"Lawless Rogues" sacrificed children

by Seven 6 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

• 

  Seven

  This article may be of some interest to forum members.

  "The investigation in Massachusetts did not uncover any evidence of recent or ongoing sexual abuse of children." I sincerely hope this statement by Attorney General Tom Reilly doesn't mean they have any intention of loosening the noose.

  seven

  More Than 1000 In Church Scandal

  by Denise Lavoie The Associated Press

  BOSTON (July 23) - More than 1,000 people have probably been molested by priests and workers in the Boston Archdiocese over six decades, a figure the Massachusetts attorney general termed ''staggering'' as he issued a report Wednesday blaming Roman Catholic leaders for the crisis.

  ''The mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable,'' Attorney General Tom Reilly said.

  The report ends a 16-month investigation by Reilly's office and a grand jury session that was convened last summer to consider charging church leaders.

  The extent of abuse the report outlines dwarfs what's been found in other dioceses. Still, while the document provides a comprehensive look at what Catholic officials knew, when they knew it and how they covered it up, Reilly said he was hamstrung by state laws that were too weak to allow criminal charges to be filed against the hierarchy.

  Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned last December, ''bears the ultimate responsibility for the tragic treatment of children that occurred during his tenure,'' Reilly said in the 76-page report.

  The cardinal, he said, was aware of the abuse even before he arrived in Boston as archbishop in 1984 - and he and his inner circle were actively informed about complaints against numerous priests. With only rare exceptions, did any of Law's senior assistants advise him to take steps that would put a halt to what became the systematic abuse of children, Reilly said.

  ''The choice was very clear, between protecting children and protecting the church. They made the wrong choice,'' he said. ''In effect, they sacrificed children for many, many years.''

  Reilly also warned that the archdiocese's new abuse policy, announced in May, is insufficient to guarantee the safety of children. Among other problems, the attorney general said the archbishop retains too much control over investigations, discipline and members of a lay review board.

  The Rev. Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the church has already taken ''substantial steps'' to prevent child abuse. Law's successor, archbishop-elect Sean Patrick O'Malley, is to be installed next week and has pledged to heal the fractured archdiocese.

  ''The Archdiocese of Boston reiterates its commitment that the archdiocese will treat sexual abuse of a child as a criminal matter, that it will end any culture of secrecy in the handling of such matters ... and that the archdiocese is committed to work at every level to ensure the safety of children,'' Coyne said.

  The archdiocese itself documented 789 allegations of sexual abuse made against 237 priests and 13 other church workers from 1940 to 2000. When evidence from other sources was included, the number of victims rose to at least 1,000, Reilly said.

  About a dozen state grand juries nationwide, and many more prosecutors, have reviewed molestation claims against dioceses dating back decades. But none has come close to uncovering the scope of abuse that was found to have occurred in Boston, the nation's fourth-largest diocese.

  As church documents released over the past year have shown, most abusers frequently went unpunished, sometimes being given new assignments in parishes where lay Catholics were unaware of the clergymen's past troubles.

  ''The magnitude of the archdiocese's history of clergy sexual abuse of children is staggering,'' Reilly said.

  The investigation in Massachusetts did not uncover any evidence of recent or ongoing sexual abuse of children. But Reilly said it was too soon to say if abuses have stopped - and cast doubt that recent changes in state law were enough to prevent future abuses.

  About 110 of the 237 priests accused of sexually abusing children since 1946 graduated from the archdiocese's main seminary, St. John's in Brighton, according to the report. Reilly said there was no indication that the archdiocese analyzed why that was so, or changed how it screened applicants.

  Public outrage over the scandal prompted the state to enact a law making reckless endangerment of children a crime. Under the statute, someone who fails to take steps to alleviate a substantial risk of injury or sexual abuse of a child can face criminal charges.

  Victims and their advocates said Reilly's report shows that more needs to be done.

  ''The fact is that a group of lawless rogues were allowed to reside in our community and to harm our children under the protections of the freedom of religion and the First Amendment, and this simply cannot be allowed in the future,'' said attorney Jeffrey Newman, whose firm represents more than 200 alleged victims in lawsuits against the archdiocese.

  In all, the archdiocese is facing more than 500 abuse-related suits. Church officials have repeatedly said they remain committed to working toward an out-of-court settlement.

  Toward the end of a news conference at which he noted that he considers himself a Catholic of strong faith, Reilly said he hopes that the report - and the arrival of a new archbishop - will lead to changes that will prevent future abuses.

