Beyond Belief: The Sexual Abuse Crisis by David Yallop (Main Forum)

http://www.elephantsinthelivingroom.com/

A couple of articles that may be of interest. The first by Paul Lakeland and the second a draft of 'Beyond Belief' by Geoffrey Robinson.

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

There seems to be some confusion about the author of this work.

At the end, on page 50, it states,
'Adapted from The power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II's Vatican, by David Yallop, Carroll and Graf Publishers, ... 2007.'

Bishop Robinson is mentioned a cuple of times, but does not seem to be the author.

Perhpas the website has got it wrong?

Annie

The opening two paragraphs.

According to John Paul II and many of his bishops, modern society is to blame for the epidemic of sexual abuse by priests, monks, brothers and nuns of victims ranging from young boys and girls to handicapped adolescents, religious and lay women. But modern society is a catch-all phrase, which means everything and nothing. When Karol Wojtyla was elected pope in October 1978, alongside the financial corruption of the Vatican Bank, was the rampant moral corruption of sexual abuse within the priesthood. Over the previous 1800 years the secret system had evolved that had not eliminated the problem of sexual abuse, but covered it up. Its efficiency can be gauged from the fact that before the Gauthe case in 1985-86, public allegations of sexual abuse by priests were very rare. The exposure of a priest either in criminal or civil proceedings was simply unheard of.

The Roman Catholic Church looked after its own, and offending clerics could not be brought before civil courts unless special permission was obtained to do so. The system was one that clearly had the full approval of Pope John Paul II. In 1983, after twenty-four years of deliberation, the current Code of Canon Law was published, and among the many changes from the previous 1917 Code, Law 119 covering the need for special permission was removed. It was a decision that many of the Catholic hierarchy have since bitterly regretted. In less than two years, the floodgates had opened. Within a decade, the cost of sexual abuse to the Roman Catholic Church at every level was devastating. In the United States alone, since 1984, the financial cost in legal fees and awards to the sexually abused is in excess of $1 billion. The cost to the image and reputation of the Catholic hierarchy is inestimable.

It is a truly horrible revelation of what went on - it makes disgusting reading. Horrifying as well is the brutal treatment of children in homes - we know this from Ann Free Spirit - and it was world wide.

How can the Church now get back to spreading the Gospel when there have been so many people abused, the effect this has on their family and then those of us who now have been made aware of it.

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

I've just finished reading this excerpt from the book "Beyond Belief" and there were so many things I could have highlighted...in the end, I would just urge everyone to read the whole thing.

Two parts of the conclusion merit a mention:

By the failure not only of Pope John Paul II and his successor, but also by virtually the entire Catholic hierarchy to confront the issue of sexual abuse within the clergy, the Catholic Church has abdicated any historic rights it has previously claimed to speak to her laity on the issues of faith and morals. To abuse a child, to violate an innocent, is for the vast majority an act beyond belief. For a member of the priesthood or a religious order to abuse a child, an adolescent or adult is the ultimate betrayal of trust. The damage may be eventually sublimated, but it is permanent. Clerical sex abuse is a total attack on the body, mind and soul of the victim. It combines physical pain, mental anguish, and emotional and spiritual rape,

and

Recently, a Rome-base prelate observed, “There will not be, either in the short or medium term, a policy of zero tolerance with regard to sex abusers. If such a policy existed and was applied across the board, there are many bishops who would be forced to resign … many cardinals who would have to take early retirement… As for zero tolerance towards homosexuals, we already have that. It just happens to be confined to the laity. If it were applied to the priesthood, its infrastructure would collapse.”

Keep in mind that this was published back in 2007. Sadly, things only seem to have gotten worse.

I feel sick to the stomach...much like I did after spending many hours reading the Grand Jury report on the cases in Philadelphia when they were released, and like I did when I finished reading Chrissie Foster's book "Hell on the way to heaven".

I need a shower.

Musica delenit bestiam feram.

There is a valuable segment in David Yallop's book which answers the response some church leaders have used that "we didn't know". Given the figures quoted in the study by Fr. Eugene Kennedy and Victor Heckler in the first paragraph, might we ask what the percentages might be in the higher ranks of the institution? How many have been promoted according to The Peter Principle, above their level of competence? Here is the section in full...

