The Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis in Ireland That Isn’t

IrelandIf one were to believe the mainstream media, the Catholic Church in Ireland is reeling from a burgeoning and active network of pedophile priests relentlessly preying on innocent children.

However, the recent release of the annual report from the Catholic Church's National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC, Ireland) tells a radically different story.

While even a single abuse allegation is upsetting, from April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2012, of 237 total allegations of abuse against Catholic priests, only six accusations alleged abuse within the past dozen years, since 2000. This represents one allegation every other year in all of Ireland in recent memory.

In other words, as in the United States, the abuse of children by Catholic priests in Ireland is a tragic era from years past.

However, don't look for these facts to be reported the next time the New York Times reports about the Catholic Church and sex abuse in Ireland.

Comments

  1. Magpieinmadrid says:

    Breathtakingly ignorant. The problem was never only about the crimes of rape. Why do you still not understand? 

    • Mary says:

      Thank you!  MSM completely ignores the RCC's other massive human rights violations, like the Magdalene Laundries, stealing and selling probably millions of infants, trafficking those infants for ongoing deadly CIA/Nazi/big pharma medical experiments (I'm a disfigured survivor), maiming and murdering millions of women with coerced childbearing, bashing people born intersexed from UNnatural Family Cramming (NFP) fertilization defects, hospital medical malpractice against rape victims, mothers and gays, forced abortions and infanticides by priests to hide their affairs and rapes, and running Nazi Ustashi death camps in Croatia during WWII.  Priest therapist Richard Sipe has proven that 80-90% of priests break their chastity vows with double life secret mistresses, boyfriends, abandoned kids and abortions.  Priests don't get caught for their REGULAR sex tourism in Thailand.  How shameful that ostriches defend this corruption!

    • Don Schenk says:

      It's true that the problem isn't just about rape, but it is mostly about homosexuality  (which the media protects) and the media ignoring the fact that the problem is just as, if not more, common outside the Catholic Church.  (For instance, read your local newspaper.)

    • Ronnie says:

      Your rant is pathetic and so ignorant. If you take an anti dose of hate you will find your mind. Listen -
      The more they bash the Catholic Church the stronger it grows! We are not afraid and all that bashing has scratched very little on this divine institution. The devil can scream himself hoarse but when Jesus comes the Catholic Church will be. Abuse and sin are not exclusively Catholic. We do not have walking saints in all the breakaway churches. There wouldn’t be all this much pain in the world if all of you bashing Catholic priests were saints. Didn’t Jesus say remove the plank before you go after the splinters!! And now do we have Rev. Sandusky on trial for abuse? I am a foster mom and I know that there are more parents molesting their children than Catholic priests and all families cover up!! Just because a few gay priests molested children doesn’t mean that all Catholic priests are perverted. Let us look at Society's responsibility of allowing perverse behavior and calling wrong right!!

      Reply

  2. Publion says:

    I have read the Magpie message and I am breath-taken! "The problem was never only about the crimes of rape"? When was that goal-post moved?
     
    In the first place, the Irish report refers to "abuse" and not to "rape".
     
    In the second place, please share with those not in the Magic-Memo loop exactly what this whole brouhaha has been about all these years if not about alleged widespread clerical sex-abuse.
     
    Why do you still not speak clearly in terms normal people can understand? I think because since your case can't stand up to even basic rational analysis if simply and clearly put, this sort of Magical Mystery talk is supposed to pass for 'knowledge'.
     
    What is it that we are supposed to "understand" that you know and nobody else does?

  3. Magpieinmadrid says:

    Please read Mary's words. She says it perfectly. Let no-one be under any doubt. The problem is all of these crimes, plus the subsequent cover ups, denials, and lies. No goal posts have been changed, except by the leaders of a corrupt organisation that is unable to see their errors. 
    The first thing you do when you are in a hole is stop digging.

    • Ronnie says:

      Mary  and magpiein madrid
      Your rant is pathetic and so ignorant.
      If you take an anti dose of hate you will find your mind. Listen -
      The more they bash the Catholic Church the stronger it grows! We are not afraid and all that bashing has scratched very little on this divine institution. The devil can scream himself hoarse but when Jesus comes the Catholic Church will be. Abuse and sin are not exclusively Catholic. We do not have walking saints in all the breakaway churches. There wouldn’t be all this much pain in the world if all of you bashing Catholic priests were saints. Didn’t Jesus say remove the plank before you go after the splinters!! And now do we have Rev. Sandusky on trial for abuse? I am a foster mom and I know that there are more parents molesting their children than Catholic priests and all families cover up!! Just because a few gay priests molested children doesn’t mean that all Catholic priests are perverted. Let us look at Society's responsibility of allowing perverse behavior and calling wrong right!!

