The recent conviction of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on several counts of pedophilia brings that awful topic to the news again. We’ve all heard hundreds of stories about pedophile priests, as well as similar actions by prep school teachers, to the extent that this seems to be some sort of epidemic. What’s going on?
When I question normal adult males–both heterosexual and homosexual– about this, they all say that they can’t imagine being attracted to young boys–they’re stinky and wiggly with dirt behind their ears, and either skinny or pudgy. In other words, they are definitely not a sexual turn-on of any sort.
A surprising amount of this sort of thing goes on in some Middle Eastern countries, such as Afghanistan. I once read a novel set there in which a young boy’s bottom is describe as looking "like a ripe peach." I suspect this is at least partly caused by the marginalization of women. If women are "the other," and considered to be somehow "unclean," and even "dangerous," then the "safer," more comfortable choice might be a young boy. This could be part of the cause of Catholic pedophilia as well.
Pedophiles like Sandusky are attracted to venues where they are likely to mix with young males–places like schools and scout troops. In Sandusky’s case, he actually created a charity to help young males, but which really ended up exploiting them.
This desire to have sex with young boys cannot be cured–or at least, no psychologist has figured out how to do it yet.
I don’t think that all these men start out cynical, although they surely must become that way. Sandusky might actually have started his charity to help young boys–not hurt them–but he quickly turned his organization into a sort of sexual "farm."
I suspect that pedophiles often join the priesthood because they feel that this asexual organization will protect them from their own dangerous desires–if they aren’t allowed to have sex, then they won’t have the "wrong" kind of sex. But then they find themselves surrounded by alter boys and their innocence quickly turns to cynicism as they indulge in something they well know to be sinful.
A wise person once reminded me that it’s not what you think about that counts–it’s what you do. We all have a lot of "trash" floating around in our minds, and if you pay attention to these thoughts as they flash by, they can be appalling. Almost all of us daydream about being famous, being applauded, becoming rich and successful without making any effort. Or maybe we dream about getting even with people who have hurt us–perhaps even killing them.
But if we were given the opportunity to get the ultimate revenge, almost none of us would do it. And if we were suddenly feted and famous, we would probably tire of it very soon–most movie stars say they do, and I believe them.
Few of use have the urge to have sex with children–and psychologists aren’t sure where this desire comes from. But we can all be perverts of a milder sort when we do things we know we shouldn’t, such as "telling someone off" or being rude to a stranger when we feel frustrated by life. Nobody can be nice all the time, but at least we can realize that when we don’t conduct ourselves well, we have become perverts of a sort ourselves.
No one will arrest us–maybe no one will even hate us–but we’ll be lesser people for indulging our weaker selves.
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In 1974 I was told a
In 1974 I was told a favourite trick of right wing extremists is to put lies in the papers and TV and radio media claiming people are paedophiles – it was right wing extremists who were telling me about it, expectant of me becoming one of their members, inside Stevenson College of Further Education in Edinburgh, here in Scotland. “We work out the most difficult story to frame someone for, so we thought people would never believe we could frame someone as a paedophile, so we worked on how we could do just that.” They told me they were planning to put an actual twice-convicted pederast at the top of MI5 here in Britain, and in January 1990 a Sunday Times investigative journalist wrote an article for a Sunday Times issue, part of which was stating that he found it odd that the head of MI5 was a “twice-convicted pederast”, another form of a word for a child molester. As Anne rightly suspects, not that many mature people genuinely want to molest children, it’s just what some pockets of fascistic bourgoisie think is the best lie to demonstrate, and further, their control with. “The Bank Job” is a film based on a true story, a true story which was only allowed to be appearing in British newspapers for 6 days in 1974 (interesting that the incident the film is based on should be so close in time to when I was asked into this fascist group) but I think people are underestimating the seriousness of that story. People can do with treating it very seriously – I’m just not one to spoil a film. It doesn’t necessarily display paedophilia or anything, it’s weirder than that, it’s that ordinary bank robbers robbed a bank – but found thousands of photographs in the vaults of hundreds of top society people, all in suggestive positions in the photographs – from my point of view, the intention is to have Absolute Photographic Proof that “you” are a paedophile, or cheating on your wife, or have a secret homosexual lover – whatever is a lie is what is good to these power-mad cliques – and they have worked hard at acquiring falsely generated photographic proof of this criminality. Another supportive story of this lie-weapon is the Oyston case, which is in the possession of Robin Ramsay who edits “Lobster” magazine. I was amazed that even what I thought were the better newspapers all went along with claiming Oyston was a rapist – but Robin’s story is supported with tape recordings and documents making it obvious the English bourgoisie didn’t want a well-intentioned millionaire around, and they worked hard at making sure he wasn’t. Every media outlet totally ignored Robin’s fantastic article. So further research guys, Anne & Whitley – watch the film called The Bank Job, read about the Oyston affair via Robin’s Lobster website (his mag is now solely online) – google and ye shall find.
