Questions for a priest.

[JimC]

You know fuck all about the justice system in Oz, and fuck all about the case I described. I have met the players in this case, seen the evidence and I repeat, he was clearly guilty. An Australian judge and jury agree with me, so yet again, fuck off.

[rainbow]

You know fuck all about the justice system in Oz, and fuck all about the case I described. I have met the players in this case, seen the evidence and I repeat, he was clearly guilty. An Australian judge and jury agree with me, so yet again, fuck off.

[Rum]

My question would be 'Do you have any idea how good, good sex can be?'

To which he would probably reply..

[Animavore]

My question would be 'Do you have any idea how good, good sex can be?'

To which he would probably reply..

..."Do you?" with an oleaginous smile and a sideward glance at the altar boy.

[mistermack]

I share the doubts about justice being possible after 30 years.
It may be hard to accept, given the nature of the alleged crime, and the current reputation of the alleged perpetrator.
But, just like Seth said, the forensics aren't available.
And unless you have some good corroborating evidence to back your story, it's just one person's word against another.
While it's tempting to imagine that you can tell when someone is lying, it's actually very difficult.
And how can you tell, beyond reasonable doubt, that one person is lying, and another is telling the truth?

I don't know the ins and outs of the case being discussed, but if there's no corroboration, it should be not guilty in every case.

Apart from the difficulty in telling who's lying, you have the fact that nothing has been said, till the Catholic Church started paying out compensation. That in itself is enough reasonable doubt to tilt the verdict to not guilty.
That's not to say it never happened. Just that the evidence doesn't warrant conviction.

Of course, it's entirely possible to persuade a jury. They don't always get it right as far as doubt goes.
And of course, you can get the right result by guesswork. It's a fifty fifty gamble at worst.

The point is though, that the innocent are not meant to be convicted by guesswork
One innocent person getting wrongly convicted is not justified, by some guilty people getting convicted.

[Hermit]

Quite a few priests have been convicted and gaoled for sexual abuse of minors in the past few years. Almost all of the crimes they were found guilty of took place two or more decades ago. The church institutions have resisted attempts to bring the accused among their ranks to court every step of the way and by any means at their disposal, but eventually had to release internal documentation that not only proved the priests' guilt but also that the church institutions were actively impeding efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The process was sort of a bootstrapping one, typically beginning with a financial transaction by way of compensation. The transaction might have occurred in the 1970s or 80s and rather rigorous secrecy requirements were attached as a condition of payment. The victims kept their part of the bargain and remained silent. Everybody else kept silent too, so each victim got the impression that they were either singular cases or one of the very, very few.

Then social activism became more active. Support groups for victims of all sorts of crimes formed. Among them of course were support groups for victims of rape. Those victims now had a channel through which they could communicate with each other. One thing led to another. Legal advice was sought. The various non-disclosure clauses were regarded as an unconscionable part of the contract and the amount of compensation paid as laughably inadequate. After that came to light investigators asked the church institutions what they did with all those priests, chaplains and brothers on whose behalf they had paid out silencing money, and it turned out that they were told to repent and moved to another parish or diocese where they could resume their nefarious activities. At least two of them were actually moved to jobs in the Vatican specifically in order to keep them out of the reach of the arm of the law.

So, yeah, written documentation of guilt exists that not only convinced most of the accused that there was no point in lodging a not guilty plea to the charges brought against them, but also that the various church institutions were forced to admit having systematically bribed, blackmailed hindered in any way they could. The evidence was simply overwhelming and a significant portion of it was actually written and signed by church officials themselves. In Australia this authorship went all the way up to the Catholic Primate of Australia, Cardinal George Pell and overseas seriously incriminating letters were written and signed by a Cardinal who went on to become a Pope.

[mistermack]

Edit to the last post.

I just looked it up, and it appears that the corroboration was very strong in this case. I missed where Jim said that there was corroboration.

It's not like the majority of "Jimmy Saville" cases that we get over here, where it really is nothing but allegations.
Even the POPE was convinced enough to defrock this fucker :

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/ ... 64785.html
I'm assuming it's the same man.

[Hermit]

I just looked it up, and it appears that the corroboration was very strong in this case.

In most cases, not just this one, corroboration, as I mentioned was not just verbal, which is usually attacked on the basis of it being a matter of consisting of no more than one word against that of another. The paper work, signed by the authorities who knowingly shield the criminals among their ranks from prosecution is far more powerful and more difficult to deny incriminating evidence. Such documents also add to the credibility of the victims' allegations.

[Seth]

You know fuck all about the justice system in Oz, and fuck all about the case I described. I have met the players in this case, seen the evidence and I repeat, he was clearly guilty. An Australian judge and jury agree with me, so yet again, fuck off.

Yeah? What evidence? Again, were there dirty underwear with semen stains, or is it all circumstantial 30 year old testimony?

Put up or fuck off.

[Seth]

I share the doubts about justice being possible after 30 years.
It may be hard to accept, given the nature of the alleged crime, and the current reputation of the alleged perpetrator.
But, just like Seth said, the forensics aren't available.
And unless you have some good corroborating evidence to back your story, it's just one person's word against another.
While it's tempting to imagine that you can tell when someone is lying, it's actually very difficult.
And how can you tell, beyond reasonable doubt, that one person is lying, and another is telling the truth?

