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Articles about the priests, vicars, rabbis ...

Aaronovitch, David, It's time to reform the sex laws and our minds - 20 November 2002 The Independent
Priests are not the only paedophiles among us - Why did we allow the abuse in Islington care homes? Why are policemen so well-represented in recent internet child-porn cases?

Andriette, Bill, Castrating the Church; At root, the priest sex hysteria is about extinguishing the male; Gay & Lesbian Review, Boston, 2002 [This version] & The Guide, August 2002 [Somewhat reduced version] 
Behind the talk of rooting out "pedophiles" and punishing "abuse," the priest-sex scandal is about extinguishing the male. Not literally of course -- though bio-engineering raises doubts about the future of the sexes, with the male the most efficient to eliminate. Rather the priest scandal is about extinguishing the male psychologically and symbolically. It is about de-legitimizing male moral and political authority, of which the Catholic church is exemplar. It is about subjecting males, based on their sex and sexuality, to a reign of terror and damnation of Biblical proportions. It is about obstructing the underground homo-social processes by which boys become men. If the Catholic church facilitated the castration of thousands boys for its choirs over the centuries, this scandal is a further step toward reducing entire generations in the West to neutered totalitarian subjects.

Associated Press, Priest In Boston Clergy Scandal Denied New Trial; November 27, 2008 
One of the central figures in Boston's clergy sex abuse scandal [Paul Shanley] lost his bid for a new trial yesterday when a judge ruled a victim's repressed memories were rightly used against the defrocked priest. 

Berry, Jason, Secrets, Celibacy and the Church, April 3, 2002, New York Times 
[...] Celibacy does not cause pedophilia. But celibacy has given rise to a secretive culture in which sexual behavior in any form must be hidden. [...]
The problem, of course, is that pedophilia is not just a sin, it is a crime. But the same secrecy and shame that hides homosexuality in the church produces an atmosphere that has concealed acts of pedophilia. [...]
Conservative Catholics, meanwhile, should recognize that celibacy is a failure, practically and morally. They should also acknowledge that homophobia is immoral.

Bradley Hagerty, Barbara; Abuse Victims Seek Court Date With Vatican; NPR 22 December 2008
Until recently, no federal court has allowed a case to proceed against the Vatican — and few really believed the Holy See would ever be open to lawyers or its treasury subject to money damages. It is considered a foreign state with sovereign immunity.
But there are exceptions to the immunity, including one called the "tortious act" exception. If Turner can show that U.S. bishops are officials of the Vatican, and that they harmed children by failing to report sex abuse, then he has a chance of getting to trial.

French, Rose, Protestant churches report 260-plus child sex abuse cases a year;  Associated Press, USA, June 14, 2007 
The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members. 

Gersten, Lana; Haredim Begin Confronting Pedophilia; The Jewish Daily, October 10, 2008 
After years in which the issue of pedophilia has been quietly dealt with among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a number of leaders in the community are speaking out publicly on the topic, spurring anger and debate over this sensitive issue.

Goldstein, Richard, The Double Standard
This brief excerpt is the beginning of an article in the August 20, 2002 edition of The Advocate. 
If you've been following the scandals involving priests and boys, no doubt you've heard a Roman Catholic Church official or two argue that most of these predatory clerics aren't actually pedophiles since they're not attracted to prepubescent children. Teen are their temptation, and that makes them ephebophiles. Say what?

Goodstein, Laurie, Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every Diocese - NYTimes, January 12, 2003 
The sexual abuse crisis that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church in the last 12 months has now spread to nearly every American diocese and involves more than 1,200 priests, most of whose careers straddle a sharp divide in church history and seminary training.
These priests are known to have abused more than 4,000 minors over the last six decades, according to an extensive New York Times survey of documented cases of sexual abuse by priests through Dec. 31, 2002.

The Guardian & Permalink; "Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse"; The Guardian 17 August 2003 &  in Religion | Permalink; 28 November 2008
The Vatican instructed [in 2003] Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church.