I’m sure that when a person
I’m sure that when a person becomes a member of the higher cliques in society or government that effort is made to get photos of them in compromising situations whether “real” or “staged.” Then they can be controlled and made to keep their mouths shut about anything they might know about the other members and their activities. The powers that be aren’t comfortable with anyone “straight” or honest obviously, and this is the way to keep a level playing field.
This is not about sex, but
This is not about sex, but about power. The same goes for raping women and young girls. Sandusky had a certain level of power due to his high profile standing at Penn State and abused it because he could. He just happened to be in a position where young boys were his obvious choice.
Some things never change…
He just happened to be in a
He just happened to be in a position where young boys were his obvious choice.
I am sorry. But I don’t think so.Many men are surrounded by young boys and never become pederasts. Somewhere growing into an adult, this man became attracted sexually to young boys. Who knows how that happens, we probably will never know and I guess every case is different. He would have seeked (probably wrong) them whether around them or not. The nature of the pederast is to create the situation, stalk the victim until they get it. It is all well planned, they know what they want and the obtain it. If they don’t have the moral structure and strength to avoid the criminal actions, they will act on their desires, at the end, it is a matter of choice and deliberate desire to satisfy themselves no matter how much pain they inflict to another human being. It is egotistical and criminal.
Ahhh, you had to do it,
Ahhh, you had to do it, didn’t you? I’m so tired of seeing articles that refer to pedophile priests like it’s part of the education men go through to become a priest. If people would pay attention to the news there are pedophiles in every religion and every walk of life. There are Baptist pedophiles, Presbyterian pedophiles, Pedophiles who are boy scout leaders, swimming coaches, teachers, babysitters, fathers, uncles and brothers.
Yet everyone has to make that Catholic connection. i suppose because it attracts a lot of traffic to the article, for one thing, and second, it takes the focus off of all the other religions who also have incidents of pedophilia.
I didn’t even bother reading the rest of the article and I WAS going to write it up to use for my Whitley Strieber column at Examiner.com. Not now.
Mr. C2CWriter, you certainly
Mr. C2CWriter, you certainly seem to have not read the article well, and you haven’t taken up the points of these answers either. I see the phenomenon as politically exploited, and give good reasons – get that film called The Bank Job & watch it, for one thing.
Mr. C2CWriter, you certainly
Mr. C2CWriter, you certainly seem to have not read the article well, and you haven’t taken up the points of these answers either. I see the phenomenon as politically exploited, and give good reasons – get that film called The Bank Job & watch it, for one thing.
Mr. Moncoeur,
I believe I
Mr. Moncoeur,
I believe I stated I didn’t read the article and I also stated why.
I do a lot – and I mean a LOT – of reading on the internet for the work I do. And I’ve just gotten to the point where now, if someone starts off with this “Catholic Priests are pedophiles” crap I just assume they’re either bigots or out for traffic.
The phrase is so overused it’s beginning to taint everything I read and I’m just tired of it. All Catholic priests are NOT pedophiles and the biggest percentage of pedophiles are NOT Catholic priests.
And I’ve finally just decided that if people don’t care that they’re offending me and other Catholics when they toss that phrase around then I’m not going to worry about leaving my opinion in a public comment anymore, nor will I read their articles. It’s time this crap stopped and seeing it on Whitley Strieber’s website is the last thing I expected.