  ''This is not about the Catholic faith, the Catholic religion. This is a massive, inexcusable failure of leadership in the Archdiocese of Boston,'' Reilly said. ''It is my hope that this report will draw a clear line between the past and a hopeful future.''

  AP-NY-07-23-03 1723EDT

  Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
• 

  Big Tex

  I sincerely hope this statement by Attorney General Tom Reilly doesn't mean they have any intention of loosening the noose.

  Unfortunately it probably does. It would not surprise me if he sat back and let the litigators suck as much money as they can out of the archdiocese and then let them off. The Church packs a powerful punch in Boston and actually pursuing action would be politically dangerous for the AG.

  But one can always hope.
• 

  mizpah

  The DA of Massachusetts is probably legally correct. There simply were not laws in place to prevent this sort of abuse. But the moral issue is clear. The leaders in the Boston diocese knew that this abuse was happening. And they did nothing to protect the innocent children. Instead, they took measures to hide the perpetrators by transferring their assigments to other churches. Worst still, they never warned the parishoners that a predator was loose among them. Morally, there is no excuse for the position they took. And it is clear that the responsibility rests upon their shoulders.

  The church still has not made a financial settlement for the victims. And it seems to be dragging its feet with this whole issue. It is possible that the new archbishop will resolve this problem. But one always fears that the money consideration is stronger than the moral one.
• 

  Valis

  I ran out of threads and I may make a post about it tomorrow, but I thought this movie is relevant to the discussion.

  http://www.miramax.com/the_magdalene_sisters/

  Mullan hit a nerve with exposé of Catholic asylums

  06:10 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 19, 2003

  By JANE SUMNER / The Dallas Morning News

  Peter Mullan, his Scottish burr whirring, bounds in like a hare from the Highlands. Hard to believe that this cuddly man, as warm as a scone from the hearth, wrote and directed one of this season's most controversial films.
  

  The Magdalene Sisters, his tough exposé of the Catholic asylums where thousands of Irish women were banished to a life of servitude for the crime of being sexual, has drawn fire from the Vatican as "an angry and rancorous provocation." He says some in the British and U.S. media also have condemned him for being too "angry."

  "That just kills me," he says. "Just look at what they did to these girls. You try being reasonable when you look at concentration camps. I'm not comparing this to Auschwitz. If Auschwitz is the boulder in the river, this is one of the ripples."

  From its powerful percussive opening, in which a priest sings and plays a bodhran (Irish drum) while upstairs a girl's boozy cousin rapes her, the film – winner of the Golden Lion award for best film at last year's Venice Film Festival – pulls no punches.

  "That wasn't supposed to be the opening," the 43-year-old filmmaker says. "The opening in the script was 'Danny Boy.' We only got the band the night before the shooting, and the guy sung me the song over the phone.

  "I was just looking for a guy in a collar who's very sweaty and sang a song. So when we came in, and him and this other guy in the band had this unbelievable [expletive] song, I said, '[Expletive] 'Danny Boy,' what you've got here is really extraordinary."

  What made the scene especially moving, Mr. Mullan says, is that the musician playing the drum had been the victim of priestly abuse, and his wife, also a victim, had killed herself.

  Growing up in Glasgow, Mr. Mullan knew there'd been a Magdalene in his hometown. "It was under the Protestant church. It wasn't Catholic. In Glasgow, there'd been a riot in 1964 when the girls climbed the fence and people had begun to find out what was going on behind the walls."

  Then, in 1998, two weeks before he won best actor at Cannes for his performance in Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe, he saw the documentary Sex in a Cold Climate, about four survivors of the asylums, which were created in the 19th century and run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The last was closed in 1996.

  That was enough for Mr. Mullan, who set out to tell the story of four of the estimated 30,000 women sent to Magdalenes, where they worked silently seven days a week in laundries without pay. Incarcerated for premarital sex, rape and even being "too pretty," some never came home.

  When challenged about his film's veracity, he says, "I don't have enough imagination to make this stuff up. The characters are all fictional. But all these things happened to individual women. In some cases, I made them happen to one woman instead of three."

  While the main set, a former Benedictine convent in Dumfries, Scotland, "had Catholic architecture and iconography, we weren't answerable to the Catholic Church," he says.

  "It also meant I could use a Scottish crew, and I would be closer to home. It was also a small space that we could populate because we had a low-budget film."

  To explain why the abusive nature of these places remained a secret for so long, he asked the production designer not to make the outside, where the women hung the washing, look too Dickensian.

  "The notion was, if you and I were to walk by the gate, we would simply see young women hanging up washing. Only if you were to communicate with them, and see what it was like inside, would you really get to know what was going on. For the vast majority of the people in Ireland, that's how they perceived them."

