Pedophile Priests Protected Not Only By Church But Also By Police
By CSPANJunkie Sunday Nov 29, 2009 7:00am
November 27, 2009 BBC World
DUBLIN, Ireland — Police officers, government officials and bishops of the Catholic church in Ireland have been harshly censured in a report on clerical child abuse over three decades in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Coming just a few months after an equally harsh report on the ill-treatment of children in Church-run industrial schools, the latest revelations have shocked Catholics and non-Catholics alike throughout the island.
An official commission investigated 320 allegations against a sample of 46 out of 183 priests from 1975 to 2004. It found that several cardinals and bishops protected criminal priests while taking no action to protect children.
Responding to the report, Ireland’s Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said that “the era where evil people could do so under the cover of the cloth, facilitated and shielded from the consequences by their authorities, while the lives of children were ruined with such cruelty, is over for good.” He added: “The bottom line is this: A collar will protect no criminal.”
In one of the most telling comments, the religious affairs correspondent of Irish national broadcaster RTE said on the main evening news that the report “represents the failure of civil Ireland, in the independent republic of Ireland, to stand up to the royalty of Ireland, the Catholic Church.” Deference to the clergy in this once devoutly Catholic country caused the police to conclude that the crimes of the Catholic Church were outside their remit.
Login or Register to post comments.
"Holy Men."
Send them to a maximum security prison, let it be generally known just what it is that these men have done - and put them in the general population.
You just wait, you'll see on Judgement day: the Baby Jebus will kick their asses around the block.
these pedophiles are trying to dictate our health care, abortion laws and gay rights. This organization needs worry about their own policies and fix them before they try and tell the rest of us what's right and wrong.
on top of mysogyny on top of racism. no wonder I'm a former catholic.
They're sick. One of the greatest advantages to leaving the RCC was knowing they would never be able to victimize my children - they wouldn't be able to pork my son or demean my daughters with their misogyny.
*
Seems pretty clear that aspiring pedophiles knew the safest career path to follow. Easy pickins too.
would always be believed by a parent over their child. that is one of the scariest parts of the issue.
"Question Authority", my favorite bumper sticker. Authority should be constantly earned, easily stripped.
This is the perfect example of why there is a seperation of church and state and it should stay that way.
The church (any church) IS the source of moral authority - riiiight?
The farging iceholes are just as (or more) flawed and sick as anybody else.
UGH!
and sicker.
Birds of a feather flock together.
Maybe that is why the police are protecting them.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness that is killing America!
were once dominated by ethnic irish. That is the tie-in, NOT republicanism. there are plenty of other spots for that.
Just like the mafia.
Those police officers might not have felt good about protecting the priests themselves but you protect the institution and do what you're told by people in authority. "Greater good." "Just following orders." Blah-de-blah.
for disbelief. at one time it was too shocking to believe. these times ain't those times.
If some robed pervert touched my child, there would literally be hell to pay. Where are the parents demanding justice???
They were afraid of the magical man who lives in the sky. They were afraid of his emissaries in the black costumes who speak for the magical man in the sky, and if you dare stand up for what you know is right and contradict the men in the black costumes, the magical man in the sky will throw you into a fire, not for a day or a year, but for all eternity.
Ignorance and fear and religious devotion made decades (centuries?) of child rape and cover-ups possible.
It could be they never knew. My mother never knew about my brother.
*
Lots of families accepted big payoffs and signed agreements to keep their traps shut while the priests were delivered to new victims...I mean, transferred to other parishes.
that a priest would do that.
There would be one sorry priest that ever touched my kids, unless the vatican got there first to spirit the scum off to the safety of Rome. That is just as criminal in my opinion.
it the one who managed the american pedophile ring.
. . . happened in orphanages.
There was non-sexual abuse as well: beatings, malnutrition, forced labor, emotional abuse of every kind. Nobody was looking out for these kids.
White House Boys
Former "Client" 2005
White House Boys News Video (8:03)
No exceptions.