       

  4. Julie says:

    Mary puts her lies out there on the internet under different names also. I recognize her claims and her style. When you get that ridiculous, people stop believing you. BTW, 3 million Catholics also died in concentration camps during World War II, including thousands of priests and nuns. One. Father Maximilian Kolbe, offered to let them kill him instead of a Jewish man with a wife and children. The Nazis killed the already nearly-dead from starvation Kolbe via injection.

  5. ItIStheorientation says:

    How can you sue when "the Church" is helping you w/your "problem" teen? In the 80s, everything was out in the open.  It wasn't the priests that were seducing and abusing the children, they were HELPING the children at the parent's request or w/parents approval after the priests/schools had brought the problem to the parents' attention.  Your son needs to go to "Courage" camp (ha ha).  So when the kid is molested or gets deeper and deeper into this homosexual world, there is no suit because the parents KNEW what was going on:
    Check out this site of a father whose son was shot in the head because of gay priestly goings on and the father was prevented from talking to his son until he died to protect the gay priests:
    http://www.awuerlofhurt.com/2012/02/priest-interrogated-shooting-victim.html
    Perhaps it is not so unusual that a teen abuser himself would not find any "recent" abuse in Ireland.  Who is the unusal Msgr Charles Brown that Pope Benedict "consecrated" as a bishop and sent as nuncio to Ireland? "According to a story in La Repubblica, later amplified by the news service ANSA, an office functionary of the Secretariate of State was stopped by cops while cruising late at night in a park known to be frequented by obdurate Albigensians. He fled, denting three cars in the chase, then got into a fist-fight with the cops. The story supplies the edifying detail that the cleric, identified only as "Monsignor CB," excused himself to the police on the grounds that he was scouting only for adult schismatics — not minors. We are an Easter People."
    http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otr.cfm?ID=3604
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15890095
    Cardinal McCarrick a known priest abuser who was promoted by the Great JPII (whose sainthood is being rushed) because of his fundraising for Poland & Eastern Europe is in residence at the Redemptor Mater seminary in DC:
    "McCarrick, wearing just underwear, got into bed with one of the priests: “Bishop McCarrick was sitting on the crotch of Fr. RC As I was watching TV with Fr BL [full names appear in the documents], bishop McCarrick was smiling and laughing and moving his hands all over Fr. RC’s body. Bishop McCarrick was touching Fr. C’s body, rubbing his hands from head to toe and having a good time, occasionally placing his hands underneath Fr. C’s underwear. [I was] feeling very uncomfortable while trying to focus on television, and Fr. B.L., started smiling. As I looked at the bed next to me, Bishop McCarrick was excitedly caressing the full body of Fr. R.C. At that moment, I made eye contact [with] Bishop McCarrick. He smiled at me saying, “Don’t worry, you’re next.” At that moment, I felt the hand of Fr. B.L. rubbing my back and shoulders. I felt sick to my stomach and went under the covers and pretended to sleep.”
    http://www.richardsipe.com/Comments/2008-04-21-McCarrick_Syndrome.html
    http://ncronline.org/news/global/us-catholics-come-aid-eastern-european-churches
    Watch this video about teen boys being abused by their dad, Fr. Maciel (who both benedict & jpii knew was a sexual addict and abuser) – but such a great fundraiser!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMGws-bc7A
     

  6. Publion says:

    The comments by ‘Mary’ and ‘Magpie’ are useful and revealing. The Philadelphia case – which is the basic subject of this series on TMR – is clearly not, in the minds of a number of people, the primary concern here. The abuse-crisis (such as it is or was, by any extant numbers) is, rather, a pretext for all manner of people’s dissatisfactions with a) the Church,  b) organized religion, c) God generally or d) all of the above.
     
    In support thereof, all manner of complaints are eagerly stuffed into the blunderbuss: the Magdalene Laundries – although they were charitable institutions, very much socially accepted, where some persons lived out their entire lives; “probably” the stealing and selling of “millions of infants”; Church opposition to people “born intersexed” (whatever that means); family planning; “hospital medical malpractice against rape victims” (whatever that means ); the same against “mothers and gays”; forced abortions and infanticides by priests” hiding their sexual affairs (quite possible but hardly widespread – unless ‘Mary’ has some special knowledge nobody else does); running Ustasha death camps (not run by the Church; the Vatican warned the runaway Croatian Catholic clergy but was helpless to stop events in that Nazi puppet state that inflamed and fed on the worst ethnic hatreds latent in Central and Balkan Europe).
     
