Tag: Child abuse

Categories
Sexuality

Conversations with paedophiles

Sean Moncrieff had a remarkable interview with a paedophile today on Newstalk.

Now, if you know me at all, you’ll be aware that my views on kiddie fiddlers are to the right of Hitler.  I’d feed the fuckers feet first into the gearbox of a fast-running John Deere tractor, and yet, Moncrieff’s show gave me pause.

He spoke to a man who identified himself as a paedophile, which immediately got me bristling, but then it turned out that this person was not a child abuser. This man said he was sexually attracted to children but that he had never acted on his urges and never would.

I find that difficult as a parent and as a human being. When my children were small, I would probably have wanted to kill anyone who harboured such urges, even if they had never acted upon them, but on the other hand, the angry urges of a protective father are not a rational basis on which to establish a civilised society, because angry protective fathers would kill almost anything that looks crooked at their beloved children.   It’s a man thing. It’s a hard-wired thing.

What bothered me about the Moncrieff interview was the notion that paedophiles might be hard-wired.

Where do we go with this?

I don’t know, and I’m not advocating any position on it. I’m certainly not defending paedophiles, but if it turns out that one per cent of the population has this tendency, as suggested during the interview, what are we to do with  the one in a hundred who find themselves sexually aroused by our children?

Emotionally, I want to kill them all right now, but we can’t frame law based on my emotions and anyway, we don’t execute  people in a civilised country, so where is this going? Should laws be based on my emotions as a father? Should laws be based on what a person feels, even if they never act on those feelings? Should we imprison people simply for being what they are, even if they never do any harm, and if so, should we stop there? Should we start to jail people for being potential thieves or Nazis?

I don’t know.

This isn’t one of those prescriptive articles where I tell you what I think.

Moncrieff asked a very hard question that deserves a reflective response by thinking people.

So what do you think?

 

Categories
Crime

Children Taken Into Care After Beating With Belt

News report 2014.

Girl who misbehaved at school is slapped across the face by her father and later beaten with a belt.

Mother routinely beats children with wooden spoon.

Mother “not talking to” child because of previous misbehaviour.

This behaviour is quite rightly treated as unacceptable by the authorities and all the children have been temporarily moved into protective custody while the parents come to terms with their “issues”, even though, personally, I have great difficulty understanding what these issues might be and how any grown man could possibly raise his hand to a child, much less use a weapon such as a belt.

But still, since the judge who heard the case knows more about the details than I do, it makes sense to defer to her assessment that the parents were honourable and doing their best.  Honourable is not the first word that would spring to my mind.  I don’t like it, and my first unthinking instinct is to punch this man in the face, but of course, that would simply perpetuate his stupid belief that violence is the answer, even though he probably would not regard hitting a child as violence.

The mother is so emotionally atrophied that she lacks the ability to deal with this little girl and instead freezes the child out in a despicably callous manner.  She tells the court that she doesn’t believe half of the things the little girl claims.

Let me say this.  The father is a prick, an authoritarian wanker with no respect for his children, and when he grows old  he’ll experience the obverse of that as a man whose adult children have no respect for him.

The mother is a disgrace who abused her children physically and emotionally and also failed to protect them.

That’s how we see things today in 2014.

 

News report 1974

Girl who misbehaved at school is slapped across the face by her father and later beaten with a belt.

Mother routinely beats children with wooden spoon.

Mother “not talking to” child because of previous misbehaviour.

 

 

Authorities take no action.  Schools don’t intervene.  The end.

 

_______________

Irish Times article

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Sexual abuse

Lostprophets Ian Watkins Jailed for 35 Years for Abusing Children

I’m struggling to understand many things about the Ian Watkins case.

lostprophets ian watkins paedophile child abuser

First, I struggle to understand why there isn’t a law that provides for the instant castration of anyone who rapes anyone.

Second, I struggle to understand why there isn’t a law requiring the instant extermination of anyone who sexually molests a young child.