..the IRA was planting letter-bombs all over Britain in an effort to remove the "boot of English Protestant Oppression" from their necks. Which, had they been successful, would have strengthened the Catholic theocracy.
I'd file that one under, "be careful what you wish for." Be especially careful about what you're willing to kill innocent bystanders for.
The Roman Catholic Church was very cooperative to the English opressor.
This caused no end of division within the ranks and organizations of the rebels.
But the RC Church, as always, knew who buttered their bread and openly collaborated with the Stranger.
The report was about the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland. The IRA campaign was about getting the British out of Northern Ireland. By your logic Massachusetts should have remained a British colony because the abuses that happened in the Boston Archdiocese might not have happened if the US had not declared independence.
..that I was trying to make was that The Troubles were an effort to make Ireland MORE Catholic, even though the Church denied women access to any method of contraception or abortion for moralistic reasons, while being shockingly immoral themselves. Fighting for freedom is one thing, but fighting to replace one form of oppression with another that is arguably worse is just nuts.
Mick I'm sure you're point is accurate -- Church authorities have always sucked up to whatever power structure was in place. It's why they've endured so long.
Rubensni, I can't concede that your argument is even coherent, let alone valid.
"The report was about the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland."
So are you trying to tell me that the sexual abuse of children stopped at the border? That the Bishops protected pedophiles in the Republic, but exposed and prosecuted those in Northern Ireland? That just doesn't make any sense.
you are correct in a sense. While the RC Church were sucking up to the occupiers, some of the rebel leaders such as Padraig Pearse saw an expanded role for the RCC in an Irish Republic.
Others such as James Conolly and Mick Collins were reputed to have seen the whore RCC for what it was and is. Countess Markewiecz certainly had no use for the RCC.
on priest abuse. It states the rates are down from the 1960-1990's. One of the reasons for abuse—“The pattern of deviant sexual behavior by clerics is consistent with several other behavioral changes in society between 1960 and 1990, including use of drugs, and an increase in divorce and criminal behavior.”
What does that mean—the church can’t handle change, they are just not that special,or are they blaming it on the rest of us.
Priests have had a problem with alcohol, women, men and children for a long time.
Justice for the victims is not part of the equation. A lot of these perverts are still serving. These men are still passing out the holy host, baptizing babies, and anointing the dead-- with the same hands they used to perform despicable acts. I would like bishop Tobin,the pope and DA's to defend, explain and justify that.
. . . you can see the Catholic Church doing the same, and for largely the same reasons: they're run by scared, small-minded people who cannot deal with modernity, and whose corrupt practices (where they exist) tend to offend, abuse, baffle or rip off their rapidly exiting rank-and-file.
Self-inflicted wounds, in short.
Voltaire was right.
People today tend to be more sanguine about the threat posed by this monstrosity, because it has receded somewhat, had some of its wings and claws clipped, since Voltaire's time. But it still is what it always was, what any religion gets to be when it has a Church directing it, it's just that the One True Universal Church has always been inherently a more unified, truer and more universal threat than most churches have grown into.
this vile lot still gets communion.
I know if you or I did that, we'd be serving time behind bars.
Are these turds just "too holy" to pay the price as well??
I've had it with the Catholic Church. I no longer donate a dime in the collections. They can dry up and go the way of the typewriter, as far as I'm concerned. I continue to practice "my faith", but not with Rome and their corrupt.
Growing up catholic, you looked at priests and nuns like they were the ultimate authority. My big eye opener was the two years I spent at the seminary. You found out that these men were not only human beings, but in many cases deeply flawed. Back in my day the priesthood was used by many men to escape their homosexuality. Since the church teaches that even thinking about such things is a sin, what better place than the "celibate" world. These gay priest were some of the most miserable individuals you would ever want to meet. Most of the time they tried to drown their misery with alcohol. In recent years many have left the priesthood and found love in the real world. I knew straight priests that had the same problem.
I agree that the church (any church) should be held to the same standard as any individual. If any member of the church is found to have covered anything up they should be charged with conspiracy. I also think that since churches now feel free to tell us how to vote, they should all be stripped of their non-profit status and be forced to pay income and property taxes.
