – at the hands of his local parish priest.
“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith said, struggling to hold back tears more than twenty years after the alleged incidents.
Both men helped make legal history by joining 500 other plaintiffs in suing the LA Archdiocese for sexual molestation, with Boucher as their lead attorney.
In 2007 the LA Archdiocese reached an unprecedented $660 million settlement with many of the plaintiffs without admitting any wrong-doing.
It also agreed to let the courts decide which of the case-related church files should be made public, including those identifying alleged and admitted predators.
But according to Boucher and court documents, the Catholic Church has since engaged in a cover-up. By Boucher’s account, Church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.
“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”
Meanwhile legal disputes delayed the release of the promised personnel files, and Donald Steir, an attorney for several priests, went to court to argue that those who’ve been accused but no convicted should have their names and privacy protected.
“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” Steir said. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s difficult if you represent an alleged terrorist or a pedophile, because people don’t really care about the rights [including privacy rights] for these type of people,” Steir said. “But once we erode the rights of a group of people we don’t like, we effectively have started down a path where other people’s rights can be similarly denied.”
The courts, expressing concern for children, overruled most of these arguments and similar ones by the Archdiocese, which declined to comment for this story.
And a judge has ordered release of some personnel files, set for some time in the coming weeks. But he also credited the church for its increased sensitivity in dealing with molestation cases and decided to withhold the names of church officials who handled the earlier cases.
It is a ruling that reminds Boucher of the breakdown in accountability in the Penn state pedophile scandal. “Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher said. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”
Under the judge’s ruling the church can also keep secret, subject to further court review, the names of priests who have not been convicted and who have only one or two allegations against them or have allegations disputed by the church.
To Smith that seems like a formula for further cover-up by church officials.
“If their interests were to protect the kids, they would have released the documents,” Smith said. “As a parent not knowing who your neighbor is -- that is really scary.”
Many of these unidentified priests are included in Boucher’s location map.
“The danger” said Vega, “is that you have a person who has this sickness in them who is amongst the children.”
The plaintiffs in the church scandal are planning to appeal the latest rulings to assure broader disclosure of suspects’ names and locations. But Boucher warned this could take time, allowing suspects to keep their privacy protected, as well as their undetected presence in neighborhoods across California.
Here, while you're waiting, have some popecorn.....
Cute?
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
You take my point, then. This sort of thing is strange. The person doing this is out to get someone.
A very old man, vague and frail, dies at age 88, probably from stress. And the prosecutor wants him exhumed to get evidence! Last night on Downtown Abbey the plot has a young woman suffering from the deadly Spanish Flu, suddenly relapsing and dying “of a broken heart,” from over hearing and seeing her fiance declaring his love for another woman,
Overdramatic,perhaps, but it does happen. A body compromised by age and/or disease, cannot stand much psychological shock. And with regard to the old Cardinal, even if nothing suspicious is FOUND, yet the prosector has managed to make the public suspicious. The aim being to try the Church in the court of public opinion.
You are quite right, CB, when you asked how the Catholic faithful can possibly brush off this condemnation with such platitudes. Yeah, we read where they have gotten angry that such things go on, but why has it not hit them square between the eyes that we are talking about supposed "men of God"? Could anyone imagine Peter or John or James or Paul excusing a follower or fellow Apostle who was guilty of such a horrendous crime? Would they have EVER allowed such a one into a position of leadership ever again? Forgive him? Yes, if he was sufficiently repentant, made it right as best he could with the child and the parents, AND demonstrated a genuine contrite heart and NEVER repeated such a vile act again. But would they have let him back as a church leader? I don't think so! A crime, a sin as grievous and vile as this permanently destroys a man's reputation, or at least it should, and he SHOULD spend time in prison if convicted. Paul reprimanded the Corinthians for not kicking out an adulterer, one who slept with his father's wife who wasn't ashamed of his acts and cease from them. How much more do we think he would have reacted if a Church leader was not only not kicked out from his position, but left in place or moved to another unsuspecting place to continue in depravity and ruin more young innocent lives?
Jesus said such a one would be better off having a millstone tied around his neck and cast into the sea than to harm his little ones. That alone should show that these kinds of sins are to be treated so much differently than other kinds. The Catholic Church is paying - and will continue to pay - a steep price for its complicity. And there is no excuse for what they did, NONE. As I said earlier in this thread, if they had done the right thing at the start, most of this damage could have been averted. I don't know if it was pride, fear of embarrassment, fear of publicity or what, but whatever the reason they have reaped what they have sown. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. The wind was sown long ago, the whirlwind - sent by God, BTW - is only getting started.
