Pedophilia

"No one [in the Vatican] thinks the sexual abuse of kids is unique to the States, but they do think that the reporting on it is uniquely American, fueled by anti-Catholicism and shyster lawyers hustling to tap the deep pockets of the church. And that thinking is tied to the larger perception about American culture, which is that there is a hysteria when it comes to anything sexual, and an incomprehension of the Catholic Church. What that means is that Vatican officials are slower to make the kinds of public statements that most American Catholics want, and when they do make them they are tentative and halfhearted. It's not that they don't feel bad for the victims, but they think the clamor for them to apologize is fed by other factors that they don't want to capitulate to."

"Children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults."

"A criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior."

"This investigation has identified some extremely dangerous child sexual offenders who believed paying for children to be abused to order was something they could get away with. Being thousands of miles away makes no difference to their guilt. In my mind they are just as responsible for the abuse of these children as the contact abusers overseas. Protecting the victims of abuse is our priority and that means attacking every link in the chain, from dismantling the organised groups who are motivated by profit through to targeting their customers."

"Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country. I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering. ... Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice. These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. I ask all of you to support and assist your bishops, and to work together with them in combating this evil. It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment, especially for young people."

"[Pedophiles must be] excluded from any possibility of access to young people, because we know this is an illness where free will does not work. We must protect these people against themselves."

"Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse – both boys and girls – but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet."

"One cannot choose to not be a pedophile, but one can choose to not be a child molester."

"The science suggests that [pedophiles] are people who, through no fault of their own, were born with a sex drive that they must continuously resist, without exception, throughout their entire lives. Little if any assistance is ever available for them."

"They are often unable to consult mental health professionals (because of mandatory reporting rules); their families will often disown rather than support them; and despite the openness of the Internet, there are few options for coming out and joining communities of other pedophiles for mutual support."

"Having encountered thousands of cases, it is my experience that the pedophiles who do go on to become actual child molesters do so when they feel the most desperate. Yet, much of what society does has been to increase rather than decrease their desperation."

"Pedophiles will remain hidden if they continue to be hated and feared, which would impede efforts to better understand this sexual orientation and thereby prevent child sexual exploitation."

"Catholic kids are stupid; they don't know how to handle a pedophile priest. Here's what you do: First of all, you don't get all scared and do whatever he tells you. Who wants to get sucked off by a forty-three-year-old clergyman with beard stubble? Not me. Instead, what you do is kick him in the nuts. You kick him squarely in the nuts, and you get the fuck out of there as fast as you can, and you go tell somebody right away; you tell as many grown-up people as you can––one of them is bound to believe you. That's what you do. You don't wait thirty years. You kick the priest in the nuts and say, "Fuck you, Father, I don't do that shit"… And you're out the door."

"At nine in the morning, I join my eight little toddlers between the ages of 16 months and 2 years. I wash their butts, I tickle them, they tickle me and we cuddle. You know, a child's sexuality is a fantastic thing. You have to be honest and sincere. With the very young kids, it isn't the same as it is with the four-to-six-year-olds. When a little, five-year-old girl starts undressing, it's great, because it's a game. It's an incredibly erotic game."

"The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State."

"By the early 21st century, the issue of child sexual abuse has become a legitimate focus of professional attention, while increasingly separated from second wave feminism...As child sexual abuse becomes absorbed into the larger field of interpersonal trauma studies, child sexual abuse studies and intervention strategies have become degendered and largely unaware of their political origins in modern feminism and other vibrant political movements of the 1970s. One may hope that unlike in the past, this rediscovery of child sexual abuse that began in the 1970s will not again be followed by collective amnesia. The institutionalization of child maltreatment interventions in federally funded centers, national and international societies, and a host of research studies (in which the United States continues to lead the world) offers grounds for cautious optimism. Nevertheless, as Judith Herman argues cogently, 'The systematic study of psychological trauma...depends on the support of a political movement."

"To excuse pedophiliac assaults in general, or to make light of the horrific experiences of others, was a thousand miles from my intention."

"Peripubertal females, in many cultures of Oceania, were noted to often be publicly sexually active with adults (Oliver, 1974, p. 362). Cook (1773, Vol. 1, p. 128) reported copulation in public in Hawai‘i between an adult male and a female estimated to be 11 or 12 “without the least sense of it being indecent or improper.” The disapproval implicit in Cook’s report probably was caused as much by the public nature of the activity as by the age-related aspects. In Tahiti, one missionary noted in his diary that the High Priest Manimani, “though nearly blind with age, is as libidinous now as when thirty years younger; …[he] has frequently upwards of a dozen females with him, some of them apparently not above twelve or thirteen years of age” (cited in Danielsson, 1986, P. 57).Gauguin credited the inspiration for his famous painting “Manao tupapau” (“The Specter Watches Over Her”), completed in 1892, to his 13-year-old Tahitian “wife” Teha‘amana (Hobhouse, 1988)."

