Catholic child abuse won't go away...

[JimC]

From an article in the Age:

THIS IS the worst nightmare made real for the Catholic Church, its careful defences of its handling of clergy sexual abuse reduced to ruins by Victoria Police.
The police submission to the parliamentary inquiry explodes the careful strategy the church has run for years that, yes, it had made terrible mistakes, but these have been corrected by new protocols since 1996, and they can be trusted.
But the police say that even after 1996 the church hindered police investigations, protected paedophile priests and never reported a single complaint to police.
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Despite constant church claims that all victims are encouraged to go to police, the police submission suggests that in fact, many are dissuaded from doing so and that the church's independent commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan QC, has a conflict of interest. Where the church says abuse has almost disappeared - only 13 of the 618 confirmed cases the church admitted to in its submission to the inquiry occurred after 1990 - the police suspect the victims have merely been slow to come forward, in the usual pattern.
The police allegations, along with others yet to be disclosed, will be a devastating blow for the faithful, who naturally want to believe the best of their leaders and who hoped that this inferno had nearly run its course.
In its submission, the Catholic Church in Victoria made what it regarded as a significant concession in dropping its opposition to the mandatory reporting of clergy suspected of child abuse (exempting information from the confessional) and agreeing to report all allegations if the police would agree to respect the privacy of victims who wanted that.
Now that seems far too little, too late. The church's credibility lies in tatters, its strategy exposed as self-serving, its good faith questioned by one group with good reason to know. Another group, victims and their advocates, have been making similar complaints for years.
All will have their chance for vindication in the coming weeks as the inquiry hears witnesses.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/selfs ... z28yb0sD37

Head in the sand time by the church, yet again...

[klr]

From an article in the Age:

THIS IS the worst nightmare made real for the Catholic Church, its careful defences of its handling of clergy sexual abuse reduced to ruins by Victoria Police.
The police submission to the parliamentary inquiry explodes the careful strategy the church has run for years that, yes, it had made terrible mistakes, but these have been corrected by new protocols since 1996, and they can be trusted.
But the police say that even after 1996 the church hindered police investigations, protected paedophile priests and never reported a single complaint to police.
Advertisement
Despite constant church claims that all victims are encouraged to go to police, the police submission suggests that in fact, many are dissuaded from doing so and that the church's independent commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan QC, has a conflict of interest. Where the church says abuse has almost disappeared - only 13 of the 618 confirmed cases the church admitted to in its submission to the inquiry occurred after 1990 - the police suspect the victims have merely been slow to come forward, in the usual pattern.
The police allegations, along with others yet to be disclosed, will be a devastating blow for the faithful, who naturally want to believe the best of their leaders and who hoped that this inferno had nearly run its course.
In its submission, the Catholic Church in Victoria made what it regarded as a significant concession in dropping its opposition to the mandatory reporting of clergy suspected of child abuse (exempting information from the confessional) and agreeing to report all allegations if the police would agree to respect the privacy of victims who wanted that.
Now that seems far too little, too late. The church's credibility lies in tatters, its strategy exposed as self-serving, its good faith questioned by one group with good reason to know. Another group, victims and their advocates, have been making similar complaints for years.
All will have their chance for vindication in the coming weeks as the inquiry hears witnesses.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/selfs ... z28yb0sD37

Head in the sand time by the church, yet again...

Sounds all to familiar from an Irish perspective ...

[FBM]

Screw the sanctity of the confessional. It's horseshit spawn of superstitious nonsense. If someone confesses a crime as hideous as this, whether as victim or perp, the priest listening should be legally bound to report it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Screw the sanctity of the confessional. It's horseshit spawn of superstitious nonsense. If someone confesses a crime as hideous as this, whether as victim or perp, the priest listening should be legally bound to report it.

They collect secrets in the confessional, this is why they've engineered it to be sacrosanct. There's no code of ethic stopping them from relaying juice intell up the chain. Well, no working code, anyway.

[redunderthebed]

Screw the sanctity of the confessional. It's horseshit spawn of superstitious nonsense. If someone confesses a crime as hideous as this, whether as victim or perp, the priest listening should be legally bound to report it.

Damn straight anyone else in a position within any other organisation is compelled by law to report sexual abuse to the po po.

[Clinton Huxley]

Aye, they just can't stop raping the kids.

[Rum]

Is the confessional no longer completely confidential then? I thought that was a cornerstone of the Capholik crutch..

[mistermack]

Pedophiles aren't stupid.

If priests had to report confessions, they just wouldn't confess.

At least, the way it is, a priest has some kind of option. Mind you, the average priest probably wouldn't see anything wrong with it.
Women priests. That's what we need.

Everybody knows a woman priest could never keep a secret.

[Rum]

Some paedophiles are stupid, surely?

[FBM]

If the priest hearing the confession of a serious crime chooses to keep the secret, he should be held legally accountable. OK, maybe that means that some people wouldn't confess at all...to the priest. Good! Maybe more of them will go to the police instead, where there's a reasonable chance of somebody actually doing something helpful instead of protecting the abuser. And if the victim refuses to go to either priest or police, that's their choice. If it's bad enough, they'll go to somebody. But if you go to a priest who only takes your cofession as an opportunity to protect the molester/rapist that's worse than not telling anybody at all, innit?

[DaveD]

If the paedophile wouldn't confess to a priest if confessions stopped being confidential what, practically, is the difference if the priest can't tell anybody, and covers up for the paedophile. The only one I can see is that offending paedophiles would be a little more isolated.

Good.

[mistermack]

Some paedophiles are stupid, surely?

Oh yeah, some I s'pose.
But the stupid ones will probably get caught pretty quick. It's the clever ones that go on offending for years.

I think priests swear not to tell what is revealed in confession, but that's just another lie.
They might not testify, but they could find some anonymous way of getting the offender caught.

Priest lie just like everybody else. More so, as they are probably lying to themselves every day.

[Audley Strange]

On the subject of the confessional, does anyone else see the fucking genius of it? Not just as some kind of folk psychotherapy, but as a tool of control. Imagine the power they must have in such catholic communities just by knowing the guilty secrets of their flock, they could(and most likely did) completely exploit and extort that community and make the dumb cannibals dance to their tune.

Gotta love evil geniuses.

[Animavore]

I wish the Catholic Church would go away.

[Pappa]

The saddest thing about all this is that it's been in the news so long the majority of people have become completely desensitised to it.