Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Religion and Philosophy What about the latest Catholic Church fiasco in France?

I thought it turned icky when they talked about flaying and killing people.

The whole topic is way way icky, but it's in the news and part of life. If you ignore it, it doesn't go away.

Sometimes life is icky...mebbe a lot of times, life is icky.

...it all depends on how we choose to deal with it.

Wrong, just wrong.

Pia, not for one minute did I say that I didn't believe her. Of course I believe her. I personally know people (and relatives) that have had similar experiences with their dad or brother or uncle or grandfather.....
(Don't we all)
Those are people they don't want to "tell on". Those are people they need to justify what happened with. If there is ANY pleasure in it (7 years old and regular robust anal sex....I have trouble believing that. It's sad that she said that), they are ashamed. A girl that little is just too little to know what's going on which is all the more sad.
That still doesn't mean I don't believe her.
So ok.
Do you have any idea how disruptive it is to the family, close friends, to "spill the beans" about something like that? People don't know how to handle it and often don't want to. Their siblings, their mother, their grandmother, their sister whose husband it is. They look up to this charming man. He's funny and cool and loving.

They are often shunned and told to just get over it (see above).
Why didn't they just say no.

This thread started out about clergymen, men of god who took an oath, preying on little boys and maybe some little girls thrown in there too.
Honestly I have not researched it but just watching the news, nothing ever changes much. Nobody goes to jail.
Y'all are right....wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
That's just gross.

Passing this off as "all boys/men are lusty" is just horrible.
And it actually feels good for little girls if the guy doesn't "hurt" her.
That is wrong. They are hurt. I promise you. Maybe crippled for the rest of their lives in terms of relationships and their own children.
And oh god, their self esteem.

Considering that I was right in the middle of it at age 10, I do know a lot more about it than anybody who didn't. Dad went to prison, and destroyed his college professor career for the rest of his life after getting out. Mom divorced him a few years later. Older sister (the victim) went into foster care for 5 years (longer than Dad's time in prison!). I was left for the next 7 years living in a much poorer family that was essentially broken, and in the later half of that living with "a sexual psychopath unlikely to benefit from treatment" (the psychologist's words at sentencing). I got the hell out of there at age 17, probably the least-damaged family member.

Of course, I don't blame my sister at all. Never did. It was 100% his fault. Her getting the authorities involved was absolutely the best thing possible, even better than him dropping dead from a heart attack. Her going into foster care was even a positive thing, because of my step-mother blaming her and the fact that she had one set of very nice foster parents.

BUT STILL: She was a perfectly normal, seemingly well-adjusted little girl and then teen during the time they were having sex. She was a Camp Fire Girl. She got excellent grades in school. She had no abnormal behavior. She had normal emotional health. She had a normal relationship with her little brother. She did tell me years later that she knew the sex was not normal, and hoped it would stop when Dad remarried my step-mother. But the fact that it didn't was not distressing enough to make her act on it for five more years.

Around this same time, I was a normal 10 year old boy. My sexual behavior was mostly solo, but not exclusively. I played "you show me your's" with my contemporaries, both male and female, and discovered that I found girls much more sexually attractive than boys. Some of those girls were quite enthusiastic, which informed me that 1) girls can enjoy sexual attention, and 2) girls are sexually developed before boys. So I was not surprised when my 13 year old sister told me she was having sexual encounters and enjoyed the physical sensations. My younger peers and I did the same thing. We didn't perform the same physical acts, simply because we didn't know about them.

This is why I felt, and still feel that the sex was not a big deal, and the psychological manipulation was much worse. Having sex with an adult was bad. Having sex with your own father was worse, though he avoided anything that could make incest babies. Having your own father brainwash you into thinking this was some "special relationship only the closest, most loving fathers and daughters shared" was worst of all: The ultimate betrayal.

It has taken me most of two days to write this post.

This thread has weighed heavily on me. 200,000 men claimed to have been sexually abused by priests of the Catholic Church. We could have discussed what the French government role should be, what the US government’s role should be in a similar situation. We could have discussed the difficulties men and women have in coming to terms with sexual abuse; there are real differences by gender, and it’s a huge topic. Given some basic knowledge and some empathy we might even have noted the physical pain and damage and cruelty that occurs when a small body is penetrated by...anything.

But instead, the choice was to explore which young people are old enough for consensual sex. Instead, the choice was to explore whether young people enjoy being abused by older people. You chose to get your information by comparing one gay man’s positive experience to 200,000 negative ones, as though they somehow balanced, as though one can inform the other, as though they had anything at all in common.


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In the United States, one in every six women has experienced rape and/or attempted rape.

I know four women who were abused by their fathers or stepfathers.
I know one woman who was raped in her late teens.
I know one woman who was raped repeatedly by multiple men at the age of 14.

Those are the ones who chose to confide in me.

If you ask them, they will tell you that they did not ask for it, did not enjoy it, in some cases barely survived it.

If you ask me which one, if any, of those women was me, I won’t answer.

Every rape, be it by strangers, step-fathers, fathers, brothers, clergy, teachers. coaches. etc. should be punished by significant prison time and lifetime sex offender registry. No excuses. No "you are just so beautiful, I couldn't stop myself". No excuses for spousal rape. The figures for the large percentage of women who have been assaulted are sickening. It makes me wonder if all men should be tested psychologically to see if they need temporary chemical castration until they can pass the test.

People do horrible things to other people, and that's not limited to men doing bad stuff to women. The perp is almost always male, and the victim is usually female, but all the other combinations do occur. We tend to lump every sexual encounter involving somebody under 18 (or 17 or 16, depending on your state) as heinous child molestation deserving hanging, flaying, or other such extreme punishment. But such interactions are all unique, and need to be considered on an individual basis. I know that's icky, and most people would just throw up their hands and say: "Hang the bastard." But we should not be prosecuting 17 year olds for production of child pornography for taking photos of themselves, and we should not be prosecuting 18 year olds for having a sexual relationship with their 17 year old girlfriend.

Regarding the situation in France, the solution is straightforward: Cancel the Statute of Limitations for sexual offences against minors, and concealing such crimes. Prosecute all offenders. Send them to prison. Compensate all the victims. Sounds like this will bankrupt the Catholic Church in France. So be it. But I doubt it's limited to the Catholic Church. But they need to look at every case individually, and dole out punishment and rewards appropriately. Buggered 50 ten year old alter boys? Life in prison and fines of everything you've got. The boys get all their medical, therapy, and education bills paid, plus pain and suffering. Fell prey to seduction by a sexually active late teen when you are a newly-minted seminary graduate? Community service and the supposed-victim gets nothing.

And I say this also based on personal experiences: My father got two years in medium-security prison for hundreds of sex acts with his own daughter. My niece's husband got 300 years for reaching into his male student's pants.

So I guess we were on the right track when we just wanted to torture and kill them.

I have tried and failed to impart to you, Jules, just how disgusting men are. All of them.

I have daughters.

(Just to be clear - my suggestion that the perpetrators be flayed was metaphorical. I thought it would be read that way but apparently that was not always the case.)

One of the figures I saw was 11,000 kids in the US in 2002. The French number may rise to 330,000. You say each case needs to be examined individually. In the case of the French report I think that’s already been done. How long would it take, in the US, to research 11,000 (which I think would be a minimum) cases and take them through the legal system?

Greger, yes, you’ve told me before. I believe that generalities absolutes based on sex, like generalities absolutes based on skin color, are false. Believe what you want; you have that right, but understand that I will do the same.