Am Airport Encounter

[Archangel M]

http://blog.archny.org/?p=1127

As I was waiting with the others for the electronic train to take me to the terminal, a man, maybe in his mid-forties, waiting as well, came closer to me.

“Are you a Catholic priest?” he kindly asked.

“Sure am. Nice to meet you,” says I, as I offered my hand.

He ignored it. “I was raised a Catholic,” he replied, almost always a hint of a cut to come, but I was not prepared for the razor sharpness of the stiletto, as he went on, “and now, as a father of two boys, I can’t look at you or any other priest without thinking of a sexual abuser.”

“You obviously never heard the stats on public school teachers,” I observed. “In my home town of New York City alone, experts say the rate of sexual abuse among public school teachers is ten times higher than that of priests, and these abusers just get transferred around.” (Had I known at that time the news in in last Sunday’s New York Times about the high rate of abuse of the most helpless in state supervised homes, with reported abusers simply transferred to another home, I would have mentioned that, too.)

To that he said nothing, so I went in for a further charge.

“Pardon me for being so blunt, but you sure were with me, so, let me ask: when you look at yourself in a mirror, do you see a sex abuser?”

Now he was as taken aback as I had been two-minutes before. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sadly,” I answered, “studies tell us that most children sexually abused are victims of their own fathers or other family members.”

Enough of the debate, I concluded, as I saw him dazed. So I tried to calm it down.

“So, I tell you what: when I look at you, I won’t see a sex abuser, and I would appreciate the same consideration from you.”

Sounds like police and cops have some things in common when it comes to public perception and the facts.

 

[jks9199]

Yep.

Had a guy the other day incensed (to put it mildly) that I dared ticket him for driving a car with a safety inspection that expired at the end of January. See, his other car was stolen & recovered (two completely different jurisdictions involved), and he'd been a burglary victim over the last few months. And he hit a deer 4 days back.

I felt for the guy. But his record showed 2 prior offenses for safety inspections, in the last 6 months, on different vehicles. And nothing he said explained why he couldn't have found the half hour or so that the inspection typically takes over the last 2 and 1/2 months.

 

[billc]

Jks 9199, I am sensing a rush to judgement. An extensive past of criminal behavior, with multiple offenses and convictions does not make one guilty of the crime he has been currently caught committing.

 

[jks9199]

Jks 9199, I am sensing a rush to judgement. An extensive past of criminal behavior, with multiple offenses and convictions does not make one guilty of the crime he has been currently caught committing.

The dead inspection sticker on his windshield was the violation. It's rather a gimme... The attitude? That was his own doing.

 

[billc]

Perhaps he came from a broken home, or was an only child, or didn't get the red rider bb gun with a compass in the stock that one christmas, or perhaps he was bullied as a child, or is color blind, or suffers from attention deficit sydrome...see, you really don't know the whole story behind his "alleged crime." Like I said, a rush to judgement.

 

[MA-Caver]

That's the trouble with sex offenders... they can be ANYONE! Anyone at all.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

That's the trouble with sex offenders... they can be ANYONE! Anyone at all.

Sadly, some professions attract them.

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=martial+arts+sexual

Just sayin'...

 

[yorkshirelad]

http://blog.archny.org/?p=1127





Sounds like police and cops have some things in common when it comes to public perception and the facts.

This is all very interesting and I appreciate this perspective. The Catholic Church however, expected nothing less than piety from all its member, all the while allowing priests to abuse the most delicate in society. The organization is evil incarnate and should be made to sell its priceless real estate and art collection in order to give reparations to those at least alive who have suffered at its hand.

 

[Archangel M]

The priesthood is being cast as the refuge of pederasts. In fact, priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else.

The Catholic sex-abuse stories emerging every day suggest that Catholics have a much bigger problem with child molestation than other denominations and the general population. Many point to peculiarities of the Catholic Church (its celibacy rules for priests, its insular hierarchy, its exclusion of women) to infer that there's something particularly pernicious about Catholic clerics that predisposes them to these horrific acts. It's no wonder that, back in 2002—when the last Catholic sex-abuse scandal was making headlines—a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children.

Yet experts say there's simply no data to support the claim at all. No formal comparative study has ever broken down child sexual abuse by denomination, and only the Catholic Church has released detailed data about its own. But based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."

 

[Bill Mattocks]

The priesthood is being cast as the refuge of pederasts. In fact, priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else.

The Catholic Church, unlike nearly all Protestant denominations, has a centralized hierarchy and an autocratic leader, the Pope. This changes the playing field in a number of different ways.

First, it means that it opens the RCC up to charges of malfeasance, both justified and unjustified, in the way that it has allegedly shuffled around those accused of various sex crimes, passed internal communications regarding how and when to reveal information to the legal authorities such as police and prosecutors in places where abuse is alleged to have occurred, and refused to open its doors and books to public scrutiny. Other churches have no central leadership, or a very limited one that is not global in scope and power, and so are not subject to these kinds of demands - or criticisms.

Second, because there are so many Catholics, and hence so many Catholic priests, even a small percentage of abusers seems like a lot - because it's a big number. People do confuse number with rate; they are different. If I hear about one abuse case in the Catholic church every month, and only one abuse case in say the Anglican church every year, I might think that there is more abuse happening in the Catholic church. That would be correct by number of incidents, but incorrect by rate; the RCC is way more than 10 times larger than the Anglican church by membership or clergy numbers.

The RCC has a lot to answer for, and I'm in favor of serious government investigation and criminal charges for those who have committed abuses and hidden them from law enforcement, including those who have transferred transgressing clergy and failed to notify law enforcement when informed of credible charges against them.

But they are a lightning rod for some of the reasons given in the original article. As examplars of what is supposed to be moral and right and Godly, when they transgress, it is a very very horrible thing. Not that it's any better when a Scout leader or a Martial Arts instructor or a public school teacher does it; but it's definitely horrible. There is no excuse for it by anyone.