"Suggs (1966, pp. 51-53) cited many cases of full heterosexual intercourse in public between adults and prepubertal individuals in Polynesia. The crews of the visiting ships showed no compunction against the activities, and the natives assisted in the efforts. Cunnilingus with young females was recorded without accompanying remarks that this kind of behavior was unusual or disapproved of for the participants. Occasions were recorded of elders assisting youngsters in having sex with other elders. Among the Marquesas Islanders in particular, Suggs (1966, p. 119) reported, extramarital relations were frequent and often involved older males with young virginal females and older females with young virginal males."

"It is easy to think that when we talk about the crisis of child rape and abuse that we are talking about the past – and the Catholic Church would have us believe that this most tragic era in church history is over. It is not. It lives on today. Pedophiles are still in the priesthood. Coverups of their crimes are happening now, and bishops in many cases are continuing to refuse to turn information over to the criminal justice system. Cases are stalled and cannot go forward because the church has such power to stop them. Children are still being harmed and victims cannot heal."

"I don’t know how high up the chain that power goes, but I know that it probably is outside of the film industry too. It’s probably in government; it’s probably throughout the world in different dark aspects."

"Now you have a child bot that’s indicating pleasure to these sexual activities? That could be very detrimental to the individual’s cognitive understanding."

"They think that anyone who turns over anyone to the outside authorities is committing a transgression to the community at large."

"They are more afraid of the outside world than the deviants within their own community. The deviants threaten individuals here or there, but the outside world threatens everyone and the entire structure of their world."

"As soon as we would give the name of a defendant … (rabbis and others) would engage this community in a relentless search for the victims...And they're very, very good at identifying the victims. And then the victims would be intimidated and threatened, and the case would fall apart."

"The sheer scale and longevity of the torment inflected on defenceless children – over 800 known abusers in over 200 Catholic institutions during a period of 35 years – should alone make it clear that it was not accidental or opportunistic but systematic. Abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system."

"Like in the general population, child sex abuse in the Catholic Church appears to be committed by men close to the children they allegedly abuse."

"Many (abusers) appear to use grooming tactics to entice children into complying with the abuse, and the abuse occurs in the home of the alleged abuser or victim."

"The problem was largely the result of poor seminary training and insufficient emotional support for men ordained in the 1940s and 1950s"

"Lewd conduct by teachers is causing growing concern. As this column reported last month, citing Shukan Post, education ministry figures show 205 public elementary and junior high school teachers nationwide – more than ever before – being disciplined for obscene behavior inside or outside the classroom."

"The goal is clear: to get pedophiles out of schools – those already there, and those among young graduates applying for teaching jobs. The means exist – at least some means do, notably stricter psychological testing of applicants. The Rorschach ink blot test is an old favorite – show the testee a splash of ink and ask what it represents, the answer being indicative, presumably, of the state of the testee’s psychological health. An alternative, increasingly popular in Japan, is a test developed in the 1940s at the University of Minnesota. It’s known as MMPI – the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory."

"“We’ve been using MMPI for the past five years,” Shukan Bunshun hears from an unnamed school board executive in an unnamed prefecture. “It’s possible, certainly, that Lolicons or people with other questionable sexual tendencies will find ways to hide that. On the other hand, we have noticed that, compared with prefectures that don’t use MMPI, our episodes of obscene behavior have decreased – to zero, in fact, over the past couple of years.” From another school board official in another prefecture Shukan Bunshun hears this story: A young applicant came across to examiners as very impressive. His written test results were tops. In interviews he conveyed fluently and convincingly his ideas concerning education. And yet there was something ever so slightly odd about him. He seemed, at times, to be looking about him furtively and uneasily. Perhaps it meant nothing. On the other hand, you can’t be too careful where children are concerned. The board sent the applicant’s MMPI to a qualified counselor for expert scrutiny. Sure enough, the expert detected Lolicon tendencies. The man was not hired. Score one victory for children and one defeat for sexual predation – right? But was the man really Lolicon? Tests are indicative, not infallible. What if he wasn’t? Whose victory is it then?"

"The day before Bishop Guizar died, he had been heard shouting angrily at Marcial Maciel. He was giving his eighteen-year-old nephew a dressing down after two women had come to the bishop's house to complain about Maciel, who was their neighbor. Father Orozco, who was among the original group of boys to found the Legion of Christ in 1941, said he heard the women had complained about the "noise" Maciel was making with children he had brought into his home to teach religion. He said that the seminary officials blamed Maciel for his uncle's heart attack."

