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Royal Commission to look into Catholic Church Pedo Crimes

by Whaleoil on November 14, 2012

Julia Gillard has established a Royal Commission to looking to historic Catholic Church pedo crimes. The Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell thinks this is all the result of an on-going media beat-up and there shouldn’t really be an inquiry.

Understandably people disagree:

Detective Inspector Fox said the royal commission should examine aspects of the Catholic Church such as confession, in which priests had been known to confess to other priests their abuse of children.

“We need to get laws to stop that happening and to compel those priests that are hearing those confessions to say, ‘Listen; God doesn’t want this man to commit more crimes. He wants me to come and tell the police to stop him’,” Detective Inspector Fox said.

He also hit out at Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell’s claims that the royal commission was brought about by ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage.

“It certainly has been one-sided, because it seems to be the Church that has been continually screaming out the message that ‘We don’t need a royal commission, there’s nothing going on here, move along’,” Detective Inspector Fox said.

“We’ve had enough from that one side, Mr Pell. Now we’re going to start listening to the victims and start listening to their families and we’re going to start doing something about the problem.”

Detective Inspector Fox joined Twitter last week in his campaign for a royal commission.

On Monday night he tweeted: “I will sleep with a smile.”

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  • manuka416

    Bravo

  • Phar Lap

    Nice to see the Salvation Army ,Anglican Church ,teachers of all persuasions,and not forgetting the well known organisation Boy Scouts,where in USA ,1600 cases of boy buggering are being investigated. hmmmm.

    • Mitch82

      “But Gillard said the scope of the commission will move beyond the Catholic church and target all institutions, including religious institutions, state-based organisations, schools and not-for-profit groups such as scouts and sporting clubs.

      It will also look at the response of child services agencies and the police to accusations of abuse.”

      http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/gillard-orders-royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse-5212308

  • nasska

    People keep giving Catholic priests a hard time but let’s not forget that they revolutionised youth culture.

    They really have a feel for the young people.

    • Dave

      Yes I agree Some of the priests love to have a feel of the young people Precisely why this royal cmosion is needed. Clear or condem!

    • Mediaan

      Nonsense. The priests are manipulating society in many ways, one of which includes grooming young people wherever they can.

      Then they get (vast) money out of governments for programmes, because they “know young people and can help”. Taxpayers pay large amounts to give to “social minded” priests.

      These priests often write books on how it’s really okay to shoplift, graffiti tagging is actually art, and gang culture is okay if you work within it and shape it.

      When the Royal Commission is over, we should count up the money poured from taxpayers into this (already obscenely rich) church for programmes for youth that never actually showed any results we know about..

      There is a sinister wider picture here I’m not even going into.

      • Lion_ess

        There is a sinister wider picture here – right on.

  • sarah

    “boy buggering” really?

    the perpetrator and the victims gender is irrelevant, call it what it is, its RAPE.
    calling it ‘boy buggering’, sexual abuse or any other euphemism just trivialises the
    victims experiences.

    They should be glad im not judging them

    these sick fucks if found guilty beyond all possible doubt should be cabletied to a chair and left in a room full of nasty implements along with their victims.

    • Neil

      Revenge helps noone.

    • Mediaan

      It needs to be remembered a lot of girls have been and are being abused too.

      And many children outside the church, who had no way of identifying their oppressor, were abused by priests, It’s hard to see how these people will ever be able to seek help and redress.

      The priests, and the church organisation, not only abused on a huge scale. They also tried to denigrate and lower the reputation of the victim and, if the family realised and tried to make a fuss, of the family.

      The boy was a “really bad type”, “a liar”, “just troublemaking and a criminal in the making”, and “the whole family was no good”… These were the sorts of things they encouraged people to say. This was, I think, to cover their abuse in case the complaints started to be listened to.

  • phronesis

    I am not up with the play on this but was under the impression that Priests who had crimes confessed to them were under no legal obligation to report said crimes to the police. If this were to change then things would get interesting.

    • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

      Priests will never give up the secrets of the Confessional. New Zealand has it’s own Catholic martyr in that regard.

  • Mohawk Genocide

    While at first glance a royal commission might sound like a good idea, it’s a bit like asking the foxes to investigate why the chickens keep going missing. If you don’t think that child abuse is an institutional problem, I suggest you google the following:

    Kevin Arnett, Paul Bonacci, Holly Grieg, Pedro Namora

  • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

    If this was an on-going problem, then of course the Church would need to be investigated. However, there isn’t an on-going problem in the Church, it’s just a media beat up.

    What people don’t realise is that there was a long period in recent times where the recommendation for dealing with child sex abuse was to just move the perpetrator on. It wasn’t considered serious enough to either warn the places he was sent to, or to get the legal system involved. That has changed now, of course, but for a long time there has been a gradual relaxation in adult-child sex views, culminating in conferences such as this Paedophilia conference in Baltimore, where paedophiles are just considered “minor attracted persons”. In 2006, the Dutch approved a paedophile party, though it has since disbanded. The German government also used to encourage paedophilia, though they may not have seen it that way.