    Richard Sipe estimated in 1995 that 4-6pct of priests abused minors (his “sex activity” includes a wide spectrum of behavior, far lesser than rape). Priests can “break their chastity vows” by something as private as impure thoughts, in which case the number might well be 99pct but that’s still a guesstimate. And he defends his highly dubious methodology – all the rage at the time – of simply believing the self-reports he was given by interviewees. Even he claimed that his numbers were “the best figures we have at this time” – and in the intervening 18 years we have two John Jay Reports that were far more substantial investigative and research undertakings. Some folks might want to read Richard Jenkins’s 1996 book “Pedophiles and Priests” since – one can only hope – they have taken the time to read Sipe’s 1995 book.
     
    So it’s clear in the comments by ‘Mary’ and ‘Magpie’ that Philadelphia in the mind of many is merely a ‘show trial’ in the worst sense of that term: something drummed up to stand-for all of their irritations and dislikes.
     
    But Philadelphia is a criminal-process trial and there is a great deal at stake, for the accused and for the integrity of the criminal-processes of American justice. That trial is and must be primarily and carefully focused on the guilt or innocence of the accused; to use it for larger purposes such that whether the individual accused are actually guilty means little compared to the ‘effect’ and ‘message’ certain groups want to ‘send’ is a lethal abuse of the integrity of the criminal-justice system.

  7. Publion says:

    I think the development of the internet is hugely valuable.
     
    But it instantly puts a tremendous burden and responsibility on users: it makes everybody a ‘researcher’, in a basic way. By that I mean you have to treat all the material you get from it as ‘initial data’ and then you have to do the work of validating it (or determining its unreliability).
     
    Since anybody can put anything ‘up’ and anybody can read it, then everybody really comes under the responsibilities of all researchers: think critically, verify or falsify, and then draw conclusions justified by what you have validated, and then ‘publish’ what you have carefully established. All the old ‘scientific method’ stuff you learned in high school.
     
    This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s what is required if Citizens are going to be dealing with a lot of data. And especially if that data is put to them as ‘truth’, ‘fact’, and so forth. And even more so if certain groups – perhaps with their friendly professionals – ‘guarantee’ the average reader that this stuff is ‘true’ and ‘fact’ and ‘science’ and on and on.
     
    And if the persons embracing and accepting the ‘information’ are emotionally predisposed to hear what they want to hear.
     
    And this whole thing is then amplified by the ease of putting whatever you want on the internet.
     
    In all these abuse-matters, when – so rarely, alas – these matters have been examined at trial or in carefully and properly conducted major studies, the huge assertions and presumptions dissolve like smoke in the wind. Even the current Philadelphia case – however the jury decides – has demonstrated this reality.
     
    That should say something.

  8. Julie says:

    "Mary" tries to turn Catholic sites into anti-Catholic sites by taking over the comboxes and spewing lies, turning it into her soapbox. She winds up being banned because her commentary is so ridiculous and over-the-top internet thuggery. Too bad, but that's just the way it is.

  9. Tony de New York says:

    Mary please STOP de lying.
     
    This is the facts:
    "While even a single abuse allegation is upsetting, from April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2012, of 237 total allegations of abuse against Catholic priests, only six accusations alleged abuse within the past dozen years, since 2000. This represents one allegation every other year in all of Ireland in recent memory.

  10. Julie says:

    I have always wondered about these internet thugs like "Mary." They spew the ugliest, vilelest accusations in the rudest most hateful and vicious manner, and then they're like, now don't you want to leave the Catholic Church? Uh, yeah, sure, I want to leave the Church and think like you, and your co-conspirators (always the same folks) who come into the combox and "agree." Sure, the Church killed three times the world's population and everybody in the pews gets raped. *Rolls eyes* No thanks. I think I will stick with my Jesus, His Church, my peace of mind and the joy of being His servant.

  11. Publion says:

    Following up on what 'Julie' said, you can go over to the Philadelphia trial site and see exactly what she's talking about in the comments section of just about any daily-report on the trial. And even when their loony assertions are exposed, they don't change. They wait a day or so and just come back with the same stuff.
     
    It's like arguing with Communists back in the day.

  12. Julie says:

    Right, Publion. People go into comboxes and make the craziest accusations hoping their ugly comments will stick with people. It makes me want to take a shower after I read some of them. They'll sit in judgement someday. In the meantime, there is no reasoning with them.

  13. Mary says:

    Ok, so there are few cases of current abuse being acted upon in law.  That doesn't mean their are few cases of current abuse.  1.  Most victims can't sue til they are older, so abuse happening in the past few years will not be acted upon in law for many years.  2.  Of those six abuse cases that were subject of lawsuit in the past 12 years, how many of the clergy were still in ministry at the time of the lawsuit?  The abuse sued about is years and years old, so there are many victims yet to come for those six clergymen.

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