Catholic Church 'facilitated' abuse
The Catholic Church in Ballarat ‘effectively facilitated’ child sexual abuse by leaving known paedophiles in ministry and was ‘un-Christlike’, former Ballarat Bishop Peter Connors conceded on Monday.
The Catholic Church in Ballarat ‘effectively facilitated’ child sexual abuse by leaving known paedophiles in ministry and was ‘un-Christlike’, former Ballarat Bishop Peter Connors conceded on Monday.
A leading German Catholic bishop has spoken of the “perfidiousness” of the way Catholic priests had used their power and authority to groom children for sexual abuse.
Bishop Stephen Ackermann of Trier, the German bishops’ spokesman on matters of clerical sexual abuse, said he was “shattered” by a report into calls to a special hotline set up in 2010. He presented the report last week and said he was deeply ashamed about what it contained.
He said he had been particularly repelled by the way the perpetrators had built up their victims’ confidence in them in a calculating way before abusing them.
“I was particularly shaken by the fact that priests had disgracefully abused the confidence of children who were probably seeking their help in a difficult situation.”
The wickedness was compounded, he said, “since priests already have a higher credit of trust. It is truly abhorrent when they then abuse that trust in this way”. Nothing at all could “whitewash” the findings, he said, which would be taken into account in the development of abuse prevention strategies.
The hotline was called by 8,500 people in the two years it was open. The overwhelming majority of victims (90 per cent) were male, Andreas Zimmermann, the expert responsible for analysing the results, told the Catholic news agency KNA.
The abuse by priests, he said, had certain “specifically Catholic” characteristics. Thus priests had used their moral authority and the psychological effect of rites like confession or prayer in order to gain power over children, even to the point of telling them that the assaults were an expression of “God’s special love” for them.
(Source: secularism.org.uk)
‘In Saudi Arabia an Islamic cleric who admits to raping, torturing and killing his daughter received a fine but no jail time for his heinous crime. Saudi media reports that the father paid 200,000 riyals ($50,000 US) in “blood money” for his crime, but will not be required to serve any time in prison.’
What is this shit.
‘Reports indicate the father had doubted his five-year old daughter’s virginity.
Lama al-Ghamdi died last October. The amount her father was fined for the brutal rape, torture and murder, would have been doubled if Lama had been male. In Saudi Arabia, Islamic law is interpreted to be that a father cannot be executed for murdering his children, nor can husbands be executed for murdering their wives.’
What the fuck is THIS shit.
Saudi Arabia, you fail at basic fucking human decency.
Trigger warning in the article for graphic talk of the horrific attack on this child.
It’s 9.30am on a Sunday, and the mood inside the school building in Bandung, Indonesia, is festive. Mothers in headscarves and bright lipstick chat and eat coconut cakes. Javanese music thumps from an assembly hall. There are 400 people crammed into the primary school’s ground floor. It’s hot, noisy and chaotic, and almost everyone is smiling.
Twelve-year-old Suminah is not. She looks like she wants to punch somebody. Under her white hijab, which she has yanked down over her brow like a hoodie, her eyes have the livid, bewildered expression of a child who has been wronged by people she trusted. She sits on a plastic chair, swatting away her mother’s efforts to placate her with a party cup of milk and a biscuit. Suminah is in severe pain. An hour earlier, her genitals were mutilated with scissors as she lay on a school desk.
I’m not posting the whole thing, because fuck.
Warning for graphic details about FGM and what is basically Child Abuse.
It may not have originated as an Islamic practice, and it may not be something from the Koran - but the Islamic government in power in Indonesia is legitimising FGM and allowing it to continue, it’s just tied in too deeply now.
~Mooglets
A five-year old Saudi girl has died after she was tortured by her father, described as a “prominent” religious scholar who often preaches on numerous satellite television channels.
Lamaa breathed her last breath in an intensive care unit of a hospital in the Saudi capital Riyadh a few days ago, after weeks of suffering from broken arms, a skull fracture and head bruises, her mother told Al Arabiya.“He used all sorts of torture and abuse against Lamaa,” the girl’s mother said, now divorced from her brutal husband.
Jesus FUCKING christ
Is this guys name going to be released ever? And his fucked up ‘reasons/excuses’?
