I don’t mean to diminish any cases of real abuse, but when I read many of these reports involving diabolical mutants like McCarrick it’s hard to avoid concluding that most of these “abuse” cases were actually consensual interactions between adults.
You mean SEX by dirt-bags who had taken vows of celibacy?
If some of the victims were legally adults - albeit young - that would make it the same as sexual harassment of an employee. Still immoral and illegal, and with a prison sentence attached.
Yes. Variations from “lovers” to violence happen in a homo-dominant environment like large parts of the Church. Think of the infamous Camarillo Four. I had a friend go there in late ‘70’s - gay bath house. The young men either fit with the culture or left the priesthood and often the Church.
Legally, I think, some of it might be classified as "consensual interactions between adults."
OTOH, some of it might be, legally, sexual assault or sexual battery: unwanted repeated sexual harassing, importuning, or touching.
And in a third category, some of it might not have been illegal as to the criminal code, but was still seriously exploitative or manipulative (in both senses) rather than the kind of egalitarian relation envisioned by "consensual interaction."
Because of the serious power imbalance --- the offender being a much more socially well-placed and prominent elder and mentor, and most importantly, being an ecclesiastical superior of the much younger man --- the contact was that of a bullying lecher against a vulnerable victimized young adult.
It's much worse, almost incomparably worse than Weinstein stuff, the Hollywood "casting couch" and so forth. It's a supposed spiritual father, a hierarchical chicken hawk hitting on seminarians and young priest proteges.
Straight-out diabolical sacrilegious violation. There's little that's comparably depraved, this side of hell.