muslimwoman u ask: "..if so many of these 'priests' are perverts is it something about the church that attracts them or does the way of life of a priest create the problem?.."
my thoughts are... a priest is just a man, a human, like us all... if a priest finds that he cannot handle being a celibate, then he can have a sexual affair with a non vulnerable adult parishioner, or he can visit a prostitute...to think a priest might feel that sex with children is his only option to me is wrong... I could forgive my priest an affair, so long as he was not abusing his position, and I could also forgive his visits to prostitutes, although if he was visiting a drug addicted street-whore from the red light district instead of a mature non-addicted lady of the night from an agency then I would question his scruples...
I think that most child abusers are cunning, and they deliberately seek a position of authority and trust where they will have open access to children. They cannot openly abuse children; they would be lynched. They need to win the trust of the children they abuse, and they also need to win the trust of the parents, and they need to be somebody above suspicion. What better place than that of priest? Usually when an adult takes an interest in your child you are concerned, but if that adult is a sports coach or a teacher or a priest, then the rules of social conformity kick in, and there is some justification in their spending time with your children. Even if you are naturally suspicious, you will ignore your fears if the person appears to be beyond reproach...
...paedophilia ia a paraphilia, something which is "beyond love", a sexual perversion, a taboo, something which is beyond the normal human range... homosexuality used to be a paraphilia, funnily enough, before lots of ppl admitted they were gay... maybe one day we will class paedophilia as just another form of sexual expression, but I hope not... it is rife, if we are honest... our culture is steeped in paedophilic images and themes- william s burroughs' Queer, nabokof's Lolita, greek poems about boy love- if u go to wikipedia and type in- padeophilia and child sexual abuse in fiction you will find hundreds of titles, all of which explore the theme in graphic detail...
...as we know, there are many different types of paedophile... there is the paedophile who was abused themselves as a child, and their early sexual experience "primes" them to associate "sex" with "children", yet this type of paedophile is rare- most abused children do not go onto abusing children themselves, although they will most likely spend some time examining themselves and hoping that they do not become paedophiles, but this is mainly because of the myth that paedophiles were once abused children...
...then you have the paedophile who is socially inept, usually of limited intelligence, who non deliberately develop a sexual relationship with a young person because they are unable to develop and maintain relationships with normal adults, again, these are quite rare...
...then there is the paedophile who says he "loves" children and will present you with stories of how the age of consent is a societal construct and offer examples of how his love is reciprocated by his victims, the "true" paedophile, the man who feels what he does is not wrong but is clever enough to know that society does not like ppl like him, alarmingly ppl like this are not that rare,
...then there is the power and control sexual abuser, who uses sex as another weapon is his arsenal and who wants his victims to be frightened and feel fear, they are usually also wife beaters and rapists... again, not that rare...
...and then there is the sadistic child abuser, who forces children to suffer simply because he finds it exciting and enjoys it and it gives him a thrill like no other, but these sexual predators are quite rare...
the majority of child abusers are not sadistic child snatchers, strangers who opportunistically steal children from the street, nor are the majority openly physically violent, beyond the sex act... they are usually men who are attracted to the whole process of child abusing- they like to find a child, win them over, groom them, and then abuse them, they like lying to families and having a secret which only they and their victims are aware of, and most of them never get caught... when they do, you find that the current victim is not the only one, and they have a long history of comitting similiar crimes... there is a paedophile sub culture at large, a whole sordid world of them- they have key words and key phrases which they will bring into conversation with others, looking for others who behave the same way, and when they find others like them they will share their stories and often their victims, if they can... there are manuals you can buy which tell you all about how best to groom and seduce children, and if u search for them u can find them online at the click of a mouse...
...statistics suggest that most children who suffer sexual abuse are not attacked by strangers, more often than not the abuser is a family member, a close friend of the family, or an adult in a position of authority- teachers, youth leaders, members of the church, et cetera... the likelihood of being molested by a stranger as a child is small, less than 0.2%, a figure which has remained stable over time, even during times of war and disaster, when normal behaviours become skewed for even the most moral of ppl...
...places like church schools and childrens' homes attract paedophiles because they allow potential paedophiles access to vulnerable children and also cloak their true motives with respectability.
Unless they have an IQ below 65, there is no excuse. Zero tolerance is the only way to go...
I heard last week that in some states in america they are gong to force sex offenders to have lisence plates which read "sx offndr"... I suggest we go one better, and tatoo it on their foreheads so we all know who they are...