What was she - possessed perhaps? SHE WAS FUCKING FIVE.
~Mooglets
A mother and father in Pakistani-administered Kashmir have been arrested for murdering their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid “in the name of an honour”, police say.
They say it is one of the first such cases of its kind in the region.
Honour killings happen when mostly male family members believe the victim has brought dishonour to their community.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 943 women were killed in honour killings last year.
That represented an increase of more than 100 from 2010.
But such happenings are rare in parts of Kashmir under the control of Pakistan.
Police say that the incident took place in a remote village in the southern district of Kotli. They say that the case was brought to their attention by the couple’s eldest daughter.
It will not be clear until Friday - when the parents are due in court - if they admit or deny murder charges.
‘Suspicious’
Local police officer Raja Tahir Ayub told the BBC that the girl’s father became enraged when he saw his daughter “looking at two boys” riding on a motorcycle outside their home on Monday.
Police say that the parents suspected she was having illicit relations with one of the pair.
“He took his daughter inside, beat her up and then poured acid over her with the help of his wife,” Mr Ayub said.
Police say that that the couple did not take their daughter to hospital until the next morning, and she succumbed to her injuries on Tuesday evening.
The head of the state-run district hospital in Kotli - Muhammad Jahangir - confirmed the death.
He said that the girl was brought to hospital in a serious condition with more than 35% burns.
“There was no way she could survive,” he said.
Police say that the dead girl’s married elder sister informed them of the alleged incident on Wednesday morning.
They say that she became suspicious when her parents did not allow mourners to see the face of the dead girl before she was buried - otherwise a normal practise in Kashmiri Muslim society.
In March the government of Pakistani-administered Kashmir made acid attacks a criminal offence punishable with life imprisonment.
OMG, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
~Mooglets
Mentally ill patients suffer from severe abuse at psychiatric hospitals and so-called healing centres in Ghana, with many chained to trees and even denied water, a human rights group said Tuesday.
Some 1,000 residents live in squalid, overcrowded quarters in Ghana’s three psychiatric hospitals, according to Human Rights Watch. Patients face physical and verbal abuse, and some are given electroshock therapy without their consent, said the group’s report.
The abuse is even worse in healing centres known as “prayer camps,” which lack government oversight, it said.
Thousands of mentally disabled people in the West African nation are sent to the camps, usually by their family members to be “cured” by self-proclaimed prophets through miracles, prayer and fasting. In most prayer camps, residents are only allowed to leave when the prophet deems them healed.
At the Mount Horeb Prayer Camp earlier this year, about 120 of the 135 residents there were chained either to trees or to the walls inside cell-like rooms 24 hours a day, sometimes for months at a time, Human Rights Watch said. Most of the chains measured only two meters long.
“People had to bathe, defecate, urinate, change sanitary towels, eat, and sleep on the spot where they were chained,” the group reported.
Medi Ssengooba, Finberg fellow at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors, urged Ghana’s government to end abuses against people with mental disabilities.
“The conditions in which many people with mental disabilities live in Ghana are inhuman and degrading,” Ssengooba said.
Ssengooba said researchers were disappointed to find the level of human rights abuse against the mentally ill in Ghana, which is one of the most progressive countries in Africa in terms of good governance and leadership.
Ghana’s 2012 Mental Health Act went into effect in June and allows people with disabilities to challenge their detention in psychiatric hospitals. But the law does not apply to the prayer camps operating outside of government control.
Many families send their mentally ill family members to prayer camps because there are very few mental health providers in Ghana and almost all of them are concentrated near Accra, the capital.
Besides the three psychiatric institutions around Accra, Ssengooba said there are only four private facilities in the country and they are expensive. And in many rural areas, people equate mental illness with demonic possession, and only think there is a spiritual cure, Ssengooba said.
Yet many mentally ill people face bondage, near starvation, and an inability to challenge their confinement at the camps.
One man with a mental disability at Mount Horeb Prayer Camp told Human Rights Watch he was chained for one year without any treatment. He said: “I want to go home, but they don’t discharge me and they don’t give me any reason.”
Doris Appiah, the treasurer of the Mental Health Society of Ghana, said advocates aren’t asking the government to close the camps but instead to monitor them.
