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keith,he may have been lying Keith Rasputin wrote:

> I've probably mentioned this before. I used to know a guy in
> sixth form college and by the way he talked and the interest he
> showed he was very interested in young girls aged 12-14 years
> old.
>
> When he was in his late 20s he told me lots of stories about
> how many 14 year old baby sitters he had fucked since the time
> when I first knew him. The scenario would be, that the car
> would be leaving and they would be up the stairs asap...
>
> I even suspected that his religious parents used to find him
> 'girlfriends' via their (Baptist) church and he was also
> involved in youth groups. The thing about paedophiles is that
> they are the people you would suspect last, they have good
> social skills and are acceptable people to be around. I think
> they really do know that what they are doing is a real crime
> and in his case his arrogance was shown by bragging about his
> conquests to me.
>
> If you are convicted of any kind of paedophilia (not internet
> porn) then you should be chemically castrated, end of story.
> The only way to render these people harmless is to rob them of
> their sex drive, for the pervert I knew that's about all he had
> going for him.
>
>

"PC" seems to be a general term of abuse that means anything you want it to mean. I've never met anyone who actually claims to be "PC" - it's all in the eye of the beholder.

This was another load of unsubstantiated innuendo from Panorama. The individual presenting it clearly had agendas. One of the allegations dates back 40 years and I doubt whether the alleged victim would convince a jury to convict anyone. Nevertheless it is fairly obvious that there are a substantial number in the priesthood with paedophile tendancy and the Catholic Church should be doing more to root them out. However that was known already and Panorama failed to make the case any stronger. There attempt to blame Joseph Ratzinger for the situation failed utterly. It would be easy to suggest some form of anti Catholic conspiracy on the part of the Panorama team but, taking into account the unproven allegations regarding football transfers, it is more likely to be the death throes of a programme past its sell-by date.

You may be right Steve, but what Keith says has the ring of credibility to me.

I didn't see the prog - and given the libel laws it would have to be fairly "woolly" to get past the BBC's lawyers.

I can speak from real experience. I was brought up in a strict Catholic household, went to a Catholic Grammar School run by Religious Brothers (not ordained clergy) and have dozens of friends who share my experiences.

Child abuse was (and possibly still is - I don't know, I keep as far away from the RC church as possible) always in evidence. The problem was that parents were in awe of the clergy and religious and lay teachers. Say anything and YOU were in real trouble. THEY could do no wrong.

I have seen and know from friends of many cases that were pushed under the carpet. The more powerful the Church, such as in Ireland, Italy and many of the working class areas of the UK in the first three quarters of the 20th century, the more they got away with it.

The abuse wasn't always sexual. Severe beatings were seen to be acceptable for the most trivial "offences" at school. Some teachers (religious and lay) were real sadists but their actions were either condoned or overlooked by the same Church authorities that overlooked or condoned sexual abuse. Don't forget that, in the UK, most Catholic secondary schools were responsible to the Church.

But what can be expected of an organisation that denies grown adults their sexual expression by demanding absolute celibacy?

What really pisses me and many others is that the priests who committed sexual abuse (and not just with kids but sometimes with vulnerable single women in their parishes) harangued their parishoners from the pulpit and in the confessional, condemning any form of sexual activity not aimed at procreation and trying to terrify 13 and 14 year old boys with the threat of torment in Hell for exploring their sexuality through masturbation.

The hypocrisy is just as bad as the abuse and even if abuse comes to light after 50 years and the guilty party is 95, they should be jailed .

My ex was at a Catholic school run mostly by nuns and although she didn't see any sexual abuse, the physical abuse was widespread. Judging from her accounts, you have to be a complete sadist to become a nun.

I agree what you say about the timescales. Someone who was seriously abused as a child will feel the repercussions for their whole lives and that's why child abuse is so serious. People never really recover, they only learn to move on with their lives. So someone who offended 50 years ago still needs to face punishment if a case can be made against them.

The Daily Mail would try and make out that the immediate post war years were idyllic with little or no paedophile activity. I strongly suspect that your view that it was as common then as it is now, if not more so, is correct. In the fifties a child claiming to have been abused by someone in authority, be it priest, teacher or someone else, would probably not have been listened to, and in the unlikely event that the person responsible for the assault was prosecuted, would be aquitted as there would not have been any forensic evidence and they would have been given the benefit of the doubt. The problem of bringing paedophiles to account now for crimes they committed decades ago is that present day juries are reluctant to convict now for sex crimes without good forensic evidence and clearly that would not be available. Before forensics, courts would convict on good circumstantial evidence or on the say so of a really credible witness. That is not necessarily the case now.

I can certainly relate to your ex's experience. A close female friend of mine had virtually identical experiences when at a catholic school run by nuns. The thing is it is difficult to see what these people achieved by physical abuse. If the idea was to produce a future generation of good catholics, I would suggest they failed!

DavidS wrote:

> I can certainly relate to your ex's experience. A close female
> friend of mine had virtually identical experiences when at a
> catholic school run by nuns. The thing is it is difficult to
> see what these people achieved by physical abuse. If the idea
> was to produce a future generation of good catholics, I would
> suggest they failed!

Yeah - girls out of Catholic schools shag like rabbits. !happy!