'toon, you said:
That is not always the case.
I’m not calling you a liar. But it is a stone fact that many abused kids do not recognize their victimization at the time of the abuse.
Sorry but this is just wrong. Some may know but, for some, it’s just life as normal and they don’t know there’s anything wrong with it until they’re a bit older.
But Cartooniverse is a survivor of sexual abuse, he gets to decide how all survivors of sexual abuse would or should act in all cases, and if someone doesn’t go by his playbook, damn it, they’re probably lying. Alas, them’s the rules.
Spotlight is a fantastic movie. I would also recommend Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, an HBO documentary.
One of the guys the Spotlight team was talking to (a priest and psychologist who had been studying the issue for 30 years) said that he thought that only about half of all priests were celibate (though most have sex with consenting adults). He estimated that 6% of priests were actually pedophiles. Spotlight’s investigation found 87 priests, just shy of 6% of priests in the Boston area.
What I don’t get is why the church doesn’t excommunicate these guys. I searched (and I may not be good at searching) and only found 1 priest excommunicated for molestation. The church excommunicated 2 priests in the 70s for the lawful act of getting married (not to each other).
Hell, John Geoghan wasn’t excommunicated. He had 130 victims.
No one called you a liar. They said you were wrong about a particular statement. And you are.
Children of abuse very often don’t know they have been abused. Even if part of them realizes it, they convince themselves it couldn’t actually be abuse. Or the abuser gaslights them.
It happened with a case not that long ago: the US gymnast case. The doctor molested tons of young girls and most of them did not know they were being molested at first. They may have felt something was off, but most were successfully convinced it was normal. That’s a huge part of how he kept them from saying anything.
It does a disservice to other victims of abuse to say that the victims always know. Their lack of recognition is often used as proof the abuse didn’t happen. You may have known, but not every kid does.
And I’m very, very, very sorry that you had to face that abuse. No one should have to go through that.
In theory excommunication only lasts as long as the excommunicated party refuses to seek absolution. Presumably a priest who wanted to continue being a priest would seek forgiveness pretty much immediately upon being caught (whatever the facts of the matter about how likely he would be to commit again). So there may not be much point.
Your points are well taken. I’ll modify my statement to read " an awful lot of victims are completely aware of what was done and what the life-long ramifications are of being raped by Catholic Priests.
Twist of Faith is a painfully accurate documentary. It is first-person proof that many sexual abuse victims not only remember but vividly re-live the abuses when awake and asleep in dream-state.
Then again, I’m not to be trusted or believed, so why would anyone click on either of these links even though they vividly prove my point?
IMHO the accused should not get to hide in the Church’s “club” justice system - they should be tried in a secular court of law in their community for their horrendous crimes. Excommunication doesn’t mean anything to the public at-large.
If your point is “a lot,” no one doubts or disagrees.
If your point is “all,” then some disagreement is warranted.
I will look for it if it is on Netflix, just need to calm down a bit after seeing this one all over again.
Yes, very good memory or great note taker. Just watched it again. And of course, the initial 13 priests in Boston that they thought were abusing the kids, when they ran it by that expert he says using his metric of 6% it would be much more than that, which would have it just around 100.
At the end of Spot Light, it lists they had 249 priests and brothers that were publicly accused within the Boston Archdiocese. It also showed 107 cities in the US that had major cover-up and sex abuse scandals going on in the Catholic Church, and over 100 more world-wide.
Cardinal Law from Boston resigned his position. Of course, what did the Church do, they gave him a much bigger church in Rome!
I refer readers back to my O.P. here.
I didn’t call you a liar, you fatuous moron, I called you wrong. I said you shouldn’t be trusted because you’re fucking stupid, not because you’re dishonest.
The attacks come as no surprise, of course. There’ve been Priest Rapist Apologists for many decades before there was a Straight Dope Message Board.
Attacking me very neatly vectors the rage away from the perpetrators to the messenger. --yawn-- Nice try.
Are you seriously calling folks like Miller rape apologists, because they think you’re wrong when you say that no one realizes later in life that they’ve been abused? You’re high as a kite.
I do not recall naming anyone in that statement.
I’m calling out people who were so enraged at my posts on this topic and have attacked MY statements on this entire issue, because attacking the messenger is a lot more comforting than admitting the truth. This goes all the way back to April, 2002.
Dude, there’s something wrong with you.
Saying “some child victims of sexual abuse don’t realize that what’s being done to them is wrong” is not the same as being a “Priest Rapist Apologist”.
Nor is it “attacking the messenger.”
I was wrong. 27.3 cases in 2010 for every 100,000 PEOPLE. So 0.03% chance for any living person, 0.06% chance for all females, maybe 0.48% chance for women aged 16-26?
That’s right.
Nice leap, cupcake.
I said that people know that what’s happening to them is wrong while it’s happening. That’s my opinion. Yours may differ.
AND, my link from 2002 proves that plenty of Apologists are enraged that anyone would ever dare to attack anyone connected with the Roman Catholic Church.
That rage endures today. Pity, that.
See, I’ve read an awful lot about Jesus Christ. And maybe I’m missing something, but I just can’t find the passage where he commands his Apostles to rape small children in his name. For, if the priests aren’t acting in the name of their Savior, why would Rome and the entire organization work so hard to protect all of them?
There’s something I haven’t said on this board in almost ten years, and I think this is the best possible time to bring back an old habit.
Fuck you, Cartooniverse. Fuck your disingenuous outrage. Fuck your deliberate distortions of people who disagree with you. Fuck your cowardly, “Oh, I daren’t disagree with a mod!” bullshit. And above all, fuck you for minimizing and dismissing the actual pain of people who have been victimized by pedophile predators with your, “Trust me, they know.” No, you unbearably stupid motherfucker, we don’t always know. Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck off. Fuck off and go burn in hell, you fucking cholera-infected shitstain. You fucking failure. You human waste. You vapid cockwart. Fuck you, you fucking sheen of scum from the top of a cesspit. You puss-streaked vaginal discharge. You vomitous reject. You miserable shitfuck. You anal canker sore. Fuck you. Fuck every single dumbfuck thing about you, you moldy cumstain. Fuck you, fuck the pathetic excuse for a mother that spawned you, fuck the diseased testicle that was your father, and if you’ve got any siblings, fuck each and every one of them right in the fucking eye socket.
You fuck.