    Personally, I think it’s fantastic that sex with children is now moving back towards zero tolerance, even though we have a long way to go, and even though for the Church with the spotlight more firmly on her that anyone else, the process has been very painful.

    • Mohawk Genocide

      The reason why it is an on-going problem is that Christianity works hand-and-glove with the civil system to control people via the Westminster system.

      An example of this is the description of common-law marriage as “living in sin”, while marriage by licence is accepted by citizens as the norm.

      Law looks to the intent; it is the predatory intent of the perp which is important, not the shades of grey of social norms.

    • Mitch82

      http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/7950059/Priest-accused-of-abuse-blamed-God

      Another one in the news today.

      No.. not on-going at all.. just a media beat-up.

      • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

        And something from decades ago.

        • Lion_ess

          So I guess it doesn’t matter then. The boys who were buggered by priests back then are today’s damaged humans, many of whom go on to commit the same crimes perpetrated on themselves. That’s the way it sadly works, but I’m sure you already know this.

          • Rebecca

            Consider that marital rape wasn’t criminalized in New Zealand until 1985 and in some states of Australia not until the early 1990s. So wives got raped and neighbors drew in their breaths and closed the curtains. Was this a “cover up”? According to sloppy thinking here, it sure was. So perhaps we all need to be accused in the enquiry too.
            No doubt some here would argue that it’s different because systematically raping a woman was legal as long as you were married to her, but that’s barbaric misogyny and we need the enquiry to protect us from people like that. Hopefully those eager to see an enquiry will be quick to sell their homes to pay compensation to the victims whose lives were ruined forever because we all squirmed and shrugged and covered up and did nothing.

          • Lion_ess

            Rebecca, the Church has gained it’s wealth from the people for years- almost like a tax really. The Church portrays itself as a home of standards for people to live by, but does not adhere to those standards. Are you endeavouring to normalise the behaviour of pedophile priests – this is what is being discussed?

          • Rebecca

            The point is that it’s hypocrisy to go back 30 years and investigate behavior unless you’re willing to subject yourself to the same standard. In those days society didn’t just tolerate rape, we legalized it inside marriage until the mid-80s. Kids these days are aghast at how barbaric we were, and what excuse can we really offer? The truth is that in our hearts we all knew it was wrong, but we went along with husband rapists in our midst just as some priests went along with homosexual rapists in their midst. So unless people are saying that homosexual rape is more reprehensible than systematic rape by somebody who promised to be your closest life companion, why is it logical to target only the priests? Sounds like the worst sort of bias and/or hypocrisy to me.

        • Mediaan

          There is no Statute of Limitations on this sort of crime.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            Not saying there is. However, you’d find very few, if any instances of abuse of this nature in the Church anymore. Old crimes are brought up because there are few new ones.

    • Mediaan

      If any great change had taken place, the Church would not still be covering it up. It would not still be denigrating and attacking the victims to silence them wherever possible.

      Sipe says 6% of all priests across the entire church were actively child sex-abusing. That is one in every fifteen. He used wide-ranging data to check his findings and wrote books.

      In the USA, with maybe 50,000 priests, that’s 3,000 priests abusing children at any one time.

      If there are four victims per priest per year, that means 12,000 child victims suffered the shock and harm of abuse (and its accompanying threats and denigration) at any given time.

      W Richard Sipe was a priest who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome and became an expert in psychiatry and priest sexuality. He left late in his career to marry a nun, but stayed a loyal Catholic and kept teaching and counselling priests at a senior level.

  • Kaygee

    Lucia Maria, your post is disturbing are you trying to throw some sort of intellectual justification behind paedophilia

    • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

      Absolutely not, just putting it into historical context. Paedophilia is abhorent and paedophiles should be imprisoned for life or executed, in my opinion.

      Unfortunately, there is a push for acceptance of paedophilia that until recently, has been gaining in strength – that was the whole point of my comment.

      • Mitch82

        Who was pushing? Was it reported anywhere other than a Catholic website?

        • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

          When you say “it”, what do you mean?

          • Mitch82

            “Unfortunately, there is a push for acceptance of paedophilia that until recently, has been gaining in strength – that was the whole point of my comment.”

            Who was doing the pushing here? Where was it reported?

          • Pokerface

            The Labour Party had wanted to lower the age of consent – maybe they were “pushing”?

          • Mitch82

            I have no idea. I just want to know where this supposed push for ‘acceptance’ of pedophilia is coming from, and what it has to do with this Royal Commission.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            Obviously perverts are doing the pushing. If you keep your eyes open, news items appear all the time about this subject.

          • Mitch82

            That’s a really empty statement.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            It matches the question.

          • http://twitter.com/unpopularfront Richard Yossarian

            The ongoing revelations of the Catholic Church’s covering up the rape of children by its priests and facilitating them to rape again show clear evidence of this going back to the 40s at least (no doubt before that too but the victims are dead). Trying to blame on some contemporary acceptance of paedophilia is as silly as blaming the evils of the inquisition on a popular fashion for torture.