Thirdly, I fail to see why there’s not a law requiring horrible torture of any pervert who rapes a baby.

And yet, all that Ian Watkins got was a 35-year sentence.

This pervert has been raping babies all over Europe.  Babies.  This piece of shit has been violating babies.  Can you even begin to imagine that?  Babies.  What the fuck is that?  Babies?

There’s something even more disturbing about the case though. Two mothers were sentenced along with Watkins for facilitating his rape of their babies.

What?

What is wrong with these people?  What exactly is missing from their DNA?  Two mothers agreed to let a sex offender abuse their babies.  Can you process that statement?  Can you make sense of it?  I can’t.

You know what?  Maybe there are circumstances in the background of Ian Watkins that predisposed him to abuse children, but I don’t really care.  As far as I’m concerned, the 35-year sentence he received is all very well, but really what he needs is a bullet in the back of the head to make sure no other child is ever in danger from him.

You think that’s extreme?  Well, maybe, but it’s in response to a fairly extreme crime.

Raping a baby?  For fucksake, just shoot the prick now and get it over with.

 

Categories
Religion Sexual abuse

Bishop Kirby and the Freudian Slips

Two friends are chatting over a pint and and one of them is trying hard to explain what a Freudian slip is.

Look, he says.  It’s when you mean to say one thing, but something completely different comes out.

Give me an example, says the other guy.

All right, he says.  This morning, I was having breakfast with my wife, I meant to say  “Pass the salt, my darling”, but instead I said “You bitch, you ruined my life!”

Poor old Bishop Kirby of Clonfert is a martyr for the Freudian slips.  Only a month ago, he was telling us that he used to think child abuse was nothing more than a friendship that crossed a boundary line, when of course, what he really meant to say was I knew damn well it was a crime, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

And then he told us that he had moved an offending priest to a new parish but that he was unaware of any more child abuse happening.  But of course, as we discover thanks to the Irish Times, what Bishop Kirby really meant to say was that he knew of sixteen more children the priest had abused, nine before he was moved and seven more in his new parish, because that priest had admitted it to his face when he visited him in prison.

And of course, when the bishop said as follows:

I literally thought, and you can put it down as gross innocence and naivety, that if I separated the priest and the youngster that it was a friendship that crossed the boundary line …

What he really meant to say was this:

I wasn’t separating a priest from one youngster.  I now know perfectly well that he raped nine children before I moved him, because he told me so himself.  Sorry for the mental reservation.

But I suppose it’s an easy mistake to make when you’re as prone to Freudian slips as Bishop Kirby seems to be.

From his statement the same day, Bishop Kirby informed us that

I profoundly regret and apologise for moving the priests concerned to different parishes thereby placing others at serious risk … Whilst no further abuse has been reported, this act was a grave mistake on my part. I operate very differently now and will continue to do so in the future.

Of course, when he said no further abuse had been reported what he really meant was that he knew of 22 children who were abused, before and after he moved the priests around, including one child abused by a priest officiating at his father’s funeral.  But again, it’s an easy mistake to make.

No further abuse.  Twenty-two children abused.  You can see how a bishop might get mixed up, especially when he’s struggling to overcome a major Freudian problem.

In his special message to the people of his diocese, Bishop Kirby said  There is no question but that I made serious mistakes in the early to mid-1990s by moving two priests who had abused into different parishes.  Of course he meant four priests, not two, but that’s only a detail, right?

And then he goes on,

Whilst I am not aware of any abuse allegations from the parishes to which they were moved, it is important for you to know that I operate very differently now and will continue to do so in the future.

It happened to me earlier today. I meant to praise Bishop Kirby for his courage and honesty, but somehow ended up calling him a miserable liar.

Damn those Freudian slips.

Categories
Law Religion

Irish Catholic Priests Refuse To Obey The Law

What’s the difference between a Catholic priest and a doctor or a lawyer?

