That must be it. How else to explain how four pastors in one week were arrested on child rape charges? Those tempting little minxes! To tempt even saintly men of God!
As an extra special bonus, the George Jenkins High School football coach and the St. Petersburg baseball coach were arrested for sex with minors this month, too.
It couldn’t possibly be that the culture grants churches and athletics excessive privileges that draw in cocky parasites, could it? Nasty little men who believe their calling gives them special dispensation to abuse?
Shit, I got nothing. This kind of thing is almost not even news anywmore…
One would hope that at some point, people everywhere would just get up and say “Enough is fucking ENOUGH”!
Nasty little men who look for situations where men are given authority over children, and institutions who collectively confuse morality with loyalty to a brand.
Child sexual abuse is not limited to these environments but they do always stand out more. Unchecked and assumed ‘authority’, ‘trust’ and the apparition of ‘morel piety’ make these people feel untouchable and aligns with their fucked up feelings of power that goes with the control they have over these young children. Fuck the church, NOT the children!
People new to the blog and unfamiliar with the crowd here should note that if, hypothetically, you were to notice anything inaccurate or misleading about the article – say nothing! To do so would lead to cries of “rape apologist!” and copious abuse and vulgarity. Also, any attempt to criticise said abuse will lead to cries of “tone troll!” – just a warning.
Now, suppose I had information that the victim was not a 14 year old boy, but was in fact 15! Would that make me a rape apologist? I’m guessing so. It would no doubt prove that I thought it was ok to rape a 15 year old!
*Cue abuse*
On a related note:
-+-+-+-
You’re a petulant whiner and a detestable fuckwit of the first order, with apparently nothing better to do than prop up yourself as a martyr after hearing children have been raped and abused.
bevwoodward @4,
gosh bev, if you see a problem then say so. honesty and courtesy are not mutually exclusive.
@bevwoodward #4
Bizarre. Is it still considered martyrdom when there is no cause?
I’m not sure what to take away from your comment, but it reminded me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_12E1EN6fs
Suicide squaaaaad, attack!
@ bevwoodward says:
*Cue abuse*
I am not going to abuse you because I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. Maybe if you made some god damn fucking sense we could zero in on some abuse. Perhaps there are better blogs for you to post on. I do not know what they are but why don’t you go and spend some time (like a few years) reading up on them.
No, that would make you a nitpicker and a derailer, someone who apparently feels compelled to point out minor, inconsequential errors that are totally irrelevant to the POINT of the discussion. I really can’t imagine why you would think it helpful or necessary to do so, unless you just HAVE to be the center of attention.
They don’t call it “pork” county for nothing. They also lead in the number of drownings in Florida. And the county is in the middle of the state, no coastline.
Would a year’s difference in age change anything? How about 18 instead of 17? Rape is rape. Bev, I wouldn’t describe you as a piece of shit because shit can be composted and something could come from it. You, on the other hand are useless, a waste of oxygen and nonrenewable resources.
Well Bev, looking through the article I don’t believe anybody claimed that all of these under age individuals were 14 or under. As such, I don’t think we can call you a tone troll, just a troll; and not even a very good troll at that.
The one good thing I see in all of this (like you can actually find anything good in this type of crap); Polk County law enforcement are actually arresting clergy for child related sex crimes and not giving them a pass because they’re clergy. Here’s hoping that we’ve finally gotten over giving anybody a pass due to their position or title within some organization. That will go a long way towards protecting kids from the sick and depraved.
bevwoodward: I love martyr complexes. It makes me so happy to nail whining assholes up to their self-erected crucifixes. Keep it up, you’ll be gone soon enough.
And/or they know that it will be more likely that they will get away with it.
bev,
Who the hell shit in your Wheaties this morning?
Your comment is nothing short of tacky. There are more important things to discuss here than your bruised ego.
To those not clued in, I’m referring to the fact that on a recent article, I raised some doubts about the methodology used to determine the prevalence of rape. As a consequence, I was accused of supporting rape.
Now the term “tone troll” was invented to characterize people who ignore the logic in your argument, and simply suggest that you should be more mild in your approach. But the people on this site make highly abusive posts which don’t really contain any logic, and then call you a tone troll when you criticize them. We have our first contender:
“You’re a petulant whiner and a detestable fuckwit of the first order, with apparently nothing better to do than prop up yourself as a martyr after hearing children have been raped and abused.”
