Oh please, give me a break.
This is the second best excuse I've ever heard. I guess they don't feel safe blaming the victims so they'll blame the times.
Do they think for one moment that the sexual abuse of children by Cathollic priests ONLY occurred in the 1960's. Please check history. What went on in early missionary schools? Junipero Serra comes to mind.
I have my own experiences with Catholic institutional life and that happened in the 1950's. Native American children have been subjected to abuse of all kinds in Catholic boarding schools.
The beat goes on.....
And that's just this continent.
Reporting sexual abuse rose in the 1960's-1970's due to many factors, including a growing demand to recognize and listen to victims. Thank you feminists. And thank you also for raising awareness of the inherent dangers in the power from the top structure of patriarchal institutions.
A man rapes a child and it's the child's fault.
If that's no longer acceptable then it's because of the social conditions.
Or maybe the devil made me do it.
The issue of sexual violence is about power and control. It always has been.
Why aren't these issues being addressed by John Jay and the Catholic bishops and everyone else for that matter. Check out the numbers of inmates in mental prisons who have been abused. They've always been ideal victims cause who would believe them anyway. They're crazy. And prisoners. Who'd believe them ? They're bad.
And then comes incarcerated kids. Kids have been raped while incarcerated FOR AS LONG AS KIDS HAVE BEEN INCARCERATED.
How many African women held in slavery in this country had been raped by their "owners" ?
The report also said that pedophilia was not a factor. This is a hard statement to grasp.
What is pedophilia? Just another psychiatric term to be manipulated at will?
The John Jay researchers define pedophile as an adult with an intense sexual attraction to prepubescent children. However, victim advocates have disputed that classification by age, since boys ages 11 to 14 were the largest group of known victims, which could include children who had not yet gone through adolescence. The American Psychiatric Association defines pedophilia as attraction to children, usually age 13 or younger.
What a convenient distinction for the catholic church eh.
RAPE IS NOT, AND NEVER HAS BEEN, A SEXUAL CRIME. IT IS A CRIME OF POWER AND CONTROL.
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PS. I have to admit that I have some uneasy feelings about John Jay to begin with. How they sway with the times. In 1971, less then two years after the Stonewall riots in New York, I went with several other gay activists to speak at John Jay police academy AND WE NEEDED AN ARMED UNIFORMED ESCORT TO EXIT THE BUILDING. We really did think they'd blame those "homosexuals".
I had heard about the report about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and it said it was not pedophelia and not homosexuality that caused it, but they didn't say what the report said caused it and so it's the social mores of the 60's and 70's!! What a travesty. You are so right about power and control and how long this kind of thing has been going on.
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