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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
See previous page for earlier entries on January 10, 2019.
As we begin a New Year, I thought it would be right to recall the status of the judicial proceedings in Australia against Cardinal Pell, by David Pierre, Jr., who has almost
singlehandedly fought against the gross bias, misrepresentation and other falsehoods peddled in the media regarding the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Church. In 2010, he
wrote the book DOUBLE STANDARD: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church which Thomas Peters has called "essential reading for anyone who wants to
hear the other side of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. The side the media hasn't told you, and side most of the public doesn't know ... Even for someone who has read about
this subject for years, it was eye-opening to me.... If someone attacks you or slanders the Church over the sexual abuse scandal, challenge them to read this book and
continue saying such things."
The witch hunt against Cardinal Pell:
Five facts you need to know
by David Pierre
dECEMBER 31, 2018
Yes, the cases against Australia's Cardinal George Pell are nothing less than a wild-eyed anti-Catholic witch hunt by the Australian government against the Catholic Church. Take it to the bank.
What is our evidence? Plenty. Here are five fast facts you should know about the false accusations against Cardinal Pell.
1. The Australian government began investigating Cardinal Pell over five years ago even though there had been no crime reported against him.
That's right. It is common sense that police only investigate a person when there is suspicion or evidence of that person committing a crime. But this was not the case with Cardinal Pell.
A Melbourne detective admitted in court that an investigation began against Pell in March of 2013 even though there were no criminal complaints against him. Pell's attorney then rightly observed, "It was an operation looking for a crime and a complainant."
2. Pell's publicly known accusers are a hodgepodge of career criminals, admitted drug addicts, and ne'er-do-wells who have lodged bogus complaints before.
As we posted last June, Pell's accusers are real winners.
There has been the late Damian Dignan, who had a criminal history for assault and drunk driving and also accused a female teacher of beating him during class when he was a youth. And Lyndon Monument, an admitted drug addict, served almost a year in prison for violently assaulting a man and a woman over a drug debt. The unlucky Monument has also accused a boyhood teacher of forcing him to perform sex acts.
But it would be hard to top the bloke who first accused Pell in 2002 of abuse back in 1961. This lad was indeed a career criminal who had not only been involved with drug dealing, illegal gambling, tax evasion, and "organized crime in a labor union," but also had an impressive 39 court convictions under his belt. A upstanding citizen, indeed. A judge cleared Pell after an inquiry.
One can only imagine the other shifty chaps we have not even heard about.
3. Even secular observers have admitted that Pell is not being treated fairly at all.
In a May 2017 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian politician Amanda Vanstone began her piece by saying that she is "no fan of organized religion," but then she wrote:
"The media frenzy surrounding Cardinal George Pell is the lowest point in civil discourse in my lifetime. I'm 64.
"What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages. Some in the media think they are above the law both overseas and at home …
"What we are seeing now is far worse than a simple assessment of guilt. The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial. Perhaps the rule of law sounds as if it's too esoteric to worry about."
And a prominent legal group in Australia, the Justice Institute of Victoria, has concluded that the "lack of regard" for the cardinal's rights was "a startling affront" to the cornerstone of the nation's legal system.
4. Accusations against Cardinal Pell were widely circulated in a 2017 book that has been roundly discredited.
In 2017, media outlets in Australia fell over themselves to heap praise on a Pell-bashing book by muckraking writer Louise Mulligan. Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell is Mulligan's wild, 384-page attempt to single-handedly take down the cleric on her own, but the media surely tried to help the woman along.
But as writer Peter Craven demonstrated in a June 2017 review of the book, Mulligan's scholarship leaves a lot to be desired. In short, Craven concluded:
"Louise Milligan's Cardinal has plenty of inaccuracies ranging from St Kevin's uniforms to clerical titles. She is the diametrical opposite of Helen Garner in her famous trial books: instead of presenting herself as an unreliable narrator – full of doubts and flaws – she is a writer of flaming convictions and sensationalist prose who backs her intuitions in the face of any notion of evidence or scruple.
"The upshot is a racketing case for the prosecution. One can only hope to God that in the present climate people will be capable of realising this is a case being mounted for a witch trial."
And how true Craven's prophecy has become!
5. Cardinal Pell has vehemently denied all the charges against him.
Let us have Cardinal Pell speak for himself. Here he is in June 2017:
"These matters have been under investigation now for nearly two years. There have been leaks to the media, relentless character assassination, and for more than a month claims that a decision on laying charges is 'imminent' …
"I repeat that I am innocent of these charges. They are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me …
"I have been consistent and clear in my total rejection of these allegations. News of these charges strengthens my resolve, and court proceedings now offer me an opportunity to clear my name and then return to my work in Rome."