-----What follows is a quote from David Yallop's "Beyond Belief"-----

As of the mid-1990s, the time of the Fr. Gauthe case, the Church had access to abundant studies of the origins and effects of clerical sexual abuse. One was The Catholic Priest in the United States: Psychological Investigations by Fr. Eugene Kennedy and Victor Heckler. The authors concluded that seven percent of priests were emotionally developed, eighteen percent developing, and sixty-six percent underdeveloped, and eight percent maldeveloped. The extraordinarily high percentages indicating emotional immaturity are illuminating. The personal profile of the immature reminds me vividly of the description of psychopaths by Sir David Henderson to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in the early 1950s:

"They are dangerous and frustrated. They are devoid of affection, are cold, heartless, callous, cynical, and show a lack of judgment and forethought, which is almost beyond belief. They may be adult in years, but emotionally, they remain as dangerous children whose conduct may revert to a primitive, sub-human level."

Fr. Kennedy's study had been commissioned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the late 1960s. It was delivered to them in 1971. It would have been an invaluable aid towards understanding the mind of the sexually abusing priest, particularly those priests who abused young children and adolescents. However, the bishops did not even discuss the questions raised in the report, let alone implement any of its suggestions. They simply ignored their own report.

The Church could also have consulted the centers for the care of problematic priests run by the Servants of the Paraclete, the first of which was opened in Jemez Spring in New Mexico in 1949. It also included the records of the Seton Psychiatric Institute, a Catholic-owned and Catholic-operated hospital in Baltimore, MD, established in 1844. Fr. Richard Sipe worked at Seton from 1967 to 1970. He was a professed a Benedictine monk in 1953 and ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1959. He is also a qualified psychotherapist and psychiatrist. He recalled,

"Shortly after I was ordained in 1959, I was assigned as a teacher and counselor at a parish high school. This was my first introduction to parish life and the secret world of sexual activity on the part of Catholic priests and religious with both minors and adults. I also became aware of the secret system."

It was this revelation that prompted Fr. Sipe's interest in counseling Catholic priests and religious. It was to become a life's work. He revealed to me that Seton had kept records all the way back to 1917, many of which include priestly sexual abuse cases:

"[Case of clerical sexual abuse] was frequently masked by fellow priests working in the clinic ... deep depression, or 'his activities have led to heavy drinking,' but sexual abuse was the fundamental problem. By the time I came to work there in the late sixties, virtually all referrals to Seton were for priests and religious for sexual contact involving minors. The referral was a device used by the Church to avoid public exposure or court action."

Fr. Sipe then continued to confine the extent of the problem and his response to such cases:

I collaborated with colleagues from many countries who were working inn the same field – The Netherlands, Ireland, England, Australia, India and Africa, Canada, Spain, much of the Third World. It's global."

He also put paid to the lie that the bishops could not have known the extent of clerical abuse. Not only was data, the information, the records on clerical sexual abuse at the various other clinics and hospitals available to any bishop who wished to be informed on pedophilia, Fr. Sipe also stated that the bishops "were fully acquainted anyway."

There was certainly no reason for the Church to be shocked or ignorant about clerical sexual abuse when the Gauthe case erupted in 1985. Apart from the sources already mentioned, the Church could have read legal articles on clergy malpractice, or consulted reference books, such as the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which defined pedophilia as follows:

• The act or fantasy of engaging in sexual activity with pre-pubertal children as a repeatedly preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement.
  
• If the individual is an adult, the pre-pubertal children are at least ten years younger than the individual. If the individual is a late adolescent, no precise age difference is required, and clinical judgment must take into account the age difference as well as the sexual maturity of the child.

In the United Kingdom, Bishop Murphy O'Connor could have referred to Child Abuse and Neglect, a study of prevalence in Great Britain, or at least twelve other studies that were all in print at the time he was ignoring advice and protecting a pedophile. Better still, he could have contacted the Servants of the Paraclete in Gloucestershire, an organization with over thirty years' experience in the treatment of pedophiles – where he himself had sent the serial pedophile, Fr. Hill. Instead, the wretched Fr. Hill was given carte blanche by the man who sits today at the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England.

