Sexual Violence

"There is no basis to assume that the Holy See envisioned [[Crimen sollicitationisthis process to be a substitute for any secular legal process, criminal or civil. It is also incorrect to assume, as some have unfortunately done, that these two Vatican documents are proof of a conspiracy to hide sexually abusive priests or to prevent the disclosure of sexual crimes committed by clerics to secular authorities."

"[Sexual abuse] offenders were unlikely to change and should not be returned to ministry."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Like alcoholics, they are never cured. They have a disease. They will never lose that disease. If sex offenders are not on their toes all the time, they are at risk of committing that crime again."

"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.""

"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."

"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; ... If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters."

"What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career?"

"Show me a villain that hath done a rape, And I am sent to be revenged on him."

"You are both decipher'd For villains mark'd with rape."

"Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own, My truth-betrothèd love and now my wife? But let the laws of Rome determine all; Meanwhile I am possess'd of that is mine."

"The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforcèd chastity."

"He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister: for rapes and ravishments he parallels Nessus."

"We do not discount the seriousness of rape as a crime. It is highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim and for the latter's privilege of choosing those with whom intimate relationships are to be established. Short of homicide, it is the "ultimate violation of self." It is also a violent crime because it normally involves force, or the threat of force or intimidation, to overcome the will and the capacity of the victim to resist. Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage. Because it undermines the community's sense of security, there is public injury as well."

"So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife? If he can be raped, who is protecting me?"

"Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?"

"We need more rape jokes. We really do. I love that some people applauded that. Needless to say, rape, the most heinous crime imaginable. Seems it’s a comic’s dream, though. Because it seems that when you do rape jokes that like the material is so dangerous and edgy. But the truth is it’s like the safest area to talk about in comedy. Cause who’s going to complain about a rape joke? Rape victims? They don’t even report rape. I mean, they’re traditionally not complainers. Like the worst maybe thing that could happen, and I would feel terrible, is like after a show maybe somebody comes up to you and is like, “Look I’m a victim of rape, and as a victim of rape I just want to say I thought that joke was inappropriate and insensitive and totally my fault and I am so sorry.”"

"A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, it should not take place. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman’s finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her."

"As long as male domination exists, rape will exist. [...] Rapists will not voluntarily stop raping women, but women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism will collectively stop rape."

"Wer’t possible that my ambitious sin, Durst commit rapes upon a ', I might have lustfull thoughts to her, of all Earths heav’nly Quire the most Angelicall."

"Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one's partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife."

"It is in female psychology to wish, to some extent, to be overcome by a superior male."

"The haughty fair, Who not the rape ev’n of a god could bear."

"The message to people raped by intimate partners or raped while unconscious is clear: don’t report; don’t prosecute. Even if you’re demonstrably telling the truth, we still won’t offer appropriate punishment. Unless you were raped by a violent stranger down a dark alley, with the bruises to show for it, your rape doesn’t count. (And, even then, what were you doing in the alley?)"

"It is vital... to establish facilities for providing sexual comfort to the soldiers as soon as possible."

"Rape isn’t an isolated brief act. It damages flesh and reverberates in memory. It can have life changing, unchosen results – a pregnancy or a transmitted disease”, Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka stressed, adding that consequences of a one-time act can sprawl into damaging long-term effects."

"A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world, strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature. Would you put this sheep that you adore in the middle of hungry wolves? No... It would be devoured. It's the same situation here. You're putting this precious girl in front of lustful, satanic eyes of hungry wolves. What is the consequence? Catastrophic devastation, sexual harassment, perversion, promiscuity."

"Go into court on a rape — it's like stepping into a refrigerator with the light off. All the men are thinking of their daughters; all the women are sitting with their knees jammed together!"

"Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations [...], on nonhuman creatures [...], and on the planet itself [...]."

"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

"Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape."

"Rape is loss. Like death, it is best treated with a period of mourning and grief. We should develop social ceremonies for rape, rituals, that, like funerals and wakes, would allow the mourners to recover the spirits that the rapist, like death, steals. The social community is the appropriate center for the restoration of spirit, but the rape victim is usually shamed into silence or self-imposed isolation."

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated."

"Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression."