Millstones, anyone?

Mr. Branch's radio program discusses self esteem, moral revival, and problems of racism that the black man confronts in the USA. 

Here he discusses pedophilia by leaders in the Baptist church and notes that Baptists, like Catholics, revere their church leaders and sort of see them as perfect, which has made opportunities for sexual predation.

Sigh. I've seen these problems: Eager younger teenagers who want to be adults and yet who seek attention from a trusted adult. And the adult often justifies their actions as okay because he perceives this attention getting behavior as a sexual invitation (or worse: an adult who grooms them to allow being sexually exploited).

as the only "lady doc" in the town, I saw a lot of these cases, all young girls: About half were exaggerations, normal playing around, "boys being boys", where an older teenaged boy exploited the girl about his own age who had just discovered her sexuality  and was willing to go along with his request (or who wanted a cute baby to play with). 
But a few cases were very bad: Rape, serial intercourse, including incest with mom's boyfriend or even (in 2 cases) the actual biological father...luckily those two cases resulted in the guy going to jail, by plea bargain to a lower crime since the trauma of a young teenage girl testifying in court was often worse than the crime itself.

Sigh

I have written about priest sexual abuse in Altoona on my non PC screed blog, and here is a summary of various articles on the subject LINK

Professor Podles has written books about the subject and has some pretty disgusting stuff on line LINK. 

Ironically, one reason that these people get away with their actions is because the victim is told they were asking for it, so were the guilty party; in contrast, the perpetrator sees himself as a good people, and the sins as either "justified" (by "consent') or as a lapse that needs to be forgiven "70 times 7 times", as they often imply Jesus was saying, meaning if you punished them, you were the "bad guy".

one example of this can be found in today's GetReligionblog where they discuss an article about sexual abuse in the Amish community, made worse because of that community's emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation, which of course puts pressure on the victim to forgive, not report, such abuse 

(hmm... sounds like a case I heard about in Altoona, where the family was pressured to withdraw the claim against that nice visitor priest who just had a "lapse" of judgement. The family did drop the case, and so a year later the bishop wrote in the local Catholic paper claiming, hey, I was not aware of any accusations of abuse on my watch. (italics mine).

and I won't even go into the Pope's dismissal of such sins by saying "who am I to judge", which has been taken out of context by the MSM to justify politically correct sexual sin by anyone (they usually leave out the next part of his statement which was about repenting), It also also ignores that the comment was not about gays as a class, but about a specific priest, Father Ricca, who used a lot of church money to fund his activities.

 The words “who am I to judge” were stated in Pope Francis’ response to a question about Ricca, who had been credibly accused of homosexual acts when he represented the Holy See in Uruguay from 1999 to 2001. Francis had nevertheless recently appointed Ricca to an important position in the Vatican.

(the job was at the Vatican Bank... cue Cardinal Pell conspiracy theories).

Of course, Ricca was only was accused at ordinary homosexual behavior, not pedophilia or even of hitting on young teenage boys of legal age, so it's okay.

 But the tendency of some sexual predators, both homosexual and heterosexual, to prey on pubescent, naive children is not just seen the clergy: it includes teachers and others who work with children. (and I won't even go into the even worse horror of sexual predation on very young children, which alas occurs but often has little evidence so it's hard to prove).

And lots of un proven rumors about the elites and the Hollywood types doing such things, because they can do it and get away with it.

this is an especially horrid reality among street children in the third world, including here in the Philippines.

and yes, there are cliques who know this is going on and network with each other with information on where they can do this and get away with their "predilections" aka crimes.

 I am thinking of rumors about a certain SciFi writer "retired" to a tropical island but remained respected even though his behavior was an open secret. But heck, the casting couch of Hollywood was also an open secret that rarely got prosecuted either.

Sigh: the Philippines is famous for sex tourism: never mind that not only young people (of legal age) of both sexes are lured into prostitution because of extreme poverty and the wish to support their families at a time when jobs are scarce, but  alas there is also an open sewer that allows the exploitation of street kids by these predators: And now, in the age of the internet, this includes cybersex of course.

 

Sigh.

Most of what I was discussing was male predators, but alas it also happens by female caregivers, which is harder to prove due to the lack of DNA evidence of sexual activity (one of my collegues had a child molested by a female baby sitter, but without evidence the lady could not be prosecuted, even though previous families had also reported her to the police).

TeaAtTrianon has a link to the book The Last Closet, about a female sexual predator who is a famous writer. 

The blogwriter, who writes historical novels, links the history of elites exploiting ordinary folk to a type of amoral paganism or gnosticism, where the elite saw themselves above the laws of ordinary folk so they were allowed to do such things. In contrast, Christianity tended to be the religion of the weak and the exploited, so it was harder for sociopaths to justify their actions: but of course, some did anyway..

nor is it just "religion" that can be twisted to justify such behavior: nowadays are more likely to justify their action by spouting Freud or Kinsey.

When I was in medical school in the late 1960s, we were told by our psychiatry instructors that allowing "loving" adults initiate sex with children would result in their being more mentally healthy, without "hang ups" or guilt. 

and who remembers when California decided not to jail "non violent" sexual predators in the 1980s, or when Newsweek had an article, echoing what was written in medical journals, that we docs should not report incest because it would break up the family if the father was arrested.

sigh.

there is nothing new under the sun you know: Even Gilgamesh was accused of using his kingship to exploit women in his kingdom.

Jesus was well aware of the practices of the local Roman elites and local non Jews influenced by Greek ideas who thought nothing was wrong to exploit their slaves or their "consenting" employees. (Hey: Sounds like some here in the Philippines who I will not name)...

Professor Podles points out that this has become worse in recent times as a result of the "feminization" of western Christianity. 

In many of today's Christian churches, the meek and gentle Jesus is preached: Jesus as a compassionate western type mother who would never discipline her naughty child, and where theologians insist that hey, no one goes to hell  because God is to nice to do such a thing.

Presumably they never heard of the the Asian Tiger mother, or that a family is important, and family members need both to love and to be responsibility for each other, something often ignored in the "me ism" of the west.

True, Jesus is easy on ordinary folk who try to do the right thing, and repent when they fail, but he's pretty strict with those elites who ignore or exploit the poor, and he is down right murderous toward those who harm children: he actually said that they deserved to be thrown into the sea weighted with a millstone.