CRISIS Magazine – e-Letter Special Report **********************************************

[See http://www.crisismagazine.com/freeletter.htm ]

What a load of party line )((%^, it seems designed to divert attention from the real issues, SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS IS OCCURRING, and it is in the main being covered up rather than being delt with.

Blaming community mores, This is just plain false. There’s absolutely no evidence that priests are more likely to abuse children than are other groups of men. The use and abuse of children as objects for the sexual gratification of adults is epidemic in all classes, professions, religions, and ethnic communities across the globe, as figures on child pornography, incest, and child prostitution make abundantly clear.

Downplaying the statistices Philip Jenkins, is from the most comprehensive study to date, which found that only one out of 2,252 priests considered over a thirty-year period was afflicted with pedophilia. In the recent Boston scandal, only four of the more than eighty priests labeled by the media as “pedophiles” are actually guilty of molesting young children. Gee they must have been very busy to have so many victims??

Changing the name The vast majority of the clerical sex-abuse scandals now coming to light do not involve pedophilia. Rather, they involve ephebophilia — homosexual attraction to adolescent boys.

While I agree that the Roman Catholic Church probably has no higher rate than other churches or professional bodies, it does not change the fact that any and every church should be dealing with this far more vigorously and openly.

I’m not sure of the “ephebophilia” issue, it may simply be an opportunistic thing, who is available to abuse. In any case it is still a criminal act and an abuse of minors.

The letter makes little mention of the issue of power imbalance, and makes no mention of victim support or compensation. It is still pushing the same attitude of 20 years ago, cover up, explain away, ignore it as best we can.

Sorry to be so angry, but abuse of any and every child, whether epheb or paed, is a criminal act and should be treated as such, it is also a pastoral and theological act and should be treated as such, openly and independently. In any other profession we would demand the judgements be public and transparent as a matter of justice, why should the church be any different.

Please forward this letter to anyone you think might benefit from it. If I circulate this letter it will be as an example of how little the church has progressed in dealing with issues of sexual abuse of minors and how little she cares for the victims of such abuse.

(in search of) Shalom, Rob

— Robert & Barbara Dummermuth Uniting Church in Australia East Gippsland Remote Area Ministry http://vic.uca.org.au/gippsland/egram