One of the biggest stories this past week was abuse cases in Baltimore.
Yet another scandal involving the Catholic Church…..sexual abuse, in cased you were confused….
This time it is the archdiocese of Baltimore and the number of cases is greater than 500….
Maryland’s attorney general released the results Wednesday of a four-year state investigation into the sexual abuse and torture of children by clergy members and employees of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The report covers the totality of 80 years of mistreatment, during which it says 156 members of Catholic clergy abused at least 600 children, CNN reports. From the 1940s through 2002, the report says, they “engaged in horrific and repeated abuse of the most vulnerable children in their communities while Archdiocese leadership looked the other way.” At a news conference, Anthony Brown pronounced Wednesday “a day of reckoning and a day of accounting.”
The investigation found that one deacon admitted abusing more than 100 children, the Baltimore Sun reports. Even after the Rev. John Joseph Mike pleaded guilty to abusing a boy, he was assigned to a parish in Clarksville. A victim wrote in his diary that Mike tied him up, suspended him from a basketball backboard in the parish gym, and whipped him 150 times. Hundreds of abuse survivors were interviewed for the investigation; the state report called the scope of the abuse “astonishing.” Brown met with advocates and survivors Wednesday to hear their accounts. “What was consistent throughout the stories was the absolute authority and power these abusive priests and the church leadership held over survivors, their families and their communities,” he said.
In many cases, the report says, the archdiocese knew of the abusers but did little to stop them. They often were transferred to new jobs, even after admitting to abuse, where they mistreated more children. When looking into abuse, the report said, police, prosecutors, and local news media often treated church leaders with deference. The attorney general said many of the abusers have since died or can’t be prosecuted because of statutes of limitations. “While it may be too late for the survivors to see criminal justice served, we hope that exposing the archdiocese’s transgressions to the fullest extent possible will bring some measure of accountability and perhaps encourage others to come forward,” Brown said.
When will the church start making these perverts pay for the crimes?
After all these religious types are sexual predators….plain and simple.
Warning: Keep your children away from youth ministers.
Happy Easter
Enjoy your day….be well and be safe.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
One of my earliest memories of a sexually-charged encounter was with a Baptist preacher who loved to fondle and grope my leg as we sat in stuffed easy chairs in his private study discussing the Bible. He has been dead for years now. When I was a catholic for seven years, I never got lucky enough to have anyone– except for some nasty-mouth old fat bitch named “Mean Jean” to approach me in this manner.
They go into the church as a career just to prey on the vulnerable, it’s as simple as that. It is much the same in every religion, but out of control in the Catholic Church. Is it any wonder that I am an atheist?
Best wishes, Pete.
You have the same feelings I have….I do not think the celibacy thing has nothing to with the abuse. chuq
For servants (alleged) in Christ’s church to allow themselves to be consumed and actually relish in such evil is just incomprehensible to me. That those in authority would look the other way, cover up and even participate in such behavior compounds the wickedness. Unfortunately, the stain with which they putrify the faith drives decent people to be dismissive of the sanctity, holiness, purity and value of the faith’s true calling and mission. These men are not of Christ. The other great fault of the Catholic Church is that in so many ways they have made their rules, regulations, theology and earthly glamor the avenue of salvation thereby replacing Jesus as the sole avenue.
Thanx Carl for your thoughts on this situation…..chuq