By all accounts a disgusting sleaze bag. All on the basis of untested allegations made after his death, of course, but there are enough of them and their nature and the surrounding corroborative and circumstantial evidence to make that pretty clear.
Any one who abuses children should fark off and rot in jail. Any organisation that systematically covers up this abuse should also fark off, be held legally accountable (including anyone involved in any part of the cover up) and punished. The fact that any institution hides behind being a legal non entity to protect their money is cowardice and moral hypocracy at its finest.
I think we can all agree on that.
A certain well known cardinal is one of these people. The Catholic Church is one of these organisations.
This isn’t opinion, this is established legal facts.
HAP was excessively generalising, but there is no doubt that there are a few religious organisations that have a very disturbing track record of pedo activity.
Don’t want to get too involved in the argument, but will say the whole idea of a good cover up is as few people as possible know about the cover up. A good cover up works because everyone has something to lose by having whatever is being covered up exposed.
So it is difficult to blame every member of the church for the illdoings of a few.
Now that the cover ups have been brought down, we can judge the organisations on their responses.
Well in that case I think you are wrong. People still trust the salvos. Maybe not so much around kids homes, but I don’t think the overall view has changed.
Previously, the Catholic Church had invoked the controversial Ellis defence, which allowed the organisation to succeed in all claims of sexual assault against it. This was because the Catholic Church did not technically exist as a legal entity.
The “Melbourne Response Program” was instead set up by the church — its architect was Cardinal George Pell. This system meant that those accusing the church of childhood abuse could not receive payments through the court, but would be paid out by the church. For victims to receive any compensation from the church, they were required to waive their right to sue.
According to Pell, the payments were made “based on justice.”
Such as the fact that the Melbourne Response was set up voluntarily, and was the first acknowledgement by the Catholic Church anywhere in the entire world that people had been harmed by Catholic clergy; that it was pushed through by Pell against opponents within the Church who opposed any sort of acknowledgement at all; that the requirement that anyone receiving compensation had to waive all other rights and keep everything confidential was dropped after less than two years; and that something like 95% of all the claims made through that system have been upheld and compensation paid.
The Bretheren are a front. Priorities are money, family a distant second and third some sort of religious acknowledgememt. Arrogant cnts to boot.
It wasn’t abuse as such but the word was that the brides to be where broken in by a dirty old “stud” the night before, so they had a rough idea of what to when they removed their long Levi dresses. The chastity belt had already been picked obviously.
They are a closed community so they didn’t talk to the outside world so who knows what the frig they did. Be a good ■■■■■ though.