Post by Administration on Mar 27, 2010 13:40:05 GMT
Bruce Arnold: Church must respect State law ahead of its own rules
www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bruce-arnold-church-must-respect-state-law-ahead-of-its-own-rules-2113998.html
By Bruce Arnold
Saturday March 27 2010
Politicians, including party leaders, are ignoring their role in putting right deeply flawed social structures that have failed
We have reached a point of surfeit over abuse. The story spreads worldwide, now involving Germany, South America, the United States again with the Milwaukee revelations. We can always trump what happens elsewhere with worse here. If it is deaf children, we had worse in Ireland where boys were sexually abused over decades, and the girls suffered mindless cruelty.
Disabled children? The same. We allowed a massive culture of abuse to develop, the church part of it, but by no means the whole, since the people, together with their guardians -- the State, the law and the police -- simply allowed it to happen. Even today, politicians, including party leaders, are ignoring their role in putting right deeply flawed social structures that have failed.
Abuse is history. Material facts continue to be unearthed, but from the past and shrouded in perpetually dishonest excuses from the church, claiming it was not clear about what abuse meant and why it happened.
As a child at school in the 1940s I read about abuse in 'The People' and the 'News of the World'. I was advised by my father to avoid men with beards! The predatory nature of adult sexual desire for children was recognised and warned against. Prison sentences were published. Even in Ireland the crime was known.
Diarmaid Ferriter, in his 2009 book 'Occasions of Sin', writes: "Cases (of child abuse) were reported in newspapers, though the language used was often circumspect and barristers had a tendency to announce they would not 'go into the gruesome details'."
To read the full article follow the link:
www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bruce-arnold-church-must-respect-state-law-ahead-of-its-own-rules-2113998.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bruce-arnold-church-must-respect-state-law-ahead-of-its-own-rules-2113998.html
By Bruce Arnold
Saturday March 27 2010
Politicians, including party leaders, are ignoring their role in putting right deeply flawed social structures that have failed
We have reached a point of surfeit over abuse. The story spreads worldwide, now involving Germany, South America, the United States again with the Milwaukee revelations. We can always trump what happens elsewhere with worse here. If it is deaf children, we had worse in Ireland where boys were sexually abused over decades, and the girls suffered mindless cruelty.
Disabled children? The same. We allowed a massive culture of abuse to develop, the church part of it, but by no means the whole, since the people, together with their guardians -- the State, the law and the police -- simply allowed it to happen. Even today, politicians, including party leaders, are ignoring their role in putting right deeply flawed social structures that have failed.
Abuse is history. Material facts continue to be unearthed, but from the past and shrouded in perpetually dishonest excuses from the church, claiming it was not clear about what abuse meant and why it happened.
As a child at school in the 1940s I read about abuse in 'The People' and the 'News of the World'. I was advised by my father to avoid men with beards! The predatory nature of adult sexual desire for children was recognised and warned against. Prison sentences were published. Even in Ireland the crime was known.
Diarmaid Ferriter, in his 2009 book 'Occasions of Sin', writes: "Cases (of child abuse) were reported in newspapers, though the language used was often circumspect and barristers had a tendency to announce they would not 'go into the gruesome details'."
To read the full article follow the link:
www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bruce-arnold-church-must-respect-state-law-ahead-of-its-own-rules-2113998.html