95% of abuse allegations against catholic church are true
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:22 am
This also appeared in the NY Times.
Catholics held a joke of a conference recently in an attempt to look like they're dealing with the problem. Yet, bishops are still solely responsible for the investigation of abuse claims. SMFH, talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
2000 years with an objective source for truth and what is right and wrong, and this all the church is capable of? They still have not figured that pedophiles lie? They haven't figured out that you protect children, not buildings and jewels and painting and bank accounts and fucking evil pervert priests.
Catholics held a joke of a conference recently in an attempt to look like they're dealing with the problem. Yet, bishops are still solely responsible for the investigation of abuse claims. SMFH, talk about the fox guarding the hen house.
2000 years with an objective source for truth and what is right and wrong, and this all the church is capable of? They still have not figured that pedophiles lie? They haven't figured out that you protect children, not buildings and jewels and painting and bank accounts and fucking evil pervert priests.
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist who for a decade ran a U.S. treatment center for abusive priests, told the conference Tuesday that just like alcoholics or drug addicts, sexually abusive priests often lie when confronted with allegations. They manipulate, they con, they deny, he said.
"There are false allegations to be sure" and it's critical to restore a priest's good name when he has been cleared, Rossetti said in his prepared remarks. "But decades of experience tell us that the vast majority of allegations – over 95 percent – are founded."
As a result, he said, trained civil authorities, not bishops, should determine whether an allegation is well-founded. Even if prosecutors don't proceed with a criminal case, either because too much time has passed or evidence is lacking, bishops should form an advisory panel of law enforcement, mental health and canon law experts to investigate and decide how to proceed, Rossetti said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/0 ... 59416.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;Marie Collins, who was assaulted as a 13-year-old by a hospital chaplain in her native Ireland, told the bishops that dynamic led to multiple hospitalizations later in life for anxiety and depression. She told her story of abuse and how the church's response to it — refusing to believe her, telling her it was her fault and taking the priest's word over hers — made the initial trauma even worse.
"I was treated as someone with an agenda against the church, the police investigation was obstructed and the laity misled. I was distraught," said Collins, who has since become a prominent Irish campaigner in the fight for accountability in the church.
Collins in 1996 went to Dublin's then-archbishop, Cardinal Desmond Connell with her story, knowing that the Irish bishops had just adopted tough new policy to report abusers to police. She said Connell told her that he didn't have to follow the church's guidelines.
Eventually, civil authorities prosecuted and jailed the priest, the Rev. Paul McGennis, and he was sentenced two more times for molesting other children.