Psychiatry and abuse

I often point to the psychiatric link in normalizing the reassignment of abusive priests based on what we were taught in our psychiatric rotations in medical school. Some of these came from Freud: Ideas like children made up abuse claims because they fantasized the abuse. 

indeed the 1979 UK Whitehall report suggested lowering the age of consent to 14, because

Girls as young as 12 'may not only want to take part in but initiate sexual activity', said 1979 Home Office report

more here.

Some ideas floating around in the recent past were loosely based on Freud's ideas that sexual repression was bad: such as teaching teenaged boys that if a girl said no, she meant yes, and raping her was okay because it helped her get rid of her hangups.

Or the idea the federal government should encourage teenage sex.

Or even the idea that having adults mentor young children into sex would prevent them from having sexual hangups and they would be better adjusted as adults.

And then there was the idea that once we had abortion on demand, by getting rid of the fear of pregnancy we would see more sexual activity, and indeed since we wouldn't have any more unwanted chidren that child abuse would disappear.

Right.

The worst one was a 1981 article in Newsweek after a TV film about incest was shown. The Newsweek article lamented that we shouldn't report cases of incest because it would destroy the family

not to mention that honest criminals would mistreat the poor guy if he was jailed.

ironically, it is this same type of psychiatric thinking that led to many of the American bishops to protect the priests accused of various levels of molestation. The bishops obeyed the experts: some because they were weak, others because they were stupid, and alas some because they were gay and who were they to throw the first stone?

CRUX reports how Father Harvey influenced a more kind and gentle approach to pedophilia/pederasty.

In a 1992 article in Crisis, a conservative magazine, Harvey described the arguments he had offered at the Ninth Bishops’ Workshop in Dallas in 1990. Harvey argued that priests who sexually abused minors often did so because of sexual addiction, and therefore guilt could not be imputed. On that basis, he claimed bishops could not impose canonical penalties. Instead, he argued, most should be rehabilitated and returned to ministry.

While he went on to note that there should be certain conditions, such as barring participation in overseeing youth ministry, he criticized bishops for a double standard in not treating abuser priests the same way as they often treat alcoholics or drug addicts, who are generally sent to rehab and then put back in the field. In the article, he criticized bishops moving toward a zero-tolerance policy...

Father Harvey didn't make up these ideas of course:

One of Harvey’s closest associates and clinical influencers was psychologist Richard Fitzgibbons, who trained at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center, and who went on to found the Institute for Marital Healing....

This August, a Pennsylvania grand jury report chronicling seven decades of abuse of more than 1,000 victims at the hands of 300 abuser priests specifically excluded the Philadelphia archdiocese, largely because an earlier investigation there had already highlighted the efforts by Cardinals John Krol, Anthony Bevilacqua, and Justin Rigali in covering up abuse of minors and knowingly transferring offender priests rather than removing them from public ministry.

As it turns out, those decisions relied on methods taught and advocated by Fitzgibbons and Harvey. 

italics mine.



I wonder if the Dr. Fitzbgibbons is the one quoted in this recent article in CNA? He dares to note the link with homosexuality and with narcissim and anger. He published this in an article on it in the Linacre quarterly

the argument is that punishment will cause people to avoid being treated.

True.

what we don't know is how successful was his own treatment, and if he has statistics on little things like relapse vs rehabilitation.

Can you cure pedophilia/pederasty?

this 1988 article says they have no clue about it.
PsychologyToday admits they don't know either.
lots of studies including using hormone blockers etc. but this 1997 study says the results are "unclear".'
one problem: Lack of compliance.

a 2003 review summarizes several articles and says it works, if they remained under treatment.

Nearly all of the studies used self-reports to measure the effects of medication. Duration of follow-up was between 6 months and 7 years and revealed that there were no relapses if patients remained under treatment. 

italics mine. Presumably the self reports are accurate, right? (the answer? self reporting is not very accurate:(this study shows 30 to 99 percent accuracy).

Bioethics article discusses the problem mainly lamenting the need for privacy so they can be treated.

So we have a problem.