I can’t see anywhere in any of my posts where I have set myself up as a martyr, so this statement appears devoid of rational content. Calling me a “petulant whiner” and a “detestable fuckwit” hasn’t really convinced me either, sorry.
We should give bevwoodward an enema, so that when it gets banned eventually, it can be conveniently housed in a matchbox.
Btw, it’s my experience that wherever young people gather, be that in sports clubs or youth centers etc, the religious ghouls are not far off, over here for example, there are “sports chaplains”.
ben,
Oooooh, you’re that douche. Yeah, you’re not doing yourself any favors by bringing up the rape stats thread.
*sigh* Not even smart enough to read what you’ve written. Did you not write “*Cue abuse*” in your very first post on this thread?
Idiot.
Here’s a protip, free of charge: If you don’t like it here, no one is forcing you to stay. Go find somewhere else to whine and carry on.
Or, “bev”, if I wasn’t so full of tpyos this evening.
I’ll put it in the form of a question: Do you have something better to do?
– If so, do it.
– If not, then I consider you a petulant whiner and a detestable fuckwit.
That’s the logic I’m working with at the moment. If P, then Q. P implies Q. If you don’t do anything other than P, that to me implies Q.
That would be this thread, where you supported rape
by insinuating that if a rape victim use the word “rape” to describe what happened to her, she therefore was not raped, even though she answered in the affirmative to one of these questions:
8. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?
9. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?
10. Have you had sexual acts (anal or oral intercourse or penetration by objects other than the penis) when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?
Dr Audley,
*cue abuse* was a prediction that the abuse would immediately start, which it did. So it was an accurate prediction, not a martyr complex. It seems that you’re the idiot.
… by insinuating that if a rape victim does not use the word “rape” to describe what happened to her, she therefore was not raped, even though …
/typo
Love moderately:
“That would be this thread, where you supported rape by insinuating that if a rape victim use the word “rape” to describe what happened to her, she therefore was not raped, even though she answered in the affirmative to one of these questions:”
Nowhere did I suggest a relationship between whether a person described what happened to them as rape and whether it actually was rape. Furthermore, that is emphatically NOT what the study did. It did not ask the woman whether she had been raped, but instead looked for a yes answer to a number of rather broad and potentially ambiguous questions. For exampe, question 8:
8. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?
Now this obviously includes cases where the man slipped something into her drink. But unfortunately, an incident where the woman voluntarily accepted alcohol which lowered her inhibitions, consented to sex but regretted it, would also elicit a yes answer.
Dear bev : you come here, post a long passive-aggressive paragraph about how you’re being oppressed “just for pointing out an error”, and then you wonder why people say you’re whining ?
Enough Derail for me. go piss up a rope.
Awe, don’t the trolls get cute when they get all defensive!
Listen, asshole, I know what thread you’re talking about and it would do you some good to re-read it yourself– there is no doubt in my mind that you are a rape apologist.
Your entire opening comment on this thread focused on how abusive we are, not about the awful news story that was linked to in the OP. Not only are you a rape apologist, you’re a narcissist and (yes) a goddamned fucking martyr that just wants to point out how awful we treat you instead of talking about the abused children of the OP.
Here’s the thing, sweetie, you are scum of the lowest order and you deserved every bit of argument/insults/naughty language that was thrown your way. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to engage any of us. I know it’s hard for a self centered clown fucker such as yourself to take this advice, but I am really pretty sure that you can find someone, somewhere who will listen to your dribbling bullshit.
Bye-bye, bevwoodward. It takes a genuine idiot to pop into a thread about an epidemic of child rape and whine that you’re being picked on.
Yes, you did. I quote:
And it turned out that those questions addressed by CHS were not ambiguous at all. These were the questions:
8. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?
9. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?
10. Have you had sexual acts (anal or oral intercourse or penetration by objects other than the penis) when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?
+++++
Those questions, 8 9 and 10 above, were not from the rape study that PZ discussed. If you’d paid attention to that thread, you’d know this. Those questions were from the Koss study that CHS maligned.
+++++
No, you are a liar who defends rape.