So I take it I may use the pronoun ‘you?’ instead?
Thanks for the ping. May Light expose all darkness everywhere and may Love redeem and restore victims and predators.
Well said.
You wrote that “it seems that some protestants think that child molesting is perfectly fine ... if the molester happens to be a protestant.”
No. You are wrong.
Read for yourself the Protestant response to a Protetant leader caught in sexual sin, taking special notice of comment 6 (from me):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2841532/posts
Nobody defends the man. Nobody tries to deflect. Universally, there is condemnation.
Here’s your starting place: Condemn sexual deviancy, even when it’s your leaders who are accused/guilty of it.
Again, when a Protestant is accused of pedophilia, or is found guilty of pedophilia, Protestants come right out and condemn such behavior. See my comment over here, for example:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2841532/posts?page=6#6
There I wrote, “Let me say, unequivocally, that if this man is indeed guilty then what he has done is damnable. It reflects badly on him, and it reflects badly on his church.”
On threads where Roman Catholic leaders are linked to pedophilia, I never see Roman Catholics simply come out so boldly against the accusations. Instead, they deflect the charges by implying that everyone’s doing it.
And this discussion is not about mere accusations, but about glossing over actual abuse (e.g., from the article: “Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse”).
Why, in God’s name, are Roman Catholics so slow at just coming out against abuse committed by some of their religious leaders, rather than primarily coming out in defense of their denomination?
Is Roman Catholicism so fragile that you can’t admit it has some terribly sinful leaders? If the structure is built upon priests, then that makes sense. But if it’s build on Christ, then you should be freer and quicker to condemn such egregious sin committed by some of your religious leaders.
I don't agree ... once again, read this thread.
Seriously.
Read it.
Count the number of posts from protestants objecting to the mention of protestant molesters.
What possible GOOD reason could there be for protestants to object to the mention of protestant molesters?
I answer: NONE. NONE at all. The only possible reasons for such objection are evil reasons.
Here’s your starting place:
Do not dare presume to lecture me on "starting places". I have been dealing with this problem since before it was "cool".
Condemn sexual deviancy, even when it’s your leaders who are accused/guilty of it.
Be sure to tell that to the protestants on this forum who object to the mention of protestant perverts.
1) Using God's Holy Name to support a false accusation is blasphemous.
2) Why are protestants so blind that they cannot see Catholics objecting to clerical misbehaviour?
Is Roman Catholicism so fragile that you can’t admit it has some terribly sinful leaders?
This question suggests abysmal ignorance and blindness so complete as to be almost inexplicable on the part of the questioner.
May protestantism decrease and Christ increase.
And still no condemnation of any Catholic for the acts.
Spare me the smarm. I have been condemning child molestation of whatever sort for a decade on this forum, and longer in the real world.
May protestantism decrease and Christ increase.
What Catholics here object to is the attempt to use the crimes of individuals to condemn the entire Catholic Church and the Catholic faith.
You are trying to play a clever word game with the statement: "Instead of damning pedophiles, Roman Catholics defend their priests" (Post #144). Not one Catholic here has defended a priest guilty of any crime. Indeed we want them weeded out more than you do. But we will not allow you to use the crimes of a small minority of priests how violate Catholic teaching to condemn the entire body of the priesthood.
It is clear from an number of postings that the real objection is the Catholic faith, not pedophilia, as the following postings clearly illustrate:
And lest I be accused of defending the crimes of Catholic priest guilty of pedophilia I will state that I find them disgusting. And so for the record:
I CONDEMN ALL THOSE INDIVIDUAL PRIEST OR BISHOPS WHO ARE GUILTY OF MOLESTING CHILDREN OR COVERING UP THESE CRIMES.
The guideline is to "discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal."
"Making it personal" includes reading the mind of another Freeper or attributing motives to him. It also includes making the thread "about" another Freeper, personally.
Basically, avoid ad hominems altogether. Discuss the message not the messenger.
If you are unsure whether your post is "making it personal" - examine your use of the pronoun "you" and either reword those sentences or remove them. But do not substitute another word or phrase for the "you" because that would still be "making it pesonal."
Okay, now why don’t you address the posts of the other interested party.
Like it or not. The RCC puts itself in a position of being held to a higher standard and when they fail that standard they will be condemned commensurate with that higher standard.
The Catholic Church never claims that priest are without sin by virtue of their ordination. They are called to holiness, as we are all, but are subject to the same temptations and sins as others. Priests too are called to repent of their sins and to go to Confession.
It appears the SOP of protecting molesters has become institutionalized and not just a few personal failings of judgment.
Shall I provide a vivid example?
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