I don't know the ins and outs of the case being discussed, but if there's no corroboration, it should be not guilty in every case.

Apart from the difficulty in telling who's lying, you have the fact that nothing has been said, till the Catholic Church started paying out compensation. That in itself is enough reasonable doubt to tilt the verdict to not guilty.
That's not to say it never happened. Just that the evidence doesn't warrant conviction.

Of course, it's entirely possible to persuade a jury. They don't always get it right as far as doubt goes.
And of course, you can get the right result by guesswork. It's a fifty fifty gamble at worst.

The point is though, that the innocent are not meant to be convicted by guesswork
One innocent person getting wrongly convicted is not justified, by some guilty people getting convicted.

Yup, exactly. Moreover, being skeptical of such old claims doesn't mean I am in any way supporting anyone who sexually abuses children, it just means that if they can do it to this priest, they can do it to ANYONE if enough people choose to conspire to accuse someone of misdeeds long past. That's exactly why statutes of limitation exist, and statutes of limitation are extremely important to the proper operation and dispensation of justice.

[Seth]

Quite a few priests have been convicted and gaoled for sexual abuse of minors in the past few years. Almost all of the crimes they were found guilty of took place two or more decades ago. The church institutions have resisted attempts to bring the accused among their ranks to court every step of the way and by any means at their disposal, but eventually had to release internal documentation that not only proved the priests' guilt but also that the church institutions were actively impeding efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

And how would such documentation "prove"guilt? Are we talking about written records from the confessional? Are we talking about hearsay evidence of the nature "I heard someone tell someone else that somebody did something nasty?" Were certain higher authorities in the church concealing evidence? Very probably. But the fact remains that it is impossible to get a just verdict without physical forensic evidence of the crime 20 or more years after the fact. Period. All the records in the world "prove" nothing. Those records can (and evidently have been in other cases) tampered with, manufactured, and otherwise rendered useless, or largely useless in proving guilt of a criminal act beyond any reasonable doubt so long after the alleged acts.

Moreover, if a priest can be convicted of a sex offense 20 years after the fact based on "records," then the same metric applies to those who created the "records" in the first place, who are mandatory reporters (at least under US law) who are required by law to report suspected child abuse.

I'm afraid that there is a clear anti-Catholic witch-hunt going on right now with "victims" coming out of the woodwork 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years after the alleged crime occurred for no better reason than that there is a strong anti-Catholic lobby that is both encouraging people to report such alleged abuse and is financially supporting them in order to coerce the church into making huge settlement payments simply to stop the harassment, irrespective of either the truth or provability of the allegations.

Does this mean that no priest ever sexually abused a child? Of course not. But what it does mean is that justice cannot be served, for anyone, by sitting on the evidence for 20 to 50 years, and society should not, as a matter of public policy, allow or acknowledge such complaints to begin with. Giving people a motive to sit on their criminal complaint, perhaps in hopes of a bigger paycheck, is bad public policy in large part because if true, doing so leaves the rest of the public vulnerable to further criminal actions by the alleged perpetrator. Thus, for every person who sat on their complaint for 20 years, even if true, they are morally and ethically responsible for injuries to every other person victimized by the perpetrator.

It is therefore good public policy to tell people "If you are victimized, report it immediately and cooperate with the investigation so that your rights can be protected and vindicated and so that the rest of society can be protected from further criminality. If you choose NOT to report your victimization within a specific statutory period, you will lose your right to do so because society does not sanction such irresponsible social behavior."

It's exactly the same sort of thing that I think it appropriate for inner-city minority residents who refuse to report or cooperate with the police in investigating gang violence in their neighborhoods merely because they dislike the police. If you withhold your cooperation in stopping the violence, then you deserve every bit of criminal violence you are subjected to.

The process was sort of a bootstrapping one, typically beginning with a financial transaction by way of compensation. The transaction might have occurred in the 1970s or 80s and rather rigorous secrecy requirements were attached as a condition of payment. The victims kept their part of the bargain and remained silent. Everybody else kept silent too, so each victim got the impression that they were either singular cases or one of the very, very few.

Nonsense. Making a financial settlement with someone who has made a complaint is commonplace and it happens all the time in business because it is far cheaper to make the settlement than it is to defend the case in court. Doing so DOES NOT prove or even suggest guilt of the underlying charges.

Then social activism became more active. Support groups for victims of all sorts of crimes formed. Among them of course were support groups for victims of rape. Those victims now had a channel through which they could communicate with each other. One thing led to another. Legal advice was sought. The various non-disclosure clauses were regarded as an unconscionable part of the contract and the amount of compensation paid as laughably inadequate.

That presupposes that the settlement was an admission of guilt, which I'm quite sure you'll find is explicitly denied in all such settlements. Non-disclosure clauses are commonplace and ordinary requirements of such settlements as the purpose of the settlement is to put the allegation to rest permanently. If the alleged victim were to be allowed to continue to allege the wrongdoing anyway, what would be the point of settling out of court in the first place. The harm caused by FALSE allegations is as bad as the harm caused by true allegations, and the purpose of a settlement is to cause both parties to remain silent on the matter as a condition of the settlement. No one who took such a settlement was forced or required to do so, they did so with their own full consent and knowledge of the conditions and therefore are rightfully held to that contract.