            On the bright side, attitudes like yours will help make the pews on sunday even emptier than they are already.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            That’s just the storyline. The reality is that crimes from decades ago are being put up into the spotlight as if they are ongoing, when the reality is that children are in much worse danger in other places that aren’t being looked at so carefully. Normally this sort of thing gains traction when the gay marriage debate hits a speed bump. Funny, that.

          • Lion_ess

            If the crimes were committed “decades ago” why is the Church still covering it up today?

            You comment that “this sort of thing gains traction when the gay marriage debate hits a speed bump” is utter nonsense. Pedophilia in churches has been going on for such a long time that the piousness within religious institutions is a standing-joke.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            The Church isn’t actively covering anything up today, again, that’s just the storyline, or the spin if you like. It’s only now that it’s politically expedient to do something about it.

          • Lion_ess

            Really, is this statement from a Cardinal not actively trying for a cover-up?

            CARDINAL George Pell has moved to release abuse victims from any confidentiality agreements signed with the Catholic Church in exchange for compensation but is resolute that priests who have heard pedophiles’ confessions should not answer questions at the proposed royal commission.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            Um, no. And if you are referring to the confessions, it doesn’t matter if the person admits to killing millions of people in horrible, sadistic ways – the priest will never tell, otherwise he is answerable to God. Confessions are like that, you can say anything and the priest will not tell anyone.

          • Lion_ess

            LM, no offense intended, but you should look up Stockholm Syndrome.

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            LOL!

          • Lion_ess

            No, ROTFLOL

          • Lion_ess

            Um, no back – this story is referring to releasing “victims from any confidentiality agreements signed with the Catholic Church in exchange for compensation” (that means take some money, shut up and piss off); and priests who have heard confessions from pedophiles (including their own) should not answer any questions at the proposed royal commission.

          • Lion_ess

            Two items in today’s news about Catholic Churches and buggery of boys – first story says it’s ok to have a Royal Commission because that will show that it wasn’t just us, and the second story blames God because he made us this way and it’s his fault. In terms of a bag of pathetic excuses, I would expect no more and no less from your average Joe pedophile up on court charges today. Either normalising the abhorrent behaviour because “everyone does it” or blaming someone else – i.e. God. Pathetic.

          • http://twitter.com/unpopularfront Richard Yossarian

            The reality is that the Church’s power over people has diminished as its moral authority has crumbled and the victims are no longer scared to come forward. The reason the catholic clergy is no longer able to shift paedophile priests from one parish to another is that people are on to them. Let’s remember it wasn’t the catholic church that brought its crime to light nor was it the pope who began the process of protecting children from priests – this change had to be forced on the church because it was in denial and cared more for its reputation than children.
            To claim it’s some sort of smoke screen for the gay marriage debate is just silly – the uncovering of the cover ups pre-dates the current push for gay marriage.

          • Mohawk Genocide

            Lucia Maria, you maintain that the problems are not ongoing even though I argued that they are symptomatic of the ongoing Westminster system. This system represents right as wrong for common-law marriage in that it requires citizens to obtain a licence in order to avoid “living in sin”. Do you not understand the relevance of this argument, or are you unable to defend the faith?

          • http://nzconservative.blogspot.com Lucia Maria

            I think your argument is somewhat idiotic. When defending at many points at once, I tend to pick and choose my battles, because I just don’t have the time to think about and respond to every single argument.

          • Mohawk Genocide

            Lucia Maria, the fact that you don’t like my argument but are apparently unable to contest it indicates that you are wrong in denying that institutional child abuse is an ongoing problem.

  • Lion_ess

    Why any-one would take spiritual direction from this group of grubby hypocrites beggars belief

  • Lion_ess

    Here, Pell says that the Royal Commission can be a good thing because it will show that they (the Catholic Church) weren’t the only ones doing it.
    Pass the sick bag.
    http://www.humanheadline.com.au/Hinch-Says/gospel-according-to-pell

    • Mohawk Genocide

      The universal religion… (catholic means universal)

  • Lion_ess

    Well who would have guessed – it’s all God’s fault

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/7950059/Priest-accused-of-abuse-blamed-God

  • Mediaan

    Two things to watch for.

    Watch for the diversionary news. It will be big.

    And watch for the welfare of the man who started it going.

    The Australian policeman Peter Fox who got all this going deserves high praise.

    He also needs every right-minded person’s watchful protection. He needs to be made so well-known they don’t dare touch him, bedcause it would be noticed.

    Whistleblowers can get brutalised and assaulted.

    I hope Australia keeps an eye on his continuing welfare and that of his family.

    • niggly

      Well said! I can’t believe Peter Fox & family is now being targeted by other corrupt officials (well obviously i can believe it – I hope these corrupt officials are found out and publically humiliated as well).

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