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Post by Moses on Dec 13, 2004 17:49:04 GMT -5
December 13, 2004 EDITORIAL Shepherds Finessing Their Flock The scandal over sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy is still raging in the courts, yet the American bishops have made a wrongheaded decision to cut back their auditing of local dioceses' compliance with the church's new child protection measures. The bishops concluded that 90 percent of dioceses had been examined, found in compliance and can "self-report" next year. The auditors will focus on dioceses that are not carrying out the safeguards fully. This easing of scrutiny hardly jibes with pledges of ongoing accountability. In the face of the dark universe of abuse by priests - more than 700 dismissed in three years for sexually abusing thousands of children - it was commendable that the bishops' conference enacted some firm remedies, including a one-strike-and-you're-defrocked policy toward abusers. But the laity is still waiting for an accounting of bishops' culpability in protecting predatory priests and paying hush money to contain complaints. That the crisis is far from over is clear in California, where Bishop Tod Brown of the Orange County diocese recently agreed to a record $100 million damage settlement with 87 victims. Bishop Brown's welcome decision to release internal church documents as part of the agreement contrasts with the struggle in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where Cardinal Roger Mahony continues legalistic stonewalling of 500 abuse claims. His refusal to turn over priests' personnel files to prosecutors was criticized by the laity panel the bishops appointed to monitor their actions. The panel warned last March that "there must be consequences" for bishops who led the years of cover-up. But the bishops still shy from investigating each other, says the panel's recently departed chairman, Robert Bennett. He said the church needs "what amount to SWAT teams to go out and rein in recalcitrant bishops and make them do what is good for the whole church." The church cannot count this bleak chapter closed until it follows Mr. Bennett's wise advice. www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/opinion/13mon2.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position= |
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Post by Lani on Dec 14, 2004 2:38:53 GMT -5
I was a therapist for several years in Canada and about 40% of my clients were survivors of some type of sexual abuse. Those who had been abused by members or representatives of the clergy, Catholic and otherwise, suffered from deeper and more profound shame and guilt than other survivors.
As several adult survivors told me, some male, some female, they felt, as children, that if 'the representatives of God on earth', were doing things like that to them, they must be so evil that God wanted them to be punished. That somehow they deserved what was being done to them. Without exception I heard some version of the following: "It was like being abused/punished by God because I was so evil."
The work we did was ultimately successful but that added layer of betrayal and abuse of authority, made it much more difficult and painful for these brave people, many of them native north americans who endured the horrors of the residential schools.
I've noticed that there doesn't seem to have been any media attention ever given to the much rarer? but equally devastating abuse, some of it was sexual and some was physical violence, by some nuns in the Catholic Church and other women in the residential programs run by denominations other than the Catholic Church. Female pedophiles tend to be much rarer than male but it has happened and probably still does. I'm not going to get into the emotional and spiritual abuse endured in these 'schools'.
The effect was the same. "Abused by a cruel God."
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Post by Moses on Dec 14, 2004 4:05:31 GMT -5
Horrible. The abuse by Nuns (physical abuse of course they have long been famous for) -- why hasn't it been exposed? Is it because there is a greater shame for the victims to come forward?
I'm amazed at your success in assisting people who are victims of this horrendous abuse -- what are the keys to assisting them?
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Post by Moses on Dec 14, 2004 4:07:27 GMT -5
The Canadian example should really be revisited, since Canada's funding of the Catholic orphanages resulted in horrible horrible abuses of power and horrendous conditions and deliberate misplacements.
This is the model that Bush wishes to reprise here in the US, and it must be stopped.
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Post by calabi-yau on Dec 14, 2004 5:12:02 GMT -5
The Canadian example should really be revisited, since Canada's funding of the Catholic orphanages resulted in horrible horrible abuses of power and horrendous conditions and deliberate misplacements. One of Canada's worst Catholic abuse occurred in Québec during provincial prime minister Duplessis' reign in the 40's and 50's. Before the Quiet Revolution of the 60's, the church and the government worked hand-in-hand and together had total dominion over social and public institutions. Known as Duplessis's orphans, thousands of victims from that era fought for decades for recognition from both the church and state about their plight and compensation for the psychological and physical scars they carry to this day. The government finally forwarded compensation and apologies but the church never admitted to any mistreatment. It is no small wonder that Québécers have deserted religion and churches since the 60's. Quebec to Give Duplessis Orphans a Public Apology
For citizens's sake, church and governments don't mesh well. No small wonder Bush wants to take the U.S. down the same road. |
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Post by Moses on Dec 14, 2004 8:47:45 GMT -5
Quebec to Give Duplessis Orphans a Public Apology
National Post
by Campbell Clark
28 December, 1998
Largest Youth Abuse Case: 3,000 survivors hope for financial compensation
The Quebec government is to issue an apology over the treatment of the so-called Duplessis Orphans, who were interned in mental institutions in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s after being abandoned by their parents, the National Post has learned.
Those representing the estimated 3,000 surviving orphans hope the public apology by Lucien Bouchard, the Quebec premier, will be a first step in obtaining financial compensation similar to that offered to victims of abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland, and others who suffered similar treatment at institutions in other provinces.
Hundreds of the Duplessis Orphans, so-named because Maurice Duplessis, the former Quebec premier, governed the province during most of the years of their internment, have reported harsh treatment and physical and sexual abuse in institutions run by Catholic religious orders.
The allegations involved forced confinement, beatings, molestation and even rape.
The episode is believed to be the largest case of institution-based youth abuse in Canadian history.
Quebec’s College of Physicians has also, for the first time, agreed to express the medical profession’s “regrets,” and to launch a program to re-evaluate the cases of orphans who were falsely diagnosed as mentally retarded or mentally ill.
The public apologies, expected to be made in January or February, will also involve correcting, where necessary, erroneous civil records, including birth certificates that may have wrongly listed the orphans’ parents as unknown.
Many of the details surrounding the plight of the orphans remain a mystery, but it is believed that many children abandoned by their natural parents were designated as mentally ill so as to obtain more funding for their care. At that time, Quebec could obtain more federal funds for health-care institutions than for schools and orphanages.
Most of the “orphans” were in fact children born of unmarried parents and left in the care of religious orders that operated orphanages, it is claimed. In some cases those establishments were transformed into health-care facilities and in other cases the children were shipped from orphanages to existing hospitals, also run by religious orders.
Doctors issued terse, unexplained diagnoses that falsely labelled many of the children mentally deficient, it is claimed.
The motive was to have them sent to the institutions, where most received little or no education.
While Mr. Bouchard has agreed the Quebec government should acknowledge responsibility for the harm done under previous governments, his government will not — at least for now — offer cash compensation.
Representatives of the orphans groups said Mr. Bouchard told them during an October meeting that he will not offer financial compensation until he knows their number — and he never committed to compensating them even if such a tally is provided.
Efforts by surviving orphans to launch class-action suits in 1992 against the government and religious orders were blocked in the courts, and the Quebec government later concluded it was unable to prosecute the 321 criminal complaints of physical and sexual abuse against nuns, monks, and institution monitors.
An association representing many orphans, the Comité des Orphelins Institutionalisés de Duplessis, has shifted strategy and agreed to accept apologies and help in correcting records without insisting financial compensation come at the same time. However, they demand that compensation follow in the near future. The Quebec government has also offered the committee $300,000 over three years to coordinate services for the orphans, and the committee hopes it will also help locate all the surviving orphans — some of whom might be able to bolster the credibility of compensation claims.
But as many of the alleged victims grow older — they now range in age from 45 to 80 — some despair they will never see the kind of compensation offered to similar victims in other provinces. Some have died of old age, some of illness, and a greater-than-average number from suicide.
“That happened to some. They died and never got anything,” said Noella Doucet, 58, who spent much of her youth in a series of institutions, where she said she was confined in cells, beaten, and molested. “And I have the impression that is going to happen to me one day.”<br>
The Duplessis Orphans retain a dubious distinction, as the most prominent group of victims still without an apology or compensation. In Newfoundland, the provincial government offered a settlement to victims of abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage; in B.C., the government offered 150 former students of a school for the deaf and blind cash settlements of $3,000 to $60,000. Nova Scotia set up a $43.7-million program to compensate more than 1,000 former residents of provincial youth facilities.
The Catholic church and the religious orders that ran the institutions have never agreed to discuss the issue with orphan groups, and has remained reluctant to comment. After several requests for an interview over more than a week, a spokesman for Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, the archbishop of Montreal, said she could not find anyone who was available.
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Post by Moses on Dec 14, 2004 8:54:20 GMT -5
In terms of false diagnosis of mental illness, Bush has initiated his "mental health screening" in public schools. Though not in the appropriations bill, a letter of understanding was attached to the HHS appropriations bill that funds would be used to initiate this horrendous program though "pilots".
Some of these funds were distributed to Tennessee, where "teams" will be formed to "identify" students with "visible" mental illness and a behavioral modification program will be imposed on these students and their family, called "PIBS". I found that the government's NID had done studies on PIBS and found it to have a 94% failure rate when applied to individuals. (Apparently it "works" when applied to groups-- i.e. schoolwide). After PIBS fails (as it is in use) the school then looks to outplace the student.
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