When we outlined facts about Cardinal Pell's case last summer, we wrote at the time:
We're not buying any of this. We pray that justice will be served, but we doubt it.
TheMediaReport.com has been observing the climate against the Catholic Church in Australia for some time now, and we have never seen anything like it. Imagine the hatred against the Church of the Boston Globe and the New York Times combined and spread out over an entire country. The climate is truly insane.
Australian law enforcement is claiming that Pell's case is being treated like any other historical offense. No, it isn't. Police do not give a rip about someone coming forward to claim someone touched them over their bathing suit 40 years ago. But this is a Catholic priest, and a high-ranking one at that. This is a big fish in the eyes of law enforcement.
Will another innocent cleric be dragged off to prison for crimes he never committed? We believe so, but we hope we're wrong.
And just to round off the viewpoint from which Pierre reports on the abuse stories - which he does not deny nor does he minimize their import...
Five inconvenient truths about the media
the media narrative on clerical sex abuse
1 IT'S NOT ABOUT CATHOLIC PRIESTS
FACT: Catholic priests abuse at a rate far lower than that of other males in the general population.
Notwithstanding the media hysteria over sex abuse in the Catholic Church, priests abuse at a rate far lower than that of other males. While even one case of abuse is too many, approximately only 4% of all active priests between 1950 and 2002 were even accused of abuse – a rate far lower than that of other males in the general population.
Newsweek magazine, April 7, 2010:
"Based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. 'We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else,' said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children …
"Experts disagree on the rate of sexual abuse among the general American male population, but Allen says a conservative estimate is one in 10. Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says her review of the numbers indicates it’s closer to one in 5 …
"Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations … It's been that way for decades."
USA Today, June 6, 2010:
"If anyone believes that priests offend at a higher rate than teachers or non-celibate clergy, then they should produce the evidence on which they are basing that conclusion. I know of none. Saying 'everybody knows' does not constitute scientific methodology."
– Dr. Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University
2 THE GRAND CONSPIRACY THAT WASN'T
FACT: You would never know it from the media's lurid and obsessive coverage, but the vast bulk of reported cases of abuse stem only from a historical anomaly, as most allegations occurred during only a small sliver of time during the Sexual Revolution from the 1960s to the early 1980s. And despite media suggestions of dark conspiracies and cover-ups, the Church – like every other institution at the time – simply followed the then-prevailing view of experts in the field that offenders could be successfully rehabilitated and sent accused priests off for treatment. [One must qualify this with the emerging truth that most bishops have also persisted in a terrible state of denial that such crime and sin could be committed by priests.]
From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Catholic Church, following the then-prevailing societal practice, sent suspected abusers to psychologists rather than calling the police.
In this respect, the Church was far from alone. When the Church was sending accused priests to psychological treatment, "the criminal justice system was doing the very same thing with convicted offenders – sending them to treatment instead of prison."
"From the 1950's to the 1980's, these treatment-based interventions for sexual criminals were not only enormously prevalent in the United States, but surveys of ordinary citizens showed that they were enormously popular …
"The science of human sexuality and sexual offending is extraordinarily young. Virtually all of the information we utilize today regarding the treatment and supervision of sexual offenders has been discovered since 1985."
– Dr. Monica Applewhite, Ph.D.
Yet in almost every media account, the media has failed to provide this important historical context that the Church was following the then-reigning advice of experts in the field to send accused priests to treatment.
"No one would hold a brain surgeon to today's standard of care for professional decisions he made in 1970. Yet the decisions made in 1970 by Catholic bishops, who routinely consulted with mental health professionals about sick priests, are being judged by today's standards. Today, the confidence of the mental health community about the likelihood of curing sexual disorders is far less than it was in 1970."
– L. Martin Nussbaum, "Changing the Rules" (America magazine, 2006)
Tragically, sending accused priests to treatment rather than reporting them to the police resulted in a high rate of recidivism among those priests. According to the 2004 John Jay College report, 149 priests were "serial abusers" (10+ victims) and accounted for an alarming 26% of all of the abuse that took place between 1950 and 2002.
Yet these 149 men represent only one-tenth of one percent of all priests who served in the Catholic Church in the United States between 1950 and 2002. Most accused priests (56%) have been the subject of only one allegation. [Through all this, one must not forget that even one sex-offender priest and even just one sex abuse victim is too much already.]