An incident where a woman consented to sex but later regretted it would elicit a NO answer, because the question was not
“8. Have you had sexual intercourse and later regretted it when a man gave you alcohol or drugs?”
The question was in fact:
“8. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?”
If they wanted to at the time, and later regretted it, they would have to honestly answer NO to that question. So you are calling these women liars by claiming that they would answer YES when it was just a matter of regretting it later.
Furthermore, we have to look at what the women themselves did say about it when they didn’t want to call it rape. This is most illuminative. As CHS puts it:
So, assuming CHS reports it accurately: 49 percent blame themselves for being raped, 14 percent think they weren’t raped violently enough to call it rape, and 11 percent think that because they got over it they shouldn’t call it rape.
And for this, CHS blames Koss, rather than patriarchy.
One would hope that at some point, people everywhere would just get up and say “Enough is fucking ENOUGH”!
I was pondering this as well, although I wouldn’t expect such an uprising to stamp out sexual abuse. What I would expect, however, is increased awareness and discussion.
As an abuse victim myself, I have experienced the attitude American society has when it comes to addressing/discussing sexual abuse: “As long as we never hear about it, it probably isn’t happening, so let’s not bother listening for it” sort of head in the sand attitude.
It played a large role in hiding my own experience from everyone until I was in my late twenties. I can only imagine I’m not alone, but instead one of a vast number of people with a similar such experience.
My 5 year-old son is already attuned to the idea of bullying in large part due to simple advertisements on the kids channels he watches. They make it clear that bullying is fully unacceptable and that we each have a responsibility to speak up. It caused him to question us about bullying long before we considered it important to educate him about the subject. And now he remains ever-vigilant to the point there are times when he brings things to our attention that aren’t actually bullying.
I’d like to see such a concerted, open effort to educate kids about sexual abuse when they’re young – and especially vulnerable to such abuse – in a straightforward way that also manages to not freak them out. I don’t like that my son’s only source of education on such matters is his parents. As his dad, I lose sleep worrying that it isn’t enough.
At his newspaper The Stranger’s group blog, Dan Savage has a regular feature called “Youth Pastor Watch,” in which he links to recent stories of youth pastors arrested on sex abuse or related charges. It’s depressing how often new items appear.
Yep, Bev, until you commit yourself and provide an absolute age of consent, you are nothing but a tone troll. You see, not to be a tone troll requires you to commit yourself to to the possibility of being wrong by actually making a declarative sentence as to your real beliefs. I’ll make mine, 18, or 16 and with two years of the age of the abuser…Loser…
while i do not think correlation implies causation, i see enough anecdotal evidence to consider studying a hypothesis whether certain professions (ones which impose virginity, give u some sort of controlling power over people, or both) leads to a higher tendency towards sex crimes against the most vulnerable sections of society.
What a gross human being that bev is. It’s bad enough playing the martyr in a thread about the rape of children, but xe also is ridiculously unaware of the fact that that is what xe was doing. Insensitive piece of shit.
Shouldn’t those pastors have gouged their eyes out to avoid having to be tempted by those delectable children? That failing, they should have avoided those sexy kids by applying the knife to a different organ.
The state of Illinois, some years back, introduced this into the curriculum for early childhood education. Oddly, Obama’s peripheral involvement in this lead to accusations that he wanted to teach kindergarten children all about sex. When comprehensive sex-education classes are offered in schools, there is a certain group which takes advantage of the opt-out at a much higher percentage than the remainder of the population. These same groups, the ones attacking Obama for his support of ‘good touch, bad touch’ sex-ed for grade schoolers and pulling their children out of comprehensive sex-ed classes, are the same ones trying to force the absolutely useless abstinence-only sex education into public schools,
If I were a more cynical man, I would start to wonder just why the authoritarian religious right wants to keep children profoundly ignorant about their bodies, about how and why things work, about differences in their bodies, and, especially, about what is appropriate for an adult to do with them, or to them. If I were more cynical, I would start to think that the right-wing religious asshats were keeping children ignorant so that they could abuse them. And then, still being cynical here, I would aslo have to start wondering about the whole ‘we are all hopeless sinners’ guilt-trip which keeps the victims feeling guilty, feeling that whatever happened was the child’s fault, that this whole Christian right authoritarian culture was a way for the powerful men to gain access to as sex as possible.