After that came to light investigators asked the church institutions what they did with all those priests, chaplains and brothers on whose behalf they had paid out silencing money, and it turned out that they were told to repent and moved to another parish or diocese where they could resume their nefarious activities. At least two of them were actually moved to jobs in the Vatican specifically in order to keep them out of the reach of the arm of the law.

Again, this presupposes guilt, which has not been proven and is not proven by the fact that priests are moved around, because priests are moved around all the time, for any number of reasons having nothing to do with allegations of sexual impropriety.

So, yeah, written documentation of guilt exists that not only convinced most of the accused that there was no point in lodging a not guilty plea to the charges brought against them, but also that the various church institutions were forced to admit having systematically bribed, blackmailed hindered in any way they could.

Any person alleging criminal harm need only report it to the police and cooperate with the investigation in order to have their credibility affirmed. Being "bought off" through a confidential settlement proves nothing whatsoever about the actual guilt of the accused, or even about the actual facts of what did or did not occur. It's all inference and supposition based on the perception that the church would not "pay off" alleged victims if they were not actually victims, but this is merely speculation, not fact.

The evidence was simply overwhelming and a significant portion of it was actually written and signed by church officials themselves. In Australia this authorship went all the way up to the Catholic Primate of Australia, Cardinal George Pell and overseas seriously incriminating letters were written and signed by a Cardinal who went on to become a Pope.

What do you mean by "seriously incriminating?" Specifically?

Did the Cardinal state that Priest X sexually abused person Y on Date Z in church A and that the underpants containing the DNA of the victim and semen of the priest are being held in an evidence locker at the Vatican?

Somehow I doubt it.

This is not to say that the Catholic Church was not aware that some priests (according to the Vatican itself, about 4 percent of the 400,000 or so priests) were sexually abusing children. Nor does it excuse or justify concealment of evidence and failure to report by church authorities who were responsible for supervisory oversight of priests. Nor does it suggest that some priests did not in fact victimize children.

But the fact remains that it is impossible to administer justice with respect to one individual accused of a heinous crime 20 to 50 years after the crime is alleged to have occurred without scientifically verifiable forensic evidence that the crime occurred to the alleged victim and that the accused is guilty of that particular and specific crime beyond all reasonable doubt.

And yes, this means that buggering priests are getting away with it, and that's a horrible thing. But the damage to justice and the rights of ALL persons who are accused of crimes is a far, far more horrible thing and allowing society to set precedents by convicting priests of decades-old crimes that the victims thereof refused or failed to report does enormous harm to the rights of everyone else in society to a fair trial and just verdict.

THAT is what scares the hell out of me. What's going on with respect to clerics and decades-old sexual abuse claims is every bit as frightening to me as the Spanish Inquisition was. In both cases, emotion and ideology are driving justice, which is being perverted and denied in a manner that endangers everyone.

[Seth]

Edit to the last post.

I just looked it up, and it appears that the corroboration was very strong in this case. I missed where Jim said that there was corroboration.

It's not like the majority of "Jimmy Saville" cases that we get over here, where it really is nothing but allegations.
Even the POPE was convinced enough to defrock this fucker :

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/ ... 64785.html
I'm assuming it's the same man.

The article you cite provides nothing but personal anecdotes and hearsay from 30 years ago. I see no forensic evidence or proof that the claims are true, just the uncorroborated statements of the alleged victim, who claims to have been paid $80,000 in a confidential settlement, which he has violated. The only thing this seems to point to is that he owes the church $80,000 for violating his agreement to remain silent. I speculate that he just wants a bigger settlement now and thinks he can coerce the church into giving him one.

[Seth]

I just looked it up, and it appears that the corroboration was very strong in this case.

In most cases, not just this one, corroboration, as I mentioned was not just verbal, which is usually attacked on the basis of it being a matter of consisting of no more than one word against that of another. The paper work, signed by the authorities who knowingly shield the criminals among their ranks from prosecution is far more powerful and more difficult to deny incriminating evidence. Such documents also add to the credibility of the victims' allegations.

Only if they specify that a crime was committed and that the evidence is being concealed. Do they do that? I doubt it, but I'm willing to examine the documents you refer to if you're willing to post them.

Anything else is rampant speculation that proves nothing whatsoever.

[Ian]

[Hermit]

Quite a few priests have been convicted and gaoled for sexual abuse of minors in the past few years. Almost all of the crimes they were found guilty of took place two or more decades ago. The church institutions have resisted attempts to bring the accused among their ranks to court every step of the way and by any means at their disposal, but eventually had to release internal documentation that not only proved the priests' guilt but also that the church institutions were actively impeding efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

And how would such documentation "prove"guilt?

By being conclusive enough for the accused to plead guilty rather than fight the accusation and by the church institutions having no choice but to admit that they have systematically shielded them from being prosecuted for their crimes by any means they could.