Of course. The latter is appalling and I didn’t intend to suggest otherwise.
Absolutely. See Andrew Greeley, not exactly an apologist for the RCC hierarchy, and someone who has been very critical of the church’s reponse to the problem of sexual abuse long before it was chic to do so.
Is it true that in many cases the parents of the victim decide to not get the police involved, and only report the incident to the church? Perhaps this is the key to the problem.
If the milkman molests your child, would you call the police, or send an angry letter to the Dairy Council demanding they make a policy about child molestation? Would the head milk producers of the US go have a meeting in Wisconsin with Elsie the Cow?
People need to stop treating the church as if they are above the law, or they will always act like they are above the law.
In the majority of cases the police weren’t involved. For the actual pedophilia cases many parents for whatever reason didn’t want to press charges. In the adolescent cases, many parents never even knew - the victims are beginning to come forward now and they are in their 20’s, 30’s, or older. I don’t think it’s very unusual in molestation cases that victims avoid filing charges. Some cites:
Well, if there’s a silver lining to this horrendous cloud, then maybe in the future parents of victims will report these crimes to the police more often.