3 THE REAL NEWS: CURRENT ACCUSATIONS AGAINST CATHOLIC PRIESTS ARE EXTREMELY RARE
FACT: Almost all accusations against Catholic priests date from many decades ago, and indeed nearly half of all abuse accusations concern priests who are already long dead. In a body of 77 million people, contemporaneous accusations of abuse against Catholic clergy in the United States are very rare, recently averaging only 7 allegations deemed "substantiated" by review boards each year. [Nonetheless, the weight and degree of media attention given to these stories, even if most of them took place in the past, deliberately underscores the burden of blame placed upon the Church for her miscreant clergy.]
A 2004 U.S. Department of Education report reported that "the most accurate data available" reveals that "nearly 9.6 percent of [public school] students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career."
This result prompted Hofstra University's Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, the author of the study, to opine in 2006, "[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem? The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
A Meanwhile, that same 2004 report cited an important study from the mid-1990s:"In an early [1994] study of 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York, all of the accused had admitted to sexual abuse of a student but none of the abusers was reported to authorities."
That is an important and alarming fact:
Number of abusive educators: 225
Number reported by school officials to police: 0
So, in other words, as recently as just 1994, it was the universal practice in New York among school administrators not to call police to report abusers.
The 1994 study also reported that only 1 percent of those abusive educators lost their license. In addition, most alarmingly, "25 percent received no consequence or were reprimanded informally and off-the-record. Nearly 39 percent chose to leave the district, most with positive recommendations or even retirement packages intact."
4 THE STORY THE MEDIA WON'T REPORT: THE EPIDEMIC OF ABUSE AND COVER-UPS GOING ON TODAY IN OUR OWN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
FACT: The incidence of sexual abuse by teachers in public schools today has been estimated to be "more than 100 times" that by Catholic priests, and there is alarming evidence of school officials covering up abuse and failing to report suspected cases to authorities. Yet the mainstream media has largely ignored this shocking story while still rehashing decades-old allegations of abuse by Catholic priests.
The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), the independent research organization out of Georgetown University, has been tracking abuse data regarding United States Catholic clergy for several years. CARA issues annual reports through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
According to CARA, here are the numbers of accusations involving a current minor that have been deemed "substantiated" each year from 2005 to 2017:
Year / # of accusations
2017 6*
2016 2
2015 5
2014 6
2013 7
2012 6
2011 7
2010 8
2009 6
2008 10
2007 4
2006 14
2005 9
Meanwhile, according to government numbers, in the single year of 2010 alone, there were some 63,527 reported cases of child sexual abuse in the United States – an alarming societal problem that has received very little media attention.
(* – Of those 6 contemporaneous accusations in 2017, four of them were against the same priest.)
Rarely seen AP graphic of teacher abuse in American schools (non-Catholic).
5 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TODAY: A MODEL FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN
FACT: The Catholic Church is likely the safest environment for children today. [Only to the extent that Church authorities adhere to the guidelines for extending such protection and do not just use them to 'prove' they have adequate measures in place. We have been shown how the much-touted 2002 USCCB guidelines for dealing with clerical sex abuse deliberately did not include guidelines for the bishops.]
The Catholic Church's record of aggressive and proactive protective measures is unparalleled in any organization today. [Yes, it's all very well to have all this on paper, but how much and how well are these measures followed?] Since the beginning of the abuse crisis, the Catholic Church:
- has instituted a "zero tolerance" policy in which any credibly accused priest is immediately removed from ministry. Law enforcement is also notified;
- has trained over 5 million children in giving them skills to protect them from abuse;
- has trained over 2 million adults, including 99 percent of all priests, in recognizing signs of abuse;
- has conducted over 2 million background checks, including those in the intensified screening process for aspiring seminarians and priests;
- has installed "Victim Assistance Coordinators" in every diocese, "assuring victims that they will be heard";
- has conducted annual independent audits of all dioceses to monitor compliance with the groundbreaking 2002 Charter for Protection of Children and Young People;
- has instituted in all dioceses abuse review boards – often composed of child welfare experts, child psychologists, and abuse experts – to examine any claims of abuse against priests.
No other organization even comes close to implementing the measures the Catholic Church has taken to protect children in its care. In this regard, the Catholic Church in the 21st century is the model for other institutions to follow in the safeguarding of youth. [In the festering circumstances of the entire clerical sex abuse/episcopalcover-up story in the US Church today, it's hard to say that with a straight face.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2019 02:19] |