Sexual Violence

"In 1999, they tried to make the most of a spate of incidents between Christians and non-Christian tribals in which a few Christians got killed (mercifully far fewer than the periodic harvest of martyrs in Pakistan). They falsely blamed Hindu activists for some inter-Christian rape cases and for a series of bomb attacks against churches, which turned out to be the handiwork of a Pakistan-based Muslim group, Deendar Anjuman. Before ill-informed but consequential international audiences such as the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, they managed to uphold their original story, but in India the campaign to blame Hindu activists for everything had badly lost its credibility."

"A climate has been created in which every allegation against Hindu activists enjoys a priori credibility while every complaint of Hindu victims is shrugged off or even maligned as hate propaganda... A similar case is the rape of four nuns in Jhabua, also in 1998: in spite of Christian allegations, it turned out that Hindu militancy had nothing to do with the crime and that half of the gang of perpetrators were tribal Christians themselves, yet this "rape of nuns by Hindu fanatics" keeps reappearing in press stories about "Hindu atrocities on Christians"."

"It was predicted that communal violence would increase a hundredfold if the BJP were allowed to come to power. In reality, the BJP term in power has been the most peaceful year since decades. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, Islamic killings of Hindus have markedly decreased. That terrorists killed twenty Hindus in Jammu (an incident that went strictly unreported in the Western media) on the eve of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s peace mission to Pakistan is first of all the responsibility of the killers themselves, even if not preventing this massacre was secondarily also a failure of the security forces. Note that most of the victims of the remaining communal violence were Hindus -- hardly the doing of the Hindu nationalist government. The Christian missionary lobby had aptly sensed the frustration of the India-watchers at seeing the “unexpected” success of the BJP in maintaining communal peace, hence its initiative to launch an international slander campaign alleging BJP atrocities against the Christians. More than ever, they could count on the foreign experts to amplify their propaganda. The world media consumer was told about the rape of four nuns and about the killing of a Christian girl and her little brother “by Hindu fundamentalists”; but not about the subsequent finding that the culprits had in fact been Christians. [..] In their desperation, the secularists tried to make the most of a few incidents in tribal areas with a history of Hindu-Christian friction. An eager international press guzzled down the stories, which passed into the received wisdom and the US Congressional Record. They have firmly remained there, even after allegations of a Hindutva hand in the matter (as in the Jhabua rape case, an inter-Christian crime) had been proven false in the court of law."

"It would be more correct to speak of ephebophilia; being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males ... Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17.""

"Pedophilia means the excessive (sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them, although that is what people generally have in mind when they use the term. Because children cannot legally consent to anything, an adult using a child as a sexual object is engaging in a wrongful act. Such an act is wrongful because it entails the use of physical coercion, the threat of such coercion, or (what comes to the same thing in a relationship between an adult and a child) the abuse of the adult’s status as a trusted authority. The outcome of the act — whether it is beneficial or detrimental for the child — is irrelevant for judging its permissibility."

"The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators. Due to a code of silence imposed on all members of the clergy under penalty of excommunication, cases of child sexual abuse have hardly ever been reported to the law enforcement authorities in the countries where such crimes occurred."

"In particular, the situation of "mandatory reporting" gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."

"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children. Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue."

"There is no way out, no place to run. The healthy, normal emotionally resilient child will learn to accommodate to the reality of continuing sexual abuse."

"Ancestral humans behaved like this. Later, when we developed the family system, the use of sex for this sort of purpose became more limited, mainly occurring within families. A lot of the things we see, like pedophilia and homosexuality, may be leftovers that some now consider unacceptable in our particular society."

"Let's say you're a 6-month-old girl, no evidence whatsoever of any abuse. They're simply saying, 'You, in this culture, may grow up to be a child bride when you're 14. Therefore we're going to remove you now when you're 6 months old. Or, 'You're a 6-month-old boy; 25, 30 years, 40 years from now you're going to be a predator, so we're going to take you away now."

"The secrecy, the obstruction I saw during my investigation was unparalleled in my entire career as a DA...it was so difficult to obtain any information from the Church at all. The Church fails to acknowledge such a serious problem but more than that, it is not a passiveness but an openly obstructive way of not allowing authorities to try to stop the abuse within the Church. They fought us every step of the way."

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia … should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."

"You are not guilty because of your sexual desire, but you are responsible for your sexual behavior. There is help! Don't become an offender!"

"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."

"ninety-year suppression order suppressing the names of twenty-eight VIP alleged paedophiles"

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

"A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn’t true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors."

"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."

"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."

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

"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"."

"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."

"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."

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

"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.""

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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?"

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

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"Children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults."

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

"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."