Luckily, I am not cynical. I just view cases such as this one, such as Ireland, Boston, the FLDS, and the other tens of thousands of cases of abuse as being totally unrelated coincidental tens of thousands of similar cases.
Or do I sound too cynical?
The beginning of this post is enough to turn my stomach. At least I’m pretty sure it’s not just post-nasal drip.
Brother Ogvorbis (#34)
Well, I’ve been wondering that for a long time, now, and I came to one conclusion — that there is, in fact, a conspiracy afoot to keep these creepers in circulation. The sad/scary/frustrating part is, most of the people who are part of/supporting this conspiracy aren’t even aware they’re doing so.
I feel that it is SO vitally important to teach children about “personal space”, boundaries, and “good touch/bad touch” as early as possible, and in a way that makes it absolutely clear that there are support services available FOR FREE, and that if someone is abusing them, they can go to ANY adult in the school system for help. And, um, I’d like to expand that to include Domestic Violence and other forms of Child Abuse, because–
There are some things that nobody should have to experience or witness.
The evidence looks pretty solid against him, at least to me. I hope he’s found guilty and severely punished by the law.
People seem reluctant to defy authority even when they know the authority is wrong. I wish I knew of a way to teach people that it’s OK to call out someone in authority when they are in the wrong while knowing the difference between something that’s actually wrong and something that is wrong in their own personal opinion. (Keep in mind, I’m going beyond the scope of abusers.)
I’m no martyr. Danger Seekers: Rex Kramer.
*Cue abuse*
[meta]
PZ: four pastors in one week were arrested on child rape charges?
Some idiot with nothing to say about the topic: “I’m no martyr.” [arbitrary link]
(Bah)
PZ: the George Jenkins High School football coach and the St. Petersburg baseball coach were arrested for sex with minors this month, too.
Some idiot: “*Cue abuse*”
We ain’t pastors, you ain’t a minor.
(But if you really want abuse, seek them. They don’t disappoint)
Fact is: Institutions with kids in them attract pedophiles
Fact is: Authoritarian institutions attract authoritarian assholes
Combine the two and you get a church and a sports-team.
bev
What makes you an asshole rape-apologist is that you make a thread about rape-victims all about you.
Well, when I pulled up the news article I was hoping that it wasn’t the Polk County I’m familiar with. No such luck there.
I’m dismayed, but not surprised in the least. My only real surprise comes from the fact that they were caught. I just hope the victims don’t end up getting any community backlash from reporting the bastards.
And the conservative powers-that-be, the anti-tax, anti-help religious right, are trying to end that, too.
I suspect that the families of the victims of the pastors will be forced to leave their respective churches — your kid got pastor Wonderful fired and arrested!
I also suspect that the victims of the baseball and football coaches will also be ostracized — you got our great coach fired!
And if you doubt this, think about the reports of one of Sandusky’s victims being bullied because he came forward.
My wife once worked for a local organization providing counselling of child victims of rape and other forms of sexual abuse, and so often came home depressed by the stories she heard.
One of the worst aspects of such abuse is that all too often (male) judges and (male) prosecutors and (male) police officers won’t take accusations seriously, especially when the accused (man) is well regarded in the local community. Rapists and abusers are all too commonly not charged and even when they are they’re often not given punishments fitting for the heinous crimes they committed.
That said, as a survivor of a Catholic primary (boarding) school run by nuns I have to say that sexual abuse is the only kind of abuse I didn’t suffer, but with only two men (a priest and a gardener) on the premises maybe I just wasn’t pretty enough to attract their attentions. Nonetheless the nuns more than made up for it with their constant psychological and physical abuse.
Another depressing story about the ongoing epidemic of child-rape and child-rape coverups going on in the catholic church and among sports coaches in associated schools. The worst part is that there will doubtless be a few of the usual platitudes from the local religious authorites, and then, as usual, nothing much will really happen, and the cycle of abuse will start all over again. Society just never seems to learn.
On the upside, at least bevwoodward has been banned. Even by the low, low standards of rape apologists, xe was a nasty piece of work.
Of course, the natural response is, and I quote: “Makes me wanna pull my child out of public school!”