Well, apart from the fact that a priest has no practical training in anything, the main difference today is that a priest considers himself above the law of the land when it comes to reporting child abusers.  You see, if a pervert informs a psychiatrist in confidence that he is raping a child, that professional must and will inform the authorities.  So will a lawyer.  So will any other professional who receives information in strict confidence.

But the Association of Catholic Priests says that its members’ vows are superior to the law of the land. No matter what a child abuser reveals in confession, they will never tell the authorities, even to save a child from further abuse.

Here we go again.  Canon Law versus Statute Law.  The law of Rome versus the law of Ireland.  As Michael McDowell acidly observed, Canon Law in this country has the same status as the rules of a golf club.  No more than that.

Some people have tried to spin this story to suggest that the government has somehow named the Catholic church specifically in the proposed legislation.  This is not true.  What it has done is impose an obligation on every citizen, including priests, to reveal information relating to the abuse of children.

Any person who shelters, conceals or assists the actions of a child-abuser deserves to go to jail, whether priest, doctor, lawyer or anyone else.

It’s that simple.

 

Categories
Religion Sexual abuse

Was Archbishop John Charles McQuaid a Paedophile?

There was a time when Planet Ireland orbited its own smug, self-satisfied star, held on course by a mysterious force known as certainty.  That was an era when Irish missionaries roamed darkest Africa, ridding the natives of their superstitions and giving them new ones.  It was a time when children on Planet Ireland were locked up in prisons run by brutal, ignorant rapists, when priests dictated to legislators what laws they might pass regulating private sexual behaviour of grown adults.  It was an era when priests and bishops could bring down an entire government with a single word, and when Prime Ministers of our little planetoid were happy to grovel on their knees before a Prince of the Church.

Nobody exemplifies this power more than John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972.   While still president of Blackrock College, McQuaid played a huge part in drafting the 1937 constitution in much the same way as an Iranian cleric might today.  When Ayatollah McQuaid, clicked his fingers government ministers jumped.

But what’s this?  According to the Irish Times, the HSE failed to pass two sex-abuse complaints against McQuaid to the Murphy commission, which was therefore unable to investigate the allegations.

The Murphy commission accepted that the failure was due to human error, but it seems extraordinary that the HSE would not grasp the explosive significance of the documents it had in its possession.

According to the journalist, Patsy McGarry,   McQuaid was fond of a tipple and often dropped into a pub near his residence for a quick nip to steady his nerves.  On one such occasion, according to McGarry, the landlord’s child came running down the stairs, crying and saying that McQuaid had done something to him.  The Archbishop was immediately ejected from the premises.

A Prince of the Church

Nothing would surprise me about the institution McQuaid represented.  In 1960, according to the commission report, McQuaid was contacted by Garda Commissioner Costigan about obscene photographs of young girls in Crumlin children’s hospital, taken by one of his priests, Paul McGennis when he was chaplain there.  Costigan had been contacted by Scotland Yard after a security officer at a British film-processing laboratory intercepted the film and informed the police.  However, instead of investigating a crime, Costigan chose to abdicate his responsibility and pass the matter to McQuaid.  The archbishop did nothing, and McGennis went on to abuse children for a further forty years.  It says much about the power wielded by these men that not even the Garda Commissioner had the courage to stand up to them.

Perhaps now we understand more clearly why McQuaid, a notoriously severe man, was so lenient with a child abuser.

Perhaps they shared more in common than just a dog collar.

Planet Ireland’s orbit has been waning for some time.  I wonder if the McQuaid story will be the one that finally cuts the gravitational umbilical cord and sends our little planetoid spinning into the void until captured by a different star?

_________________

Health warning: unfortunately, the Wikipedia article on McQuaid is contaminated by the involvement of an active apologist for clerical abusers, who claims to have created most of it.  It’s not a reliable source.