Appiah, 57, was a medical student in her early 20s when she was committed to a mental hospital with severe depression. After escaping from the hospital, her family put her in a prayer camp near the town of Kumasi, north of Accra, hoping for a quick fix.
She stayed in prayer camps for five years, and was tied to a tree with rope. She is now an advocate for mentally ill people in Ghana.
“People are sick and they are not blamed for being sick, but you are mentally ill and it’s your fault. And we hear it over and over again. People say mentally ill people are a liability and we are a menace to society,” she said. “When you have mental illness you are considered sub-human, and that is the truth. You are carried places and things are done to you.”
She said minimum standards at prayer camps need to be set by the government, and people in Ghana need to be educated about the causes of mental illness.
“Whether you are in chains or not, being mentally ill is like being incarcerated,” Appiah said.
TW: Description of forced sexual contact/penetration/sexual assault in 7th paragraph.
A Virginia woman who claims a priest sexually abused her while performing an exorcism is suing a Catholic diocese and an anti-abortion group for $5.3 million in damages.
The woman claims the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer abused her between April 2008 and September 2010, according to the suit filed in Virginia’s Arlington County Circuit Court.
The suit names as defendants the Catholic Diocese of Arlington and its bishop, Paul Loverde, as well as the anti-abortion group Human Life International and HLI Endowment Inc.
Euteneuer had been transferred from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, to serve as president of Human Life International and HLI Endowment in 2000. He resigned in August 2010.
The woman, identified in the suit as Jane Doe, said she signed an “agreement for spiritual help” with Euteneuer in February 2008 because “she believed she was in desperate need of the rite of exorcism,” the suit said.
Euteneuer repeatedly hugged, kissed and groped the woman, and said he was “blowing the Holy Spirit into her,” according to the suit, which was filed on June 19.
Euteneuer told the woman to undress on about six occasions, touched and kissed her body, and put his finger in her vagina, court documents said.
The suit alleges that Loverde and the Diocese of Arlington knew Euteneuer would perform an exorcism on the woman.
Asked about the suit, the Diocese of Arlington said Euteneuer had never been its employee. He worked for Human Life International, an independent company, subject to his bishop in Palm Beach, it said.
“Rev. Euteneuer was not authorized to perform an exorcism on the plaintiff,” it said in a statement, adding that the diocese had its own exorcist.
The woman’s attorney, Demetrios Pikrallidas, said Euteneuer was not named as a defendant because he had reached a private settlement with her.
Dianne Laubert, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Palm Beach, said Euteneuer had been recalled when the allegations surfaced. His “priestly faculties” were withdrawn and he can no longer celebrate Mass or administer sacraments, she said.
The woman is seeking $5 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages.
Euteneuer’s behavior “was never within the scope of his employment with” Human Life International, the anti-abortion group said in a statement. “We intend to vigorously defend HLI from the false accusations made against it.”
One day, we as a human race, are actually going finally collectively have enough of Catholicism’s bullshit and believers will stop giving their money to the Church.
~Mooglets
Pedro Hernandez confessed last week to the 1979 murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz in lower Manhattan. While the admission was the first by Hernandez, 51, confessed to authorities, it may not have been for members of St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in Camden, to which he belonged, according to a report by the NY Times.
Wow. Just… wow.
~Mooglets
It is a poison that annihilates relationships, breaks down family bonds and destroys communities. Despite the social damage, witch-hunts are still commonplace in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and here in South Africa. MANDY DE WAAL speaks to Nigerian humanist and witchcraft researcher, Leo Igwe, and explores Africa’s witchscape.
The Vatican is reported to be investigating seven priests of the Legion of Christ order in connection with allegations of child abuse.
In a statement to the AP news agency, the Mexican order said seven cases had been referred to the Vatican’s department that deals with sex crimes.
The Legion of Christ’s founder, Marcial Maciel, sexually abused many boys and young men over a period of 30 years.
He was disciplined by the Vatican in 2006 over the abuse.
One of the cases being investigated in relation to the seven priests is recent, while others date back several decades, the order said in the statement given to AP.
The investigation will be handled by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that investigates allegations of sexual abuse.
