Community | September 14, 2009 | 33 comments

Italy grapples with priest sex abuse

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/italy-grapples-with-pries_n_285428.html

Image
singrrr
VERONA, Italy — It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest's bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.

When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel "as if I were dead." This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.

For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.

A yearlong Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by Web sites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.

The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or euro1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) due to victims in Ireland.

However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and – slowly – within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.

The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States – where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million – more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.

The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the U.S. and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students' speech impairments, for example, made the priests' admonition "never to tell" all the more easy to enforce.
In this predominantly Roman Catholic country, the church enjoys such an exalted status that the pope's pronouncements frequently top the evening news, without any critical commentary. Even those with anti-clerical views acknowledge the important role the church plays in education, social services and caring for the poor.

As a result, few dare to criticize it, including the mainstream independent and state-run media. In addition, there's a certain prudishness in small-town Italy, where one just doesn't speak about sex, much less sex between a priest and a child.

"It's a taboo on top of a taboo," said Jacqueline Monica Magi, who prosecuted several pedophilia cases in Italy before becoming a judge. "This is the provincialism of Italy."

Breaking the conspiracy of silence, 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement alleging that sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Current Tonight,   Onofre Poonin
  2. tags:
    News,  Religion,  World News
  3.     
    |

33 comments // Italy grapples with priest sex abuse

  • Ragan
    • 0
      Ragan  

    • God was a manmade creation to excuse the crimes of mankind. Idiots set on jury panels to decide the guilt or innocence of a defendant and when a man is falsely imprisoned fopr ten ot twenty years, the Judge and jury can always say it was Gods will. What a joke. Even mans judge and peers are entirely idiotic and have no right to pass judgement on another. When a man is seen and known to commit the crime then he should be punished accordingly and no jury is needed. and no god is needed to make a wrong a right.

    • 2 years ago
  • EtVoila
  • Agent_Alpha
  • idealist
  • furryjenn
  • Ragan
  • maizein
    • 0
      maizein  

    • But... wait! God must have a plan for those kids... and for everyone that has suffered sexual abuse in His house(s)...

      We may not understand it now but there's a reason for that... and when Jesus returns it will all be clear: It was all part of Gods plan!

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
  • think_free
    • 0
      think_free  

    • I think this in and of itself proves there is no 'god'.

      Well, the 'god' that the church worships.

      Harming another for personal pleasure is the sickest of crimes.

      Love is god, and the church obviously hasn't grasped that.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  

    • my attitude on this is not that the church is corrupt but that t is made of people and people are imperfect. If one considers priesthood to simply be a profession like any other and divorce religion from the issue one can compare it to other professions with similar problems.

      Security jobs draw bullies.
      Fire fighting jobs draw pyromaniacs.
      Teaching jobs draw pedophiles.
      Mortician jobs draw necrophiliacs.
      Entertainment jobs draw narcissists.
      Unaffiliated preacher (as opposed to the priesthood) jobs draw charismatic sociopaths and Charles Manson types.

      The problem the priesthood has is similar to that of any other which grants authority. People who wish to abuse that authority become attracted to it. The trick is the same as any similar profession uses which is to recognize this as a potential problem and modify hiring practices to control it.

      The priesthood as compared to other christian groups does have a uniqueness in that due to their celibacy requirement they are going to attract people uncomfortable with or running from their own sexuality. And this has consequences. The mere recognition of this should help somewhat.

    • 2 years ago
  • maizein
  • trut
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  
    • bombastinator:

      @ trut
      Artists. And people who like things that go zap and have flames shoot out of course. There's a fairly large overlap.

      Welders hold authority over the metal and tools they work with, not people per se.
      Honestly I have no real idea. Most of the welders I know are either artists or build classic cars in their time.

    • 2 years ago
  • samthesixth
  • BridgetAnne1
  • photochick
    • 0
      photochick  

    • I wonder how many suicides these horrible pedophiles are responsible for???? Men of God....what a disgusting name for them........I hope they rot in the worst of prisons!

    • 2 years ago
  • idealist
  • NeutronActivation
    • 0
      NeutronActivation  

    • "Suffer the little children to come unto me"!

      This just goes to show how wide spread baby raping is the church. Did the Vatican ever decide just how many kids a priest can rape before it became a crime in their eyes?

      What other organization on the planet is given the luxury of deciding how many times they can rape children before they have to report it? Could you imagine Boy Scouts officials moving pedophiles around to hide child molesting scout leaders without a MAJOR FBI investigation ending in long prison sentences?