 

Categories
Crime

Lessons from Cloyne Sex Abuse Report — Time To Remove Power from Bishops

This is not the Lord of the Rings.  This is Ireland in the 21st century, and the Cloyne report is about events that happened, not a millennium ago.  Not even a half century ago.  The report includes events that happened two or three years back.  Today, in other words.

After all the bishops’ talk of learning curves, and nearly twenty years after the Brendan Smyth affair brought down a government, we discover not only that a bishop had no interest in protecting children, but that the man he appointed to deal with complaints has little respect for Irish law compared to Roman Catholic rules, which he regards as superior in all respects.

There is no place called Cloyne, except in the minds of the clergy.  The so-called Cloyne report is about North Cork, a real place with real people, not some demented ecclesiastical Middle Earth.   And the inhabitants of Cloyne are not Hobbits but real people, who were terrorised, unfortunately, by the fiends of Sauron Magee as he languished in his Dark Tower, aka Cobh Cathedral.

They don’t get it and they never will, these agents of a foreign state who wield so much power in our society, and who control the very places where child victims are to be found : our primary schools.

When I say that they represent a foreign state, I only repeat what the Papal Nuncio said when he refused to answer queries from the commission of inquiry.  He claimed diplomatic immunity.  And yet, this same foreign civil servant is the conduit by which Rome instructs its agents, the bishops, in this country.

Our children are our only wealth.  Why would we submit anything so precious to the control of a self-proclaimed foreign country?  Why would we cede sovereignty to foreign agents who not only have no interest in protecting our children but, as in the case of John Magee, actively lied to the government, the health service and the police, concealing vital information about the crimes committed by his staff?

Is there anything special about the North Cork diocese?  I don’t see why there should be.  I see no reason to presume that Magee was in any way unique, except in the fact that he himself is the very model of a clerical apparatchik, a private secretary to three popes and very close to the thinking of those in the Vatican. And if the Vatican’s man could have been so indifferent to the crimes of his own people, why should we suppose that the home-grown bishops are any better?

Let me repeat something that I have said many times before.  These people are in control of our schools.

Why?

Why do these people still have the power to put child abusers in control of our children?  Child abusers like the pseudonymous Father Calder, who, according to the report, threatened a school principal with loss of pay  when she refused to release children into his clutches for “private” confessions.  How could he get away with this?  Because of the medieval patronage concept whereby the local bishop becomes the patron of every school in his area.  Calder had already been identified as a danger to children, yet Magee appointed him to the position of chairman of the board of management.  In that capacity, he was able to tell the principal that he would refuse to sign her pay cheque unless she facilitated his plans to sexually abuse children.

Furthermore, Magee’s delegate, Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan tried to intimidate this school  principal when she complained to him about the priest’s behaviour.  This same character disagreed profoundly with the Irish bishops’ own child protection policy, as did the Vatican, and even today we hear Cardinal Sean Brady issuing more mealy-mouthed, empty statements of regret.

Look at the surreal moment when Brady veered into a parallel reality: “If there is one positive thing to come out of this it is the confirmation that the church structures have been proven to be effective”.  These are the same bishops who fought against their own board for safeguarding children, refusing to hand over files under the dishonest and spurious pretext of data protection, even though they knew full well this objection had no legal substance whatsoever.

They obstructed their own inquiry, and yet Brady feels able to claim that the church structures are effective.

Is there no limit to the delusion and dishonesty of these people?

Ireland has been forced to confront some very harsh financial realities over the last two or three years, and many more are yet to come.  Now is the time to face another reality, and strip power from these unstable, unqualified and dangerous men.

___________________________

All posts mentioning the Cloyne diocese

 

 

 

Categories
Crime

Miserable old priests defend child abuse

I’ve been feeling very grumpy lately, which isn’t like me, as you know.  I suppose it might have to do with the fact that the country is completely broke thanks to the criminals in the banks and the fools in government, but that can’t be the whole story.

It has to be more than that.  If I believed in bullshit, I’d say it was a bad aura, but since I don’t believe in bullshit, I won’t say that.

