The Pope admits to a backlog of 2000 sex abuse cases which still need to be addressed.
The Pope - 2000 sex abuse cases backlog
by Tallon 4 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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flipper
Sounds like the Catholic Church is dragging it's heels as well in prosecuting child abusers. It's a good thing that they put more staff on to handle the crimes, but if the staff sits on their hands and does nothing- then nothing gets accomplished. Good article, thanks for posting it.
I think MANY different religious organizations drag their heels in handling child abuse because of the public fallout and negative media coverage . So the WT Society, Catholics, Baptist, Mormons, etc. - many of these organizations try to settle out of court with child abuse victims to hush it up- rather than change their child abuse policies. It shows where priorities lie with most of these religions- and it's not the needs of the abused children
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TTaTT4U
More like a 2000 year backlog
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waton
Even the Vatican's financial guru, The man from Australia, Pell, no show for the ARC commision, has been targeted by new accusers.
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David_Jay
The problem is even bigger.
People tend to see pedophilia as something that affects organizations, like religious ones, or schools, or "dirty" coaches. But incestuous child abuse is pervasive in homes too, far more than what you hear in the news.
People don't like to mention it, but this is not merely a problem of organizations and people not admitting to abusing children, it is society itself not caring for children as individuals. Kids are like lower class citizens, and their words often mean little. They become "problems" or reduced to "cases" or statistics that get shuffled from one department to another.
There are school teachers who molest kids, police officers, firefighters, CEOs, political figures, stay-at-home mothers (yep, women do it too), babysitters, neighbors, uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc., etc., etc. Right now people are focusing on religious organizations (and believe me, they should--and do it even more rigorously), but they are also just using religion as a scapegoat.
Society has yet to turn the light on itself in this matter. If it did, the horrors would pour out like vomit. I am an adult survivor of child abuse. I told aunts, uncles, teachers, coaches, school officials, neighbors, police officers, doctors. No one believed me when I reported it. If some did, they did nothing about it. Some of my own family members witnessed it, but did it stop? It went on from infancy until I was about 13. I had to leave home for it to stop, and to this day there are still many among my family who deny it ever happened.
I am not unique, unfortunately. And we need to stop it in our churches and schools, we need to go after the actual people, the criminals, who hide in these organizations. There are no such things as abusive or pediphile priests or elders or perverted teachers or coaches. There are just "abusers," "pedophiles," "perverts," yes, criminals. These people stop being priests, elders, teachers, etc. once they become abusers.
And there are victims that people still don't really care about as much as getting their hands on those religions and squeezing the lifeblood out of them. Sure, you want to punish those churches and groups, but do you want to help the children and survivors with as much zeal and ardor?
In my experience and that of my fellow abuse survivors, the answer is no. People love being in mobs to carry pitchforks and torches. But I would rather there be more mobs of rescue workers than lynch mobs. We appreciate people bring this problem to light, but merely being angry at these groups doesn't help the victims if you never do anything practical for them.