While it is under way, the suspects will be kept away from children.
‘Immoral acts’
“Over the past few years, in several countries, the major superiors of the Legion of Christ have received some allegations of gravely immoral acts and more serious offences… committed by some legionaries,” AP quoted the statement as saying.
The order has previously insisted that Fr Maciel was an isolated case.
The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Rome says that if these new allegations are proven it will show that the rot in the order had spread beyond its disgraced leader.
In 2009, the Church launched an investigation into the order after Fr Maciel, who died in 2008, was also revealed to have fathered a daughter by a mistress.
A year later, Pope Benedict XVI appointed an envoy to implement a complete overhaul of the Legion of Christ, saying it had to be “purified”.
The previous pope, John Paul II, long held up Fr Maciel as a model to the faithful, despite persistent allegations of sexual abuse, which were later proven.
In recent years, the Church has been rocked by cases of paedophilia by priests, and accusations that it did not do enough to investigate the allegations.
A five-year-old girl is thought to have become the UK’s youngest victim of forced marriage.
She was one of 400 children to receive assistance from the government’s Forced Marriage Unit in the last year.
The figures have emerged as the public consultation into criminalising forced marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland comes to an end.
Amy Cumming, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit, said 29% of the cases it dealt with last year involved minors.
“The youngest of these was actually five years old, so there are children involved in the practice across the school age range,” she said.
To protect the child, the authorities have not disclosed details of the case or where the marriage took place.
But the case comes as no surprise to the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO), which deals with more than 100 cases of forced marriage a year.
“We have had clients who are in their very early teens, 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds, the youngest case we had was nine years old,” said IKWRO campaigns officer Fionnuala Murphy.
Now the consultation on forced marriage has come to an end, IKWROs hope it will become a criminal offence.
“Our organisation is pro-criminalisation because we believe that it will empower victims to know that this is a crime, to stand up to their parents and to stand up for their own rights and it will enable them to come forward and seek help and say what’s happening to me is wrong.”
Violent abuse
Author Sameem Ali is all too familiar with the trauma of being a child bride - she was only 13 years old when she was taken to Pakistan by her mother on a holiday.
As a teenager she was excited about the trip, but when she arrived at the family’s ancestral village, she discovered she was to be married to a man twice her age, whom she had never met.
“The whole family turned up with an imam and they forced me into this marriage. I didn’t really understand what was happening at the time.
“I was only a child. There was no way I could say no. There was no support there whatsoever.”
Eight months later she returned to the UK after suffering months of violent abuse.
“I was brought back to this country when I was 14 years old and pregnant,” she said.
She eventually fled the relationship and is now happily married with two children and helps other young people at risk.
However, Sameem is concerned that making forced marriage a criminal offence will deter victims from speaking out.
“I think it will be detrimental to the victim. The victims will stop coming forward, because nobody will want to point the finger at their parents,” she explained.
“The young person will not come forward if it’s a criminal offence. They will not stand up in court and testify against their parents.”
Law change
In 2011 the Forced Marriage Unit helped deal with around 1,500 cases, but many more are thought to go unreported.
Forced Marriage Protection Orders were introduced in 2008 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007.
A potential victim, friend or police can apply for an order aimed at protecting an individual through the courts. Anyone found to have breached one can be jailed for up to two years for contempt of court, although this is classed as a civil offence.
The prime minister wants the law to go further and ordered a public consultation on making it a criminal offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to force a person to marry against their will.
In Scotland the breach of a forced marriage protection order is also a criminal offence in Scotland punishable by prisons.
Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said the government would now look at all the arguments.
“We will now consider all of those views and responses to the consultation before we make a decision on the best way to protect vulnerable people.
“We are determined, working closely with charities and other organisations doing a tremendous amount in this area, to make forced marriage a thing of the past.”
A decision is expected to be announced later this year.
This is an intersectional issue - both religious and cultural. Hence it’s appearance on this tumblog.
