The Clerical Child Abuse Thread (merged)

marienbad wrote: »

Before going on another rant like this yourself ISAW and again going all over the place , do try reading my posts please.

Who was it who posted "A crime is a crime end of,"?

But it seems that you only are interested in less than one per cent who happened to be clerics. If the other 99 per cent plus who were not clerics are also criminals then what happened to your "end of"?

Your tactic of spreading the blame everywhere and bringing all but the kitchen sink into every post is just boring at this stage

If you can't deal with a valid analogy don't blame me.

and so demeaning to those who have suffered abuse at the hand of the clergy. You should know better.

I never once demeaned those who suffered abuse whether it was the victims of the less than one percent of abusers who were RC clergy or victims of the other 99 %.

gigino wrote: »

All the scandals

Over the last 100 years?
I have asked you to list the numbers of priests and names.
Ill bet you cant think of more than five.
Ill bet you cant list more than 20 by name.
20 people over 100 years!

- the most recent one being last week when Fr. Donaghy was convicted .

Not in Ireland. And you neglected to mention the 70,000 people involved in an international child sex ring also in the media opver the last few days. You cant find 30 and interpol can find 70,000 current non priest child porn operators.

gigino wrote: »

Countless Priests were transfered, many overseas.

Countless? So you shouuld have no problem naming 30 then?
Try 20 for starters. Ill bet you might not get past five.

He is an Irish priest and was convicted in N. Ireland. Your point being ?

The stats you used for 0.1% of population referred to where again?

gigino wrote: »

The amount of Irish Priests / religous who went abroad could be measured in thousands, if not tens of thousands. Anyway thats going off on a tangent.

Off you go then. Since you claim thousands went can you list say 30 of these priests whom you claim were moved abroad due to abusing? Ill bet you cant list more than five in the last 100 years who moved outside Ireland and Ill bet you wont list more than one ot two who moved with the local bishop knowing about them.

Whats the 0.1% got to do with Fr. Donaghy ?

Exactly! You brought up the 0.1% current population of priests. I pointed out the case you brought up was from N Ireland. You said "so what"? I pointed out the 0.1% you are using refers to the Republic and not N Ireland. Not alone that but his abuse aren't from the last 10 years.

You said the church was not suffering with paedophiles,

It is always suffering but the numbers and rates are way less than outside the Church - a hundred times or more less.

I made the point "All the scandals - the most recent one being last week when Fr. Donaghy was convicted - shows it was not the church which suffered from pedophiles, it was society which suffered from clerical abuse.

But you were also shown cases from the last week with 70,000 suspect current child abusers all not RC clergy
You prefer to focus on a single case of non currentclerical abuse from over a decade ago in an attempt to make it look like this vile behavior is a current scandal and is widespread in the Church.

In the news headlines only a few days ago was the news that tens of thousands of boys had been abused by the Catholic church in Holland"

Where ? What is the evidence? whatreference have you?
Ill bet when you go and look like all the other cases yu will fint scant cases of sexual abuse of children - pedophilia- as you claim.

Go and read the reports. I hgavent read the full version but her are some stats:
It covers abuse from 1945 -1981
There were it seems at least hundreds of child rapes
It may have involved dozens of priests - the Dutch prosecutors' office said it had received 30 reports of abuse by clergymen ( Irish Times)
the Deetman commission referred 11 cases to prosecutors
So far, one sexton has been sentenced to 15 months in jail

The main person responsible a bishop in Rotterdam who selected clearly unsuitable people for the priesthood resigned as bishop in 1993!

Do pay attention.

Here is a copy of the Deetman report . If you only read English ther is a 23 page summary. Ill bet you didn't even know the name
Go and read it
http://www.commissiedeetman.nl/english-summery.html

Sexual abuse is defined as:

any sexual contact by representatives of the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese – priests, religious, pastoral workers employed by the
church, lay persons and volunteers working for the church – with a child or youth
under the age of 18, entrusted to the responsibility of those representatives...

i.e the report is much broader than clerical abuse.