This reminds me of the famous story from some years back where in Ireland in November 1994 at the appropriately named Dublin gay bathhouse, the Incognito Sauna, the mainstream press (The Irish Times) reported where a well-known local priest had died of a heart attack after some unsuccessful attempts to revive him by a young medical student (customer). All was not lost because there was another priest (customer) on hand to give him the last rites and another priest (customer) on hand to help out.
When I read of such stories it only reassures me that religion is one huge ugly complicated farce to keep the masses ignorant, abused and obedient.
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." -- Anne Lamott
What a becoming frock.
What's funny is that the catlick church has opened their arms to Anglican families concerned that their Episcopal church is accepting gays and women into the clergy.
... they have to do something and quick!
How else is the pope going to pay for his bespoke wardrobe, personal guard, precious metal and gem encrusted palaces and his retinue of Bishops?
I mean really? Without the extra dross the new converts bring in there would be no way he could continue to bribe world leaders into pushing his misogynistic hate filled agenda.
They'll take anyone at this point, they have to if they want to remain in control of their army of zombies.
I'm not sure how much the coppers are to blame since the movement of priests is directed, I understand, by the Vatican, which is something of a city-state, and the pope is considered a foreign leader, met by such presidents as ray gunn, Clinton and boosh, although I'm not sure about Obama
Yet.
Since when is it surprising to know that the police cover up the church's crimes? This has been a standard throughout society...it's one of the main reasons I believe that we can never have true freedom as long as the church remains.
The Church uses a bullshit god to keep the masses in line, then some of the masses become police and use their authority to protect the bullshit chruch because their god might punish them.
I don't like intollerance, but I can't help but look down on religous people, if you are over the age for 14 you should really think about giving up your invisible friend and face life on lifes terms.
It has been going on for years all over the world
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=333...
Burning at the stake.
I prefer mine medium well.
1. Use the RICO law to confiscate and sell off all the church's assets from the Vatican on down and give the proceeds to the millions of victims of the church. The catholic Church is organized crime in that it is centered on an international child sex ring and on criminal fraud, i.e. raising funds and controlling lives via scientifically unproven claims about "god," "jesus," "heaven," "miracles," and other such nonsense. It is a terrorist organization in that it has participated in and encouraged acts of genocide and actively strives to use its perverted delusional belief system to undermine secular states, democracy and human rights.
2. Arrest and prosecute the Pope, all his minions and every lay member of the church who continue to belong to and support that criminal organization. Insanity can be the only defense for lay members who are shown to be true believers.
3. Prohibit all religions from raising funds, owning property or holding any assets.
4. Force leaders of all religions to tell the public the truth about their claims; that there is no rational reason for any sane person to believe any of them in that they are unsupportable by factual scientific evidence and must therefore be regarded as lies.
These animals preyed on children, far too many Catholics are in denial.
Stop believing that they will be punished in the after life, they must face punishment for their crimes here, on earth, before the justice system.
I grew up Catholic and I knew boys that were abused. The victims became recruiters for new victims.There was one boy that tried to recruit me for the "St. Josephs club", it was a secret society....no adults were to know about it. For a ten year old kid it sounded soooo James Bond.....perfectly innocent sounding and perhaps would lead to an important position.
I did not join, something about showing your penis to a priest seemed wrong, and later the following year the Parish Priest left the priesthood. One Sunday before he left the PP stood before the congregation and lambasted the flock for spreading rumors about his leaving, "I will sue any of you who spread lies about my reason for leaving", being 11 years old I would have never guessed that the "St Josephs Club" , and his leaving were connected.
Just a few years ago I was sitting around a campfire with other Backpackers telling stories and someone brought up Catholic Priests and I told my story about the "St Josephs Club". To my surprise 4 other guys had the basic same story with the exception that the club name was different.
The thing that amazed me the most was that two of the guys were still catholic and had sent their kids to a catholic school.....WTF?