      Cardinal Law (US) should be saying mass in prison for the rest of his life along with any other officials and priest involved. If any place on the planet could use more priest it is a prison and they'd get all the sex they could handle. The same goes for the pope in his own backyard you can be sure if he went to prison for looking the other way the next pope would find a way to control the problem.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
  • NeutronActivation
    • 0
      NeutronActivation  
    • NeutronActivation:

      Sorry, the church is made of flesh and blood therefore your imperfect human model applies to it too! making it imperfect by definition. You can't just conveniently ignore the fact that the church is built out of imperfect parts. Without people the buybull is just paper and churches are just buildings. I'm sure a raped child is comforted by the fact that there are bad people in disguise everywhere but it doesn't excuse the church's inaction until public opinion forced their hand.

      If the church thought it was so wrong why did it look the other way for so long. A major aggravating factor was the actions of Catholic bishops to keep these crimes secret and to reassign the accused to other parishes in positions where they had continued unsupervised contact with youth, thus allowing the abusers to continue their crime. Cardinal Bishops are some of the church's highest officials next to the pope.

      Cardinal Law submitted his resignation on December 13, 2002. In a statement and apology Cardinal Law said, "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness". He remained cardinal, which is a separate appointment, and participated in the 2005 papal conclave.

      WOO HOO! way to punish a criminal pope-a-dope! Wow, I guess the church does care!

      If high level Boy Scout officials were caught hiding pedophiles and moving offending members to other areas they wouldn't just let them resign nor would they be allowed to participate in official functions after their disgrace! It would be a national news scandal with jail time for ALL involved. Not only that Boy Scouts of America would fold like a newspaper.

    • 2 years ago
  • EmperorThan
    • 0
      EmperorThan  

    • "Here ya go Italy." *hands over manual*

      -"You Americans have a manual for priest sex scandals?!?!"

      "You don't?!?"

      -"No we trust our priests commitment to God..."

      *Americans start laughing hysterically*

    • 2 years ago
  • evilliberalbastard
  • CreditFigaro
    • 0
      CreditFigaro  

    • -YAAAAWN-

      This is old news. We all know priests do this... it's the parents' fault for letting their kids go into a dark room with someone reputed for molesting children.

      Catholic parents ought to be held accountable on some level.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  
    • CreditFigaro:

      I disagree. What is new is not that the catholic church has a problem with this but that the problem is being acknowledged not only outside the United States but in Italy itself. many doubters have claimed that priest molestations incidents were not occurring outside the US and were only occurring inside because we are a fundamentally debauched and corrupt nation.

    • 2 years ago
  • idealist
  • CreditFigaro
    • 0
      CreditFigaro  
    • CreditFigaro:

      It is not my obligation to try to prove something to doubters. If you recognize something so prevalent as this and assume that it's not everywhere because of the good of the people in the position (bwahhahahaha), you are a moron.

      These people live in a world where it's not OK to have anything to do with anything sexual, and they express it in messy ways. It's a sad truth of humanity. Since we were made in God's image (right?) logic would suggest that natural impulses of sexuality are healthy, normal, and godly.

    • 2 years ago
  • bombastinator
  • RAWCUT
  • Ragan
    • 0
      Ragan  

    • In the days of the Empire building Rome, The Emperors all had their young boys instead of mistresses. So for the catholic church and the vatican to foster young boy abuses is and inheirited trait that must exist throughout the reaches of Vatican power and authority. With the high numbers of Sexual abuses in the Congress and the Senate, one would think we were living back in the days of the caesars in Rome. Washington and Rome have more in common that Judicial law. Cicero would have a lifetime of cases here. Years ago I remember seeing Arab boys walking hand in hand on the streets but it seems that may have changed.

    • 2 years ago
  • chasingame
    • 0
      chasingame  

    • Just imagine if priests lived by the word they preach to people every day. Parishioners would only have to pay 5% of their income to the church instead of the 10-15% that they pay now. It get expensive to keep a false image of a false god perpetuated when you have to spend billions on legal defenses for your minions because they rape little boys.

    • 2 years ago
  • vicgal
    • 0
      vicgal  

    • It is undisputed that the earliest Christian leaders were very largely married men. The mention in Mark 1:30 of Saint Peter's mother-in-law indicates that he had married. Neither the Catholic nor the Orthodox tradition considers the rule of clerical celibacy to be an unchangeable dogma, but instead as a rule that could be adjusted if the Church thought it appropriate.

    • 2 years ago
  • lordsbassman
  • troyl2
    • 0
      troyl2  

    • Catholic priests are sick how can you say your a man of God when they keep doing things like this then what makes me mad the pope is always covering it up instead of fixing it, i guess he's one of them too i wouldn't be surprised

    • 2 years ago
more from Community:
from the community

top videos