  It irks Mr. Mullan, who was raised Catholic, that his critics in the church suggest it's an anti-Catholic film.

  "I said, 'No, this is about Catholics being abused by the people they trusted.' It isn't purely Catholic, either. This could be applicable to any place where there's domestic violence."

  That kind of oppression, he says, is common throughout the world. "It's as applicable to young women in Afghanistan in the 20th century when that little-known organization, the Taliban, was doing horrendous things to women.

  "No powerful government people seemed to give a [expletive]. ... It's shocking that the mass discrimination of women in Afghanistan should go so unnoticed until there was an awful, revolting act of savagery committed in the U.S."

  One thing not in The Magdalene Sisters that was common in reality, he says, was "a snitch who would get special privileges for telling tales about the other girls. That, along with the lesbian love scene, to me seemed so obvious that they were never going to be in the film."

  Before shooting, he says, he showed his script to a former Magdalene nun and to a survivor. "I made it on the money I was making as an actor, so it wasn't commissioned. I could drop it if I wanted to. If they said the film was bollocks and bore no relation to their experience, then I would drop it."

  Instead, former Magdalene nun Phyllis McMahon took a role in the film and survivor Mary-Jo McDonagh, he says, told him, "It was much worse than what you see. I don't like to say it, but the film is soft on the nuns."

  In it, the writer-director-actor – who played in Trainspotting and Braveheart – cameos as a belt-wielding father. His own dad, he says, "was a horrible guy, a monster even. To be kind to him, which I seldom am, and to give him some context, he was one of many Scotsmen who fought the second World War and came back [expletive] lunatics."

  Mr. Mullan claims that while his father raped their mother regularly, "which we were sorry enough to witness ... he was never physically violent to us; but we became physically violent toward him. Oh, Jesus, yes, we'd kick the [expletive] out of the [expletive] and have no qualms about that."

  But while such behavior can be damaging, he says, "I'm not a violent personality. I'm not, and I'm lucky enough to play-act in film. I've killed so many people in films it's unbelievable."

  He studied at the University of Glasgow, but it was his years as a community dramatist working with the mentally and physically challenged – "all groups nobody else would work with" – that he learned about directing, he says.

  Tapped for a play with the Moscow State Theater, he says, "Their acting is Ph.D. We're still in kindergarten." In Russian theater, he says, it's not about good reviews, Tonys or the vanity of the performer, "but about pursuing some emotional honesty."

  Ironically, the National Film School rejected the gifted Scot. Lacking the money for a film with sound, he sent the 8mm short he cut in his bedroom with a tape and instructions of when to press the button for dialogue.

  "Honest, I had no money and no contacts. I was completely convinced these people were serious filmmakers and they would sit there and do that. But they never even opened my [expletive] box."

  E-mail [email protected]