~Mooglets
Catholic League president Bill Donohue issick and tired of coddling rape victims. That’s why he supports efforts by lawyers for two Missouri priests accused of sexual abuse to cripple an organization that advocates on behalf of the victims of pedophile priests – Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
SNAP is not involved in the Missouri litigation, but the priests’ lawyersare seeking“more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.”Donohue thinks this effort, which seeks to bankrupt and embarrass the organization, is justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”Donohue went further, telling theNew York Times’Laurie Goodsteinthat the Catholic Church “has been too quick to write a check” and could save money “in the long run if we fought them one by one” – them being rape victims.He also claimed that the bishops are reaching the conclusion that “they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough.” “We don’t need altar boys,” he continued, as only Bill Donohue could.Donohue may just be projecting though, or at least speaking out of turn. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Goodstein thatDonohue was wrong: “‘There is no national strategy,’ she said, and there was no meeting where legal counsel for the bishops decided to get more aggressive.”Meanwhile SNAP is resisting subpoenas in the Missouri cases, but national director David Clohessy hasalready been deposed.He told Goodstein that the deposition was “not a fishing expedition,” instead it was “a fishing, crabbing, shrimping, trash-collecting, draining the pond expedition.” He said the real motive is to “harass and discredit and bankrupt SNAP, while discouraging victims, witnesses, whistle-blowers, police, prosecutors and journalists from seeking our help.”As for Donohue, he really can’t seem to help himself. He may have been an asset for right-wing bishops at some point in the past, but now he’s a liability. He attacked rape victims without denouncing pedophile priests, and then dropped in an altar boy quip. It’s almost as if he’s in the fight to amuse himself, not to win any arguments or friends.But we probably shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Donohue has a history of this sort of thing.
A minor 16 years Moroccan decided to end her life in Larache (North of Morocco) after being forced to marry her rapist, ten years older than she, and by the mistreatment to which she was subjected.
Says daily local “to Massae” in its edition of this Tuesday, last Saturday the girl decided to eat a rat poison in the House of the family of the husband, desperate for the ill-treatment to which he was subjected by this and her husband, as well as the rejection of his own father to receive at home.
The history dates back to a year ago when the family of the victim deposited a complaint with the Attorney general of Tangier accusing the perpetrator of sexual violation, points daily.
After an intervention by acquaintances of the two families, was decided to marry the girl to her rapist with the authorization of the judge.
This type of marriage is imposed by the force of tradition, especially in rural areas to safeguard the honour of the young and “resolve” the damage caused after the violation.
Also, according to the Moroccan penal code the rapist is exempt from punishment if he admits to marry his victim.
Claims of feminist movements include the amendment of this article, according to Hafida Elbaz, Director of the women’s solidarity Association, it is a “trap” to evade sanctions.
Rhode Island: Teen atheist Jessica Ahlquist has faced a blizzard of taunts, abuse, and threats of physical violence after a federal court ruled a controversial Christian prayer banner hanging in her high school auditorium must come down.
On Friday, Rhode Island police began investigating the threats.
Jessica Ahlquist has been the public face behind a much publicized battle to remove the unconstitutional prayer banner displayed at Cranston High School West. Jessica, a student at Cranston High, has faced prejudice, adversity, and religious intolerance from Christian extremists in her fight to remove the unconstitutional prayer banner.
The abuse and threats have only intensified since a federal judge ordered the “immediate removal” of the controversial Christian prayer banner located in the auditorium of Cranston High School West.William Hamby, Atlanta Atheism Examiner, offers examples of the abuse and threats being directed against Jessica via social media. The following is but a small sample:How does it feel to be the most hated person in RI right now? Your a puke and a disgrace to the human race.
shes not human shes garbage
I think everyone should just fight this girl
F**k Jessica alquist I’ll drop anchor on her face
Let’s all jump that girl who did the banner
But for real somebody should jump this girl
I want to punch the girl in the face
I hope there’s lots of banners in hell when your rotting in there you atheist f**k
jessica alquist is gonna get punched in the face
Screenshots capturing some of the abuse and threats directed towards Jessica can be seen at Jesus Fetus Fajita Fishsticks.By standing up for what she believes is right, Jessica is paying a price. Yet despite the abuse from those who call themselves Christians, Jessica is not alone. Many in the secular community have rallied to Jessica’s defense. And many Americans appreciate Jessica’s courage in standing up for the the separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
For those interested, the Friendly Atheist is conducting aJessica Ahlquist college scholarship fundraiser.
