rest of the article Looks like all three Abrahamic religions are sharing more ground that previously thought .
That's oversimplification at it's prejudiced best. There are more children sexually harmed by public school teachers or day care providers than religious leaders, or camp counselors. Children are also around 3x more likely to be sexually harmed in their own homes. I don't mind alerting people to incidents of child abuse because it is a wake up call for parents, but it needn't turn into a heavy-handed and prejudiced smack at religious peoples.
FYI....... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html
This isn't right... The first thing is that there should be NO Statute of Limitations on this crime. The family has said they would've preferred to handle the allegations within the community. But when accusations are managed from the inside, victims are rarely believed and abusers aren't punished — in part because the word of an elder is respected over the word of a child, victims and advocates say. Joel Engelman said he tried to work with yeshiva officials, finally confronting them at age 22 about a rabbi who abused him as a child. Engelman was given a lie detector test and encouraged to keep quiet about the allegations, and the rabbi was temporarily removed — long enough for Engelman to turn 23, making him too old under state law to file a complaint.
Do you think all school teachers are Catholics, Muslims, or Jews? Certainly, there are no atheists who teach in the public schools, so...I'm not sure what to make of the the split. Is it like 33/33/33 with 1% non-child raping atheists? I just want to be right when I spread this information everywhere. http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/about/administration/provost/hofhrz/hofhrz_s03_shakeshaft.pdf
Thank you for the reply but the article is about a spiritual counsellor not a teacher , people don't usually take their kids to an atheist when they have theological questions (tho they should) , also i don't know of any atheists calling rape victims sl0ts in defence of a godless rapist.
Ohhhh, right....because all pedophiles own up to what they have to what they have done to the child and never put the blame on the kid. They're all just sterling people, you know. Listen, I am of the "scourge and crucify pedophiles and let the crow peck their eyeballs out" variety of human. Be it priest, teacher, or that drunk uncle...don't care. If this was about the child like it's supposed to be you could have left off the smart tag on the end. It was offensive and by no means indicative of reality. Pedophiles are of every walk of life.
The topic of the thread and the news article is about sexual abuse committed by the person parents suspected the least , this usually IS a spiritual figure . If you have read the article it is clear that this community created a safety net so what happens inside it stays inside it , this is not the case with schools .
So, when Margot wins the lottery and has big bucks a person comes forward and says, 35 years ago Margot molested me and I've just now found the strenght to tell the newspapers and the television stations and my lawyer. How do you defend yourself from an allegation from the distant pass especially with people on the jury who decide your guilt think if you belong to a Abhrahamic relgion you're guilty or if you're male you're guilty. In the U.S., we have had charges of molestation in the distant past proven bogus but it's rare. How do you prove yourself innocent? I was asked once, "That were you doing on the afternoon of December 29th three years ago?" My response was, "How the hell should I know?" In my 30 years as a police officer I met a lot of people who sexual abused people. Many of the abusers were associated with churches, many were school employees, some were in the medical professions, and a few were associated with other youth programs such as Boy Scouts and social clubs. Oh, some foster parents, too, one of whom was a police officer. I arrested one man who was a retired police officer. He had been molesting women in an AA setting and the group thought they were handling it. Then the kids started coming forward and they were forced to admit their intervention wasn't working. If this man is guilty I certainly hope he gets convicted and sent to prison. I hope the parents and the community support the victim and don't support the molester. My wife belonged to a church where the 40-something year old minister was caught having sex with a 14-year old girl. Wouldn't you know, it was the girl's fault. She was possessed by demons. The minister was an innocent victim. No police. No charges. No sanctions of any sort. The girl was possessed and the minister got everyone's sympathy, even the girl's parents.
Then why didn't you post about the article? You said: which is just a swipe at religion. You said nothing about the kids, nothing reality-based about pedophilia, just used a child's pain and suffering to make an ill-informed post that was a snark at religion that does nothing to help and in fact hurts the situation by creating the false perception that kids are only at risk around the clergy.
Fair enough.. you raised some good questions. I think this particular story resembles the Penn State debacle.. or the Catholic Church problem with pedophile priests.. or even the horrendous scandal that just broke about the Horace Mann school.. Some people call law enforcement if their children are molested... but if you are going to report to a closed system.. you are out of luck.
Isn't paedophilia always about kids getting violated ? why do i need to state the obvious. I am very interested about those cases because i live in a christian orthodox country and in their religion priests are allowed to be married before they become priests . Paedophilia is very rare but almost all non married priests are into gay sex (nothing wrong with it , the previous head of the church had the nickname "Dorothy") so apart from all religions being evil i wonder if celibacy can mess the regular mind so badly and if yes what can be done about it . In dogmas where sexuality is oppressed people tent to slip out of their minds so isn't more practical to let people have sexual lives instead of paying the lawsuits later and damage the PR of their institutions ?
It is hard when th abuser is in a position of authority. I was giving a class to police officers once and they started whining about false complaints. I said, "If a woman accussed John Jones of molesting her enroute to the jail, what would your response be?" Everyone laughed. Then I said, "What if a woman accussed Bill Smith of molesting her enroute to the jail?" Everyone suddenly got quiet. Your reputation does make a difference. I learned after arresting a school teacher for molesting junior high school boys that the kids called him Gay Bob and even school counselors had heard, and ignored, his name. I also learned that he'd left two previous teaching jobs because when accused of molesting kids the school promptly agreed to give him a good reference if he'd resign and leave. Now, that should be illegal. I had a friend who, when he was 73-years old, told me he'd been molested for a year by his minister. When he finally told his parents his father whipped him for lying about that good man. Consider what happened to the women who complained of sexual assault by President Clinton. Five of the six were suddenly audited by the IRS, they were maligned in the press, and a hired gun was put on the payroll, James Carville, to attack the women. Does anyone who lived through those days not remember, "Who knows what will come out if you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park?" One Democrat who repeated that to me got, "What? The President of the United States?" We had a school program called "Stranger Danger". It was run by a local woman. Every year, after the program the police would get a lot of calls from frightened children imaging all the things the woman warned them about. Finally, the school psychologist took the position that the program as it was structured was doing more harm than good. I agreed with him. One other sad fact is that pedophiles who actually engage in physical contact with children don't change. They go to prison for a couple of years, come out with their "debt" paid in full, have people agitating for their voting rights to be restored, and agitating for their criminal record to be sealed so they can get another job with a church, a school, or a center for disadvanted adults.