According to the census in 1947, there were 3.7 million Catholics in the Netherlands
in a total population of 9.6 million (38.4%). In 1967 there were 13,500 priests (4,000
secular in seven dioceses and 9,400 regular in 34 orders and congregations) and
40,000 brothers and sisters in 111 orders and congregations in the Netherlands

It is quite clear that abuse happened but that the Duch church by the 1990s were already responding. ( page 7)

page 8

The Commission of Inquiry has exercised a certain caution in interpreting the data
from the survey, which was conducted by TNS NIPO, because it covers a period
stretching back 65 years, the memory is fallible and views differ about what
constitutes sexual abuse.

Which means while it might not be wholly accurate it is fair and balanced - unlike your views. As usual you don't actually bother to read the sources and you cherry pick out the third hand details from media sources that suit you.

It was very broad in the analysis of all branches of the church. Information was received from every diocese and from 65
orders and congregations, including 18 congregations of female religious. Two
congregations of sisters said that the names supplied (there were three names)
provided too little to go on to answer the accompanying questions. No response was
received from one congregation of sisters, which was asked about one name.( page 10)

Page 11

First, the impression that sexual abuse of minors occurred primarily within the
Roman Catholic Church needs to be qualified. Sexual abuse of minors occurs widely
in Dutch society.

A point it seems I have to make to you again and again and again.

page 12

The Commission of Inquiry has found that the problem of sexual abuse of minors
received a relatively great deal of attention from the hierarchy throughout the history
of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands.

The research in the archives into the activities of the church and religious
administrative bodies shows that the relative prominence given to sexual abuse
ended quite abruptly after the mid-1950s, with just a few exceptions in the late 1950s
page 15
and 1960s.

Anyway their main conclusions are:page 20

- The scale of sexual abuse of minors in the Roman Catholic Church in the
period 1945 to 2010 is relatively small in percentage terms, but is a serious
problem in absolute numbers. Several tens of thousands of minors have
experienced mild, serious and very serious forms of inappropriate sexual
behaviour. Victims have often suffered for decades from the effects of abuse
and have received acknowledgement of the fact.
- Bishops and other church authorities were not ignorant of the problem of
sexual abuse. Moreover, in the view of the Commission of Inquiry, in many
cases they failed to take adequate action and paid too little attention to
victims.

It would seem that Dutch society had a lax attitude to sex - they still do.
Even a single case of clerical abuse is wrong. The level in Holland like Ireland was relatively low . the number and rate of non clerical abusers in catholic schools by lay people etc. was higher than in Ireland. the Church also lacked organisation and proicedures to deal with it and in some cases such as a bishop in Rotterdam there were mistakes made.

the Archdiocese of Utrecht has currently 5 bishops and six sub diocese all with bishops. Rotterdam for example has 3 bishops. That's at least 20 covering the country If you include order heads that may be much higher. anyway it is around 5% of the bishops made serious errors of judgement.
It should be zero but it is not "endemic"

PDN wrote: »

I think the RCC has made great strides in implementing child protection policies etc.

But ISAW, you and I (and everyone else) know fine well that cases of this nature take a long time, certainly more than three years, to bring to the point of prosecution and conviction.

Therefore, if anyone were to reveal knowledge in this thread of a sexual assault within the last three years, then either the post would be deleted for legal reasons, or you would point out that they were simply allegations and unproven. So asking for examples of abuse occurring in the last three years is rather pointless.

Fair enough. Cases not yet concluded then.
The point is people are claiming it is "endemic" and ongoing. If you are going to tie my hands and say I can't ask where then how come they are allowed to accuse people and defame them?

If a report has claimed that proper procedures were still not being followed in some areas as recently as three years ago, then that is worrying. But we probably won't find out for another ten years or so whether that resulted in cases of actual abuse.

Yes it is worrying if procedures are not followed. But that is not proof of child abuse nor should guilt be assumed as you are suggesting. If you are asking for due process and a fair trial then you have to accept that absence of evidence while it isn't evidence of absence of a crime is also not proof of a crime. why should I have to prove someone not guilty?

Why are they also allowed to use current stats to make arguments about historic levels?

i dont agree a case takes ten yerars to secure a coinviction but even leave the current decade aside - wher are the plethora of cases from 1990- 2000?
I have listed tens of thousands of sex crimes in the last ten years . surely if their claims are true they can list ten abusing priests in ireland from the 1990s?