First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"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."
"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!"
"ninety-year suppression order suppressing the names of twenty-eight VIP alleged paedophiles"
"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."
"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."
"[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."
"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."
"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."
"In particular, the situation of "mandatory reporting" gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."
"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."
"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."
"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.""
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Detective Tapp: You know, we arrested a dentist last week who liked to play with kids a bit too much. He lived two blocks from here. The sewer lines run under this neighborhood, Doctor."
"My name is sweetie, I'm 10 years old. I live in the Philippines. Every day I have to sit in front of the webcam and talk to men. Just like tens of thousands of other kids. The men ask me to take off my cloths [sic]. They undress. They play with themselves, they want me to play with myself. As soon as I go online, they come to me. Ten, hundred, every hour. So many. But what they don't know: I'm not real."
"An indecent image of a child is just a picture of a rape in progress. And they look so real, that it’s difficult to tell the difference between real and a computer generated image."
"The goal of the state is to find some practice that is universally reviled and pose as the one and only way of expunging it from society. The best example today is child pornography, a grim and ghastly industry that every decent person would like to see eradicated from the earth. But in the name of doing so, the state invades everyone's privacy, controls speech, interferes with families, and otherwise uses the issue as a wedge to eliminate every freedom."
"Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will."
"Child pornography is great. Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing. We must filter the Internet to win over online file sharing. But politicians don’t understand that file sharing is bad, and this is a problem for us. Therefore, we must associate file sharing with child pornography. Because that’s something the politicians understand, and something they want to filter off the Internet."
"There is no evidence that demonstrates a significant increase in the danger to children caused by pornography. A person who is prone to act on his fantasies will likely do so irrespective of the availability of pornography."
"Christopher DeVries, who organized a protest in support of Black Lives Matter and defunding the police, pleaded guilty to 20 counts of possession of child pornography. DeVries received a minimum of a three to six-year prison sentence, which started on December 27th, a $4,000 fine, and must register as a sex offender and comply with probation. DeVries could be incarcerated for as long as 15 years, with one year potentially being washed from the sentence if he completes sex offender treatment."
"Like the jury and the district court, we have been forced to view the images in this case in order to determine the issues raised--a decidedly distasteful and depressing duty."
"Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again. It hurts me to know someone is looking at them -- at me -- when I was just a little girl being abused for the camera. I did not choose to be there, but now I am there forever in pictures that people are using to do sick things. I want it all erased. I want it all stopped. But I am powerless to stop it just like I was powerless to stop my uncle...I am horrified by the thought that other children will probably be abused because of my pictures. Will someone show my pictures to other kids, like my uncle did to me, then tell them what to do? Will they see me and think it's okay for them to do the same thing? Will some sick person see my picture and then get the idea to do the same thing to another little girl?"
"We're agreed that child sexual imagery is a case apart, it's illegal everywhere in the world, there's a consensus on that. It's absolutely right that we identify this stuff, we remove it and we report it to the authorities."
"If you make virtual child pornography under strict government control with some kind of label explaining that no child was abused, you can give pedophiles a way of regulating their sexual urges."
"I think that repressing your fantasies can lead to frustration and, ultimately, for some types of paedophile, to a greater likelihood of doing something wrong."
""Chaku Ero", which means "erotically clothed" is a kind of soft porn - it doesn’t involve nudity, but it can get very, very close and is often overtly sexual. Stacey asks a Chaku Ero producer (who wanted to remain anonymous) how young the girls in his shoots are. “My youngest was six years old,” he says. “We filmed her in her bathing costume playing with some toys. Her mum was standing behind the camera holding her favourite toy so she would face the camera.” He makes much more money filming children than older girls. The DVD of the six-year-old made him “four million (£28,500) or five million yen (£35,500),” he says. “The senior high school girls will make about one million (£7000)”."
"As long as Chaku Ero photos don’t show the child’s naked genitals, buttocks or chest, it isn’t categorised as child pornography. But, according to Kazuko Ito, a Human Rights Lawyer who is trying to challenge this definition, “Chaku Ero is child pornography. That’s the reality.”"
"As, assuredly, what must be mainly taken care of and complied with in handling these trials is that they be managed with maximum confidentiality and after the verdict is declared and put into effect never be mentioned again (20 February 1867 Instruction of the Holy Office, 14), each and every person, who in any way belongs to the tribunal or is given knowledge of the matter because of their office, is obliged to keep inviolate the strictest secrecy (what is commonly called "the secrecy of the Holy Office") in all things and with all persons, under pain of automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication, incurred ipso facto without need of any declaration other than the present one, and reserved to the Supreme Pontiff in person alone, excluding even the Apostolic Penitentiary."
"… I do promise, vow and swear that I will maintain inviolate secrecy about each and every thing brought to my knowledge in the performance of my aforesaid function, excepting only what may happen to be lawfully published when this process is concluded and put into effect … and that I will never directly or indirectly, by gesture, word, writing or in any other way, and under any pretext, even that of a greater good or of a highly urgent and serious reason, do anything against this fidelity to secrecy, unless special permission or dispensation is expressly granted to me by the Supreme Pontiff."
"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."
"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 be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants."
"Anyone who has committed the crime of solicitation dealt with in canon 904 is to be suspended from celebrating Mass and hearing sacramental confessions and, if the gravity of the crime calls for it, he is to be declared unfit for hearing them; he is to be deprived of all benefices and ranks, of the right to vote or be voted for, and is to be declared unfit for all of them, and in more serious cases he is to be reduced to the lay state."
"In accordance with the apostolic constitutions, in particular the constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae of Benedict XIV of 1 June 1741, a penitent must within one month denounce to the local Ordinary or the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office a priest guilty of the crime of solicitation in confession; and a confessor must, under a grave obligation of conscience, inform a penitent of this duty."
"Church must do penance for abuse cases."
"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."
"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."
"A criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior."
"Children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults"
"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 end of the mid 1990s, it was estimated that [...] more than half a billion dollars had been paid in jury awards, settlements and legal fees"
"There was mounting evidence in the world of psychology that indicated that when medical treatment is given, these people can, in fact, go back to ministry."
"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. ”"