The bishops are correctly being blamed, but no one is talking about the ones who advised the bishops. I will leave the lawyer articles to someone else, but one of the ones who aren't getting criticized are the doctors who advised the bishops.

We see lots of psychiatric explanations of why men abuse children/teenagers/adults who are in their power,  but what about psychiatrists who treated them, told the bishops they were cured, and let them go back to work? True, often they did so with advice to keep them away from children, but that didn't work out well, did it?

So this is a major scandal for the medical community. So who is naming names?



AKACatholicblog has more on it here, and names names.

One is Dr. Money, whose theories on sex vs gender sound strangely like those being pushed on the public by the gender police.

From the NYTime obituary:

Early in his career, Dr. Money coined the terms "gender identity," to describe the internal experience of sexuality, and "gender role," to refer to social expectations of male and female behavior. The two concepts still drive much research into sexual identity.

the theories were not as much about the general public but based on the rare medical problem of intersex children with ambiguous genitalia. This led to his involvement with gender confusion and he was behind the push to medical/surgical treatment of these children.

The problem? one of the major examples on which he based his work turned out not to be true.

Wikipedia article on David Reimer.

The psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned. The academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer's realization he was not a girl crystallized between the ages of 9 and 11 years[3] and he transitioned to living as a male at age 15. Well known in medical circles for years anonymously as the "John/Joan" case, Reimer later went public with his story to help discourage similar medical practice.

and he eventually committed suicide. Sad.

another physician named in the article is Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, who worked with one Father Harvey in an organization aimed at those with same sex attraction.

from crux:

until at least 2011, Fitzgibbons continued to play a role in treating abusive priests and advocating for their return to ministry in Philadelphia, one of the dioceses most affected by sexual abuse.

While today Courage maintains its strict compliance with the charter, at the time of its adoption, Harvey expressed regret that too many bishops were pushing abusive priests out and advocated a path of treatment.

“In short, the predominant view of the bishops in the ’80s and ’90s was that such men should be given a second chance which included spiritual support, individual spiritual direction, and careful supervision,” he wrote in 2002. “From personal pastoral experience, I saw good things happening with these priests. I also was aware that some of these bishops took good care of the youth who had been victimized by priests.” Summarizing his views on zero-tolerance, Harvey wrote, “I have grave difficulty with [that] opinion.”

NationalCathReg article refers to stories in the Kansas City Star and accusations by SNAP.

In that case, the priest was taking pornographic photos of a young girl, but the good doctor has also been quoted as blaming the pedophilia scandals in general on the fact that the perpetrators are gay, and saying that the Philadelphia grand jury report overdid it.

You see a lot of hair splitting here: Pedophilia bad, Pederasty, i.e. preying on young teenagers, iffy (and common in both the gay and hetero community, another fact no one wants to discuss), and gay relationships between adults, even if the adult is vulnerable to you punishing him or her if they object, is fine.

the problem? Narcissism. they lie about what is going on and rewrite it in their mind to make themselves the hero.

They aren't seducing that 13 year old boy: They are "mentoring" him to feel comfortable in his sexuality.

It works for girls too: When I was in medical school the book Lolita was used as an example of how young teenage girls really really wanted to have sex with older men, and it wasn't until I read "reading Lolita in Tehran" that I realized the novel showed the self serving manipulation of a sexual predator, not a teenage vixen seducing an innocent older man.

from the above CNA article quoting the John Jay report:

The psychiatrist also reviewed the findings of the John Jay researchers, who reported that 81percent of the victims of clerical sexual abuse were male, 51 percent of whom were age 11-14, 27 percent were aged 15-17, 16 percent between 8-10, and 6 percent were under 7 years of age, emphasized Fitzgibbons.

 we catholic layfolks just say: well you took a vow not to do anything, so stop quantifying if your sin is bad or really really bad.

as for WWJD? Millstone, anyone?

as for these doctors: Hippocrates said don't sleep with your patients, but ten percent of psychiatrists admit they do so.

So when will we see the medical "ME TOO" scandal hit the pages/