Well as a matter of fact, rape does require penetration. If there’s no penetration then there’s no rape. There may be other sexual assaults, but no penetration = no rape.
Yep, but that turd is using a technicality to try and make something utterly unacceptable seem not so bad. Weasel words.
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I didn’t murder him, your Honour.
I just… killed him.
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How about we settle on molested?
As in ‘serial, unrepentant, life-ruining child-molester.’
I take it the church would find that description of some of their priests acceptable.
So every killing is a murder?
That may well be right.
Why not be accurate? Why not say that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people have been raped or sexually assaulted by priests?
Either way it’s still ■■■■■■■ with someone
I’m trying to find a middle ground.
If they want to be technical about rape or sexual assault, we’ll just call them child-molesters.
Child Molester, Fr. McEvil.
Is that not acceptable?
What about priests who abused adults?
Yeah, nah, … they’re ok, … 
Like Maria James’s priest?
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Has it actually been established that he killed her? And assuming he did, it was murder, and only indirectly sexual. IIRC, he killed her because she was threatening to expose the fact that he had abused boys in his church, including I think her son.
No, of course not.
But , in the case of my little joke, yes. The speaker is taking the party of a misguided defendant, thinking that the change in a word equals the change in an action - and attempts to evade responsibility for their actions by seeking to exploit a semantic loophole. Just so you know - and I must warn you - spoiler alert - he doesn’t get away with it. I mean - he does, in court. But that’s the Justice System for you. What can I say - he had great lawyers. However - and this is a big one - he doesn’t ‘get away with it’. Almost literally. haha. Because on the way out of the courtroom, he gets capped in the head. Blood splatters everywhere. His high-priced lawyers get their high-priced suits totally spoiled. The ‘capper’ so to speak, then promptly gets arrested. But it’s ok - he, also, pays high-priced lawyers, so all is good.
Oh my - I’ve gone and given it all away!
Soooo…still a child molester?
Anyway, I see the sexual abuse of adults as a different crime. You may not agree, and I don’t have an issue with that.
I don’t know all the facts of that case. I read the article quoted in Captain Jack’s post. And in that article he is not reported as taking the part of the “misguided defendant” or as evading responsibility for his actions. He is quoted as simply saying, quite correctly, that not all cases of sexual abuse by priests were rape. And if you’re saying that all sexual crimes or misconduct should be regarded as rape then I disagree with you, whether they were committed by priests or anyone else. Patting a woman or man or boy or girl on the bottom may be sexual assault, but it’s not rape and should not be treated as rape.
To be clear - I’m not actually saying anything I didn’t actually say. To be clear.
I’ll also say, in the Deckham Justice System, someone putting their digit inside someone holds about the same penalty as putting their ■■■■■ inside someone. Call it what you will.
Now if we’re arguing that there are varying severities of crimes that fall under the same heading - sure, I agree with that. Are you saying that? As an aside - personally, I take no issue with similar crimes being labelled different things - providing they attract similar sentences. Because when it comes down to it - semantics are just not that important to crime victims.
There’s a very interesting discussion to be had about the nomenclature of sex crimes. Germaine Greer recently published a book about it that’s received a lot of publicity and caused a lot of argument. The traditional definition of rape in Western societies was non-consensual penetration of the vagina by the ■■■■■. From the early eighties onwards the definition was widened in various jurisdictions to include other forms of penetration, such as penetration of the ■■■■ and penetration by things other than the ■■■■■, so that in Victoria your example of penetration by a finger is in fact rape. (So, for that matter, is penetration by the tongue.) Whether some of the widening has gone too far is a question on which reasonable minds can and do differ. Personally I think it has, and that it would be better to have different names for different types of conduct. Which does NOT mean that I want to go back to the traditional definition and bring back all the old rules about how trials are conducted.
I’m not sure what all this has to do with the argument I seem to have provoked. Captain Jack made a post quoting, apparently approvingly, an article that criticised a prominent Catholic for pointing out that it was wrong to describe all priests guilty of sexual abuse as rapists, because not all the abuse was rape. I posted that the prominent Catholic was correct: it’s only rape if it includes penetration and not all sexual abuse by priests did involve penetration. Neither the prominent Catholic nor I said that if it wasn’t rape then it didn’t matter or wasn’t serious. FWIW I would say that there can be some instances of non-rape sexual assault that are more serious than some instances of rape, although generally I think rape is more serious than non-rape sexual assault and I think most people would agree with that. And also FWIW I would fully agree that any sexual offence is made worse if the offender is in a position of trust, such as a priest, and the victim is a child or otherwise a vulnerable person.
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There is a story floating arounf about how the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Detroit is transferring all of its real assets to a holding company (held by the archbishop). Such a move is apparently legal, but it would have the unfortunate effect of denying any payments to potential sex abuse victims who might sue the diocese in the wake of the upcoming state and DOJ investigations into the sex abuse scandals. The archdiocese is apparently using donation money from the Roman Catholics in Detroit to pay for an expensive law firm to effect all of the transactions as quietly as possible.
Evil farks.
It goes beyond words how to describe such an organisation as reprehensible as the Catholics.
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