The Vatican was fully aware of many of these studies. In 1971, for example, it invited Dr. Conrad Baars and Dr. Anna Terruwe to present their paper dealing with the causes, treatment and prevention of emotional immaturity and illness in priests to a meeting sponsored by the Synod of Bishops. Among those listening in the audience was Cardinal Wojtyla, who was elected to the Synod council at the end of that Synod. Dr. Baars' report as based on the medical records and files of 1,500 priests treated for mental problems. A Dutch born Catholic psychiatrist, Dr. Bars concluded that less than fifteen percent of priests in Western Europe and North America were emotionally fully developed. Twenty to twenty-five percent had serious psychiatric difficulties that often resulted in alcoholism, and sixty to seventy percent suffered from lesser degrees of emotional immaturity. The report made ten recommendations, including a more effective vetting of potential priests. None were implemented.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Apparently obtainable in UK from

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/

which offers free delivery worldwide,

or amazon.co.uk which would probably charge to deliver.

I've just ordered a 2nd hand copy on CA's recommendation/urging.

Mary

I have read Beyond Belief, and I have to say that I have very serious misgivings about it. First: who wrote it? At the bottom is this note:

Adapted from The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican, by David Yallop, Carroll and Graf Publishers, 245 W. 17th St., N.Y., N.Y.; © Poetic Products Ltd. 2007.

Did David Yallop "adapt" it, or did someone else?

The start of my misgivings came from the very second paragraph which I will deal with in sectons:

The Roman Catholic Church looked after its own, and offending clerics could not be brought before civil courts unless special permission was obtained to do so.

Where is he talking about? He could not be talking about common law countries. The dispute between Henry II and Thomas a'Becket in 1166 was over the right of the civil courts to try clergy for crimes. It was one of the reasons, or excuses for Henry VIII breaking away from the Church. The "benefit of clergy" was gradually whittled away under any vestige of it remained in England in 1823 and 1827 and was largely abolished in the United States in 1790. I can't speak for Continental systems of law, with close ties to the Catholic Church, but I would have been very surprised if it still remained there with the French revolution and later ones throughout Europe getting rid of the power of the Church.

The system was one that clearly had the full approval of Pope John Paul II. In 1983, after twenty-four years of deliberation, the current Code of Canon Law was published, and among the many changes from the previous 1917 Code, Law 119 covering the need for special permission was removed.

This passage does not make sense. It says that the need for "special permission" for clergy to be brought before civil courts was removed in the 1983 revision of Canon Law. Well, let's assume that prior to 1983, there was something in Canon Law that said that no cleric could be brought before a civil court. How did that effect the civil law? It couldn't and it didn't. This book seems to have been written on the basis that the Reformation, the French Revoluton, the European revolutions of the 1800s, the taking away of the Papal States had never occurred.

It was a decision that many of the Catholic hierarchy have since bitterly regretted. In less than two years, the floodgates had opened. Within a decade, the cost of sexual abuse to the Roman Catholic Church at every level was devastating. In the United States alone, since 1984, the financial cost in legal fees and awards to the sexually abused is in excess of $1 billion. The cost to the image and reputation of the Catholic hierarchy is inestimable.

And in the last part of the second paragraph, the reader is given the impression that if it were not for this change in Canon Law in 1983, none of the abuse of children would emerge. That is absolute nonsense.

As I went through the book, much of what it describes has been well documented before, but I started to become suspicious again when I started to put his quotes into Google to see where they might be independently verified. I found about 2 out of ten. Now some of them might be explained by the author himself speaking to the people involved, such as Tom Doyle, or maybe because they are the author's translation of something originally spoken in another language. But he quotes an affidavit by Tom Doyle, but the only instance of it on the internet that appears is in the internet reference for the book. I find this highly unususal, but of course, it is possible that it had not been quoted elsewhere.

But there are several others, from Vatican officials and even from Benedict XVI himself that are not found anywhere else on the internet.

Unfortunately none of his sources for quotes are revealed, and that itself makes it highly suspect.

I'm sorry to put a damp squib on this book, but I think the issue is too important to be relying on bad scholarship.