Talking of bullshit, did you hear that fucking eejit, Monsignor Maurice Dooley, on the radio today?  [A reader reminds me that it was a repeat of an old interview, as part of the year’s round-up.]

This is the fool who made a complete ape of himself last March by telling the nation that bishops have no obligation to report crimes of child-rape to the civil authorities.  Maurice Dooley is a former professor of canon law, which tells you all you need to know about canon law — shit they made up.  Dooley thinks canon law is superior to the law of the land, and sees no problem with the cover-up of the Catholic hierarchy,  including Seán Brady, swearing raped children to secrecy.

That’s Cardinal Seán Brady.

What an absolute prick.

This evening, on Matt Cooper’s show, Dooley tried the same nonsense, and promptly walked into a wall of opposition in the shape of Colm O Gorman, who exposed the morally-bereft waffler for the bullshitter that he is.

Why?  Because although Maurice Dooley might know all there is to be known about the rules of his church, he has no standing in this State.  As Michael McDowell memorably expressed it, the rules of Dooley’s church have the same standing in this country as the rules of a golf club.  No more and no less.

When a golfer abuses children, I don’t want to hear some club manager telling me that he’s protected by the rules of golf.

O Gorman challenged the arrogant cleric and beat him hands down, reducing the miserable old fool to moaning about intemperate language.  He confronted Dooley on his use of the word “jousting”, which is precisely what Dooley himself does.  Playing word-games and indulging in the immature, undergraduate games he and his fellow applicants for the priesthood used to play when they were 19, while at the same time ignoring the reality of rape.  It was all they had to keep them amused, in the absence of a mature sexual relationship, but Maurice is getting on now.  You’d think he might find a new way to sublimate his rage at never getting laid.

Dooley was getting his rocks off on the radio until Colm O Gorman challenged his hypocrisy, and all the morallly-bankrupt old cleric could do was complain about intemperate language.

It’s not intemperate if it’s true, and Colm O Gorman nailed the old hypocrite.

These guys call themselves Canon Lawyers, when in fact they’re not lawyers of any sort, but simply dispensers of Catholic rules.  And these are the same people who shut down all disclosure to the civil power when the bishops knew full well that crimes had taken place.  Only last week, when Chapter 19 of the  Murphy Report was published, we saw the power of these pedants.  We saw how Gerard Sheehy, another ideologue in the mould of Dooley, instructed one bishop after another not to inform the police about child rape by a priest.  “Outrageous” was Sheehy’s word for the suggestion that the police should be informed.

And one bishop after another obeyed the miserable old bully, leaving the way open for the rapists to continue abusing children.

In many ways, I suppose we should be grateful for gobshites like Maurice Dooley, who continue to expose the true attitude of the Catholic church. Maurice is like the proverbial Japanese soldier on the remote Pacific island who doesn’t know the Emperor has surrendered, except that in Maurice’s case, he’s right. The Emperor hasn’t surrendered. Last week, we were treated to the spectacle of Ratzo telling us that back in the Seventies, nobody knew it was wrong to be fucking children.

That struck me as a very strange statement from the head of a church so obseesed with sex.

I can guarantee you that back in the Seventies, the Catholic church knew it was wrong to be fucking dogs and goats. After all, they spent most of their time telling the world it was wrong to be fucking your hand.

But somehow, they overlooked children.

Dogs, goats, sheep, hands, all bad.

Children? Not so much.

That’s the Catholic church.

They knew it was evil to put a piece of rubber on the end of your dick, but somehow they couldn’t see much wrong with fucking a child.

Nice one Ratzo. A severe case of mortal relativism, in my opinion.

Categories
Bock's People

Busting the Belgian Bishops — Pope Not Pleased

What about the Belgian cops kicking in the doors of a bishops’ meeting and arresting the whole lot of them, digging up two dead bishops to search for hidden documents and seizing Church computers?

The Pope is furious, we’re told.  He thinks the church has the right to investigate its own crimes of rape alongside the police, and he doesn’t like being told to back off.

The Pope, to put it plainly, still thinks Canon Law has some status in the world and some authority.  He thinks the crime of rape is not something to be investigated by policemen, but by priests.  And he does not like his priests being challenged by meddlesome cops.

The old attitudes remain, it seems.  Only this week in Ireland, despite all we have heard and seen over the last few years, the Catholic clergy are still not capable of knowing their place.  Last Saturday in the diocese of Cloyne, Bill Bermingham, a priest with responsibility for child safety, resigned.

Why?

Because, after he had a meeting with a woman who complained of sexual abuse by a priest, he gave his handwritten notes of the discussion to the man accused of the crimes, before this man had been interviewed by police.

He didn’t see anything wrong with doing this and believed it was permitted by Church guidelines.

Church guidelines!

Not civil law.  Not criminal law.  Not the law of this land.

Church guidelines permitted him to pass details of a complainant’s confidential discussion with him to the individual accused of the crimes.

Don’t you just love the way these guys keep failing to get the point?

No need to answer that.

The Pope, as I said, is hopping mad that his bishops could be held for nine hours and have their mobile phones confiscated, like ordinary members of the public.  He expressed his rage in Pope-speak, saying that crimes should be investigated under civil and canon law respecting their reciprocal specificity and autonomy.

In other words, the Pope thinks the private rules of his club should decide how a crime is investigated in a sovereign country, Belgium.  He even wrote to his bishops condemning the deplorable way the raid was carried out.  He’s horrified that his bishops might be as answerable to the law as any other citizen, but of course, that’s hardly surprising.  As I pointed out in a previous post, these guys are agents of the Vatican City and they don’t pledge their allegiance to the country of their birth.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the man who blamed homosexuals for clerical abuse, upped the stakes by evoking the Soviet era, saying things like this weren’t even done during communist times.  This was a studied insult to the power of a democratic state and a clear indication of what the Vatican thinks of democracy.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea if, instead of tip-toeing around these old geezers, our own police kicked in a few doors and dug up a few dead bishops?

Categories
Sexuality

Catholic Bishops and Civil Partnerships

The Catholic bishops are at it again.  This time, they’re complaining about proposed legislation on civil partnerships.

The Civil Partnership  Bill entitles

  • same-sex couples to legal recognition
  • a partner in a relationship whether of the same sex or not, to seek maintenance  from the other partner.
  • a partner in a relationship to inherit property.

This doesn’t sit well with the bishops.  They don’t want homosexuals who live together making arrangements for succession, social welfare and property rights.  Apparently, they regard this as an attack on The Family.

But wait.

This isn’t a defence of families.  It’s about that abstract entity known as The Family, which the bishops and their fellow travellers used to such horrendous effect with their opposition to every compassionate constitutional amendment and liberalising law known to this land.  Everything from divorce to the Mother and Child Scheme was opposed by these bishops as an attack on The Family, even if the proposed measure would benefit real, living families.

But let’s not forget, these are the same people who terrorised abused children into silence and knowingly hid paedophiles within their dioceses.  That was because the child abusers didn’t attack The Family.  They just harmed real flesh-and-blood people, and bishops, as we all know, aren’t used to dealing in hard facts when they can concern themselves with hair-splitting abstractions instead.  This is why they’re against the proposal for civil partnerships.

The man who articulated this position is bishop Christy Jones of Elphin.  You might remember Christy as the man who said that child abuse is everywhere and it’s unfair to blame the Catholic church.

Here’s my suggestion.

This proposal concerns people in loving relationships, and I’m afraid loving relationships are not something these bishops would know much about.

Therefore, the bishops would be better employed tracking down the child abusers they have harboured for so long, and working to ease the pain of their victims.

Let these discredited old juveniles keep their noses out of grown-up business.

Isn’t it extraordinary that a group of people with no moral authority should still seek to dictate to the lawmakers of this country?