Another lovely comment from the same story:
(Full disclosure: I live in Klop[1] County.)
[1] We’re so bass-ackward we pronounce it “Polk”.
Oh, good, PZ did some sanitation.
I, being more cynical than Brother Ogvorbis, don’t hesitate to leap to those conclusions. Reactionaries literally believe that there is a hierarchy of human beings, some groups in which exist only for the convenience or entertainment of other groups and have no rights that the “superior” groups don’t accord them.
Of course, they would likely claim they’re horrified and disgusted by child sexual abuse. But that claim comes with a thousand “buts” and other qualifiers appended to it. Children lie. A good godly man would never do something like that. It’s only because the gays infiltrated the church. This is a smear by his enemies.
*puts on cynical, misnathropic hat*
The question is – do child molesters seek out areas where their authority will not be questioned so they can carry on this way, or was it child molesters who started institutions like these so that they could carry on this way?
Perhaps this is the real foundation of religion as a mind-control device. Keep them ignorant, keep them afraid, keep them thinking they have an immortal soul who’s eternal well-being hands in the balance, and you can rape kids with impunity for eternity.
Which looks like is works more often than not over the course of christianity’s two millennia. The militiary, Judaism, Islam, sports teams – all also bastions of male privilege, unquestioned authority and mandatory obedience – have similar issues.
A cub scout pack leader once told me (this is paraphrased as it was 35 years ago): “There are men and there are children. Children exist to make men happy. Some children grow up to be men. You get to marry the ones who don’t.”
I think I recall you quoting that before. The only thing notable about that sentiment is how frank it is. Most people don’t talk like that, but many people’s assumptions run precisely along those lines — even if they’re not pedophiles.
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
He was mentoring scouts.
And I’d expect that the ministers in the OP have, basically, the same philosophy.
Brother O.: I’m aware he was mentoring scouts. And, yes, I’m sure the ministers in the OP, the higher-ups in the Vatican, etc. believe the same. But it also takes a majority of submissive authoritarians who believe the same thing at some level for the predators to get away with it.
Sorry. I wasn’t clear.
No problem.
Jesus Hussein Christ. In Australia!?!?!
You’re stupid enough to blame everyone else when you fail to express yourself clearly?
See, that’s why you were banned.
Dear general population: Your children have far more to fear from people such as priests, sports coaches, Boy Scout leaders, etc. I wouldn’t worry about atheists when THOSE goons are running around.
Ogvorbis @#48: He said that for real? That’s deeply disturbing, and even though I see evidence of it so much, a part of me still can’t process that such a mindset exists. Even worse, that it’s the reason so many kids suffered and are still suffering.
Well, now I want to start lighting a few fires under some people’s asses. Not literally, just . . . do SOMETHING to suss out those nutjobs who think this is an acceptable way to view kids, and other adults. I don’t want them to be in a position of power, particularly not one where they’re pretty much unquestioned. They shouldn’t be protected from consequences, and that’s mostly what has happened so far.
That is paraphrased and condensed, but yes.
See, he was deeply involved with his religion and he viewed the scouts as a tool to make children into men. And he was
shit.
He used this to justify what he did to some of the scouts. To show us that we didn’t really want to still be children when we grow up.
Sorry.
I’d just like to remind folks never to trust anyone who actually wants to spend lots of time with children. If a coach or teacher ever offers to give your kid a ride, extra tutoring, etc., your antennae should go up.
No need to apologize, Brother O. I offer you my empathy.
I’m apologizing because I cannot continue with what needs to be said.
You mean “Stay away from the children, you filthy bastard!”
No. I mean I really cannot go there right now. Really. Sorry about that.
There is a ray of hope in one of those accounts. To quote
At least the elder didn’t do the RC thing of sweeping the matter under the carpet.
Sexual abuse of children has probably always been pretty common, but it used to be something no one talked about and about which the police did nothing. Now, perhaps indirectly because everyone is well aware how much kiddy porn is accessible on the internet, people do talk about it, and the police do act on it.
Rather like the slow, painful shift to sexual and racial equality (neither of which processes is anywhere near complete), society is slowly waking up to the prevalence of sexual abuse, and doing something about it.
There is reason to hope.