If parishioners leave their children alone with clergy, staff, Sunday School teachers, etc then they are just plain stupid. Churches should also have strict rules about this as well. As far back as I can remember EVERY church I have attended had those rules and they were DRILLED in us. Even our pastors had enough common sense to make sure another adult was present. Good grief, my daughter babysat for our pastor and his wife always picked her up and took her home.
The Catholic church let this happen and their followers just went along. Irresponsible and negligent on both ends.
A lot of the followers didn’t just “go along” with it; they believed hollow reassurances that the men involved would be removed from ministry, and wanted to prevent scandal for the Church (while that may sound silly today, decades ago when these crimes were occurring it was still an important issue to many believers). In fact, many of these stories were broken when parents that had received those assurances later found out that the child rapist in question had simply been reassigned elsewhere.
The Church, like the state itself, was slow to realize 1) that there is no cure for these criminals and 2) that such criminals look for work that gives them access to children. FWIW, I have no problem with executing anyone involved in reassigning known offenders who later raped again.
Nonsense...it happened less in the Catholic church than in protestant denominations...the difference is you sue the archdiocese of Minneapolis or main street Lutheran church......see the difference???????$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Our parish requires any adult who will come in contact with the kids to take an approved course on proper behavior.....I worked in the juvenile detention system for many years and they are adamant in their protection of the kids.....some of the courses are for CYA purposes, of course, but there was a zero tolerance policy concerning abuse.
I was in a male detention facility and all of the abuse situations that I ever was aware of were female on male....nurses, teachers, counselors, officers, going after the gorgeous young men, all of which they could view in the nude at shower and bed time......Had I been female, I could have certainly seen their temptation!!!!!