Dublin archbishop: Sex abuse report will shock (1,000's of children sexualy abused)

[moobu2]

DUBLIN - The Archbishop of Dublin said Thursday that an upcoming report on child sexual abuse involving Catholic priests will likely reveal that thousands of youngsters were abused from 1975 to 2004.

The report "will shock us all," said Diarmuid Martin, during Mass at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral.

The archbishop said the report, compiled by the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation, is expected to show that "thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognized for what it is."

The government-appointed commission was set up to investigate abuses within the Dublin archdiocese in 2006, the same year the diocese admitted that up to 102 of its priests were suspected of abusing children. The report is studying how complaints of child sexual abuse were handled.


LINK

[rurallib]

1. Anyone remember why priests can't marry?

And have a 'normal' sex life? I know it would not have stopped everything, but it sure would have cut it down.
And boys weren't the only victims. Girls far outnumbered the boys. Priests abusing little girls doesn't sell deodorants and baldness cures.

My recollection is that in the middle ages marriage was outlawed so that there were no inheritance problems when a priest died. All property accrued to the church.

[aquart]

3. Yep. So much for the idiotic excuses they give.

If ever a religion made a decision based on greed guaranteed to destroy it, that was the one.

[Ken Burch]

4. I need to clarify the effects of the marriage ban in response to your posts

Because, and I'm sure you did this without meaning to, your post confused a couple of things.

If a priest had the proclivity to sexually abuse children, allowing that priest to marry would not prevent him(or eventually, perhaps, her)from doing so. The fact that there are huge numbers of non-clerical married men who have committed sex crimes against children is evidence of this.

What lifting the ban on married priests WOULD do is make it easier to replace priests who have molested children, because there would be a much larger pool of people in the priesthood. The main reason offenders in the priesthood have not been barred from contact with children(let alone, in most cases, turned over to the criminal justice system)was that the Catholic Church has had a "labor shortage" among the priesthood.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. There's another angle to consider.

Perhaps a "celibate" priesthood appeals to men who don't have much interest in normal, age-peer heterosexual relationships.

[Ken Burch]

6. That has been said, by various people who've observed the priesthood

and its current denizens.

There has also been an argument that, in the cases of those who were, er, GROOMED for the priesthood from their early teens through early training, there has been a serious problem with arrested development, in the social and thus by fairly direct progression to the sexual sphere.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. I believe that to be commonly true.

Your comment is in part an amplification of mine.

[JerseygirlCT]

13. In a way, yes

They know they have a problem, and are hoping becoming a priest will fix it. And these disturbed individuals are allowed in, because the RCC is so hard up for priests that they've been taking just about any warm male body.

These men are in need of serious help, and becoming a priest isn't going to change that - except to make it nearly impossible to get that help, and to put them in dangerous positions - for their victims.

[JerseygirlCT]

12. Precisely. Marriage, and even more compelling, IMO, women

ordained.

They'd have a far larger pool of qualified and sane applicants. The church would be immensely enriched. But it won't happen in my lifetime, that much I'm sure of.

[ccharles000]

2. sick

[MrPerson]

7. And I thought this was an "American Problem"

Because we're so decadent over here.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. I think Jean-Paul tried to claim that.

I suspect the fact is that in most Catholic countries, there are much higher barriers to reporting clergy sexual abuse than here. The church is very good at blaming the victims. In the case of one such victim (of pubescent multiple-priest abuse) whom I treated, when my patient reported what had happened to him to the hierarchy, he was screamed at for seducing and corrupting the priests.

[Webster Green]

8. Well, it doesn't shock me..

SOP for the Catholic Church. :shrug:

[napoleon_in_rags]

9. Good. Get it in the open.

I was writing lately about pandemic sexual abuse, how these things way too often don't see the light of day. This is a step forward.