Hemmingway, Sam; Paquette's therapist a child molester, lawsuit says; The Burlington Free Press, August 31, 2008 
A church therapist hired by the state's Roman Catholic diocese to treat the Rev. Edward Paquette for fondling boys in Burlington in the 1970s was himself a child molester, according to court papers on file in Massachusetts. 

Innes, Stephanie, Clergy abuse victims in Tucson to get $7.5M; Arizona Daily Star, July 17, 2007 
Five former altar boys from Tucson will each receive $1.5 million as part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles' $660 million clergy abuse settlement.

Ipce Newsletter E 13, June 2002: Some quotes 

Israely, Jeff (Rome) and Van Biema, David (New York), The Pope's Sex Abuse Challenge;  Time. April 11, 2008 
Benedict's is the first papal trip to the United States since the priest sex abuse crisis erupted in 2001. It is a controversy that has left much of the American laity bitterly disillusioned with their Church's leadership. For many of the 67 million American Catholics, how the Pope confronts the lingering fallout from the pedophilia scandal may largely determine the success of this visit.

Koloff, Abbott, $ 5 M settles priest sex suits; Paterson Diocese accord involves many abused in Mendham; Daily Record, 10 Feb 2005 
A group of 26 men who say they were abused by Catholic clergymen, many by a Mendham priest in one of the most notorious cases of clergy abuse in the state, have agreed to an estimated $5 million settlement to end two lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson. 

Lewis, Paul; Three British evangelicals cast blame on each other in trials over child abuse at Albanian orphanage; The Guardian, 27 October 2008 
Three evangelical Britons, including the director of the orphanage, David Brown, have been accused of abusing children in their care. 

Mattingly, Terry, Fathers, Mothers & Catholic Sons, April 2002
[...] the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago eventually opened its files on all 2,252 priests who had served in the previous four decades. The powers that be hunted for pedophiles and they found one.
The key word is "one." One priest had been accused of assaulting a prepubescent child. The other allegations involved priests and sexually mature, but under-age, adolescents -- mostly boys.

McKee, Tom, Archdiocese Enacts New "Touching" Guidelines; KYPost, 11 August 2008 
Tough new guidelines on "good" touching and "bad" touching are now in place for anyone who has contact with children within the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. 
For example, "side hugs" are allowed but "bear hugs" are considered prohibited physical contact.

Michels, Scott; Orthodox Jewish Community Struggles With Abuse Allegations; Alleged Victims and Advocates Say Sex Abuse Common, Rarely Discussed; ABC News, May 5, 2009
When Joel Engelman was 8 years old, he says, he was called from his Hebrew class to the principal's office at his Brooklyn yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. [... ...] 
When Engelman arrived at the principal's office, he says, Reichman told him to close the door. He told the boy to sit on his lap and began swiveling his chair back and forth, Engelman says. Reichman then touched him, moving from his shoulders down, Engelman claims. 
The same kind of abuse went on twice a week for several months before he left the school, Engelman claims in a civil lawsuit filed against the yeshiva, the United Talmudical Academy.

About Father Shanley 

Some quotes and clippings from the press 

1) Defrocked priest faces only a single accuser; CNN, January 19, 2005 
2) Ex-Priest Shanley Convicted of Molestation; FoxNews, February 07, 2005 
3) Beat the Devil; Back to Salem; Alexander Cockburn, TheNation.com, February 17, 2005

No facts relative to the charges intruded into the courtroom; only emotion. Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel should have dismissed the charges, as requested by the defense. In the atmosphere of Massachusetts it would have taken courage to do that, and truly extraordinary courage for anyone on the jury (which included a therapist) to have insisted that memories are not evidence, and that there was far more than reasonable doubt in this case

The Guide, Sex Terror; What's breathing down your neck; The Guide, March 2005, on the Shanley & Lynne Stewart verdicts.
The separate convictions of two elderly radicals a few days apart last month show how far hysterias over sex and terrorism are sliding US jurisprudence in that totalitarian direction.
.