"Pedophilia, of course, is the most repulsive of all human behavior. It is so repulsive it is so evil that it makes us see red, right? It is almost literally unthinkable and it therefore understandably can make us stop seeing anybody who's even accused of it as our fellow human. Anybody abetting it or even abiding it's basically the same thing. Your brain just instantly goes to monster, right? Understandably, as it is the most repulsive of all human evil. And when confronted with it, we almost can't process it. And it is a deep dark thing to recognize that about human nature, right? The capacity of some people for that behavior for that level of evil and our collective massive human revulsion and rejection of that evil. But recognizing that to decide that you're going to try to harness that for political gain, that you're going to make false accusations of that kind systematically to reduce your political opponents to non-human status, that is a horrific abuse of its own, and it has become one of the hallmarks of modern authoritarianism, not only in Russia but especially in Russia under Vladimir Putin. As I said, it's basically how Putin got his job in the late 1990s. … Vladimir Putin has been in power years now in Russia, and that particularly sick hallmark of his time in power has been a constant. He has used it against all different kinds of political opponents and it always works. During the Trump years here, we started to get the conspiracy theory cult version of it on the political right here in America. The QAnon pro-Trump online cult built its whole bizarre central conspiracy theory around these same kinds of false and fantastical claims, that everybody in the world who isn't Trump is allied in some big satanic pedophilia ring, and someday, Trump will catch them all and bring on mass public executions of all the Democrats and all the celebrities. And then, finally, we'll be free from the Satanic pedophile conspiracy that runs the world. That's the basic idea of the bizarre pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory cult."

"We have said repeatedly that ... our understanding of this problem and the way it's dealt with today evolved, and that in those years ago, decades ago, people didn't realize how serious this was, and so, rather than pulling people out of ministry directly and fully, they were moved."

"There is always a price to pay for not responding'. The church will have to pay that price in terms of its credibility. The first thing the church has to do is to move out of any mode of denial. Where the church is involved in social care it should be in the vanguard. That is different to a situation in which the church proclaims that it is in the vanguard.... in a very short time another report on the sexual abuse of children will be published, this time about how such abuse was managed in the Archdiocese of Dublin of which I am archbishop."

"My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible injustice, an injustice compounded by the fact that they had to suffer in silence for so long.""

"Twenty detectives have been assigned to the so-called 'God Squad' since 2002. But despite evidence that priests were transferred to other parishes, where they continued to abuse, and despite public admissions by senior figures that not all relevant information was passed to the civil authorities, no charges will be laid against senior members of the church.""

"A girl three years and one day old is betrothed by intercourse. "A girl three years old may be betrothed through an act of sexual intercourse," the words of R. Meir. And sages say, "Three years and one day old.""

"It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more."

"If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who's intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual … then I would not call it pathological in any way."

"At the time the Archdiocese took out insurance in 1987, Archbishop Kevin McNamara, Archbishop Dermot Ryan and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid had had, between them, available information on complaints against at least 17 priests operating under the aegis of the Dublin Archdiocese. The taking out of insurance was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that Archdiocesan officials were still "on a learning curve‟ at a much later date, or were lacking in an appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse."

"Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets"."

"NAMBLA condemns sexual abuse and all forms of coercion. We insists there is a distinction between coercive and consesual sex. Laws that focus only on the age of the participants fail to capture that distinction, for they ignore the quality of the relationship. Differences in age do not preclude mutual, loving interaction between persons any more than differences in race or class. Some existing laws criminalize sexual relationships that are loving and fully consensual. These laws are ill-conceived and morally repugnant. As is our right, we advocate their repeal."

"Dark web child sex offenders — some of whom are the very worst offenders — cannot hide from law enforcement. They're not as cloaked as they think they are, they're not as safe as they think they are."

"I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past, which instinctively and quite naturally they’d rather not look at. That takes courage, and also we shouldn’t forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did."

"Despite knowing his history of abusing children, the Norbertine religious order moved Smyth to different dioceses where he abused more children."

"[T]his sexual attraction has the potential to cause significant harm to others and is also not in the best interests of the individual."

"We realise that paedophilia isn't going anywhere, so we ought to find a way to deal with the lust for children in a way that keeps actual kids out of the equation. Hence, robots. It's child molestation, without the children."

"The vast majority of the research on sexual abuse of minors didn't emerge until the early 1980s. So, it appeared reasonable at the time to treat these men and then return them to their priestly duties. In hindsight, this was a tragic mistake."