This pull that magical thinking has on people is a powerful force, and to think that it would influence people so much that they would seemingly expose their children to pedophiles in exchange for supposedly receiving a better education is astounding.
Around 10 years ago, a priest at the church I went to as a child committed suicide. It was believed that he killed himself after being told that he was under investigation for molesting children through the years. Some of the victims had decided to sue the church.
Upon reading about this in the newspaper, I remembered the one time he had taken my confession. I and the other kids in my Sunday school class were marched over to an office in the rectory and were told that we were to give confession to this priest in the office, rather than in the confessional as we normally did. I thought that this was odd and asked why we were giving confession in the office, with another priest present there as well. I was told that it was because the adults were using the confessional.
After reading the report of the suicide in the newspaper, it occurred to me that, most likely, the reason we gave confession in the office that day was so that another priest would be there to keep an eye on this priest when he was with us kids. After this one occasion, we never gave confession in the rectory office again, and never had our confession taken by that particular priest. However, that priest remained at our church for over 20 years after that.
I left the Roman Catholic Church when, as George Carlin so succinctly put it, I reached the age of reason. Church had always been a miserable experience for me, especially because I have ADHD; it was very difficult for me to sit still for an hour, much less to remember all of the rituals and to perform them correctly. I just never felt comfortable there and, to this day, I've never understood why anyone would require a go-between in order to communicate with God...
By RACHEL D'ORO - Diocese in Alaska agrees to $10M abuse settlement
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks and representatives of almost 300 alleged victims of clergy abuse have agreed on a settlement of almost $10 million.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have no answer for myself or thee,
Save that I learned beside my mother's knee:
"All is of God that is, and is to be;
And God is good." Let this suffice us still,
Resting in childlike trust upon his will
Who moves to his great ends unthwarted by the ill.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Twentieth-century feminist Sonia Johnson once remarked, “One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one single woman, in any country of the world, will go to church."
------------------------------------------------------------------
and they can be convinced of almost anything.
Of course all of those children are lying little perverts. How could you think such a thing about a man of G-d. /snark
Once we get the catholic church under control could we get the dangerous fundamentalists out of the military?
Wall St. $pends a great deal of money to retain their key players as well.
Talk about... Whistle-blowers ;)
It sickens my heart that once again we have some very anguished and tormented lives among us because we have allowed these low-lives to prey on our children all hidden behind the make-believe world of god and we have not taken the appropriate steps to rid ourselves of these collared vultures. This is a great crime against humanity and how long are we going to allow this to continue?
Now we find another country (Ireland) where even the very people placed there to protect us and our children against such scum were actually protecting them and blatantly hiding their great crimes and turning a blind-eye on those great sins of perversion. They were allowed to use and abuse the children to their hearts content and lustful desires with the full permission of the police force. I find this all so disgusting.
It is time we grow up and come to terms with the fact that making believe there is something out there is a huge lie perpetrated by a thousand charlatans for their own power and gain. We have been used and fooled so long because these evil men hide behind the veil of the unseen mystical sky-fairy. A sky-fairy that somehow and for some “mysterious” unknown reason doesn’t ever seem to be there when he is most needed. When are we going to have enough of this nonsense idiocy? If I am wrong then prove it ... because thus far I seem to be 100 percent correct time and time and time and time and time and time again.
Religion is all about the money and power. So keep lightin' those candles and mumbling to yourselves while your valnerable children under your protection and care are being sexually tormented with your full and unbridled permission. Shame on you.
I personally have had enough.
"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites." -- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia)
I'm one of "those" altar boys, but somehow managed to have a normal non-tortured life. I have a wonderful (same-sex) relationship that just passed the 35-year mark.
It turns my stomach that two institutions, one that has an awful and systemic problem with child-abuse, and another that is literally founded on the concept of "plural marriage", are out there spending like there's no tomorrow to plant the message that our relationship is somehow bad for society. Oh the irony.
35-year gay marriage: bad. Centuries of molested altar boys: heaven!
Login or Register to post comments.