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
• 

  Valis

  BTTT

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
• 

  Seven

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  "Magdalene Laundries" I was an unmarried girl I'd just turned twenty-seven When they sent me to the sisters For the way men looked at me Branded as a jezebel I knew I was not bound for Heaven I'd be cast in shame Into the Magdalene laundries From "The Magdalene Laundries" on the album "Turbulent Indigo" The following is written and used by kind permission of Mari Steed Ireland has suffered a great many tragedies in her long history...there are those we hear of every day - the "Troubles," the great Famine - Irish sorrows and issues we are all familiar with. But hidden beneath the surface, lies a tragedy just as great, just as terrible and just as unimaginable. And it is only just beginning to break through to the light of truth. It is the story of thousands of Ireland's women...judged "sinners" by the cruel Church-driven society of the 1800's through present day. Their crime? Bearing children out of wedlock...leaving abusive husbands or home situations. The punishment? A lifetime of "penitence" spent in the service of the Sisters of Charity or other orders, performing domestic chores...harsh, thankless chores such as laundering prison uniforms, cooking, cleaning and caring for elderly nuns or their aging peers, still trapped behind the walls of Ireland's numerous convent laundries, industrial schools and the like. They are "The Magdalens," ironically called after the converted prostitute, Mary the Magdalene, who served her Jesus loyally and was rewarded with his forgiveness and love. No such rewards exist for these "penitents." They were told to forever hide their shame inside these walls, work under harsh, spartan conditions, driven unmercifully by the sisters and often abused by them as well. It is a story Ireland has every right to be ashamed of, which is perhaps why it has only come to light recently. In the 1970's, church property held by the Sisters of Charity in Dublin which once served as a convent laundry was to be sold back to the Republic for public use. It was discovered at that time that some 133 graves existed, unmarked, in a cemetery on the convent grounds. The graves belonged to women who had worked in the services of the convent all their lives, buried without notification to possible family...unmarked, unremembered. When the discovery was made, a cry arose in the streets of Dublin...families came forth to identify and claim some of the women as their long-lost daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and sisters. Yet many remained unidentified. Finally, in the early 1990's, a memorial was established and the remaining, unclaimed bodies were reinterred in the Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin, properly laid to rest with respectful homage and a sad memorial commemorating their plight. Further allegations of on-going abuse within this convent system appeared in the press and other media. More outcry ensued and at last, the Catholic Church seemed to offer some recognition of its culpability in the cruel punishment of these women and their offspring. But full retribution remains to be made. In addition to graves gone unmarked, so too, living women go "unmarked," languishing still inside the convent walls - unclaimed by their respective families as many were given false names upon admittance, making their true identification enormously difficult. This page is dedicated to the tragedy imposed upon these women by an exceedingly judgmental and harsh Church and society. My own mother may well be a Magdalen...but because the circumstances concerning my Irish birth remain sealed by Ireland's 1983 Privacy Act, I may never know the truth of her own circumstances. But as an orphan herself, raised through a series of convent homes, industrial schools, and the mother-baby home where I was born, little doubt exists she was likely a victim of this vicious system. In a Church and society that seems to hold life as sacred and cherished, I cannot help but wonder what monstrous idealism could spurn fallen women and their fallen daughters for the "crime" of becoming pregnant or of being poor? And, in its basest form, has the system perpetuated itself? As a birthmother of a relinquished daughter, now a third generation "Magdalen," I feel compelled to find out. This demeaning treatment of women - of any human - should not be tolerated nor go unpunished itself. I urge you, gentle reader, to explore the links I've supplied here...they will tell you the tale of the Magdalen women better than I ever could. While few at present, I hope to add more as this tragedy reaches the ears of more and more people, igniting a spark of outrage that ANY government or church could treat human beings in such a manner. "We are the ghosts of the children no more. We lay in the graveyard of the home for unwed mothers, next to the church with the beautiful rose window, underneath the disturbed soil of Ireland. Our mothers came here, sharing secrets, being quiet, toiling and attending Mass with each other, though they never shared their true names. There was a momentary sisterhood, it seemed, and we thought we might one day live here, and be happy. We each knew our mothers very well, and some of them talked to us every day, in their little rooms, alone. Sometimes there was anger, sometimes crying, but we were always with them, and felt close. In our whispers to each other, underneath the grass, we've shared how each of our mothers grew austerely silent as the day of our birth approached. Some of us withered from all the unhappiness, and left our mothers early, and here came to rest. Others traveled the birth canal, just like any of you living, but our mothers disappeared so suddenly, we died of fright. But we don't speak to frighten you. We call to you because you are our brethren. In each other, we have found comfort, but our ears are keen in the silent air, and we know many more of us lay, all over the earth, forgotten. We never lived to understand what was so important to your ways that made our growth, our awareness, so brief. And though we are now part of the trees, the light, and the air, our spirits stay sunken, unidentified. We understand we are bastards, and we know there are the living among our kind. You are our brethren and you can hear us in the night when you think about your own mysteries, and wonder. Every time you speak out for the bastards, you bless another one of us with a name, another with a face. Whenever you feel isolated, you can call to us and we will hear. Use your breath, your precious life, and change the world's ways for all of us. Know we were loved by at least one silent heart. Be strong, and love each other, and the world will surely change." - Gavriela Maxime Ze'eva Person (Amy) Born 1969, Died 1997 Adoptee, Celtic Sister Requiescat en Pace Gavriela Maxime Ze'eva Person's Memorial Page Searching In Ireland Mari's Place

  Home Page
• 

  Valis

  A little bigger for old people like onacruse to be able to see...*LOL* ...

  Wow Seven...that is really nice. And very timely.

  We understand we are bastards, and we know there are the living among our kind. You are our brethren and you can hear us in the night when you think about your own mysteries, and wonder. Every time you speak out for the bastards, you bless another one of us with a name, another with a face. Whenever you feel isolated, you can call to us and we will hear. Use your breath, your precious life, and change the world's ways for all of us. Know we were loved by at least one silent heart. Be strong, and love each other, and the world will surely change." - Gavriela Maxime Ze'eva Person (Amy)
  Born 1969, Died 1997
  Adoptee, Celtic Sister
  Requiescat en Pace

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer