Moving pedophiles around and doing very little to prevent them from abusing children is certainly a terrible crime.
But there is a worse crime involved. The parents who's love of God and/or their church blinded them to the serious nature of this crime, to the extent that they did not immediately call the police and report the pedophile, are even more responsible than any bishop or enableing priest. Care and protection of your children is a primary responsibility of parents, far beyond any claim of responsibility any other persons can be held to. These parents not only allowed their childrens abusers to go free, but also alowwed these abusers to abuse others later on because they did not take appropriate action. OK....here we go........this is where I tell things one normally doesnt talk about in a public forum. I was raised in the Catholic church and went to a Catholic school for several years. When I was 7 or 8 a new priest came to our parish. One day he stopped a group of us between classes. He sat me down on his knee and put his arm around me while he told everyone some story or another. Right in front of everyone he had his hand on my crotch, but I dont know if anyone noticed he was fondling me. What no one else could see was that I could feel his (enormous to my young mind) boner throbbing against my hip. Even though I was pretty naiive at that age I knew that this was wierd and I felt very uncomfortable. This went on 5 or 10 minutes and then he sent us back to our class. Being the naiive child I was and possessing no understanding of what had occured, I promptly forgot about the incident. A couple of weeks later a story got out and circulated among the parents in our parish that this priest had molested one of the boys at the school. (Not me I should add) Of course my dad, after he heard, took me to his room for a private talk. He started by telling me this priest was a sick man and that he had done something bad with someone or another of my schoolmates. And had this priest touched me.....here....or here? At first I didnt remember, but my dad (I can see this in retrospect) was very worried for me, and his questions finally caused me to recall the above incident. And of course I told him what had happened. And of course a group of parents (including mine) forced the church to move this priest far away. But they did the wrong thing. The matter should have been brought to the police. But in the 60s that was more or less unthinkable. Maybe it still is today. But priests are not seperate from the rest of society. The church is not seperate from society. And those who hold positions of leadership, even more, those who hold positions in which they are given a responsibility to care for the wellbeing of numbers of people, must be held to the highest standard one can be held to. And violations of such high standards should require stringent punishment like any other criminal act. I am really lucky that I carry no baggage due to this incident. It holds very little emotional content for me. I feel that I was protected by my innocence and that nothing worse ever occured to me as a result of that incident. Having as an adult been exposed to others who were victims of serious abuse and seen how much harm the abuse had done to them, I understand how fortunate I am that my self-esteem was undamaged by all this. I dont "blame" my parents. I think it would be hard for them to forsee the results of their actions (or lack thereof). But I still think they did the wrong thing and any person confronted with an event of this nature in the future should immediately take it to the secular authorities. xponent Thats How It looks To Me Maru rob