“”Catholic Priests are
“”Catholic Priests are pedophiles” crap ”
You have a very thin skin, probably thinner than the victims of these priests. Well it happens that this is not “crap” to the victims, nor to their families and although what you say is true, that not all priests are pedophiles, you have to come to terms that things are what they are and we are talking about something that is happening right now and is defining how people see priests.Pedophilia has been so widely spread and at high levels has been so protected that you can say that those higher ups are equally abusers since they let it happen; that’s a lot of people in the Church. It is no surprise then, that pedophilia is just another of the catholic church’s face, a true and ugly face you must come to terms and accept as real and overwhelmingly dark and evil.
Since my point is that these
Since my point is that these peado stories are mostly lies with intent of improving control over people……and also I think you’re exaggerating Anne’s writing there…..you seem to be responding very blindly.
Since my point is that these
Since my point is that these peado stories are mostly lies with intent of improving control over people……and also I think you’re exaggerating Anne’s writing there…..you seem to be responding very blindly.
The point here is
The point here is pedophilia.
Discernment of all things moral lies strictly in personal decision. In the end, those who have themselves been damaged and sedated into profane arrogances have choice to break the chain of abuse or willingly and intentionally distort and ruin the lives of others. It matters not the title they carry nor the path they profess loyalty to.
Blind erudition to and for any religion, or not, is not the point; willing destruction and abuse of the sacred life of another is blasphemy, no matter moniker attached.
Raine,
you stated the above
Raine,
you stated the above perfectly concise and truthfully. thank you!
To: C2C writer—You have
To: C2C writer—You have your head in the sand.
Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools
DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
Nine years in the making, Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.
It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.
The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.
“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” the final report of Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families — a category that often included unmarried mothers — were sent to Ireland’s austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.
The report, unveiled by High Court Justice Sean Ryan, found that molestation and rape were “endemic” in boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
“In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. … Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body,” the report said. “Personal and family denigration was widespread.”
Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.
But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.
The report proposed 21 ways the government could recognize past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counseling and education to victims and improving Ireland’s current child protection services.
But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions — in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
Irish church leaders and religious orders all declined to comment Wednesday, citing the need to read the massive document first. The Vatican also declined to comment.
The Irish government already has funded a parallel compensation system that has paid 12,000 abuse victims an average of euro65,000 ($90,000). About 2,000 claims remain outstanding.
Victims receive the payouts only if they waive their rights to sue the state and the church. Hundreds have rejected that condition and taken their abusers and those church employers to court.
Wednesday’s report said children had no safe way to tell authorities about the assaults they were suffering, particularly the sexual aggression from church officials and older inmates in boys’ institutions.
“The management did not listen to or believe children when they complained of the activities of some of the men who had responsibility for their care,” the commission found. “At best, the abusers were moved, but nothing was done about the harm done to the child. At worst, the child was blamed and seen as corrupted by the sexual activity, and was punished severely.”
The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders — that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children.
But the commission said its fact-finding — which included unearthing decades-old church files, chiefly stored in the Vatican, on scores of unreported abuse cases from Ireland’s industrial schools — demonstrated that officials understood exactly what was at stake: their own reputations.
It cited numerous examples where school managers told police about child abusers who were not church officials — but never did when one of their own had committed the crime.
“Contrary to the congregations’ claims that the recidivist nature of sexual offending was not understood, it is clear from the documented cases that they were aware of the propensity for abusers to re-abuse,” it said.
Religious orders were chiefly concerned about preventing scandal, not the danger to children, it said.
The commission also condemned Ireland’s Education Department for aiding the abusive culture through infrequent, toothless inspections that deferred to church authority.
Inspectors were supposed to restrict the use of corporal punishment and make sure the children were adequately fed, clothed and educated — but the report called those inspections “fundamentally flawed.”
It said a lone inspector was responsible for monitoring more than 50 industrial schools, schools were told about the visits in advance and inspectors rarely talked to the children.
Wednesday’s report also highlighted the rarity of human kindness in the institutions.
