The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128156   Message #2878928
Posted By: Smokey.
03-Apr-10 - 04:32 PM
Thread Name: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
Subject: RE: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
Smokey, your 6:03 post seems to be saying that because there has been a wide range of different types of abuse taking place in the Church, that most of it can simply be put down to "opportunity".

My point was that the distribution of types of offence, for example more abuse by priests on youths than by priests on young girls, correlates with the circumstances in which it was possible to happen. There are many times more opportunities available for priests to abuse youths than to abuse girls, and the reported incidents seem to reflect that, showing a larger proportion of same sex (m-m) abuse overall. To put it another way: if priests were only ever left with 6 - 10 year old girls, that is where all the abuse would be, and I think that many of them (but not all) would be the same priests. I think Ed's link explains it far better than I ever could.

My other, and main, point in that post was that half-preventing some of the abuse just isn't good enough, whatever the overall demographic distribution and sexual orientation of the overall abuse is. It's all profoundly and equally wrong and it all needs to be stamped out. Remove all opportunity. Personally I don't care who gets offended, put out of work, faith shattered, whatever. They should be glad to make that sacrifice for the sake of protecting children from such treatment, and to ensure the credibility and maybe the survival of their church.

The children are more important.