NAMBLA Bulletin, Father Shanley; From NAMBLA Bulletin 25-1.
One thing is clear: as in similar moral panics involving day-care centers, school teachers, and the Boy Scouts, the most lasting damage may well be the end of affectionate care, touching, and individual relationship with children by adults. What priest or teacher or other care-giver would dare be left alone with a child, or be seen caressing a child who has fallen? No more hugging, no more late-night counseling, no more one-on-one confidences, no more field trips.
.

Father Shanley - Private message, 15 February 2005
I'm very upset at the moment seeing the utter destruction of one of the most wonderful, kindest, most caring, persons in the world. A man who thought nothing of helping anybody whenever he could.
 

Wypijewski,, JoAnn, 

Priest Abuse and Recovered Memory; in: September/October, 2004, issue of Legal Affairs.
The accusations against Shanley rely on a psychological theory called dissociated or repressed memory. [...] One of Ford's first therapists, Robert Azrak, testified in a deposition that "there is no scientific basis" for the type of recovered memories described in this case.
 

Crisis of Faith; Carnal Knowledge; The Nation, March 16, 2009 [An article about Father Paul Shanley] 
There was no evidence in the case, just a claim that depended entirely on faith. Dr. Brown was in the courtroom to give it the imprimatur of science. 
"Decades of research and scientific debate have clarified over and over again that the notion of traumatic events being somehow 'repressed' and later accurately recovered is one of the most pernicious bits of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry." 
 
The Passion Of Father Paul Shanley, in: Legal Affairs - date not mentioned. 
The criminal charges against Shanley, 73, are rooted in the "recovered memories" of one man, Gregory Ford, whose claims, it now turns out, will never be tested in court. 
The accusations against Shanley rely on a psychological theory called dissociated or repressed memory. 

Tierney, John, The perils of reform at church, March 29, 2002, New York Times 
[..] I worry that an overreaction to the current scandal will deprive today's boys of the kind of mentors that we cherished — the truly celibate men with the time and the freedom to make big differences in our lives. I spoke with one of them yesterday, and he confirmed my fears.
"Today," he said, "I couldn't spend time alone with a kid the way I did with you. I'd be scared
somebody would get the wrong idea."
Some boy is the poorer for it. 

Tierney, John, Wrong Labels Inflame Fears of Catholics, New York Times March 22, 2002
[...] There has been serious sexual misconduct, but we have exaggerated it by mislabeling it. The image of "pedophile priests" is largely a myth, according to Philip Jenkins,
[...] he says there is no evidence that the rate of pedophilia among Catholic priests is higher than among other clergy or other professions.
Most of the church's sexual abuse cases involve older teenagers above the legal age of consent, Dr. Jenkins said.
[...] They were not pedophiles. You could call them pederasts, using a term that originally meant men attracted to boys up to adulthood, although it has come to be applied to homosexuals in general. The most precise term, Dr. Jenkins said, would be ephebophile someone with a sexual preference for boys or girls beyond puberty but don't expect to see that in many headlines soon. 

White, Bill, 'Deliver Us From Evil' is a heartbreaking look at broken trust;  Seatle PI, November 10, 2006 
"Deliver Us From Evil," a documentary on Father Oliver O'Grady, whose crimes as a sexual predator were covered up for nearly a decade by the Catholic Church, is such a level-headed, even-handed treatment of a controversial subject that it makes most other
documentaries look like temper tantrums. [...] 
The interviews with O'Grady are disturbingly candid. He sees his actions not as criminal, but as a mere compromising of priestly ideals. [...] Berg films the families of the victims in real space. They are not talking heads, but real people.

Yapp, Carl, Vicar was 'connoisseur' of porn; BBC News 25 September 2008 
The detective who led the investigation into convicted vicar Richard Hart has spoken about his double life as a respected village priest and a so-called "connoisseur" of child pornography.

Zoll, Rachel, Bishops: New Sex Abuse Claims Top 1,000; CNN News, Feb 2005
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops said Friday that over the last year they received 1,092 new allegations of sexual abuse against at least 756 Catholic priests and deacons.

 

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