“A word of consideration or encouragement, or an act of sympathy or understanding, had a profound effect. Adults in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives,” the report said.
“Often the act of kindness, recalled in such a positive light, arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not given a beating when one was expected.”
__________________Now add to that story all of the evidence from Australia, Canada and other European countries beyond Ireland and then add in the United States, all claiming the exact same outrageous behaviors of Catholic leaders against children. Maybe it’s simply having a position of power over children knowing that authorities will tend to look the other way when a powerful institution like the Catholic Church is involved. But, C2C, for you to disavow a connection to the Church above and beyond average prevalence is absurd.
If priests from neo-pagan covens had done these things to children they’d be hanging from light posts before dawn. The reason it has been downplayed, yes downplayed, is because of the powerful position of the Catholic Church in so many communities and it’s supposed ‘basic goodness.’ The Catholic Church has gotten a slap on the wrist pass C2C. If witches had done this their meeting places would have all been burned to the ground by now. As your churches still stand, albeit that many have had to be sold, the punishment and chastisement has NOT yet been appropriate to the horrendous and heinous activities covered up and propagated by your church by refusing to get rid of the sick freaks after they were found out about. So, C2C, you’re sick of hearing about pederasty attached to your church. Too bad you’re not equally as sick of your church turning it’s back on the children and knowingly allowing the abuse to continue.
Horrifying things like this
Horrifying things like this do seem to happening more often, but I think part of the reason for that is that the media seem more willing to cover it. Not only are they willing to report it but they seem willing to go into the painful details at length. Such in depth explorations, may be geared for those that seem to have a hard time understanding. Unfortunately, sex and aggression are intimately wired together in all of us. Historically, in Ancient societies, warlike states have used the separation of men from women into mens houses to heighten male aggression, the same thing seems to happen in prison populations where men are segregated from women. I can’t help but wondering if super saturation and exposure to male pheromones, in some way turns on genes to heighten aggression. Similar to what happens in other species during swarming, for example locusts in the swarming phase are a very different creatures than they normally are. Thus in humans sexual segregation may create a more aggressive individual that would be more ideal for warfare. While not jeopardizing the rearing of young with their aggressive tendencies. As an Anthropology undergrad, I did study some societies in New Guinea, in which children were kidnapped from neighboring societies, where they were kept in male houses, and trained to be warriors. This was done because the birth rate was so low, as women were seen as inferior, and sexual intercourse was prohibited most of the time. In our society, sports teams, in some sense mimic, men’s houses, and attempt to discourage sexual relations with women, with the belief that contact like this will weaken them…. But that’s another issue entirely. The problem is not just sexual deviancy, but deviant aggression, of the kind displayed by sociopaths.
@Gerald Anderson
Thanks for
@Gerald Anderson
Thanks for one of the more intelligent and thoughtful posts I have read here! It dovetails somewhat with it not being about sex, but about power and aggression. You said it much better than I did, and it makes sense. Kudos!
A few more comments on this
A few more comments on this inflammatory subject. My partner of many years was sexually abused by the notorious Brothers and one priest who taught at his boys school in Belfast in the 1950’s starting in first grade and proceeding until he was at least 14. I am unclear on any details as he absolutely refuses to talk about it, will never talk about it, and gets angry if any reference is made. He only alluded to the situation a few times so that I would understand some of his odd behavior and since has expressed disappointment that he let his guard down that much.
In terms of the fact that at least 75% of his class of boys have been dead for many years, due mainly to the violence of the Troubles and in a few cases, accidental death,
I think it is fair to say that no sexual abuse was reported by those men. Men don’t like to talk about things, even less than women, as it is more shaming for them to be associated with what in their minds is a homosexual act. That was one class in one school in one age group. I believe from that that the number of cases of abuse are many, many times greater than anyone suspects. Not everyone will come forward and like these boys have gone or will go to their graves with their secrets. So don’t ever underestimate the enormity of this problem and the toll it takes on the lives of so many people. Don’t get tired of bringing the subject up. The why question is somewhat like the why question about the Nazis. As the beautiful boys of the sixties once sang: ‘Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry, just look at them and sigh, and know they love you’.