Catholic priest says victims of sexual abuse are the perpetrators and priests are the victims...

[cynatnite]

Interviewer: Part of your work here at Trinity has been working with priests involved in abuse, no?

Father Groeschel: A little bit, yes; but you know, in those cases, they have to leave. And some of them profoundly — profoundly — penitential, horrified. People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that's not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.

<---->

Here's this poor guy — (Penn State football coach Jerry) Sandusky — it went on for years. Interesting: Why didn't anyone say anything? Apparently, a number of kids knew about it and didn't break the ice. Well, you know, until recent years, people did not register in their minds that it was a crime. It was a moral failure, scandalous; but they didn't think of it in terms of legal things.

If you go back 10 or 15 years ago with different sexual difficulties — except for rape or violence — it was very rarely brought as a civil crime. Nobody thought of it that way. Sometimes statutory rape would be — but only if the girl pushed her case. Parents wouldn't touch it. People backed off, for years, on sexual cases. I'm not sure why.

I think perhaps part of the reason would be an embarrassment, that it brings the case out into the open, and the girl's name is there, or people will figure out what's there, or the youngster involved — you know, it's not put in the paper, but everybody knows; they're talking about it.

At this point, (when) any priest, any clergyman, any social worker, any teacher, any responsible person in society would become involved in a single sexual act — not necessarily intercourse — they're done. And I'm inclined to think, on their first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/abbott/120830

Wow! Just wow.

[Politicalboi]

1. Can we close them down now?

I just don't understand how they still have people in their pews.

[cynatnite]

2. I was amazed at this man's thinking. n/t

[rurallib]

3. can't believe how fucking mad I am right now

I was a victim.
Seems like every time I read about one of these jerks, someone is defending them.
No, no, no they fucked up my life and millions like me. They need to be held responsible. Period.

[Zoeisright]

4. Burn in hell, Groeschel.

Just burn.

[tanyev]

5. I'd say someone needs to start looking at this guy's history.